by Ashanti Luke
Something had dropped behind Euston, but Milliken had paid little attention to it. He had wrapped the fingers of his right hand around Euston’s neck and pressed his thumb hard just beneath the jawbone as Sifu Tanner had taught him. Something or someone smashed into the soldier to his left as Milliken twisted his right hand outward, pulling Euston’s rifle barrel in the opposite direction with his left. Euston started to move his feet, but Milliken had already raised his knee upward with force, driving it up, dropping it, and then driving back up again into the Euston’s groin. Euston’s hand had released the rifle, which fell to the floor as Milliken brought his hand back in a fist into Euston’s ribs.
Milliken’s punch collided with some hard piece of metal in a pocket in the soldier’s vest and sent a shock through his knuckles up his arm, but Euston’s body had buckled anyway, weak from the attack to the groin. Euston grasped feebly at Milliken’s wrist as he fell, scraping skin from beneath the cuff of Milliken’s jumpsuit with his nails. Out of the corner of his eye, Milliken noticed Cyrus was now on the same floor as them, lying on top of another soldier. Milliken locked the fingers of his right hand into a claw and dug his own unkempt nails into Euston’s neck. Euston tightened his grip and Milliken checked Euston’s elbow with his free hand, turned to his left, and snatched his hand away from Euston’s neck in a forceful rake. Milliken ducked under Euston’s arm, stepped his right leg behind him, and then reached over his shoulder, grabbed Euston’s neck and chin with both hands, and stepping hard down and backward, flipped the soldier over his own shoulder.
Euston’s legs flopped awkwardly as he went over and he landed face and chest-first on the ground, sliding a half-meter or so before his knees plopped to the floor. Milliken was already moving toward him to finish him when he looked up and noticed two guards across the lobby, about ten meters away, guns trained on him.
Dr. Winberg could barely believe his eyes when Cyrus leapt over the edge of the balcony using the Ashan commander’s neck as an anchor. The guards had scrambled around as anarchy was loosed upon the hallway. Arms, legs, elbows, and knees swung wildly as bodies dropped and scientists and guards alike moved about like roaches from an overturned refuse bin.
So this is how Dr. Chamberlain is going to get us killed. There had been a scuffle at the door of what looked like the staircase, and there was a commotion at the edge of the balcony as guards had wrestled with Dr. Chamberlain’s chains to free their commander from his grip. One of them had fumbled with a small device and they had argued until finally Dr. Chamberlain’s, along with everyone else’s, chains released.
The fire was now spreading toward the hall at an alarming rate. Water began cascading over them as four guards rushed up from behind with extinguishing units. As the men approached, and as the two original guards who were still conscious moved to follow whoever had escaped in the stairwell, Dr. Winberg saw his chance.
“I can help you!” he yelled above the cataract and chaos. “I know his plan!”
Torvald knew something was coming but he had no idea it was coming like this. He had spent two dome cycles alone in a darkened room with only a table and a chair. He had spent most of the time curled up beneath the table, locked in a repeating memory of life in Bonn. He had expected to remember his fiancée, Siobhan. He had even tried to keep revisiting images in his mind of her thick locks of red hair she could never keep from tangling, her skin so pale it would freckle the moment sunlight graced her body, her laugh that, despite being a very masculine laugh, turned him on to her more than any other of her outward traits. But every time he tried to think of what Dr. Villichez referred to as ‘enchanted thoughts,’ he had always been returned to the same vision—riding on the Bonn sub-lev, from end to end, the day before his fifteenth birthday. It had been the week of Karneval and the doorman at the bar where his surprise party was supposed to be refused to let him in because he was eight hours too young. His best friend Jörg had to tell him about the surprise that was never sprung. For what must have been a full day, he rode that same sub-lev again and again, complaining to Jörg, who stayed with him the whole time. Jörg joked about their Novitiateship together, trying to get him to forget his anger at the doorman. That image continued to run through his mind even after they removed him from the dark room and placed him in with the other room of scientists. Davidson and Milliken had tried to tell him something, Davidson had even spoken to him in German, but all he managed to understand of what Davidson had said was a paraphrase of what Cyrus had told him before he was gaffled, ‘Something is coming.’
That image of that sub-lev ride was still in his head now as the orderly line in front of disintegrated into bedlam. It felt as if his insides had been tangled up in a rigging line and now two mag-levs were tugging at either side trying to free it. Only moments earlier, his wristlocks had tightened, but that had seemed like only part of the routine. The confusion at the front of the line may have been a sign of the ‘something’ that was supposed to be coming, but it seemed like everything in this place was accompanied by some form of bushwah or another.
Before he had been snatched by the imaginary rigging line from his reverie, he had been lucid long enough to see something fall from the ceiling in front of the line. That was when he felt his wrists were no longer restrained. That was when the tour de farce that had formed around him could no longer sit outside of his acknowledgement.
The hard metal that had collided with his shoulder, evidently aimed for his head, reinforced this demand for his attention. He stumbled from the unexpected blow into a guard, but as that guard shoved him back the other way, he found himself spinning and lifting his left leg as if he were in Sifu Tanner’s dojo. Unlike in the dojo, as he brought his leg around in an arc incident with his assailant’s head, he tried to shatter his target’s temple with his heel.
The guard, evidently woefully unprepared, took the heel to his head and dropped straight down. Torvald continued his motion but dropped as a second piece of metal, another rifle butt, whiffed through his hair, rubbing against his scalp but doing nothing to slow his momentum. Torvald planted his left foot and whipped his right out and around, sweeping the other guard’s legs from beneath him. The guard’s body inverted, and as Torvald stood, the back of the man’s head smacked against the ground. Torvald continued his motion, stopped his right foot, lifted his left knee, and brought his heel down into the man’s torso. Torvald felt the guard’s breath expel and his ankle rolled slightly on something in one of the guard’s front pockets. Then Torvald stood there stunned with vision blurred, frozen on the man’s chest like an image of a hunter with his trophy as the scrapes on his scalp and shoulders protested against the cold washing over him. Rousseau and Qin had earlier turned and sheltered their heads from the commotion behind them but now stood staring at Torvald in frozen awe. Torvald saw past them to the two khaki forms moving through the rabble toward some tussle at its head. There was a bizarre hissing above him, and for a moment he tried to discern what it was until he saw the khaki forms stop moving and heard someone yell “Desist!”
That was when he knew Cyrus was in danger.
Had Cyrus known the level and intensity of the pain that would wash over him as he lunged, dislocated shoulder first, into the back of the unsuspecting guard, he might have chosen another course of action. But now, his knees gave out beneath him as the sickening pop from his shoulder resetting still resonated in his ears. It felt as if his spine was being ripped out of his side. As the ground engulfed him, and a thick black frost spread through the void left by his seemingly excised backbone, Cyrus wondered if the man he had checked into the wall had managed to maintain his own consciousness...
...the warmth of a jaundiced sun was an alarming contrast to the apathetic chill that had brought him here. He was moving quickly, as if he was riding a mag-cycle, but the movement was too bumpy, more organic. Maybe it was a nanohorse. Either way, the sense of urgency rushing through his veins like a poison made the nature of his conveyance irrelevant—whatever he w
as riding was not fast enough.
He rode faster and faster but it was still not enough to appease his anxiety. But then he saw his destination. It was a small point on the horizon, barely visible in front of the setting sun, but he instantly knew what it was. It was a child, a little girl, but she had the face of a woman, a woman who had lost something very dear to her—she had the look of a mother in mourning for her child.
That was when the clouds began to coalesce and swirl in the sky behind her, but she was oblivious to their formation or their intent—or so it seemed. She was too far away for him to have gleaned this and yet he knew it anyway. He pressed on harder, rode so hard he began to sweat, but the clouds continued to form—thick, unctuous billows that seemed to have issued from despair itself. Talons formed, and then sinewy arms, and then a ghastly visage that eclipsed the pallid sun. The form reared back, the girl still in either ignorance or apathy, Cyrus still too far away. It lunged forward, teeth bared and mouth gaping, to devour its prey...
...but Cyrus was snatched from his mount by his neck. The surreal horror before him faded and gave way to very tangible disorder.
Toutopolus was pulling Cyrus to his feet by his collar, but had been too focused on the resuscitation to see the rifle butt arcing toward his own head. It smacked against the side of his head as someone yelled “Desist!”
Cyrus stood into a kick but his vision and balance failed him. He stumbled, and even though he was still sure the guard’s head was in the path of his foot, he only managed to knick the soldier’s wrist and catch part of his rifle barrel.
But that had been good enough to set the guard off balance. Toutopolus reeled away from the guard, and he clutched the side of his head, revealing another guard training a gun on them both. The ground was still wobbling beneath Cyrus’s feet, but he allowed his body to stumble with it into the guard he had tried to kick. They both clambered to the floor in a sprawl, but Cyrus managed to regain enough awareness to bring his forehead down hard on the guard’s nose as the ground broke their fall.
Cyrus rolled onto his back, still on top of the guard, to see a gun barrel aimed at his head. “Move again and I finish you!”
Uzziah had pushed past Tanner and Jang on the second landing. By the time they had reached the fifth floor, two floors down from where they started, their chains had fallen away, but Uzziah kept holding the rifle like a bat. The Ashan rifle was a design very similar to the assault rifles he was accustomed to: top-loading, safety catch in the same place, and no shell ejection port because the rounds were most likely caseless. He could use the weapon as had been intended, but he didn’t hold it like a gun. He held it like a polearm because firstly, his captors had foolhardily never suspected him of having any military training, and secondly, because something was amiss. The chaos that had ensued had been a crossfire nightmare, but he knew, before he had followed Tanner and Jang out the door, that at least one of the guards had a clear shot at him. There had also not been a single report of gunfire echoing down the stairwell. The guards had obviously been given orders not to shoot, and a man wielding a rifle as a Kantistyka racket was less likely to elicit unsanctioned gunfire.
As they had reached the fourth floor, the door had opened in front of them, and Uzziah had kicked it back and had kept running, pulling Jang along with him. Tanner had scuffled with someone at the door when it had opened again, and he had somehow barred the door and continued to follow.
Dr. Rousseau had moved out of Torvald’s way as he rushed forward, but he had to shove Dr. Qin and Dr. Eisenhertz to the side. Eisenhertz fell to the ground hard, but Torvald had not been concerned. He had been concerned about the khaki form that had been moving toward the front of the chaos as someone had yelled, “Move again and I finish you!”
Dr. Qin had been between Torvald and his target, but as Torvald rushed toward them, and as the soldier began to turn, Qin crouched down, covering his head. Torvald did not hesitate. He launched his own body into the air and threw a left punch at the soldier’s head, using the loop of the cuffs as metal knuckles. The man turned his temple directly into the path of the unorthodox attack and crumpled as Torvald landed on top of him. Then, unexpectedly, something from the soldier’s utility pack jabbed painfully into Torvald’s side, knocking the breath forcefully from his lungs.
Toutopolus had flipped the man onto his back with the kick. The man had tried to spin on his back, had tried to bring his own leg around to clip Toutopolus’s feet, but Toutopolus had seen both Cyrus and Sifu Tanner do that on the Paracelsus, and he had fallen for it too many times. Toutopolus had jumped, pulling both feet into the air, raising his knees up to his waist. As he had landed, he brought both feet down on the soldier’s chest and stomach. Toutopolus had felt the soldier’s body shift awkwardly underneath his feet and had stumbled off his torso. Toutopolus had not resisted the fall, had moved with the momentum, and had pedaled his legs beneath him to regain his footing. He had stumbled three steps toward another soldier as that soldier had turned his back with his machine gun hanging from its shoulder strap. The soldier reached for some other device and yelled, “You fit to fry espion!”
That was when Toutopolus tripped on Davidson’s ankle.
Davidson still could not make sense of the debacle that was playing out around him. Bodies were spinning, flying, falling everywhere. He had become dizzy, and he realized that he had not been breathing. He had heard the words, “You fit to fry,” but he had only been able to stand there, trying to catch his breath, trying to clear his vision. And then something clipped his Achilles tendon and sent a sharp twinge through his entire body. The twinge shot through to the base of his skull, clearing and focusing his vision. He saw through the chaos of the melee in front of him—there were two soldiers, across the lobby, neglecting their machine guns to reach for something else to gun down Milliken who, with the bellow of some enraged creature, blindly charged toward them.
The soldier stood wisely outside of Torvald’s reach, and he pulled a small black box from his utility belt. Torvald coughed, spittle erupting from his mouth as he strained to pull in air that eluded him. He noticed that Davidson was the only thing in the hall that seemed to not be moving. It was as if everything else was spinning around him—Davidson was the center of balance in a universe that refused order. Then, as the soldier pointed the black box, Torvald realized he was, as these jackmonkey Ashan soldiers would put it, finished, complete.
But then, a comet from the chaos assaulted the stable center, and Torvald saw Toutopolus, like a Fringe cat in a wildlife holostream, curl into a ball and bowl into the legs of the soldier with the black box. A tiny bolt of lightning burst from the box, but went upward, dissipating into the ceiling as the guard’s body splayed and fell, his limbs flailing into awkward positions on the floor. Torvald rolled from the man he had punched, who was now twitching beneath him, and he noticed Cyrus was still in danger.
“Get up, rightforth!” The soldier standing over Cyrus bellowed as he ignored the calamity around him. Cyrus looked down the barrel of the gun, and he felt the heat well in him again, eclipsing the throbbing in his shoulder. And then he saw the earwig radio in the soldier’s ear. They were all connected, and yet, in the midst of this nonsense, not a single shot had been fired—not even into the air. So Cyrus leaned forward, as if he was about to stand from the bloody soldier writhing beneath him, and he launched a front kick at the soldier’s knee.
Torvald launched himself from his crouch toward the soldier standing over Cyrus, but as Cyrus moved, the soldier’s body came back toward him. Torvald landed another metal-knuckled punch, this time right at the base of the soldier’s skull. The soldier’s head snapped forward but his body continued its descent. As he fell, Torvald noticed another black box, like the one that had been pointed at him, on the man’s belt.
Milliken’s legs rushed him toward the guard. A world-class sprinter could cover thirty meters in a little less than three seconds—but Milliken had a larger distance to cover in less time. The thought cr
ossed his mind and then dissipated in the fury that still fueled his body and launched him toward the guard across the lobby. The guard had reached onto his belt and was pulling something black and oddly cold-looking from his belt, and now he was raising it to point at Milliken.
Davidson hurled himself forward behind Milliken, screaming as he charged toward the second guard across the lobby. The guard had pulled the thing from his belt, and as Davidson screamed, the guard turned his attention from Milliken to him. He pulled the black box between himself and Davidson and there was a flash. Davidson’s vision went blank and he felt his chest stop, as if someone had lifted a hand and halted him. He realized he could no longer feel his legs. And then the feeling in his arms and fingers was gone. An then, finally, nothing.
Milliken saw something that looked like a thin bolt of lightning streak from the black box of the guard to his right. It had halted the screaming of whoever had followed him out of the brawl into the lobby. He didn’t know what it had done, but he was sure he didn’t want to find out, so as the guard turned his eyes back to him, Milliken leapt forward and dropped.
Torvald saw Davidson get laid out by the bolt of lightning that shot out from the soldier and it felt as if his own heart had stopped. Davidson twitched as static electricity crackled through his body. But now, Torvald had one of the black lightning boxes in his own hand. He saw Milliken drop to the ground, slide, and clip the soldier near the entrance from his feet. Torvald lifted the box and pressed the green button, hoping simultaneously that he was pressing the correct button and, for Davidson’s sake, that the bolts that issued from the box were not lethal.