Countdown (Arrival Book 2)

by Travis Hill

  “Okay,” she said.

  Melly pulled me closer. Our breathing synced as our foreheads touched, silence replacing any words we might have spoken. I worried that before the week was up, we would exhaust our emotions. The fire within me still burned as bright and hot as ever, even as we raced toward my departure, but I wasn’t sure how much more of the intense mix of love, loss, pleasure, and sadness I could take.

  It had been like this for almost a week. Sometimes we collapsed in a snoring heap after a string orgasms within a brief period, our bodies sore from the constant friction, the constant contraction of muscles that seemed to go on forever. Sometimes we held each other, neither saying a word, neither of us needing to hear anything the other said since words were meaningless. Mostly we did our best to experience another two decades of life, love, laughter, and passion during the short time we had left.

  The paralyzing fear of separation hounded me at every waking moment, even while we were engaged in physical pleasures. It ate away at my sanity. That only drove my need to display my love, my affection for Melly to greater, more desperate heights. By the time my departure date arrived, I had convinced myself that Melly would escort me to the portal before safely slipping back into The Bower. I tried to keep from thinking about how she would once again be alone, one more lover slipping away yet again. It frightened me more than the fear of what would happen to me when (if) I stepped through the portal in the Justice plaza.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Departure: -03h 05m 00s

  I breathed in Melly’s scent one last time, my body quivering at the light trail of wetness her lips made as they followed the line of my jaw until they met my own. The Death Lords would get the party started any moment. I held on to Melly as long as I could. I never wanted to let go. She didn’t either. I could tell by the way she trembled as her hands clutched at my back. But she was older, wiser, and knew that all things must eventually come to an end. No matter how painful, how wrenching they could be. When Melly roughly pushed me away, I fought to keep my tears in, my sanity intact.

  “Don’t,” she said when I reached for her one last time. “I fucking love you, Andreada. Don’t ever, ever forget it. But we have to do this.”

  Her eyes glanced down to the chron on my wrist. Just over three hours until I met my fate. There was only about fifteen kilometers of city to traverse before I could step into whatever awaited me on the other side. And about four blocks of hell where at least fifty humans and Guardians would soon be duking it out. Not to mention maybe a thousand Guardians along the fifteen klick route.

  I checked my pistol one last time then slipped the tactical goggles over my eyes. I waited for the unit to link with Melly’s, then pulled a second pistol from the webbing on my leg. It was a dummy that had been modified to spray bullets indiscriminately. I didn’t need it to be be linked to any kind of targeting system. The dummy was made for keeping heads down and clearing tightly packed targets. The targeting reticule in my vision blinked twice then became a steady green, changing to a blue X when it passed over Mellisandra.

  “Try not to kill any of Griff’s boys,” she said with a grin. “They’re on our side.”

  “For now,” I grumbled. Melly trusted them, but I had learned in my time to never trust anyone beyond my depressingly small circle of friends. “I can’t believe you gave them the implosion grenade.”

  “Don’t worry, they won’t cross us.”

  “How do you know? Seems like Griff has been itching to settle a number of scores with you for a long time.”

  “Griff and I go way back,” she agreed. I waited for her to hint at just how far back, but she avoided it like always. “But that grenade is our guarantee that he won’t stab us in the back.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a second implosion grenade. “And this one, you know, is just in case I’m wrong.”

  “Were you two…?” I asked when I saw the way her expression changed, as if she’d had a pleasant memory bubble up to the surface. That Mellisandra and Griff might have once had a thing was surprising, but her having a second grenade wasn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a hundred more of them stashed in her pockets.

  Melly frowned. “Gods, Drea…”

  “I’m just curious. I don’t trust him or his crew, and I only know about the shit we did to them. There seems to be a hundred years of conflict between you two. But the way you look when you talk about him is a dead giveaway.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No,” I said with a genuine laugh. “We’ve been together almost two decades and I’m still discovering all of these little secrets you have.”

  “They aren’t really secrets.”

  “Sure,” I said, scowling at her. “Because I never asked a specific question about someone or some ‘where,’ right?”

  “Drea…”

  “Even though when I asked specific questions about certain someones or somewheres, Dogan for instance, you blurted it all out in a rush, right?”

  I could tell I’d wounded her. I wondered if she was full of regret about not filling some of the long periods of silence in our nineteen years together. It wasn’t like we were mute around each other, though that happened enough when one or both of us were angry at the other (or ourselves for being too proud to resolve the problem). The level of comfort, the sense of belonging, of intimacy that we’d built over the years allowed us to express ourselves, our feelings, in ways that transcended spoken words. Would I have ever learned to not be selfish if Ebbers had stopped my clock and allowed me a century or more with Melly?

  “I love you,” she said before looking away. As if saying it would fix everything.

  I reached out and clutched her forearm. It did fix everything. I had three hours of this life left. I flushed away the negative feelings and focused on keeping her and myself safe until it was over. I didn’t want to regret anything more than I already did, should I survive.

  We waited in silence for another half hour. More scavs had poured in, and now outnumbered the Death Lords almost three to one, though how accurate that count was depended on how many scavs were hanging back and out of our range. Griff didn’t seem to be concerned as he casually strolled into the middle of a partially cleared intersection, repeating rifle slung over his shoulder, its barrel pointed toward the nearest scavs who seemed frozen in surprise. The buzz of Griff’s weapon shattered the silence as well as three scavs who danced and skipped until they landed face-down on the concrete.

  All hell broke loose. We kept our heads down, waiting for the Death Lords to fully grab everyone’s attention, including the Guardians who hadn’t moved an inch from their position at the barrier. The tactical readout in the goggles made it easier to follow the action after most of the underground battlefield was obscured by the smoke and dust of an intense firefight within two minutes.

  Griff’s crew gained the upper hand right out of the gate with his surprisingly bold opening act. They held on to it even being outnumbered three or four to one thanks to their superior firepower. The Guardians remained still, unmoving, ever-watching.

  A few minutes later, the scavs seemed to be pushing the Death Lords back, the sounds of battle coming uncomfortably close. I tried to stand up to help out but Melly held me down, shaking her head. Bullets began to ping off the walls around us. I bared my teeth at her when a trio of rounds dug into the concrete just above my head. Without the goggles, I would have spent the next ten minutes trying to flush the dust and silica from my eyes.

  Melly tapped me on the leg and pointed toward the barrier. I raised up just enough to realize the fight had turned and was creeping toward the Guardians. I grinned. Griff and company were in full control of the battle, manipulating where it was fought.

  A piercing shriek split the air, followed by a whoosh and a tightly wound smoke trail. The rocket impacted a Guardian’s chest, penetrating the advanced armor before detonating. As one, the five remaining Guardians ran forward at blinding speed.

  A second rocket shot
past the Guardians, the intended target barely dodging it. I watched the smoke trail as the rocket left the undercity and continued on into the daylight aboveground. I heard a shout—probably Griff’s—and a majority of gunfire stopped. The scavs kept firing, which drew the attention of the swiftly approaching Guardians, which drew the attention of the scavs who began to fire at the automated peacekeepers in a panic.

  Melly tapped me on the leg then began to advance toward the barrier in a crouch-walk. I followed, doing my best to watch where my feet and knees were going while also keeping an eye on the chaos off to my right. By the time we were less than a hundred meters from the barrier, the scavs had been ground down enough that the Death Lords rose up and resumed their attack on the remaining Guardians. Another shout caused Melly to tap furiously on my arm, her other hand pointing to her face. I glanced up just in time to see her mimic closing her eyes and opening her mouth while exaggeratedly expelling the air in her lungs.

  It was just in time. The implosion grenade detonated less than a hundred meters away. The sickening disorientation effect of the world around it being sucked into another dimension—or maybe just compacted down into a single molecule—made the balance and cognitive thought functions of my brain go haywire. The rush of air across my skin let me know that if I’d had air in my lungs, they might have collapsed from the sudden quantum vacuum. Griff and his men were troopers, as they were within a few meters of it, yet the instant the implosion collapsed on itself, a rowdy cheer rolled across the broken underground landscape.

  I chanced a quick look around the last concrete column before the barrier. Three of the Guardians were nowhere to be found. A fourth was in full combat mode as it backed away from the swarm of humans who ravaged it with small and medium weapons. The only thing left of the fifth Guardian was a leg, part of the left side of its torso, and a shoulder that was missing half of its attached arm. I was mesmerized by the sharp, clean edges of the Guardian where the implosion sphere had touched it. I wondered again where matter went that was caught within the implosion’s area of effect.

  “Let’s go,” Melly said.

  I nodded and we took off at a dead run toward the barrier. Four more Guardians were just touching down as we started up the ramp. One looked like it was going to head us off, but it veered back toward its buddies and the four bounded down into the darkness. Poor Griff. I mentally rooted for him and his crew to at least escape to safety if they couldn’t defeat the new arrivals. I had no time to worry about any of that.

  In my head, I heard alarms blaring, loudspeakers shouting warnings, and swarms of attack drones and Guardians and even citizens attempting to stop us as we ran at full speed into the daylight then turned down a wide boulevard. Other than the sounds of a gun battle wafting up from The Bower, the city seemed to be unaware that two criminals had broken out of their self-imposed prison and were loose on the streets. We kept to the sidewalk, forcing citizens to step aside as we blazed past.

  I became irritated that topside citizens seemed to have little to zero concern that we were blowing by them, our legs pumping at full speed, an illegal firearm in each hand, tactical goggles giving us threatening bug eyes. Part of me was relieved, as it meant the fifteen klick trek to the Upperjustice Ministry might be free of threats. Another part of me was angry that these people, this entire city, possibly all of humanity, were so locked into their life routines—routines that had been programmed or enacted by whoever or whatever—that they were unable to grasp the anomaly of Mellisandra and Andreada.

  Not that I wanted them to begin screaming and panicking and running around in circles until they fainted. It just irked me that they somehow subconsciously knew that one or both of us were nearing our departure and didn’t want to interfere in any way. That they didn’t want to care enough to question why the hell two women were armed to the teeth and burning a path through their district.

  *

  Departure: -00h 07m 31s

  I stuck to Melly’s trail, my feet falling almost perfectly within the area her feet had just vacated. We were poetry in motion, ducking under tree branches that hadn’t been trimmed, weaving our way through or around citizens who were in the way. I’d begun to believe we would make it to the portal unscathed when the whine of turbines filled the air.

  At least ten Guardians touched down in a line fifty meters ahead of us, barely one hundred meters from the Upperjustice Ministry plaza and the portal that sat in the middle of it. Melly didn’t pause, didn’t miss a step. She charged forward, putting ten meters between us.

  “Keep going!” she screamed behind her then turned forward and veered off slightly to the left.

  The explosion of her ballistic gun drowned out the chattering energy pistol. I focused my attention on the far right Guardian and the portal beyond it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one Guardian fall, its guts slagged to cooling chunks of metal and composite nanocarbon. Eight others made a beeline for her, while the ninth, the one standing in my way, simply stepped back as if to let me pass unmolested.

  My legs slowed down involuntarily as I realized what was happening. Melly was screaming at the top of her lungs. Another Guardian was down and done for, the remaining seven surrounding her as they attempted to subdue her. The Guardian in front of me took another step back and raised one arm, as if pointing to the portal beyond.

  Another scream from Melly forced my attention back to her. The Guardians had tackled her and were piling on as if she might escape by leaping straight up into the air. A third scream was cut off almost before it started.

  “NO!” I shrieked, tears spilling from my eyes as I pivoted and headed directly toward the Guardians.

  I was rage incarnate. I would tear the limbs from the machine monsters with my bare hands. I would die by their hands or in Melly’s arms as my timer expired. My vision had narrowed into a pinpoint. All I could see was her leg sticking out from a tangle of matte black and bronze.

  A blur from my right hit me so hard all the breath left my body. I felt the Guardian pick me up and begin running toward the portal.

  “No!” I screamed. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Put me down!” I twisted as hard as I could but the Guardian’s grip was unbreakable.

  “You must get to the portal in time, Andreada,” the Guardian said. Its voice was soft, feminine.

  “Fuck you!”

  “You can’t help her,” the Guardian said.

  At that moment, the disorienting sensation of the world turning upside down and inside out at the same time overpowered me. The air rushed out of my lungs and I was sure for a fraction of a second my entire chest would collapse. The Guardian was pulled a meter backward, the implosion’s force almost greater than the machine’s strength until its turbines kicked in and propelled us forward.

  I felt something inside of me snap. I was dead inside. One moment I was a ball of fury, fighting and screaming at the Guardian to let me go, the next, it was as if my emotional fuse had blown. I went limp in the Guardian’s arms. I didn’t care anymore. Until the Guardian stopped five meters from the imposing, otherworldly construct.

  I looked back at where Melly had fallen. There was only a scattering of shattered Guardian components, a matte black hand cut off at the wrist, and a half-meter depression in the street. She was gone, along with seven Guardians.

  I fell to my knees. I felt nothing. No pain. No worries. I was the void.

  “Andreada,” the Guardian said softly, touching me gently on the shoulder.

  “Fuck you!” I shrieked, flailing my arm to remove the cold, metal hand. “Don’t fuckin’ touch me!”

  “Andreada,” it said, the voice somehow relaying compassion and sadness. “You only have three minutes left. You must enter the portal.”

  “Why?” I screamed. I stood up and got nose-to-faceplate with it. “Why? Tell me! What the fuck is on the other side?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Bullshit! Fuck you! You do know! Tell me!”

  I was wild. Beyond wild. I felt emoti
ons explode from the void I’d become. I screamed until my throat was raw as I beat the Guardian with my fists. It stood still, taking whatever punishment I could dole out. I kept at it until my hands finally relayed the pain, the damage I’d done to them. I blinked, staring at the red streaks my blood had left on the machine’s chest and head.

  “I’m sorry, Andreada,” the Guardian said softly. “We are not allowed to know any more than you are.”

  “Why?” I sobbed. “Why are they doing this to us?”

  “I do not know.”

  The Guardian sounded genuinely upset that it and its kind knew as little as we did. I felt its fingers gently touch my cheek, letting my tears spill over the composite material they were made of.

  “You loved her?” it asked.

  “Yes,” I said through another round of hitching sobs.

  The Guardian stroked my hair, running its fingers over my neck just like Melly used to. My knees buckled but the automaton caught me.

  “It is time,” it said.

  I looked down at my chron. It had a cracked readout but the numbers were clear. Thirty seconds.

  “I’m sorry for whatever they’ve done to you,” I said.

  I kissed the Guardian on its synthetic cheek, took one last look at the crater where Mellisandra had been, then walked through the portal.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Departure: +00h 01m 00s

  Of all the places I had imagined the portal would lead to, a small gray hallway with a door at the end wasn’t it. One second I was in the sun, topside in the city I hadn’t seen for two decades. The next, a dull, muffled silence without shadows. I turned around but there was no portal behind me, only a blank wall, the same matte gray as everything else.

  Including my clothes. Instead of the black bodysuit and gear webbing, I was now (somehow) wearing soft gray pants and a shirt. Whatever had changed my clothing had also healed my hands. There was no sign that I’d shredded my knuckles on the Guardian’s armor.