Focus, Cygni. We gotta get moving.
Overhead, several police cars zipped through the air with sirens blaring. They were followed by three, heavily armored vehicles twice their size bearing the five-point star of Star Corps. All of them had crackling aegis fields around them.
The sight drew her up short. It occurred to her that Daedalus had control of the local garrison and was probably looking for the ones who bested his Praetor. Had they seen her? She dared not use her power-draining stealth system. Her silver-skin stood out like a beacon on the street, though without it she would succumb to the Siren nanoweapon in seconds.
“I have to get underground,” she murmured to herself as the last of the flying APV’s broke off from the group and banked back towards her.
She looked around. Her heart pounded and the hum of the vehicle’s dark energy engine grew louder in her ears. Looking for a way off the street her eyes found only grates spewing forth the Siren cloud, polysteel, and glass. Judging by the thrashing, screaming people trying to escape the lobbies, the tower doors around her were locked tight.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Her legs carried her down the street away from the approaching APV. Any illusion in her mind that they hadn’t spotted her yet vanished when a spotlight lit up the ground around her.
“FUCK!” she screamed, breaking out into a run. Could she make it to the restaurant in time? It was only a few more blocks ahead, but that damn APV was closing fast.
[Warning: Enhanced energy expenditure has resulted in a revision to remaining power levels. 27 minutes remain.]
Gotta run, gotta run… She cut down a side-street and jumped over two convulsing bodies laying in the road. The enhanced strength of her armacorium had her clearing three meters of air over them before gravity pulled her back down. Her feet smacked the pavement when she landed and kept running. Behind her the APV swung out over the street.
The pulse of its engines swelled. The air crackled and the street erupted around her. An explosion blew her clear off her feet and slammed her into the ground with her armacorium vibrating and hot around her. She skidded several meters on the pavement and somehow managed to scramble up and keep running. The next corner, and a chance to dodge out of sight, was just a hazy twelve-meters away. She pumped her legs harder, pressing herself through the pain in her lungs. She told herself she had to make it, that nothing but her own survival mattered—
The air crackled again.
She turned, kicking off with her back leg to propel herself down the side-street. There was a cluster of perhaps twenty or so beings before her all locked in Siren’s grip. They thrashed and flailed, striking each other as she ran by. One of them turned toward her, his eyes wide and wild as he reached forward with blood-foam streaming from his mouth.
Another projectile hit the street an instant later. The explosion smacked her body like a giant hand and she was hurled into the air. The man who reached for her shattered, torn to pieces along with the rest of the crowd by the concussive force. She’d never seen anything like it. The pure horror of the moment welled up in her gut like a secondary explosion. She tried to open her mouth to scream but the armacorium was solid and vibrating, too busy saving her life to accommodate her terror. She struck the side of a building. The impact knocked the air from her lungs and sent sparks through her vision. She hit the ground in a heap a moment after, feeling small impacts as debris and things she would rather not think about rained down on her.
[Warning: Power levels critical. Ten minutes thirteen seconds remain.]
She blinked, looking up from under the pile of debris and gore. Part of her waited for the next blow from the hovering APV. She knew it would end her life. Would it be better to die facing it or running away? Biren would most certainly have chosen the former. Perhaps that was best. A final act of defiance, a last spit in the eye of the enemy. The thought was so ridiculous she almost laughed, but when she heard the thrum of the APV approaching she turned over, brushed the dust and gore from her eyes, and stared up at the thick white haze of Siren above.
Typical, she thought. I can’t even see it.
The throb of the dark energy engines continued to grow. It seemed the craft was taking its time coming for her. Maybe it was just as impaired as she was by the Siren cloud. It was still thickening, and perhaps it was now at the point where even the sophisticated sensors of military craft couldn’t get through it. Dared she hope she might actually live?
The air hummed louder with the rise and fall of the deep sound. It peaked moments later, so loud that she could hear nothing else. The oscillation was like the lowest strings of a bass plucked over and over again. She felt it deep inside her gut. If they were able to see her it wouldn’t be long now. Would she feel it, or would it be too fast for the pain to set in?
The pulsing thrum faded. It crew quieter and quieter, and soon all she could hear were the screams echoing down the streets.
Oh, by the Will, I’m alive! She laughed, not quite believing it. How ironic that the very thing killing those around her saved her life. It was too funny not to laugh. She continued until her laughing sounded like crying.
A strange quiet lay upon the street like a smothering blanket.
[Warning: Power levels critical. Nine minutes remaining.]
She sighed and sat up, feeling several slimy things fall away from her silver body. She could barely see, and the street was filled knee-deep with the bodies of gray-skinned civilians. She tripped on them as she squinted through the Siren-haze making her way forward. She was no longer sure of where she was, and it seemed like finding the correct street was an impossible task. Still, with the power indicators in her UI flashing red she knew she had only minutes left before her armacorium would fail and she would succumb to the deadly nanoweapon.
Despite this she was happy of the lack of smell that her armacorium afforded her. She didn’t want to imagine what the hundreds of dead and dying around her smelled like.
She heard the sounds of screams and the rather peculiar noise of tearing flesh a when she rounded a corner and encountered a street full of brawling, Siren-maddened citizens. The crowd of them was like a pulsing mass of angry faces, tearing fingers, and blood. Her eyes widened, and she was about to turn and run when she saw the blood-stained wooden facade of Fried Delectables just over the heads of the pulsing crowd.
“Oh fuck,” she said a bit louder than she intended, and several crazed members of the crowd turned toward her. She turned to run on numb feet, feeling her armacorium start to sag from her flesh as she did, but froze.
The loud thrum of a dark energy engine pulsed above her.
This is how I die, she thought, waiting for either the APV to part the Siren cloud or for the Siren-mad to grab her from behind and tear her apart.
The air shimmered before her, and a large black ship with a bulbous fore section materialized in the haze. Its nose split apart and a ramp dropped down, spilling florescent-white light on the street. Cygni’s eyes squinted as she looked up and saw the three lines of the Mitsugawa symbol emblazoned on an airlock door within. Standing before them was a tall woman with silver skin, firing away with a large pistol in her hand. Beside her towered a military combat drone whose shoulder turrets and forearm cannons swept back and forth through the air mowing down the Siren-mad behind her like it was cutting grass.
[Power failure in five seconds,] her PLIA announced. It was the spur that got her moving.
She ran toward the woman, not even sure that huge looking gun wouldn’t turn on her and end it.
It didn’t.
The woman continued to fire over her head, downing members of the crowd behind her right until the moment Cygni got onto the ramp.
The ship lifted off. The burst of sudden motion almost threw her out, but the ramp closed and she wound up slouching against the inner wall of the chamber.
“Hold still,” the woman said and jets fired sanitizing nanomachines over their bodies for several seconds.
[POWER FAILURE: EMERGENCY D
EACTIVATION] flashed across her vision and her armacorium used the last of its energy to withdraw into her skin.
Crossing her arms over her chest and dropping into a crouch, Cygni looked up at her would-be rescuer. She was clearly another Umbral, though that could mean she was about to spend the rest of her life in a CSA cell when this was all over. Maybe the woman recognized her as a fellow, though, and that was the reason for her sudden rescue?
“Cygni Lau Aragón, you are the last person I expected to find here,” the silver woman stated. She put her weapon against her thigh and bands of armacorium lept out to hold it there. The armacorium over her head melted downward, revealing shoulder-length black hair, blue-green eyes, and olive features.
Rage clenched her jaw and she reached for the gun at her side only to realize it was on the floor after her armacorium retracted. The reality of her situation hit her in that moment, cooling her blood.
“You’re an Umbral now?” Her heart skipped a beat. Was she about to be arrested in the name of the Premier, or did this woman serve another master?
Carina regarded her for several moments before turning around. The airlock door cycled open and she gestured for her to follow.
“The name’s Meia. By the Void the Spur is a weird place. What the fuck are you—know what? Never mind, there’s no time. Come on.” Meia headed through the airlock’s open inner door and climbed up a short ladder beyond.
Cygni gave the combat drone a wary look and decided now was not the time to act on her vendetta. She retrieved her pistol from the floor.
The drone held out its armored hand.
With a sigh she placed the weapon into its grasp. The drone stayed behind, unable to fit through the inner doorway, while she followed Meia up several more ladders. She passed through a bulkhead door into a spearhead-shaped bridge with an egg-like chair at its heart. Meia sat within it and gestured for her to occupy one of the seats along the terminals along the sides. It was surprisingly comfortable against her bare skin.
“This is a Mitsugawa ship?” Her body was shaking with the aftereffects of fear, adrenaline, and wonder at her continued existence.
“What gave it away?” Meia cocked an eyebrow. “What the hell were you doing down there?”
She hesitated. “Are you working for the Premier? The Praetors?”
Meia gave her a sidelong look before responding. “You’re a bit out of the loop. That shit out there, the stuff that almost had that crowd tearing you apart, that’s Siren—”
“I know.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Sanul was your man. Cylus didn’t know about the Siren lab under the palace until recently, and then we didn’t want this to happen by storming it. Fuck,” she shook her head. “We should’ve, but it was too dangerous. There’s a VoQuana involved, and—
“And Daedalus,” Cygni finished for her.
Meia gave her a long look. “Thank you for the data, by the way. You risked a lot getting it.”
“Data?”
“Sanul’s working with me. He gave me the stuff you have on Cylus and the rest.”
“He told me.” She sighed, angry that this woman was working with Sanul; angry that she was alive and Biren wasn’t. “Are you working for the Premier?”
“Yeah.” Meia turned her eyes on the narrow strip of windows at the fore of the bridge and closed them. The ship banked around a set of towers and headed down Xyxal Street. The hum of its engines kept the noise of the horror below them out.
“Wait, we’re near the bazaar.”
“You need to go shopping?”
“Um, no, though maybe something to wear while my armacorium powers up might be nice. My friends are down there. Kae’s wounded and they need help.”
“Who’s Kae?” Meia asked.
“Kaeden Faen, he’s—”
“Kaeden Faen?”
Her sharp tone cut Cygni off, and she realized that Meia must know the captain of the Slynn. Her jealousy flared anew. How deep into her life did this woman intrude?
“Yeah, he’s here with his kid and he’s wounded,” she said.
Meia’s eyes opened and she chewed her lip. “Okay. Where is he?”
“A shop at the Bazaar. I’ll show you.” Her heart was beating hard. With a ship they could get out of here. They could go find Nero. Like it or not she would have to tolerate Meia at least that long.
Following her directions Meia brought the ship down into the Bazaar over the teeming crowds of the violent and the dead. It settled on its landing gear with a hiss and Cygni tried not to think about the crunching sound beneath them.
“Here, you’ll need this,” Meia said.
[Incoming transmission,] her PLIA stated.
“What is this?”
“A configuration file for your nanoimmune system. It’ll make you immune to Siren.” She got out of the egg-like chair and moved for the bridge door.
“What? You have the cure for Siren?”
“Long story. Get your armor on, open the file, and let’s get going.” She disappeared through the doorway.
Cygni watched the file finish downloading in her UI, licked her lips, and opened it. Despite her mistrust she had for the woman, not having to worry about being horribly killed by the nanoweapon was worth the risk.
[…SCANNING FILE FOR VIRUSES…]
[…RUNNING EXECUTABLE…]
She held her breath.
[…RECONFIGURING NANOIMMUNE FUNCTIONS…]
[PROGRAM COMPLETED]
Was it true? There was only one way to find out, but maybe she didn’t have to take the risk just yet. Her armacorium was recharged a little, and it was probably good enough to get her friends out of the shop.
Armor mode, she ordered and followed Meia out. The familiar feeling of the silvery alloy sliding over her skin accompanied her back down through the ship and outside into the Siren haze. She had barely twenty minutes of charge, but it would be enough.
The ground shook as Iapetus followed them down the ramp and onto the street. Meia made for the shop door and a sudden chill shot down Cygni’s spine. She grabbed the woman by the elbow and shook her head.
“You’ll let it in.”
Meia looked at her a moment, then nodded. It was strange seeing the woman standing without protection in the Siren-saturated air. The reconfiguration must really work, but she still wasn’t ready to risk it.
“Follow me.” She cast about and spotted a manhole cover some distance off. Knowing Siren wasn’t in the tunnels, and hoping that was still the case, she headed for it.
Kae was still lying on the floor when she arrived through the hatch in the back room. His brown eyes were wide with shock as he stared at Meia, who still had her head visible as she knelt beside him with a big grin on her face. She ruffled Rune’s hair as the kid grinned back at her, and planted a kiss on Kae’s lips right in front of everyone.
Cygni ground her teeth.
“So I guess you guys know each other?” Sanul asked, then looked up. “Cygni! Thank the gods you’re all right.”
“Yeah, I got us a lift.” She stood in the doorway of the crowded room.
Sorina stood with her arms crossed and her ears angled away from her head like wilted leaves. She met Cygni’s gaze for but a moment. It was enough to make guilt settle in her gut like a stone for having returned without Nero. She was about to apologize but was interrupted.
“It’s incredible to see you again.” Kae’s voice was faint. “And right before I’m going to die.”
“You’re not dying,” Rune stated with vehemence.
Kae chuckled, then winced. “Maybe not, just feels like it. Ugh.”
“My ride is outside. The file I sent you all will make you immune to Siren.” Meia held out a silver arm and the bangle-like drone on the table leaped up on blue jets and flew over to perch upon it. Her DS-109 stuck its torso up through the hatch and climbed into the small room, forcing them all back toward the walls.
“Cute trick,” Kae said as the drone reached down and picked him up a
s though he were a small child. “Hey there big guy.”
“It is good to see you again, Captain Faen. Meia has been concerned for your welfare and that of your offspring for months.”
Cygni startled. Combat drones, to her knowledge, didn’t talk like that.
“Yeah, well I’m flattered, but we’ve got to find Nero.” He looked at her.
“I wasn’t able to make it to the Palace.” She felt the stone in her gut get heavier.
“I’m not surprised with what’s going on out there,” Sanul said. “The streets are choked with people going insane. I can’t believe they actually did this.”
“I recommend departure.” Athame headed for the door, brushing Cygni out of the way with a shoulder.
“Not a bad idea. You good to travel there soldier?” Meia beamed and winked Kae.
Cygni couldn’t help but watch her fawn over him. That was a surprise. She didn’t think Kaeden swung that way, but they obviously had some kind of history. Even Rune was smiling at her. Perhaps Meia didn’t know Kae was gay? The thought of what would happen when the truth came out pleased her.
“Ready and willing, Captain,” he said.
“Iapetus, let’s haul ass,” Meia said. It was then Cygni realized that she had named it.
“Affirmative.” The drone, Iapetus, swung around and walked in a crouch as standing up would have put its head through the ceiling.
Sanul grabbed the brain cores off the table and folded up his portable terminal before hurrying to catch up. She joined him and Sorina behind the others as they followed through the narrow wood corridors heading for the street.
“What happened out there?” Sorina asked in tense tones.
“Like I said, I didn’t get very far. She’s Premier Keltan’s Umbral,” Cygni gestured to Meia with her chin. “She might know more.”
Sorina nodded.
“Cyg, we cracked it! Having both brain cores did the trick.” Sanul could hardly contain his excitement.
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