by Jack Delgado
Episode 6: Endrace
December 31st, 2199
An eyeblink later and dusk arrived, the Omega day winding down around the Underground with the same old hubbub of tired voices and grinding car wheels. Dante rose into the dusk slowly, flexing and yawning. The GIACA began to subsume under his skin as he moved, taking the bulky armor plating of sleep mode back to his skeleton from whence it came.
He walked into the hallway and pushed through the door, wincing a little as the bone plates merged back into him. The bar was as dark as ever, several of the fluorescent bars and dim yellow light bulbs broken out after the duel the night before.
Aaliyah was sitting at the bar, wolfing down a bowl of green sludge and a pile of black energy bars. A stack of bowls next to her tottered slightly to the left, evidence of a long feast. Malachi was cleaning the bar, keeping a wary eye on the pile of dishes while pretending to go about his business.
Dante shook his head and silently descended the stairs, cracking his neck and rubbing his eyes. Aaliyah caught sight of him as he walked toward the bar and waved merrily. He grinned and sat next to her, stretching one last time.
“How the hell do you eat all that?” he asked amazedly, gesturing to the pile of bowls, “Sooner or later that’ll catch up with you!”
She snorted, gesturing derisively at the bowls. “As if this stuff actually fills you up. All the essential ingredients for life, none of the flavor of life. You’re welcome to some of it, if you want.”
He shook his head. “Nah. I’m not hungry. I had a brick on the way in last night.”
“Suit yourself.”
Silence fell back over the bar, the tension slowly stretching taut between the pair of runners. Malachi said nothing to either of them, keeping his back painstakingly turned to the his attacker and his savior. The evening wore on, turning from dusk to night to midnight in what felt like no time at all.
An alarm beeped out from Aaliyah’s wrist-monitor, warning her of the time. She sighed and stood up from where she had been sitting the last hour, stretching and loosening up her joints. Dante pursed his lips and stood with her, following the same routine of stretches and exercises. Neither of them said a word, the edgy silence between them almost palpable.
When they were done, the runners walked to the door and exited silently, Aaliyah patching the price of their meal through to Malachi on the way out. They strode past the spot where Dante killed the android, now just a slight black stain on the floor from spilt fuel cell fluid, and pushed through the screen door into the alley.
Aaliyah stood guard as Dante bent down among the trash heap and rummaged about. After a few seconds he stood back up, holding what he had been looking for; a thin pane of glass-like material, suction cups and tiny needles lining the inside edge. He looked back at Aaliyah, who nodded and pulled her own visor out of its slot on her leg with a slight sucking sound.
They raised the visors to their eyes and pressed them in, the suction cups grabbing at skin and holding on tenaciously. The needles inserted in slowly, digging mere millimeters into waiting hardware jacks and connecting with the central processing unit at the base of each runner’s spine.
The glassy substance stiffened and hardened around the two runner’s faces, forming a V of stretching from temple to temple. Dante opened his wrist-monitor and tapped a few keys, linking the computer to his and Aaliyah’s armor. First came night vision, illuminating the dark Omega nighttime with a green burst of light. Then the heads-up display, information racing across the visor in a rush of dull yellow lettering; ammo counts, system diagnostics, a GPS system, a damage monitor.
Then the final phase; each runner’s GIACA thickened around their bodies and carried long, thin, aerodynamic plates of woven metal-and-bone armor to the surface of their skin, forming the basis of the Battle Mode. A rush of grey flowed out over the uncovered flesh of their faces, turning anything not covered by the visor into a featureless, armor-ribbed mask. Fingernails elongated into serrated claws, elbows grew talons and knees hardened into rounded, studded caps.
Within a minute, the two had become unrecognizable as human; tall and faceless and armored, they had become nightmares out of some old soldier’s troubled dream.
Dante cracked his neck and walked up to Aaliyah, who had turned to face the alley wall and was looking sideways at Dante. He turned on his heel and faced the wall with her, gazing straight ahead.
“Born from the darkness, we battle for the light,” he intoned, turning his eyes up to look into Omega’s polluted sky.
“Born from war, we strive for peace,” Aaliyah replied, following his gaze.
“Born from evil, we are the guardians of all things noble.”
“Born from death, we fight for life.”
“We are the runners. From our lips come the screams of the oppressed, the curses of the damned, the cries of the innocents lost to tyranny. From one hand we offer mercy and from the other we offer death. We are the wind that tears through the city. We are the storm on the horizon. We are killers and madmen and terrorists, the scum of society banded together against the hell the world has become.”
“And we. Will. Never. Back. Down.”
Dante felt a hand slip slowly around his, squeezing tight. He squeezed back and turned to face her. He could just see her eyes through the visor; they were set, resolute, burning with a fierce pride as they looked at him.
"If I fail tonight, it's been an honor," he said softly, speakers at the corners of his visors amplifying his voice just loud enough to be heard.
“Not.”
She let go of his hand, bending down into a start position. Now she was smiling deviously, the light of competition blazing in her eyes.
“An.”
He copied her movement, a grin rising up on his face before he could contain it. His heart began to quicken, the world becoming sharper and more detailed around him as the adrenalin began to pump through him.
“Option.”
And they disappeared in a rush of grey.
The twin blurs blasted up the wall of the monolith, running up as far as they could before catching a handhold. They scrambled and clawed their way up with frightening speed, spiders on a black wall, leaping and fighting their way to the top with all their strength.
They burst over the edge of the roof, flying fifteen feet in the air, rolling off their shoulders and coming up running. They soared across the black rooftop, their feet pounding the concrete with inhuman speed, clearing jumps that should have been impossible without a second glance, barreling through the chaos of the Omega slums without once breaking stride.
People jerked up in bed as the duo raced past, denting the steel roofs of the slumhouses with every step, shaking the slums with their long steps, leaving a trail of astonished and fearful souls in their wake. In the distance lay the prize; the shining Core, the heart of the city, its white, harsh light barely peeking through the ring of gigantic helioscrapers that formed the concentric Economic District.
Dante looked to his left at his teacher; she was keeping a silent, dogged pace with him, neck-and-neck in the dark. He grinned and shook his head, marveling at this two-hundred-year-old wonder. Then focus reasserted itself and his only thought was to complete the mission.
Soon enough the slums, with its brothels and cheap establishments and factories, gave way to apartment housing and a more concerted population of monoliths, with the helioscrapers looming in the background. The outskirts of the Dead End; the Economic District.
The pair worked their way up to the newly-elevated skyline, scaling the flats and government offices like shadows, blending in and out of the night as they moved. Police passed beneath them, never looking up long enough to feel their blood run cold at the sight of the twin phantoms.
Their legs were beginning to burn, their breath coming harder out of their lungs, the plates of sonium and bone chafing against their skin. The visor’s data jacks sent little daggers of pain through their foreheads, sweat beginning to shine on the surf
ace of the armor.
And still they ran neck-and-neck. Still they remained equal.
Quicker than they had expected the outskirts gave way to the true district, the beginning of the massive helioscrapers and the many military checkpoints. Low buildings were scarcer, the massive glass sides of the sunscrapers dominating the scenery.
“Now how the hell are we going to do this?!” Dante shouted, pressing a finger to the corner of the visor to activate the commlink.
“Improvise,” Aaliyah replied, sailing up gracefully over the edge of a nearby roof, “You’re usually good at that.”
Dante growled in exasperation and terminated the link, wiping a bead of sweat from his armored forehead. He looked up just in time to see the edge of the roof come hurtling towards him, a huge gap stretched out between the apartment and the first helioscraper of the block.
Time slowed to a crawl as Dante’s eyes widened and his legs bent, then sprang outwards almost of their own accord. He flew through the air in slow motion, windmilling his arms through the air to push himself as far as he could.
The jump had been too quick. It would carry him just out of reach of the helioscraper’s glass, straight down to street level. Had he jumped a little more to the side he could’ve smashed through the glass and kept running, but that twenty degrees was all it took.
Shitshitshitshitshit
The ground advanced leisurely on him, like it had all the time in the world.
Fuckfuckfuckfuck
Dante’s mind raced, trying and throwing away a dozen strategies as the street waited to receive and reject him. The last and only plan possible formed in his head and he grimaced.
“Command,” he shouted, “Activate Gecko Pattern!”
The armor plates vanished beneath his skin near-instantaneously, altering its molecular structure a dozen times over to fit the program. Some rode back to the surface, forming a much thinner set of armor covering all the vital areas of Dante’s body. The rest, refined into beta-keratin and coated in phospholipid fluid, sprouted out of his hands and feet in a short, bristling forest. Dante twisted through the air, extending his hand out to catch the front of the glass, reaching as far as he could, stretching with all his strength...
His palm scraped against the side of the glass, sticking where it landed and whiplashing his body out with a bone-breaking pain. Dante ignored it and slapped his other hand to the glass, then his feet. He looked behind him, the world slowing once more as he did; Aaliyah was curling into a ball and hurtling sluggishly straight for the glass side of her own helioscraper.
Dante grinned and took off running, leaning out sideways to keep his balance as he pounded across the vertical face of the building.
He tapped the commlink as he ran, a smirk rising on his face despite his best efforts to contain it.
“You might want to look out the window,” he said casually, halfway across the massive glass face.
“Ohhh…”
Aaliyah’s voice was woozy and unfocused, and Dante heard the sound of crunching glass as she staggered to her feet.
“Sorry, had a run-in with thick glass,” she mumbled, staggering forward, “What’d you say?”
“Look out the window. Look, ma! No hands!” Dante said, glee infecting his voice as he cut off the link and kept on running.
Aaliyah groaned and shook her head to clear the pain, bracing against the wall of an office cubicle and pulling herself up. She blinked groggily and stumbled towards the window, nearly tripping over several ill-placed chairs in the dark.
“Alright, now what the hell do you mean-” she started to say, shaking her head again and looking up to where Dante was running across the glass. The words died in her mouth, her jaw dropping as she saw the effects of the Gecko form.
She touched the commlink slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on her son.
“What have I told you about altering your GIACA, Dante?” she asked coolly.
“That it’s probably the only reason both of us are still alive?” he answered glibly, a mischievous grin plastered all over his face.
“Damn right,” she said softly, “Damn right, son.”
She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, resting her head against the glass as she fought against the lump in her throat.
“You haven’t won yet, Dante,” she continued after a moment, “You haven’t beat me until you reach Vinny’s.”
“Ain’t no way you’re catching me now, mom,” he responded flippantly, “That’s just the simple fact.”
“Drop the accent, kid,” she told him, smiling wryly, “It doesn’t suit you.”
Guess I’d better get a move on.
She sighed and turned left on her heel, breaking into a sprint as she raced for the other side of the helioscraper. The long office floor was deserted, bereft of the tired, droning life that filled it by day, the lights of the city filtering in through clear, strong glass.
Aaliyah kept her eyes on Dante as he ran across the side of the helioscraper, absentmindedly vaulting over cubicles and punching through office space.
“What did you do, anyway?” she asked him, pressing the commlink again, “I’ve tried a dozen different ways to run on walls, all of them ended up being bone-breakingly hard.”
“Like this isn’t painful at all,” he retorted blithely, jumping over a protruding spine of concrete along the side of the helioscraper.
“At least it isn’t giving you a compound fracture, kid,” she responded, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice. “Now how did you do it?”
“It’s pretty simple,” he said, shrugging, “I change some of my bone structure into beta-keratin, add a few phospholipids I’ve been saving in a jar, and now I’m basically a gecko. I’ve had to practice a lot to get the motion right so I don’t just stick to the surface.”
“Makes sense, but don’t gecko hands bend the opposite way from human hands?” she asked.
“Remember the part where you described it as bone-breakingly hard?”
Aaliyah sniggered a little, trying to fight down her smile.
“So, a gecko, huh?” she asked, slowing to a halt as she came up on the glass corner of the massive building. “I tried a wolf one time. Didn’t work out too well for my spinal cord.”
She drew her hand back, her armor hardening into a spike on her palm.
“Still,” she mused, shrugging, “I suppose I could give it another go. It was definitely an experience I won’t-“
She fell silent, furrowing her brow in confusion. Her HUD had flickered off for a few seconds, and when it returned the words and the diagnostics were all bright red, flashing and wailing a warning into her brain. Three shapes were descending through the sky, droplet-shaped and outlined in the threat detector’s cerise indicator.
Aaliyah’s eyes widened, every muscle in her body freezing up as she saw the machines descend, maddeningly slow. Her eyes slowly turned to the right, to the dot on the behemoth that was her son.
They were making a slow, steady beeline for him, moving in to intercept.
"Dante! Incoming R.I.O.T Pods!" Aaliyah shouted into the comm, smashing her wrist against the glass. Cracks ran out in a yellowed spiderweb all around it, but the glass held against her strength.
“Get the fuck out of there!” she bellowed, panic infecting her voice as she struck the glass again and again.
“DANTE! CAN YOU HEAR ME?! WE’VE GOT INBOUND HUNTERS!”