by Zack Archer
I lay there for several seconds, sucking in ragged breaths. “You’re welcome,” I said to Kree. She didn’t respond, instead grabbing my wrist and hauling me to my feet to retreat, darting away under an avalanche of gunfire and two more explosions.
Kree cleaved her way through the gloom, scrambling up an inner staircase as I struggled to keep pace. In my mind, I was just waiting for somebody or something to appear out of the shadows and cut us down and I was shocked when it didn’t happen.
Kree led me through a maze of ductwork and metal corridors, passing startled workers and other city dwellers who were frozen by in place, shell-shocked, by our appearance. Soon we entered another deserted tunnel and it was here that we stopped to catch our breath.
“Not smart,” Kree said. “I can’t believe you did that back there.”
“Me? You’re the one that sucker-punched that guy in the face!”
“That was unavoidable.”
“Oh, and the machine coming to kill us wasn’t?”
“We could have just run,” she said.
“Yeah, and been gunned down from behind.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but I silenced her with a look. “I can’t believe we made it,” I finally said.
“Me either,” she replied with a faint smirk.
“I also can’t believe we got double-crossed back there.”
Kree favored me with a quizzical stare. “You…expected a man named Lout to be honest?”
“You’re gonna learn, I’m a little naïve sometimes.”
“Naïveté can get you killed, Quincy.”
“Hey, we’re making progress,” I said. “You called me Quincy.”
“Don’t make it out to be anything more than it is.”
“You can say what you want, but I’m beginning to think we make a pretty good team.”
She puffed out a breath. “We’re not part of a team, Quincy. You need to know that I’m only doing this to help my people. Don’t think it’s anything more than that.”
I dusted myself off. “And here I was getting ready to thank you once again for helping us save the universe.”
“Words mean little,” she said, her eyes aglow. “They’re particularly cheap when you consider what people like you have done to people like me.”
“And I keep telling you, I’m not from around here.”
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from.”
“And the others I was with, Atlas, Splinter, Liberty, and everyone else, they’re not like the fuckers that are in charge of this place,” I added, some steel I my voice. “They’re good people.”
Kree smirked and began slowly walking as I shadowed her. “I assume you’re going to say next that they’re…different.”
I nodded and she barked a nasty laugh. “That’s what everyone always says until they take power. Your colleagues may have the best intentions, but if they succeed, if they topple the ones who are in power, in time they’ll become just like them. It’s inevitable.”
“I don’t believe that,” I replied.
Her tailed flicked sideways. “Then you’re more naïve than I thought.”
She dashed forward and I watched her go. I had fleeting thoughts of running off and trying to find the others by myself, but then I realized there was safety in numbers. Besides, I had no idea where I was or how I’d be able to track them down. The truth was, I needed Kree far more than she needed me, so I slipped my helmet back on and threw myself forward, trying to catch up to her.
58
My body thrummed with adrenaline as I followed Kree up another staircase until we’d exited the underground city and were ambling through a tunnel-like chamber in an Upperworld building.
A string of tiny LED lights partially lighted the space. We moved past throngs of passersby, but nobody gave us a second look. The sound of screams and sirens had faded, so I allowed myself a moment to get reoriented.
My eyes found a new focus, fixing on Kree who strode with purpose several paces ahead of me. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
“Not at all,” she replied, “long as you don’t mind if I don’t answer.”
“What happened to you on Halja?”
“I’d prefer not to talk about that.”
“Because I think I know.”
She slowed. “How could you possibly?”
“Back in the bar – the memory motes...”
“You saw it?” she asked.
“I saw something,” I replied. “I think I understand things a little better now.”
“Then you know we don’t want revenge, Quincy. Regardless of what was done to us before, the past is past. We just want what’s ours back.”
I nodded. “Are we headed in the right direction?”
She nodded.
“How do you know?”
She tapped at her ears, which were now erect and pointed forward instead of pinned against her head. “I can hear things others don’t.”
“I thought you guys didn’t have any powers.”
“Any ability I have pales in comparison to yours.”
“What do you hear now?”
She turned back, her eyes glowing as if somebody was inside her waving candles back and forth. “I don’t hear anything now,” she whispered. “All I hear are the sounds of silence.”
“That’s a good thing?”
She nodded. “That’s a glorious thing.”
We moved in silence for several minutes and then she cast me a sideways glance. “You know some of how I came to find myself here, but what of you? How is it that you came to be here?”
“I was kidnapped.”
She arched an eyebrow and I added: “Well, maybe not technically a kidnapping, but I was on Earth when another superhero named Aurora found me and brought me here.”
“Because of your powers?”
“Feats,” I said, correcting her.
Her eyes shone with anger. “If we, if I, had been blessed with even a portion of those powers our world would never have been conquered.”
“Be careful what you wish for. What good is power if you only use it for evil?”
“That is something only a powerful person could say.”
I met Kree’s gaze. “I think it’s time we separated, Kree.”
“What? Tired of hearing hard truths?” she asked.
I shook my head. “You’re mission’s complete. You did what you said you were going to do. You got us to the Upperworld. I’ll find the others and then we’ll take it from there.”
She clucked her tongue, a volley of unintelligible words escaping from her throat.
“Translate,” I asked.
“What I said means ‘bullshit,’” she answered. “It means if I wanted to, I can’t simply rely on you and your friends to save my people.”
“You don’t trust us?”
“Was that not obvious?” she answered. “Besides, where I come from, not only do we finish what we start, but we always endeavor to uphold a universal, cosmic oath.”
“Which says?”
“The smart have an obligation to safeguard the stupid.”
She moved off as I stood there contemplating her words. “Hey! Wait! Was that a dig at me?”
We walked for ten minutes through a twisting hallway dotted with niches. It appeared that we were in a more industrial section of the city, the nearby structures laden with enormous generators and turbines that made it difficult to hear ourselves think.
“You would do well to leave this place as soon as you are able,” Kree said.
I removed my helmet and wiped a sweaty lock of hair back from my forehead. “Even if I could get out of here, you’re assuming I have something to go back to.”
“You have a family, no?”
“I’ve got a mother.”
“Then you have more than me.”
“What happened to your family, Kree? What happened to them before Halja?”
“What happened is that privateers and traders from another planet, a
place called Nibiru, came to our world. In addition to the things they carried with them to barter, they brought disease.” Her head sank. “Whatever virus they had struck down seven in ten of us. By the time we realized what had happened, it was too late. When the aims of the privateers turned from commerce to conquest, we couldn’t fight back. Those that did were taken away to Halja, along with the women and many of the children.”
My gaze smoked into hers. “Your family—?”
“My family never made it to Halja. They went away,” she replied, her eyes misty.
“Far away?”
“So far away I don’t think I’ll ever see them again.
“I’m sorry, Kree.”
“Don’t be. It’s the way of the universe. The strong have always struck down the weak and they always will.”
“I know that better than most.”
She snorted. “Says the man who has always been powerful.”
“You say that like you know me.”
“I know people like you.”
I stopped and stared at her. “I was a security guard back on Earth, Kree, okay? You know what I did? I guarded a friggin’ building where things were made.”
“You guarded that place with your feats.”
I shook my head. “I guarded it with a can of perp spray and a bad attitude.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I wasn’t powerful, Kree, at least not like I am now. In fact, I mostly spent my time sitting around racking up zeroes if you want to know the truth.”
“Meaning what?”
“That I was wasting my life. I lived in a country that used to be the most powerful on my planet, but it went bad. I don’t know what the hell happened, but somehow people slowly started turning against each other. Nothing could ever seem to get done and nobody could agree on anything. My mom said it was because people stopped believing in the story.”
“Which one?”
“Not any particular one, just the idea of a common story I guess. A myth, that binds everyone together.”
“The most important resource is trust in the future,” she said.
I nodded. “You need something that makes people think tomorrow is going to be better than today. Once people stop believing in that, everything falls apart.”
“What about you? Did you stop believing?”
I nodded. “My life wasn’t really happy or even what I wanted it to be. Then Aurora showed up and I decided to go with her. I took a risk and even though I might be vaporized in the next five seconds, it was still worth it. I still don’t think of myself as powerful, but at least I have a better idea of who I really am. At least I found something to believe in again.”
“It’s a shame you won’t have very long to enjoy that self-realization.”
I shrugged. “I heard someone once say that a flea can trouble a lion more than a lion can trouble a flea.”
“Please translate,” she said.
“It means fuck the odds. Sometimes it’s preferable to be the little guy.”
We continued down the long hallway and eventually stopped alongside a niche where a ladder was visible, bolted to the stone wall.
Kree grabbed the rungs and began crawling up. I followed, gripping the cold metal, heading up rung by rung. Kree slipped on a moss-slicked rung, losing her balance. She fell into my arms and we crashed to the ground
I sat there, dazed, my arms wrapped around her. “You’re making me look like the better climber.”
She pointed to the fleshy discs on the palms of her hands. “They secrete an adhesive that doesn’t function very well when it’s cold and moist.”
I nodded and she pressed her hand to the exposed flesh near the base of my neck. “They’re better on hot surfaces.”
Swallowing hard, I helped her up. We exchanged a look and then she grabbed the rungs and hauled herself up as I watched her go, my eyes locked on her glorious ass.
The ladder ended at a concrete landing that we maneuvered onto. Steam hissed from a mass of piping and what sounded like powerful generators and pistons thumped from unseen alcoves.
I removed my helmet and breathed deeply. The air had a tang of biological decomposition. Fetid pools of what appeared to be sewage ran in troughs on either side of a raised walkway that was littered by more pipes and what looked like the remnants of a long-forgotten construction project, a menagerie of scaffolding, trusses, decking, and pilings. Scanning the troughs, I assumed that this was one of the spots where the waste from the Upperworld collected before being jettisoned down into some lower level.
We picked our way around the debris and stumbled down through an oversized section of stone conduit, melting into the vaporous mist that rose from the sewage in the man-made cavern.
I slipped my helmet back on as we exited the conduit, moving briskly, crossing ramps and catwalks, passing groups of people going the other way. The people were laughing and frolicking, seemingly oblivious to what was actually going on around them. None of them likely knew that a weapon, the Light Breaker, had been found and its contents stolen. A device, if the stories were true, that could end the universe. I stopped and traded looks with a young man who smiled hugely, shuffling past, not a care in the world. Maybe Splinter had been right after all. Maybe most of those who lived in Fiasco Heights were sheep.
We stopped in front of a stone wall covered in vibrant graffiti.
There were images of Greylock and the Harbinger drawn in what looked like chalk. Somebody had gone over them and given them yellow eyes and white fangs that were dripping red blood. Kree glared at the images and muttered something in her native tongue which sounded a lot like “two sides of the same coin.”
Exiting through a side tunnel, we emerged into an alley and hooked a left, pressing ourselves against one of the buildings so that we could remain as inconspicuous as possible.
Sweat prickled my brow, and I wondered where Aurora was. Had the Lout been telling the truth? Had she been kidnapped and taken to the Harbinger’s fortress? And if so, what was he doing to her? She was powerful and wouldn’t have gone down without a fight, but still.
“You’re moving slowly,” Kree commented.
“Because I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know where the others are.”
“They might already be there, Quincy. One of them mentioned a place.”
“The hideout.”
She nodded. “They may be there waiting for us.”
“But I don’t know where it is. The only thing I know is that Splinter called it…a petal building. Something made of different structures that resembles the petals of a flower.”
“The kind of thing that might stand out,” she replied.
I held up my hands as if to emphasize just how small we were in the shadows of the nearby structures. “Yeah, if we could see over these buildings.”
She smiled. “Good idea.”
Kree turned and ran full-force toward a metal contraption that resembled a fire escape on the opposite building. She scaled the metal like a rock-climber, moving deftly up and over the top of the three-story structure.
Seconds passed and then she dropped back down. “I see it.”
“How far?”
“Four streets over.”
“Great,” I said, a ghost of a smile gripping my face.
“There is a slight problem.”
“What’s that?”
She blanched. “The building is guarded by a small army.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of a big problem, Kree.”
She shrugged. “We either find a way to evade them, or we go somewhere else to take refuge.”
“There is nowhere else.”
I kicked at the ground, trying to come up with an angle, a way we could avoid having to confront the Snouts. Then it suddenly dawned on me that I was still wearing a Snout uniform. I still looked like a cop! Jesus, that was the reason the various passersby hadn’t batted an eyelash at us. They probably assumed Kree was under my watc
h or a prisoner.
“I’ve got an idea, Kree.”
“Does it involve going in the opposite direction of the small army?”
I shook my head. “We’re going to do the opposite of what they’d expect us to do. We’re going to walk right past them.”
59
After taking Kree’s empty pistols and holstering them on my Snout suit, I adjusted my helmet.
“How do I look?”
Kree grimaced. “Like one of them.”
“Perfect, now all we have to do is get our diversion ready.”
I held up the egg-shaped device that resembled a grenade.
“Thumper,” Kree said.
“You know what this is?”
“I’ve seen some of them used in the mining operations. They can punch a hole five feet into solid rock.”
“Just what we need.”
She took the device from me and circled a finger on its face. The device glowed orange and then began beeping.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It explodes in two minutes.”
She tossed the device back to me. I turned and slung it down through the open window of a deserted building.
Then I removed one of Kree’s pistols and nudged her in the back. Her tail flicked and her eyes glowed.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We moved briskly out and down one of the main streets, Kree marching in front of me as I counted down the seconds.
I expected shouts and screams and possibly a wave of bullets to greet us, but nothing happened. We weren’t immediately outed and I made damned sure to conceal my boots as much as I could. We kept to the sidewalk and I walked to the left of Kree so that she’d block the view anyone advancing might have of my footwear.
My mind raced with so many disparate thoughts that I quickly lost track of time. How long had we been walking? Thirty seconds? Forty?
We crested a rise, moving with alacrity, and that’s when it came into view.
The structure Splinter had mentioned.
The Petal Building.
It was situated at the edge of downtown Fiasco Heights, surrounded by what looked like office buildings, apartments, and sprawling skyscrapers that seemed to perfectly integrate human architecture and the towering trees I’d seen before.