by Zack Archer
A soft whistle echoed.
I closed my eyes, thinking I’d imagined it.
Another whistle.
Eyes opened, I turned and shifted around and caught sight of a spectral form at the rear of the building. Just on the other side of a panel of octagonal windows.
It was a face on the other side of the glass peering in.
A face I knew well.
It was Kree.
She was smiling and waving at me.
71
I didn’t want any of the others to notice Kree and frankly, I thought my mind might be playing tricks on me.
I closed my eyes again then looked back up and there she was.
Fighting to remain as inconspicuous as I could (given the circumstances), I gently nudged my cube back, shifting it over toward the window.
Aurora noticed what I was doing and her eyes flitted from me to the rear wall, going wide at the sight of Kree. She nodded, realizing she needed to keep quiet.
The closer I drew to Kree, the more the other inmates grew agitated. I didn’t turn around, but it was obvious they’d spotted her. Some of them were whispering, and others were shouting and exclaiming that we’d all been saved.
I wrenched myself forward, moving faster, figuring I only had a few minutes, maybe less, before the bad guys arrived.
Drawing to within a few feet of the window, I noted that Kree was clutching a short-barreled rifle. I mimed hitting the window and she did from the other side, bringing her weapon back and down against the glass, over and over again.
The sound from the other inmates was deafening.
They were howling, egging Kree on and when the window spiderwebbed they cheered.
The window frame rattled and then Kree, with one final violent movement, bashed the window completely in. She swatted away a few jagged shards of glass and crawled halfway through the window, before crouching on a sloped inner sill that was two feet wide.
“I’ve got questions,” I said.
“There’s no time.”
“How the hell did you know where I was?”
Kree held up the small tracking gizmo I’d taken from the Snout. The one that was synced to the beacon in my uniform.
“How did you get up here?”
“I guess you could say it’s my feat, remember?” she replied. “I can scale a building like nobody’s business.”
I smiled and then the reality of the situation broadsided me. Kree might have arrived to save the day, but I was still locked inside a box, suspended a hundred feet in the air.
“Can you smash your way out?” she asked.
I shook my head and she spotted the bindings looped around my wrist.
“I have an idea.”
“A good one?”
“A really, really crazy one.”
“Which was the exact opposite of what I’d hoped you’d say.”
“I’m going to shoot that cube,” she replied, angling her gun at me.
“And when I fall?”
“I’ll grab you.”
I felt my breath draw in and out very slowly. “Just like that?”
She nodded. “If you’ve got a better idea, let me know in three seconds.”
“What happens in three seconds?”
She pointed and I looked back to see Dez!
Shit!
He was visible back near the entrance to the prison room, flanked by a small army of snake goons. He looked super pissed and was gesturing wildly in my direction.
“Shoot it,” I said to Kree. “Shoot the goddamn box!”
Kree fired a single shot that ricocheted off the box.
I cursed, and she fired again.
The same thing happened, but this time the round from her gun nicked the exterior of the box.
“AGAIN!” I screamed.
She fired again, then two more times, as I ducked and the glass frosted. I pulled my legs back and kicked at the compromised pane, eventually shattering it.
The only problem was that the box folded up like a punctured balloon.
Before I could react, the box splintered then broke apart, and I fell.
Stopped only by Kree, who managed to grab the back of my Snout uniform. Lips draw back, she tugged me up until I was seated on the sill next to her.
“Hold your hands back as far as you can,” she said.
I did and watched her pull the small gun (cold to the touch) that I’d removed off the body of the unconscious Snout out of her pocket.
She pulled the trigger and there was a burst of icy cold mist as a beam of blue light hit my bindings.
The beam was so cold I yelped.
“Breathe deeply and pull your hands sideways,” she said, keeping the beam on my bindings which were slicked with ice. Kree then brought the gun down on the bindings and they shattered.
“Hey! You did it!” I screamed, holding up my hands when—
Shots rang out.
I looked sideways to see Dez firing at us with his pistol while the snake creatures were boarding what looked like skateboards that hovered in the air.
“Let’s get out of here!” Kree said.
“We have to get her first!” I replied.
“Who?”
I gestured at Aurora. “That’s Aurora.”
“The one who left you stranded in the Empty Quarter?”
I nodded.
“Why would we want to get her?”
“Excellent question, but I’m pretty sure she’s the only one who can help us defeat the Harbinger.”
Kree squinted, measuring the distance between Aurora and us. “You owe me for this, Quincy.”
“Put it on my gigantic tab.”
Kree bent low and then propelled herself forward, long-jumping the distance between the sill and Aurora’s glass box.
She slammed into the box and dangled off the edge by one hand. If it wasn’t for the fleshy discs on her palms, I doubt she would have made it. Twisting in the air, she rotated her body around and crawled onto the top.
Aiming her weapon, she fired a burst at the snake goons, cutting several down, the recoil from the shots shunting Aurora’s prison cell close enough to the sill that I could grab it.
Shots from the weapons fired by Dez and his goons whizzed over my head and bounced off the back wall.
Hands up in front of my face, I conjured up an energy shield that deflected the subsequent incoming fire, allowing Kree to drop back down on the sill. Then I twirled my wrist and manufactured a corkscrew of plasma that ate through Aurora’s glass box as we grabbed and pulled her toward us.
“We’re free!” I said.
Aurora nodded, absolutely no emotion on her face. “Yeah, that’s great and all but we’ve got a pretty serious problem.”
“What’s that?”
“How do we get down?”
Crap.
In all the excitement, I hadn’t thought about that.
“We’ll go back down the way I came up,” Kree said.
“We don’t have your abilities though,” I replied.
“And I’m not going out that window,” Aurora said.
Kree held Aurora’s gaze. “Then you can stay behind.”
I gestured at Kree. “I forget to do the intros. Aurora, this is Kree. Kree, this is Aurora. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves while I figure out how not to get us killed.”
The ladies stared at each other and then I heard a humming sound and looked back to see several of the snake goons flying toward us on their hoverboards.
I fired a blast of energy that knocked the snakes back through the air toward Dez who ran for cover.
“What about the other prisoners?” I said.
“We’ll come back for them once we take down the Harbinger,” Kree answered, before ducking out through the window.
My gaze swung to Aurora. “You’re welcome by the way.”
Aurora did a slow burn, then noticed the blood leaking from my leg wound. “Courtesy of Dez,” I said, flicking a finger at the wound.
She grumbled and engineered a thin band of energy that she tied around my leg like a tourniquet.
I quickly thanked her and crawled out after Kree and a draft of wind hit my face.
Kneeling on the ledge, I breathed deeply, the cool air reinvigorating me for a moment, even as I tried not to look down.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, swallowing my panic as a more powerful gust of wind nearly ripped me from my perch.
“You’re looking at it,” Kree replied.
Aurora looked over. “Hanging on the outside of a skyscraper is the plan?”
Kree shrugged. “I never said it was a good plan.”
She pointed and I looked over the ledge which protruded from the rear of the building. A sloped, curtained wall of glass and steel lay fifteen feet below us.
The wall, which was thirty feet wide and appeared to function as the roof for some kind of solarium, was fastened in diagonal grids that resembled diamond shapes.
On the other side of the wall of glass was a bumped-out balcony and a set of doors. If we could just drop down, make our way across the glass, and slip through those doors, we’d have a fighting chance to reenter the Harbinger’s fortress and head down and once we’d done that we could—
WHAM!
A round fired by a weapon from back inside the prison grazed my head. We were out of time.
“WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO JUMP FOR IT!” Kree shouted.
I stole another look down and bite back a scream. We’re so high up that the people and objects on the streets below look like dots.
“That is so far down,” I mumbled.
“It’s all in your head,” Kree said.
“Tell me something to ease my mind.”
“There were a number of tall buildings on Halja. In my experience, from this distance, if you fell you’d fragment upon impact, your inner cavity basically becoming one with the ground.”
“How the hell is that comforting?”
“You won’t live long enough to feel the collision.”
“Still not comforting.”
Kree grabbed my left hand and Aurora grabbed my right and we jumped. We fell in what seemed like slow-motion, buffeted by the wind. I steeled myself, sucked in my abdomen, and tensed the muscles in my core, preparing to stick a landing.
We hit the glass with a terrific thud.
The ladies threw out their arms and managed to stop their forward momentum.
I wasn’t as lucky.
I bounced off the glass, which was curved at an unusual angle, and skidded sideways, streaking down toward its edge.
My palms slammed down, the friction erasing the top layer of flesh, but I was able to skid to a stop.
Momentarily disoriented by the play of light off the glass, I sat there and then I heard Kree and Aurora shouting for me to hurry.
Pivoting, I crawled back up the glass as a whirlwind whipped past, nearly sucking me down to my death.
Kree and Aurora were at the top of the curtain of glass, urging me to double-time it when three of the snake creatures from inside the prison appeared through the broken window.
They aimed their weapons at us at the instant that Aurora and Kree slid down the glass toward me.
One of the snake creatures flung a baseball-sized device at us and since I was too busy helping the ladies, I couldn’t deflect it.
The device bounced off the glass and detonated, shattering the curtain of glass as we plunged down into the solarium.
72
Everything that happened next happened incredibly fast.
The three of us rode the wreckage of the shattered glass down into a circular room. We crashed through a wooden statue and splashed down in a fountain fringed with green and yellow plants.
We lay there in a heap, listening to the gurgle of the water, and then we were on the move again, slashing past a pod of startled building workers.
I stared at the palms of my hands which were raw and bloody from the curtain of glass. “There’s a saying on Halja,” Kree whispered. “Be grateful for pain because it’s weakness leaving the body.”
“I am never going to Halja,” I replied as we ran down a catwalk that led through a series of interconnected conference rooms with impressive stone-topped wooden tables and excellent views of the city.
We exited the rooms to a walkway made of metal mesh and looked over its edge to see that we were situated within the huge rotunda that lay at the center of the Harbinger’s keep.
Down below us was a ramp, and we could see dozens of armed Snouts and snake goons running up to greet us.
“Where to?” I ask.
“We have to find the children,” Kree answered.
Aurora arched an eyebrow. “What children?”
“The children of my people,” Kree replied.
I nodded. “The Harbinger is holding them captive down on the fifteenth floor.”
“Children are not our concern,” Aurora said.
“They’re the only thing that matters!” Kree shot back.
Anger flared in Aurora’s face. Her teeth clenched and her jaw locked. “The trap bottle is the only thing that matters, right, Quincy?”
I stepped between the two ladies, trying to head off a confrontation, realizing both of them had a point and both of them had saved my ass on multiple occasions. I was indebted to the pair, but the bottom line was I wasn’t going to leave a group of children in the clutches of the maniacal Harbinger. Frankly, I didn’t care what the cost was. There was just no way in hell I was leaving them behind.
“I’m going back for the kids, Aurora. Once they’re safe, we can go for the trap bottle.”
Aurora cursed and I stepped over to her. “This is your chance to right some wrongs. To make up for what you did before.”
She recoiled. “That wasn’t a mistake. I did what I had to do before and if given another opportunity, I’d still leave you and the others down in the Empty Quarter. It was the right choice. Everything I do is for the greater good.”
“Don’t be so selfish.”
She sneered. “Haven’t you realized that selfish decisions are usually the right ones?”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I replied, “but I gave Kree my word. I promised to help her people.”
“Don’t feel sorry and don’t ever apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.”
And with that, Aurora took off in the other direction, vanishing down over the walkway as I shouted at her to stop. Kree took my hand and smiled. “Thank you.”
Before I could reply, the area all around us was peppered with small arms fire from the Harbinger’s security goons. They were firing non-lethal bullets and flash-bang grenades designed to disorient us.
Sparks flew and light flashed as the munitions bounced off the walls and detonated. Kree grabbed my hand and we took off down over the walkway in a crouching run. I noticed stenciling on a faraway wall that denoted we were on the twenty-second floor. The kids were seven floors below us.
We stopped and crouched even lower, jets of smoke filling the air. Dez, the Snouts, and a small army of snake goons were coming at us from both directions.
“What do we do?”
“Where I come from, there’s an old saying: the best defense is a good offense.”
“What does that mean, Quincy?”
“It means we need to do the opposite of what I’d like to do. We have to run right at them!”
Dez lurched into view at the other end of the walkway, huffing and puffing from exertion. I narrowed my gaze, assembled a forcefield of energy, and ran at the bastard, Kree following behind.
Dez brought his gun up and fired at us, but the forcefield deflected the shots. Picking up speed, I curved the forcefield into the shape of a shield and lowered my shoulder.
I slammed into Dez and sent him flying back into the serpent goons.
Rolling to my side, I came up on the balls of my feet as a round from one of the attacker’s weapons clipped me in the shoulder, tearing out a nu
gget of flesh and spinning me back to the ground. Bruised but not bloody, I picked myself up and flung a ball of plasma at the enemy.
The plasma crashed into the nearby wall and the resulting blast wave radiated outward, knocking some of the snake goons over the edge of the walkway where they plummeted down through the rotunda.
More incoming fire gouged the walkway, throwing up bits of metal and fiberglass-like material as the snake goons counterattacked.
One of them rushed from the other direction and grabbed Kree in a bear-hug.
She growled and head-butted the beast, then slammed a boot into its groin.
The thing fell to its knees and she shoved the freezing pistol in its mouth and pulled the trigger. The snake’s head turned to ice and Kree karate-chopped it into smithereens which was one of the coolest things (literally) I’d ever seen before.
Before I could turn back, huge hands latched around my throat and nearly squeezed the air from my lungs.
Heart pounding, I forced myself sideways and caught sight of Dez, who was bleeding from a gash on his forehead and grinning like a madman.
“TO HELL WITH THE HARBINGER!” he shrieked. “I’M CROSSING YOU OVER RIGHT NOW!”
He lifted me off my feet and I saw the ground pass by underfoot.
I threw out my hands and caught the edge of the walkway just in time. Dez tried to muscle me over, but I brought a boot back and into his groin. The impact doubled him over, but only for a few heartbeats.
I dropped down onto the walkway, but before I could regroup, he was on the move again, charging at me with his hands upraised like a villain in a kid’s Saturday morning cartoon.
I juked to the left and whipped a ball of energy that exploded mid-air, slightly over and behind Dez, the blast washing outward like a wave breaking on the beach.
The impact propelled Dez’s body forward and through the walkway’s railing.
He tried to grip the railing and stop himself but was unable to.
Smashing through the railing, Dez flailed about in the air, falling twenty-two stories to his death.
The path ahead was now relatively clear and we ran from the bad guys who were approaching from the other direction.