Anthem's Fall Page 11

  There would be only victory. Their strongest son, their emperor, would return their victor.

  Chapter Seven

  Vengelis

  A heavyset Royal Guard tried to step into the elevator to fight alongside him, but Vengelis shook his head sternly and motioned the soldier back into the cheering bunker. “Protect them,” Vengelis said to the brave Royal Guard as the doors shut between them with finality.

  The lone journey to the surface seemed to last ages as Vengelis blinked at the closed doors. It was hard to conceive the yoke that now rested on his shoulders. As the elevator rose, so too did the rate of his heart. He could feel it pumping furiously, spilling oxygen and rushing adrenaline into his muscles. Vengelis clenched his fists and cleared his mind. His palms were sweating, and his ears rang.

  His face was stoic.

  The elevator opened with a hiss. Vengelis sprinted through the barracks and into the terrible massacre that greeted him in what once was a florid courtyard. He looked around him, unclear on how he was going to find the machines. Overhead, black smoke was gathering like a storm above Sejeroreich. Vengelis lifted off the ground and ascended into the caustic cloud cover. The midday sun barely held authority over the sky, it was merely a shadowy dot tethered in the billowing blackness. In the unseen distance of the city beyond the palace walls, sounds of unspeakable destruction and torment were swept up in the wind and carried to Vengelis’s uncomprehending ears. Dozens of dark skyscrapers appeared in the veiled sky around him, though many more had fallen.

  “Where are the machines?” Vengelis screamed as he scanned the city below. It was impossible to discern anything, least of all these so-called machines. He shouted again and again, not knowing what else to do.

  An oil line caught flame and exploded suddenly outside the palace, causing a spire of bright red flames to leap high into the air below him, the blaze in sharp contrast with the shadowy streets. He bore down at once, descending toward the whooshing flames. As he approached the inferno, Vengelis saw that a melee was underway. He slowed, hoping to catch a glimpse of a Felix.

  The first thing Vengelis saw amid the fire was a man. Initially, he thought it was a member of the Imperial First Class that had shed aside his armor, but he changed his mind at once. This man looked like a demon born of fire. He moved amid the roaring flames that leapt from the spewing oil line. Sheets of burning fluid covered his body, his face and arms engulfed by dark crackling flames. Yet he was unaffected. The burning man was moving with faultless coordination, and a speed such that Vengelis had never before witnessed.

  A soldier in Imperial First Class Armor with huge limbs and monstrous hands lumbered toward the burning man. Without even seeing the soldier’s approach, the burning man jumped over soldier’s broad shoulders and landed directly behind him. A burning arm wrapped around the Imperial First Class’s head and twisted his neck, easily snapping the giant’s spine. Another Imperial First Class started charging, fist cocked. The burning man covered the distance to the soldier in an instant, flames leaping around him, and launched his elbow squarely into the soldier’s solar plexus. The soldier gasped as a smoldering leg slammed into his chest, launching his body across the street. The Imperial First Class’s dead form crashed into a building, which collapsed inward from the impact. The burning man then turned, sending a smoldering fist straight through the chest of another Imperial First Class. Dark blood spurted from the soldier’s punctured armor and sizzled in the blistering heat.

  Vengelis exploded down toward the flames, stopping just above their reach. He was livid with this burning man. Why would Primus be fighting Primus at this hour? He tracked his gaze across his surroundings, all around the flames and street beyond, but he lost the position of the strange burning man. He cursed and descended to the street level, touching down outside the flames.

  Vengelis was reaching down to inspect a fallen Imperial First Class captain’s corpse when a young boy ran by, dragging an enormous wounded soldier across the street. The boy was covered in dirt, his face streaked with dried tears. Vengelis swallowed hard, immediately recognizing the boy as the son of Councillor Harken: a child of Royalty. The nearby blaze screeched and crackled, the wind spreading eager flames.

  “My lord! You must escape, they are all around us!”

  “Steady yourself, child.” Vengelis’s voice came out strong, confident.

  The boy stood as straight as he could and saluted. He was younger than eleven. “Forgive my weakness, Lord Vengelis.”

  Vengelis nodded with admiration. The child’s bravery filled him with a swelling pride. “Where are the machines?”

  “They’re all around us, Lord Vengelis. They look just like us. The army has been fighting them since dawn, and I will die before I surrender.”

  The boy was valiant, his Royal lineage obvious in his grit.

  “Good boy,” Vengelis nodded. “But get yourself to the palace barracks and join the Royal families in the bunker. This is not your fight.”

  “Yes, Lord Vengelis!” the boy called, but suddenly froze with fear. The boy began trembling, his chest convulsing in terror. Vengelis slowly turned and looked in all directions. Hysteria was rampant; men, women, and children were running every direction, many horribly wounded. None of them were soldiers. The fire was blazing out of control, and the entire block was immersed in raging flames.

  A woman standing nearby, just below a broad tilted awning, remained unscathed. Her appearance contrasted strangely with the mayhem around them. She was thin and average sized, of Royal appearance, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Tattered ribbons of the awning and bits of orange cinders and ash blew all about her. She was smiling at Vengelis, her teeth white and perfect. Vengelis was taken aback.

  Her eyes.

  Vengelis squinted through the billowing ash and felt an eerie sense of disquiet surface within him. Her eyes were not quite right. There was a glowing property to her stare, as though her eyes were emitting a strange blue radiance. She was beautiful, but the serene way she was smiling in the midst of the madness was peculiarly horrifying.

  “State your name and rank!” Vengelis called out.

  The boy stifled a small cry as the woman’s smile broadened. Vengelis glared and turned his attention from her to the boy. In a corner of his mind he already knew he was speaking to one of the Felixes. She moved her unsettling gaze from Vengelis to the boy. The boy let out a terrible sob and released the soldier he had been dragging. The woman took a step closer to the child.

  There was no longer any doubt in Vengelis’s mind.

  The woman whirled into motion, dashing toward the boy and reaching for his throat. The boy flinched and locked his eyes shut, expecting instant death. But it did not come. He peered through his trembling eyelids after a moment passed. The woman was still reaching for his throat, though now just in front of him. Vengelis had closed the distance and grabbed her wrist with his left hand, stopping the strike in its tracks. Her fingernails were reaching out longingly, inches from the boy’s neck. The woman turned to Vengelis, her expression vacant.

  “Huge . . . mistake,” Vengelis growled through gritted teeth, his knuckles white from the vice grip on her wrist. “Get out of here, kid.”

  The boy looked up at the famous Vengelis Epsilon as he stood over him, protecting his life with such raw passion. A hero had come to save him from this nightmare. For a moment the boy froze in awe of his emperor. Then he followed the order. He grabbed the dying warrior on the ground, arched his back, and pulled with all his capacity, carrying the unconscious soldier by his enormous leg toward the barracks.

  The woman’s glowing eyes looked from the retreating child to Vengelis with an emotionless gaze. Close now, Vengelis looked into her eyes. Her retinas were a shifting and shimmering blue. He was looking into the eyes of a machine. The Felix’s mechanic gaze looked to Vengelis’s hand on her—its— wrist. The Blood Ring clung with a conflicting opulence to Vengelis’s clenched fingers.

  Vengelis wound up with his ri
ght hand and punched the Felix with all his might on the side of the head, a perfect temple shot with the strength of an earthquake. The Felix’s head rolled back, and she stumbled a few feet in a daze, her hair flying about. Vengelis could not believe the machine remained standing. The punch had been strong enough to level a mountain. The ringing sound of the impact of his fist with her head resonated like a deep gong, as though her skull was made of iron. Pain radiated up Vengelis’s forearm. He immediately shook it off, clenching his fist without showing the slightest grimace. Nothing was broken. If machines did not feel pain, neither did he.

  Once more the woman looked at him with her sapphire stare, her eyes luminous against the shadows of ash and dark flames around them.

  Vengelis charged her with another fist, but this time she sidestepped with ease. His fist whistled through empty air. He turned around, furious, and launched several more blows as hard as he could. The muscles in his chest, back, and legs expelled all of their strength to no avail. His fists and legs met only the swirling smoky air as he swung and kicked at the machine. The Felix was impossibly fast, weaving across the street with a velocity he had never before encountered.

  In the midst of her elusive turns and sidesteps, the blonde Felix unexpectedly lashed out with an open hand at Vengelis’s face. He ducked, but not fast enough. A long sharp fingernail cut deep into his cheek. Vengelis could feel hot blood trickle down his neck and patter onto his gilded chest armor. Without a second thought, Vengelis erupted into the sky, hoping for an advantage in the air. The Felix was after him immediately, soaring easily in his wake. A few hundred feet in the air, Vengelis turned directions abruptly and attempted the same blow he had delivered to Lord General Hoff earlier that day.

  The punch landed with devastating force, pummeling straight into the machine’s face. He watched as the Felix’s body reeled backward through space, spinning round and round with limbs askew. And at that moment, as the Felix fell through the smoky air, Vengelis knew he could win. He could destroy this machine.

  But suddenly, an arm wrapped around his neck, and the back of his head was pulled into someone’s unseen chest. The chest was burning, and Vengelis felt the tingle of flames sift through his hair. He knew at once it was the male Felix he had seen in the flames. Struggling, Vengelis could not break the unyielding grip. The sizzling flames of the Felix’s forearms and chest were nothing but a tickle against Vengelis’s impervious flesh, but the snakelike chokehold was suffocating him by the second. Dizzying blood began to pool in his head. Vengelis flailed his body as the caustic stench of his smoldering armor filled his nostrils. A dark hole began to spread from the center of his vision, and soon he could see only black. Vengelis thrashed his limbs into the mysterious body in frenzy, though the Felix easily sustained every hit. All he could feel beyond the strangulation was deep and infuriating confusion. In the midst of his despair, Vengelis felt a rocking blow in the darkness. The arm wrapped around his windpipe released at once.

  He was free.

  Vengelis fell into space, descending into a dim oblivion in a barely conscious haze. As his body rotated and spun in freefall, the pressure in his head steadily subsided. His vision began to return. Within the same instant he was upright and regaining his composure floating far over the rooftops of Sejeroreich. He looked up to see Master Tolland engaged in combat with the burning Felix.

  His teacher had saved his life.

  Vengelis burst upward toward their struggle. No words needed to be spoken between the two Sejero warriors. Together Vengelis and Master Tolland assailed the lone burning Felix. As they did so, the blonde Felix returned. Vengelis gladly focused his attack on her. She evaded several of his advances until he leveled a strike into her gut that sent her reeling across the rooftops of the city and nearly out of sight.

  “Vengelis, this is not a winning fight. There are more of these machines down in the streets. That first punch broke my wrist.” Master Tolland was winded already, breathing heavily with forceful wheezes and cradling his malformed right hand in his left. He looked older and wearier than Vengelis had ever seen him. “Trust me and do as I say, Vengelis. You have to escape. We . . . together . . . can’t beat these demons.”

  “I can’t.” Vengelis screamed to him. “You of all people know I can’t!”

  "You must go! I know it will be difficult, but in order to defend your people, you have to leave—and leave right now. I wish I were younger and could be of greater help to you, but my time has passed. Go to Filgaia”—as Master Tolland spoke, the west portion of the palace collapsed beneath them with a roar that drained out his voice. When it subsided Vengelis only heard—“only if you work together!”

  Panicked and shocked by the volume of the historic palace’s collapse, Vengelis ignored Master Tolland’s plea. He saw the blonde Felix coming, and he charged full speed toward her with everything he had. Either he or the machine would be dead before this fight was through. They met with a blur of speed. Vengelis launched every ounce of power within the well of his being at the strange machine. One after another his hits began to hit their marks. Vengelis was faster than her, he was certain of it. He caught the side of the machine’s face with a brutal fist, sending it stumbling, and he broke away for a split second, out of breath and exhausted. Nausea rose in his core and his muscles burned from fatigue. Vengelis looked down to the barracks far below, and saw something that turned his blood to ice. The enormous Royal Transport was lifting off from the barracks, ascending into the shifting ruinous skies over Sejeroreich. Eve and his mother were on board, along with all of the Royal families and the hopes of his people. This was the moment. They were following his last order to escape while he distracted the machines.

  As the prodigious transport rose from the barracks, Vengelis discerned something flying after it. With sudden dread, Vengelis exploded toward the lone pursuer. In his heart he knew it was another one of the Felixes. As he did so, the blonde Felix charged after him as he bore down on the huge transport. Without the slightest difficulty, she caught up to him. He was flying as fast as he could when from his blindside a burning elbow careened into the center of his face. Vengelis felt his nose break and his face burst with a crunching of bones and cartilage.

  The Felixes had surrounded him.

  Vengelis squinted through watering eyes and unspeakable pain as the distant Felix caught up to the Royal Transport and tore into the side of the giant craft like a missile, disappearing entirely into the steel hull. The transport split down the middle, and for a moment Vengelis caught a glimpse of its riven innards: steel supports, command decks, hallways. Then the fuel cells sparked, and the craft erupted into white-hot flames. Two smoldering halves of the gigantic ship plummeted to the ground far below, marring the sky with a broad streak of smoke.

  Desperate, Vengelis now turned to see the blonde Felix brutally beating Master Tolland. His teacher was going to die, and Vengelis had not followed his last order. But Vengelis could not bring himself to flee. He turned his back to Master Tolland and began to fly toward the falling wreckage. Yet another Felix was already on him. His last vision was the pieces of the transport crashing through the roof of the maimed palace far below.

  There were too many of them. His family was dead, and he knew he would soon follow. Vengelis reached out to the distant calamity as the blonde Felix—having defeated Master Tolland—mounted her legs around his midsection and began to unleash a flood of eager punches at his undefended face. Vengelis vaguely felt his head rock back and forth from each blow. His jaw cracked and each of his cheekbones shattered from the consecutive knocks. Soon the strikes felt like nothing at all, he was so loosely clinging to consciousness.

  Vengelis descended limply through space, free falling toward the ground, his face unrecognizable and his armor cracked and shredded to ribbons. Closer he fell toward the ruined and burning intersections of his once beloved Sejeroreich.

  …

  Throbbing pain pumped relentlessly in the vast emptiness. Excruciating blackness. F
rom his head through his body to his feet, he was only aware of the blinding, pulsing pain. His thoughts were a torturous mixture of inadequacy and dread.

  Death. The savior gods, the Epsilons, had fallen at last.

  An incoherent whispery voice came through his stupor, perhaps his own. It was cracked and parched, foreign to his ears. Vengelis tried to force his eyelids open, but all he could see was a slit of light through the swelling of his eye sockets. The pulsing blood pumping through his ears drowned out all sound. His consciousness slipped away, and Vengelis sank into the abyss.

  Chapter Eight

  Kristen

  The two cups of coffee on her desk were both empty, and computer printouts from the previous year were piled around her. Kristen was deeply concerned in the wake of her conversation with Cara Williams. Her entire afternoon had been spent sifting through past Vatruvian cell research for any clue—even the most miniscule or trivial figure—that might explain this crisis. Genetic codes for the Vatruvian cell’s unusual protein structures scrolled across Kristen’s monitor as Cara Williams’s confession churned through her thoughts. With a frustrated sigh, Kristen let her shoulders sink into her chair and took a sip of water from her Nalgene bottle. She knew Cara Williams had told the truth.

  The Vatruvian cell was anatomically superior to the very cells in which it replicated.

  According to Cara’s data, the Vatruvian cells were flourishing in habitats that killed their natural counterparts. Their synthesized cells were flourishing in one-hundred-eighty-degree environments. That was up in the temperature realm of rare extremophiles, not run of the mill research bacteria. It was not right. Kristen was scouring her old research in hopes of finding some overlooked detail that might explain this strange phenomenon.