We walked deeper into Sillwood as the waning sun began to break across the rooftops, leaving walls of light and veils of dark following the gaps in the highrises. The streets were a mess. Smashed glass and trash joined tire marks and blood stains in painting a strange mural where we walked. Richard would often redirect us and I had to keep telling myself that any detour would be more efficient than getting caught in a gunfight.
We entered the entertainment district, passing the Sillwood Nentech headquarters building. The digital sign at the front displayed a smiling woman with a prosthetic eye. Someone had spraypainted tattoos onto her, along with the words “Better run, pigs”.
Looking up, the white tower was pockmarked by broken windows and framed by the red pulsating object in the sky. It pressed down on everything, like we were in a pressure cooker, melting humanity into new ingredients.
On occasion, a dusting of glass would fall like heavy snow to the streets, followed by any number of office objects or heavier robotic machines that smashed to pieces on impact. Crows hopped around the detritus excitedly. A wave washed over us and the crows took flight. Too late, I caught sight of what they had been pecking at. Something else that had been thrown out those windows. Horrible broken shapes lay on the sidewalk, blood drying into haloes around their heads. Rising bile made me turn away.
Richard stopped me, pointing to the road up ahead. There was an overturned car, like a turtle on its back, with two people sitting on top. One had a mouth perpetually held open by large tusks that seemed to have originally been some of his teeth. The other had arms covered in dark glossy fur. Next to them was a pile of bodies.
The one with the tusks raised a hand in greeting. Richard turned with a dark look in his eye and guided us down a side street. Gamblers, he mouthed to me.
We took a shortcut through an eerily empty luxury car dealership. Only one of the cars remained and it was driven halfway up a set of stairs, black oil trailing back down. We passed by an office with the door ajar. A man wearing a wrinkled suit sat inside. His nose was broken and bloodied. Other than that he looked unharmed but he stared at his blank computer screen with hollow eyes, as if he had seen enough of the real world.
We entered the shadow of a skyscraper, going along a street that had cafes and patios, with planter trees and leafy vines intended to make this little pocket of the city a bit closer to nature. But in the darkness, the red hue coming from the sky made the plants look brown and dying.
A teenager ran towards us, her face was scratched up and she was barefoot. Richard barked something at her and she slowed down, responding. Then a look crossed her face and she fell to her knees and vomited. Tears carved trails down her dirt covered chin and neck.
After a brief conversation that I couldn’t follow, Richard hoisted his gun and moved on. I gave her a sympathetic look which only made her shy away from me. I brushed off the ugly feeling that stirred. That’s fine, better to move on. I learned my lesson from my encounter with H.E.S.P. Any interactions would slow me down and risk stopping me entirely.
We moved slowly and carefully forward. Richard hadn’t deemed to tell me anything and I didn’t want to break the silence by asking. My eyes made out a body in front of us, slumped over a bench. I pointed and Richard nodded and motioned me forward as he kept watch. As I drew near, I noticed that the bench was broken, skewed to the side that the body lay on.
Oh. The sight was almost too sickening to view. The person’s head had been split open, disfigured to the point that the skull didn’t retain its shape. For once the darkness was a blessing, obscuring some of this ugly reality. I noticed another wound at their shoulder, a perfectly circular depression, like they’d been crushed under a hydraulic press.
I led the way now, muscles tensed like springs, ready to move the second I saw movement.
Another corpse was further ahead. They were lying on the street, with two holes that were larger than my fist punched through their chest. A smoldering car was a few feet away. They had crashed and then crawled out, only making it this far before they were done in. But what had they crashed into? The car was in the middle of the street. Yet the front hood was severely crumpled. I ran my hand over the impact point. The car hadn’t hit something from the front, instead something had landed on the hood, creating a crater of bent metal. There was another hole in the roof that had punched through and yet another deep hole had burrowed into a seat cushion.
Falling debris? But no remnants of rubble.
I felt like whoever or whatever was out there would definitely hear my heartbeat echoing against the buildings.
We came across one other body, but this one had been shot. I peered at his fingers, trying to find a Ring tattoo but couldn’t make one out. I looked up and realized that despite all our detours, we had almost made it to the casino strip. I could see the colourful bright lights moving along the buildings up ahead. It wasn’t far to the Old Town.
With the unknown threat present in my mind, we made it to where the street ended in a T intersection. Rather than moving laterally, I decided to enter an alleyway that kept us moving forward. Richard tapped my shoulder. I turned to see him sweating and panting, he held up a finger and leaned up against the wall, catching his breath.
Right. We had travelled quite a long distance on foot. Richard probably wasn’t used to this much cardio. A pulse shook its way through the alleyway and my eyes were drawn up to the sliver of carmine light above our heads.
Richard raised an eyebrow and spit to the side.
“You don’t see it?” I asked in a low voice.
Richard looked up and then shrugged, shaking his head.
“Doesn’t everything look kinda red to you?”
Richard squinted and then shrugged again. “… a little. Just dark mostly.”
A shadow passed over us, blocking out the blood red planet-thing. My heart lurched and my branches crackled around me. Richard stood straight and pointed his gun upwards. We waited. After a few minutes had passed, we decided that whatever had made the shadow had moved on.
“Lots of sounds coming from up ahead,” Richard said slowly. “… wait here for the others.”
I looked at him. “Others?”
“Graham, Zola, Terry, and AJ. Vanessa and B are hunkering down … won’t be coming.”
“I thought they were all evacuating.”
“I … spotty phone call through while you were inside the uni. Turns out AJ needed … his mother to safety and when the others heard you had a plan to stop this, they were all onboard.”
Richard’s eyes widened and I whipped around. A figure appeared at the entrance to the alleyway and Richard raised his gun past my shoulder. The silhouette was unique, with arms that had strange protrusions…
I quickly placed a hand on Richard’s gun and pushed it down. The figure took a few cautious steps forward. It was Spike. His jittering pupils regarded behind a swollen eyelid and there was a nasty purple bruise across his jaw. He promptly sat down on the cold concrete.
“I … that way if I were you,” he said as he hugged his knees. I couldn’t understand all the words, but I got the meaning anyway. Bad news ahead. I noted that many of his spikes had already been spent. He only had about a third of them left, with the spent ones leaving holes on his arms where the skin puckered to close them.
Richard asked something and Spike looked up with tired eyes.
“The Outcasts are … in the Old Town. It’s bad here, but it’s worse in there apparently. They’ve … for now but they want to try escaping soon. I’m trying to … there to escort them.”
Richard and Spike kept talking and I couldn’t follow. I thought of the little girl with her mouse-like whiskers. She doesn’t deserve this.
Spike stood. “No time to waste.”
“You’re in bad shape,” I said.
He frowned. “Doesn’t matter … isn’t an option.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
Richard grabbed my arm and I turned to see him red in the face. “No. Wait here for the others.” Then he jabbed his fingers at his phone, typing out a message before thrusting it in my face.
[ ITs a death trap. Sevral differnt Rings all fighting. There are TRAPS all over. Spike FAILED once tryn to get thru. ]
I shook my head. “I agree with him. I can’t wait. Plus, I’m durable. Other than Graham, the rest of you could die easily. And more numbers just makes us a bigger target.”
“Why am … one who’s … smart here?” he asked through gritted teeth and it made him hard to understand. “The crew … had this talk. No one … now.”
“I’m gambling. I get that.” I turned to look at Spike. “But if at least one of us makes it through, then at least someone is getting the help they need.”
Spike studied me seriously. “I won’t turn back for you.”
“That’s what I want. I understand you, Spike. Nell is the same for me. Her safety comes first.” It’s an ugly thing to say when so many lives are at stake. But here I am, forced to choose.
“Stupid,” Richard said angrily. He sat back down with a huff.
“Wait for the others, Richard,” I said. “Then you can decide if you want to follow or not.”
His mouth formed a grim line but he nodded. When I had first met Richard, I never would have thought I would see concern for me written on his face. It almost made me change my mind. Almost.
Spike nodded and I followed him back down the way he had entered. He peeked around the corner for a moment, then turned back to me. “If I don’t make it, I hope you can … to help the Outcasts once you help Nell.”
“Of course,” I said firmly. “They’re kind people. They don’t deserve the life they had to live. And who knows, maybe after Shaping is revealed to the world, they won’t have to hide anymore.”
Spike stared down at his bruised hands. “We both know that isn’t going to happen. But it would be nice.”
He breathed in and set his feet. “Okay. On three?”
I nodded.
“One. Two. Three!”
We both dashed out from the alleyway. Shadows stood in front of a bonfire in the middle of the road and I felt a dozen eyes lock onto us. I could imagine the shouts. Spike’s head jerked and he changed direction. A bullet cracked against the road in front of us.
We split. I formed Locust Legs and launched myself over a fence, while Spike ducked into the next narrow alleyway. After leaping another fence, I caught a glimpse of Spike emerging from the alley before ducking behind some parked cars.
The ground started to shake and I turned just in time to see a car barrelling towards me. Ring members hung out the sides, hoisting weapons in the air, their teeth and the whites of their eyes appearing starkly in the darkness. I leapt and the car hit my legs, spinning me in the air.
Colourful neon lights streaked across my vision and I hit the ground on my side. The car’s tires spun and it started to reverse back at me. I scrambled to my feet, feeling the roar of the engine in my fingertips, and dashed for a narrow side street packed tightly with buildings on either side.
Briefly checking behind me, I saw that the car had spun out and failed to make the turn. The windows of the shops around me were full of moving images. Slot machines flashed and whirred from the window of a casino on the second floor. A sign from further ahead was flashing neon blue in a pattern, making it hard for my eyes to adjust. Open store fronts became dangerous holes in black space that I couldn’t see to the back of as I passed them.
Someone stepped out from the darkness, a machete emerging to catch on the purple hues. I pivoted to avoid his swing and saw that two others were approaching from where the car had stopped.
The first of them had curved blades emerging from his elbows, which he swiped at me. I sidestepped the swing and it sliced through the glass window next to me, leaving a perfect line in the glass without fractures. Impossibly sharp. I moved backwards, giving myself distance now that I knew my armour wouldn’t stop those blades in the slightest. The man pursued, backlit by the headlights of the car, eyes filled with rage. I let him swing again and took out his footing with a wave of small branches under his feet. He came crashing down, the blades sinking into the pavement. His friend stepped on his back to reach me with his machete.
I let the machete sink into my shoulder, getting caught in the brambles of my weave. I grabbed him and swung him into the flimsy metal shutters of a closed shop. The man hit the shutter, crumpling it inwards. It was only after I’d released him that I realized that his hand was still on the machete embedded in my shoulder. His arm had twisted and lengthened to allow this. They’re all Casts.
A weight settled on my shoulder as the third Ring leapt onto my back and drove a knife into a gap in my helmet. The edge glanced across my ear, the pain reminding me that I still had them.
Then I was hauled sideways. The man grinned as he retracted his elongated arm, pulling me towards him. Unsteady with the weight on my shoulders, I fell down into the bent shutter, my bones getting caught in the twisted metal.
The Ring with the deadly sharp arms was extricating himself from the pavement. The one on my back was raining blows down on the back of my head. It was doing more damage to his fists than to my armour, but the Tree egged him on, and because of it I couldn’t stand up.
A pulse hit me in a moment of panic, seizing my anger and tearing it out of my grasp. I twisted and stabbed the man with hollow points, filling them with datura and a chaser of fear. The man screamed and threw himself off of me. I retracted my armour, letting the weapons clatter to the ground and freeing myself from the shutter. But as I rose, the arm snaked around my neck and yanked my back. My skin felt hot as I injected the arm with datura too and the arm retreated after a moment.
I pushed myself away from the shutter, breathing heavily. There were beams from flashlights moving from the intersection up ahead. Someone else joining in on the ‘fun’.
I ran towards them, my field of vision narrowing as I redonned my armour. Bursting past the intersection, I felt the vibrations of gunfire even as I didn’t turn to look.
The road exited on a wide thoroughfare. A large casino loomed in front of me from across the street. The roads on either side would lead me to the concrete barriers marking the entrance to Old Town.
Shadows emerged from hiding spots and flashlights flared to life. Too many people to count in an instant. I vaulted the divider on the multiple lane road and then formed Locust Legs while bracing up against the opposite side. The lights settled on me and I regretted the fact that I was a stark white colour.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Spike, slinking away in the shadows. Good. I’ll be the distraction.
A moment’s release and I was across the road and smashing through the glass pane of the locked revolving door to the casino.
I rolled and sprung back to my feet. The lights inside were dazzlingly bright. My head throbbed as my eyes slowly adjusted.
Only to be met with the sight of every slot machine, every card table, every bannister of the massive multi-tiered room being host to hundreds and hundreds of crows. Their beady eyes glinted like stygian glass. Even in the silence, I could see their beaks opening and snapping shut in laughter. A familiar murder waiting for me.
Crows don’t forget their grudges.