The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2) (13 page)

“I think I saw something moving beyond those hills,” said Garros, and they couldn’t communicate with Jena for confirmation. “It might have been nothing.”

As they came closer and closer to their destination, the terrain changed so gradually it was almost unnoticeable. The dry desert land then changed into sandy dunes. Pieces of what could only be the crushed remains of man-made structures poked through the sand, and some were crushed under the Creuxen’s careless feet.

Where am I now?
Nandi asked.
This doesn’t feel right.

“Erin, are we okay in this sand?” asked Ezra, misunderstanding Nandi’s concerns.

“Probably,” she said, and Phoenix stopped for a moment. “I never heard of sand messing with a Creux. Why do you ask?”

When Nandi said nothing else, Ezra dismissed the matter as well.

Then, after climbing up a particularly tall hill of treacherous terrain, they stopped to take a good look at their destination.

It was the remains of the city of Kerek: crush and dust buried under sand in what used to be a basin about three-fourths the size of Roue. Not one single building stood anymore, as though the Laani had intentionally destroyed it, wanting to make sure not even its memory remained.

Tens of thousands of lives lost to the disease, hundreds infected and changed, taken away to become a part of the cruel god Lys. It was a grim look into a future in which they failed.

Beyond the city, not far from the far end of the basin, was the base of the peak they had seen from a distance. Clouds gathered and circled over its highest point: a thin rocky formation, like a deliberately crafted spire. He could feel a strange kind of energy, or power, coming from the spire.

“The end of the world,” whispered Garros.

The world ended long ago
.

A sudden loud roar made the remains of Kerek tremble; pieces of stone rolled down the sides of the steel basin, crashing into the destroyed buildings one body length beneath.

Still lost in the depressing sight of stone and steel, he didn’t see Jade Arjuna draw her arm back. Her arrows were suddenly flying downward at invisible targets, making no noise in their immateriality.

He hadn’t noticed it at all, but there was a Flash hiding in the ruins of the city, and when his mind finally prepared itself for a battle, it was already underway.

But as Ezra moved down the basin to join Ares and Phoenix, he stopped so suddenly he almost sent the mass of Nandi rolling down. There was an even more unexpected sight than the Flash guarding Kerek.

Even from Nandi’s height, he could see a different kind of movement amid the ruins: a young woman, a human being, looking up at the Minotaur as though there was no other danger in sight.

Don’t fall for her lie
, warned a voice, and he could no longer tell whose thoughts he was hearing.

Chapter 7

The Voices Speak

Though Ezra had grown more confident in a fight
, the battle that broke over the ruins of Kerek proved to be even more of a challenge than usual. Fighting in the Creux was already difficult for many reasons—from the trials of moving such a large form to the fear of being lost to bloodlust—but having to fight and protect someone while trying not to crush her under one’s huge feet was proving to be almost impossible.

He had begun to doubt whether he had actually seen someone or not—it seemed impossible to think a human being could have wandered into these unprotected ruins, which hadn’t seen human life for decades. To Ezra’s eye, she appeared to be a girl, no older than Ezra himself, and it was like she was appearing and disappearing, coming in and out of Nandi’s sight.

He finally saw her again, crouched behind a dead tree with bark as white as the ashes it shed. Her hands were on her ears, covering the deafening sounds of the battle—roaring monsters and machines, of earth being crushed and life extinguished.

A canine-looking Trooper came too close to the ashen tree, and Ezra was quick enough to grab it by its thick, lizard-like tail. Nandi’s strength proved enough to pull it back towards him, away from the girl. With one quick, practiced motion, Ezra put Nandi’s hands around the creature’s head. It roared, furious, and snapped its jaws at Nandi.

They’re monsters, just monsters. Nothing but monsters.

Energy gathered in the space between the Minotaur’s horns.

. . .
nothing but monsters . . .

He thrust his hands forward and the power burst through. He threw the Trooper’s body away, and blood splashed on the sand.

They’re monsters they’re monsters just monsters . . . oh my god . . .

It wasn’t easy. Even after all the psychological training that took place in Zenith without his noticing, killing something that might have once been a human being was not easy in any context.

“
Blanchard! What the hell are you doing over there
?” called Erin’s voice.

He looked ahead and saw Phoenix fighting a Trooper—a very big one—with several others surrounding her. Ares and Jade were busy, so he was forced to leave the girl to her own devices.

Nandi rammed the Trooper like a charging bull, goring it with his horns and sending it crashing far away, dead or very hurt. He gave Phoenix his back to face the Troopers that surrounded them, and they engaged in a two-man attack. Nandi would send orbs of power to the sides, arms stretched as far as his armored shoulders allowed him, while Phoenix attacked in one of the many offensive forms she had perfected through the years.

He had always wished to watch her fight as a spectator and not a teammate also involved in battle. Ezra was too busy commanding the Minotaur to see clearly, but it was always a spectacle. For all its communications problems, Phoenix Atlas was both fast and strong—bird-like in its grace. When she launched her technomantic power and created a bright shadow of herself, imitating her movements, it was like performance art.

With monsters and violence.

Every chance he could, Ezra looked back at the area of the city where he had seen the girl to make sure no monster was near. No Carrier to infect her or Trooper to crush her.

She’s doing it again!
Nandi yelled, sounding strangely alarmed.

He hadn’t noticed, but Jade had already positioned herself behind him. Ezra knew what it meant. He locked his arms in an L to avoid shooting, and began to make a pool of power in his horns.

Jena shot, and enormous versions of Jade’s arrows flew through the dusty air to strike and kill.

Nandi hated it, and a part of Ezra did too; it made him feel less like a fighter and more like a tool, but the results were hard to ignore—no Trooper could stand after two hits of Jade’s magnified arrows.

Ezra could feel in his human neck the strain Jade was putting on Nandi’s, as she repositioned his head and horns like she was about to use them like a slingshot.

Then, suddenly, there were no monsters hiding behind the clouds of dust and sand—only silent emptiness that made everything feel more desolate. There was always a feeling of guilt and sadness after a fight, but at least then there was
some
life around them. Seeing Kerek truly empty around them gave them a weighty sense of despair stronger than even the empty desert.

There was a city here. It’s gone now.

“What took
you
so long?” asked Garros, and he was angry. Though he couldn’t see it in Ares’ face, Ezra knew he was talking to him.

“I saw—there’s someone in here. A girl. I was trying to protect her.”

“A girl?”

“Yes, a young girl. She was—,” Ezra started walking back to the spot where he had seen her—the ashen tree, the base of a destroyed building. He turned around to see Ares and Phoenix walking behind him. Jade Arjuna was not in sight.

The girl was gone, as expected. At least it appeared like she had gone elsewhere, and wasn’t instead killed during the battle. There was no corpse. “She was right here.”

“Are you sure you saw someone?” asked Erin.

“I am.”

“This city has been dead for decades,” muttered Garros, and Quantum Ares turned around to look at the destruction. “We just fought a huge Flash. There’s no way people are still living in here—there isn’t anything that can be used as shelter.”

“I know what I saw,” said Ezra—a line he was tired of repeating.

“Jena is calling us,” said Erin, and Phoenix Atlas spun on one leg to walk away from Ezra, dismissing the matter entirely. Garros followed her, and Ezra did the same.

For once, he didn’t care that they didn’t believe him; the girl couldn’t have gone far. If they were going to search the city for clues on where to find the missing pieces of the Armor of God, he was sure to find a trace of her.

Jade Arjuna had made her way almost to the heart of the destroyed city, and was banging two huge iron beams together to call either Garros or Erin’s attention; Besoe Nandi’s field hearing was not active, and couldn’t hear the sounds outside the aural link.

“What you got?” asked Erin, and Jade pointed downward, at something beneath her feet. It must be extremely frustrating to be unable to speak. Or to speak, and not be heard.

Ezra chuckled to himself.

He maneuvered Nandi across a city redecorated with dead monsters, towards the others. He took every step carefully, afraid to step on something, or someone, he shouldn’t.

The others were standing on the rim of another smaller basin, at the bottom of which there was an indentation, like a slit engraved into the floor. It was about the size of Nandi’s arm.

“What do you suppose that is?” asked Garros.

“Should we go down there?” asked Ezra.

“Of course not,” replied Erin and brought Phoenix down to her knees. With prods of her clawed finger, she tested the durability of this second basin, which looked as though it had been
eroded
by some strange force, and not actually carved by man. “We could shatter it, whatever it is. Maybe there’s something important down there.”

“Maybe there’s people!” said Ezra.

“Maybe,” replied Garros. “Damn, is there any chance the people of Kerek didn’t all die here, when the city fell? Maybe they moved somewhere else—maybe underground.”

Erin and Garros were too busy looking at the eroded basin to see Jade Arjuna frantically moving her arms to draw their attention. Ezra saw her, and raised the Minotaur’s hand to let her know that he was looking at her.

She pointed Jade’s finger towards the distance, at the base of the peak, but he wasn’t sure at what.

The bow of her arm collapsed. She tilted her entire body upward as she drew an arrow of light, and shot it upward. The arrow flew up and then down in an arch; a beam of technomantic energy was as much a victim of momentum and gravity as a real arrow.

Hers landed near the spot she was pointing them to.

“Garros? Erin?” said Ezra, and they finally turned around.

“What’s that?”

Jena kept sending arrows at the mysterious target far away from them. It looked like a Fleck, but it was completely immobile, and covered in a cloth that had to be enormous. It stood next to a massive stone wall that stretched up to become part of the peak.

Jade Arjuna ran across the city and climbed the basin effortlessly, asking the others to follow with motions of her hand. The way in which she moved suggested excitement, if not urgency.

It wasn’t as easy for Creuxen as heavy as Ares and Nandi to climb up the steel basin at the edge of the city, but they finally made it to the top, back to the sandy dunes that surrounded the remains of Kerek.

“Holy crap,” whispered Garros.

Jade ran without warning, towards the target, overeager.

The others followed, and as they came closer to it, it took shape. It was huge, humanoid, and covered in silver armor, resting one knee on the floor, arms falling on the floor as though boneless.

It wasn’t until they were just a few body lengths away from it that they recognized what it was, and why it had caused such exhilaration in Jena; this was Milos Ravana. They had finally found the Armor of God, and hopefully, Akiva with it.

ф

Hopes were low when Vivian got up that morning and took what could be the last shower she’d ever take in the colorful dormitory she had been born to occupy.

Tessa had suggested she should wear civilian’s clothing when going back to Roue to vote on Proposition Tomorrow, but to Vivian that seemed silly, not to mention cowardly.

She had no reason or desire to hide her identity as a pilot of Zenith. Quite the contrary: she wanted all those people who back then disregarded her to know that she was playing a part in saving humanity’s future.

Whether they wanted it or not.

So, she dressed in a fresh uniform that displayed all her patches—Zenith logo, Roue Armed Forces, and of course her favorite: Rose Xibalba. She tied her boots tightly, cleaned them, and walked out of her room.

She passed by every room and corridor she had grown to call home in the last months, and didn’t see almost anyone else. Vivian made her way to the train station, where she found some of the other pilots waiting for the train to arrive from its last trip to Roue.