2044

Allison Fey

Another scream littered the soundscape of her mind, and she was brought out of her thoughts. Tears stained her cheeks as the look of Felix on that day stained her memory. How angry he was and how easily she could have died. The pain of that trap sunk in her leg rung in her prosthetic and it felt hot—hot where no feeling should be. In truth the phantom existed in that space where her leg no longer did. It also existed within her as that was the day her hopes of reuniting with him had died. And the gall of him to reappear after so many years as if nothing had happened...it infuriated her, but most it just re-opened the sorrow she thought she had long sealed away.

Another scream littered the space. They were too frequent to drown out with her own thoughts now, but it wasn’t like she could do anything to help. If anything her position now was just more evidence to her failures. She thought it more than just an occurrence form the outside that didn’t matter. There was a reason for it...what could that reason be?

Another scream.

She had no reason to be scared for them. She knew they were part of the reason why she was where she is now, but they were still people. Even if they were brainwashed, somewhere deep down they were still people. They used to be people. Her arms struggled against her restraints—an empty gesture, but one she couldn’t help but attempt.

Two more screams—louder than the last. An explosion rang out. She shook and felt a deep memory of feeling a shaking just like this recently but couldn’t pin down the source right away.

Her eyes darted from the lower edge of her backpack to the center column which built up toward the brilliantly shining amber light shooting out to the expanse. She looked ever upward and saw the shape of the light was flickering, ebbing. It looked as if it shook with every scream pierced the light itself—harming the center core.

The tower as a whole shook as if something heavy had slammed onto the top—her restraints buckled and she hoped slightly that they might give, but they still held firm. Damn it.

She felt a chill run up her spine. The cable inside her felt cold. She felt the pain end if only briefly. Another scream echoed out, but this time it was met with the clanging echoes of steel. She noticed it came from above instead, and she didn’t know what she felt about that. The ember-light from the embedded stones went dark and she was left staring at total pitch black.

There was a sense of dread that filled up within her—filling the emptiness within her with room to spare. Echoes continued above her until she heard more clangs of metal and a roar that didn’t sound human. It was low—guttural. Like it came from a beast.

She closed her eyes again and tried to imagine what was going on above. She could only envision what the younger version of her would have wished for. She imagined Jace above fitted in shining silver armor fit tightly around his form. He would wield the very lance she so foolishly wasted and be fending off Vita.

The light began to shake again. It bent and frayed and suddenly a cracking sound snapped. It drowned out all other sound and left only a faint ringing. The light from above had cut out completely and the room was encapsulated in darkness. She sat in silence, waiting for something—anything to happen. She preemptively waited for the pain to surge through, but it didn’t come.

Then a horrifying sound tightened her insides into a full constriction—something fell from the top of the tower to the ground below. The impact was hard—but she distinctly heard bones break and flesh compact on itself. It was a disgusting sound and heaved what little was in her stomach up.

She didn’t dare ask if the body is still alive. She knew their fate as simply as she knew her own. What a poor fool who would challenge Vita. At least they were able to turn out the lights—whoever they were. It was also more than she could say about herself.

Suddenly there was a new chill in the air and Allison knew that she wasn’t alone in the dark. Down within the tower’s core the victor from the fight above had joined her down below. She got an immediate awful feeling from the energy of the newcomer. It is a newcomer. This isn’t Vita come to check up on me down here...which means…

Sudden light.

I’m looking at a face of a man, but it’s not fully a man. His head was shaped...wrong. It almost looked like a human face that was pierced by bullets, but the trails the bullets took melded the skin and grafted it past its natural point. They almost looked like tendrils of flesh and then...his flesh was almost pure white—too white. His eyes were nearly pure white but had the slightest of dark outlines around the pupils. He smiled a fierce look as he looked her up and down.

“Ah, so you’re the source of the smell I’ve been feeling,” he said. His voice seemed...doubled. Like there was another voice underneath.

Allison looked down to see the crumbled body of Vita. His body looked like it had been folded in half and tied into a bow—his arms and legs broken at the joints. She couldn’t see what lay under him as they all looked to be crumpled on top of his face, but she recognized the armor right away.

“You...what are you?” Allison looked back up to the monstrosity in front of her.

He flashed another grin and chuckled smally as he backed up, revealing a long tentacle-like arm wrapped around the bar behind her he was using to support himself up. It looked to be the same tone of white that his face looked to be, but the closer it got to her the darker it faded into darkness. “Should get you free first before we talk chutes and ladders, no?”

Allison had so many conflicting feelings on the events as they were playing out, but...she wasn’t reading immediate danger from them. There was a level of unease that gave her pause, but she simply nodded. With Vita dead she would finally be able to reclaim her lance—her dependency was not lost on her.

She felt the cold presence over her arms and noticed that the tentacle over her hand felt...wisp-like. Almost like a cold fog given the barest amount of physical presence. It did not help her uneasiness.

She heard the metal unlatching and her right arm fell to her side. There was a soreness aching from her shoulder to her armpit. She noticed that the cable inside her no longer was. Just when was that removed? She felt so out of it—it was totally possible that he had removed it from her.

She awaited the same cold feeling on her left arm, and it brought similar uneasy feelings to rush over her. The metal unlatching brought both her arm—and the rest of her body down to the ground. She landed on her backside and groaned as she hit—but more pressing than the issue of her pain was the relief over her release.

“There you go. Nice and easy,” the figure said, lowering himself down to the ground level. “We each have questions aplenty to ask one another I think, I know I said I’d free up my mind when I freed you...but I think talking about our strengths among a graveyard is some disrespect to the dead. So! Follow me, I found a cool space we can pick each other’s brain for information.” His arm shifted from a tentacle back to a human hand and three more tentacles extended from his back, lifting him off the ground.

Allison looked up at him with a strange look but remembered where she was—so she walked over to Vita’s body and winced at the way his body was desecrated. The metal she knew so well was melded onto the front of his armor—it no longer was in the shape of her lance, but instead looked like a slab of dough mashed on the front of his armor. It brought forward all the feelings of self-doubt seeing it attached to his armor as it was. She bent to one knee and placed a hand on the face plate of Vita’s armor.

She felt a familiar warmth around her hand as the metal tried to call it back to her will. It seemed to pull away enough to cause a separation, but it was clear there was a solid magnetic hold coming from his armor. She felt it coming from her prosthetic, but she kept her hold firm and held her hand over the front of it.

She saw the image of Jace imprinted as the metal started ripping itself apart from the armor. It peeled some of the armor off with it—and melded with it, almost looking like it had consumed the pieces of armor. When it had ripped enough of the small pieces off—the metal had seemed to absorb the magnetic qualities of the armor itself, and the rest of the armor started peeling off, piece by piece. When it was done, she held the finished lance in her hand, brandishing it and feeling like a sense of herself has returned.

She looked up and saw that the figure was nearing the top of the tower—she saw he was using the excess tentacles to scale the tower from the inside. She couldn’t believe she was moving to meet him up top, but stranger things have happened.

Allison took a deep breath and then swiped the lance out—the metal extended like a whip and sunk right into the side of the tower. She yanked back to ensure the grip was firm. When she was confident in the hold she leapt and swiped up the other side—it latched out like a grapple, shooting up to the core about fifteen feet higher than where she was. She continued this pattern of launching herself upward and catching on the wall as the metal latched to the walls and magnetized. The light that spilled out from the top lit enough of her path that made the jumps possible.

She made it to the top and reached up with her arm, pulling herself up over the edge—placing her elbow just over the curve and lifting her weight up. When she made it to her knees she let out a hoarse cough and felt the ringing of the pain in her once more. She brought a and up to her chest where the cable was inserted—it was extremely sensitive and still bleeding.

She gritted her teeth and moved a stretch of the metal to her chest, knowing the incoming pain but spread enough of a patch to cover the wound. She took a sharp breath as the metal felt warm against her skin. She expected it to hurt worse than it did, but when she pulled it back into the shape of the lance she saw it had scarred over. She let loose a breath which led to another cough—that was going to take some time to stave off, she felt.

Behind her she saw the prism at the apex of the tower—where the light was magnified and blasted up into the sky was cracked in more places than one. The core, she noticed was fractured and continued to be broken cutting the connection completely with the power source. Standing on the edge of the tower overlooking Galder’s Reach below was the figure—his back was toward her, so she stood in place.

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“Mind telling me your name, stranger? Or what you are, for the matter? Or is this leading up to a fight between us...in which case I won’t care to learn either and waste either of our times.” Allison asked.

“Well, that’s what it boils down to, does it?” The figure said. “Always the same, names and faces. Even at the apex of the world it comes down to names and faces.” He turned to her. “You can call me Zane. I’m partly human. Partly monster. Specific kind isn’t too important—monster’s a monster at the end of the day. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept?”

Allison was still wary, “I don’t know if I should say one way or the other.”

“I’m not here to fight with you,” he said. “In fact, I came to you for some assistance, and figured we could help each other out.”

“Speak, and I’ll judge for myself.”

“I understand the defensive nature. I knew people like that real close like. I can feel it in my core myself, you know? You don’t need to act defensive, though. I know the secrets you hold—at least the ones that dragon knew. I’m not asking you anything.”

“That…” Allison started, thinking to Sakonna.

“She didn’t answer your calls for help because she was otherwise occupied, and unfortunately for her, will be for the foreseeable future.” Zane moved to sit, stretching his legs out over the edge as the tentacles from his back retracted into his body—revealing the slits in the shirt he wore where they had previously torn through. “I’ve been intimately aware of those like her for a very long time.” He started to chuckle. “I can tell you the dragon breathes no longer, but I hope you’ll hear me out. I know you two were partnered up...well, I don’t know if I would consider it a partnership, but you were at least temporarily allied.”

“And you say you’re not looking for a fight?”

“I know that your alliance was frail—as soon as you got what you were looking for you could care for fuck all what happened to her...am I wrong?”

Allison remained silent.

“And so, it would go that since I know what she knows, I am of the same value to you of her. I know where the vessel you seek is. And I have every intention on keeping the pace that you two were originally going to have.”

“You come with answers supposedly, but you come with just as many if not more pressing questions.”

“Well, I’ve got nothing but time right now, why don’t you fire away? I’m sure you’ll find I am not holding anything back. You might as well sit down, though. I have a feeling you have a lot to ask, and you’ve been strung up for quite some time now.”

Allison thought on it, staring at him sitting and realized how simply it would be if she were to gut him in the back. She felt a dangerous feeling standing next to him here.

“You would probably be successful in stabbing me if you tried. For all my strengths I am not invincible. You would only rid yourself of the only way to that which you seek.”

She thought on it another moment and then took a few steps to the edge and leaned herself up against one of the walls that rose up next to the openings outside and sat down with her back against the wall, Zane directly in her view. “Who and what are you?”

“Like I said, you can call me Zane. If you are more comfortable with a last name, I think his was Hannes.”

Her look elicited a smile from him.

“I am part human—in the fact that the human part was something I claimed. Zane Hannes was the name of the human before I claimed him. The monster—that was all of me. In their language I was known as a Chronomaly. I had no name because I had no will of my own. That is a very long story which I’ll tell if you ask, but I have a pretty deep suspicion that you don’t actually care.”

Her rolled eyes gave the answer he was looking for.

“And rightly so. My goal here is to hunt down people that shouldn’t exist. At least, that’s been my goal before I got...well, Zane, under my belt here.”

“And since then?”

“Well, trying to survive, as any other in this world. But you see, tendencies are the way they are, and I find myself attracted towards objects of power—objects that shouldn’t exist. It’s sort of a bad habit of mine. That metal of yours caught my whiff from quite a ways away. Now, don’t worry, I’m not itching to steal it from you. I saw what it did to you to not have it right next to you when you were chained up.”

“How am I supposed to trust that you’re not going to try to fight me for it?”

“There’s a bigger picture out there, darlin’.” He said, and chuckled. “Sorry, that’s Zane. He’s got a bit of a bad streak with women that sometimes his drawl slips out. So, I am not focusing in on that piece there because I seek a much larger prize—there’s a scent I’ve been catching that I need your help with connecting with. If I were to go for the low hanging fruit of your metal here, not only would you not desire to work with me, you would also be infinitely less useful for that which I am asking.”

“So I’m to just help you...what, cause more havoc like I heard out there? I heard their screams. You can’t expect me to in good conscience support that.”

“I would have figured you would have made the connection sooner—especially since they had you hooked up to their tower and all,” Zane said.

“What do you mean?”

“This place isn’t normal. Everything served towards the tower here. You should have felt that when they were plugging you up to it. Then all that energy they shot out—well, that’s another tack entirely. But the point of the matter is that the people down there were no longer individual people with unique thoughts or lives. That would counteract the setup they’ve got going here with this tower—if people had their own wills about them they could freely leave, no? What then happens to your power source if you no longer have any people to plug into it?”

“You speak as if killing them was the only recourse.”

“Well, yeah,” Zane said. “Those that get plugged in eventually die like that corpse that was hooked up next to you. Those that don’t get their psyches ripped away piece by piece from the inside. Hollowed and carved out leaving only basic motor function and suddenly you have an army of people willing to bend to your every whim.”

“And you know this exactly...how? You know to the fullest extent there was no other way to save them? I don’t understand how you seem to know everything about what has gone on when you’ve only just arrived?”

“Well, it’s because I know it because that guy down there at the bottom of the tower knew. You didn’t see his head cracked open?”

A look of disgust crossed her face. “I can’t say I was looking directly for that…”

“Be disgusted as much as you’d like. My business isn’t a clean one, but it’s how I gather information. I cracked his brain out and...well, to spare your stomach I gained the knowledge he had. I know how this tower was meant to work because I have his thoughts inside me from the source itself.”

“From the source…”

“Him down there now didn’t construct this large tower by himself. He’s definitely not the ringleader, by any stretch,” Zane chuckled. He just wore heavy plating and convinced the easily convincible that he was some sort of god. No, the one behind this construct here is probably the one that energy was being shot to—fired into the sky and received at some other location. I don’t have the specifics because I think that part of the brain got damaged during our fight. Unfortunate, but it happens.”

“And...you don’t feel bad about that?”

“If you’re asking if I’m capable of feeling empathy...I would say no. I was confused very recently into believing I was human—that I truly was Zane Hannes. I guess in that moment of time I would have said yes, but since coming to the realization of what I am and what I am setting out to do, no, I cannot say I feel bad for the people down there. Don’t take that to mean I took pleasure from killing them. It was simply a natural resolution. And for…” his head turned toward the pit.

“Vita,” she answered.

“Right. That’s what he called himself in this time. That’s not the name he went by for the majority of his life, though—more of the ideas of grandeur I mentioned. Anyway, that doesn’t matter now. What does is that his brain was imperative for learning about the situation here—which leads to what we will do next.”

Allison looked surprised. “You’re still thinking I’m going to work with you?”

“Well, I assumed you still wanted to find that girl who you’ve been searching for so long. And I believe I’ve answered every question you’ve asked to the best I can give? Don’t tell me you’re letting a moral quandary stop you now.”

She was silent a moment.

“Listen, it’s not my business to end life for no reason. I would have thought you felt similar. Would you not agree given the circumstances that things played out in the best available opportunity?”

“You really think there was no saving them?”

“I know it, of course,” Zane said. “Those parts of themselves got offered up to the tower. They’re converted into that energy. Even if we were to track the specific bursts down and somehow find the containment field where they’re received, that wouldn’t mean much all to the bodies here, right? How would you suppose we convert that into human willpower?”

Allison was silent.

“Right. The choices available were to end this whole thing now or let them exist. And in that end they’d live out whatever fantasy they pretend to carve out here—but not of their own desires, but act as dolls that can walk without being pushed. A facsimile of life. And him down there—he took great joy in overseeing his ant colony. Now, I’m afraid I am reaching the end of the time I’ve given to this particular topic. It is the time to ask. I would search out the destination of that energy and find the true culprit behind these events. The person at the top is someone that I personally have a heavy interest in.”

“Someone who shouldn’t exist…?”

“That is right. But also, I have deep interest in finding the one who wears the skin you are searching for. Which is where we are at now. I would ask for your assistance in the former and I will put my full effort into helping with the latter.”

Allison pondered it for but a moment. She held the lance close to her chest and in that moment knew there was only a single choice that mattered then. She knew she would put anything on the line to reach her goal. And so she looked back over at Zane, “I’ll help you, but you help me find Issachar first. Me being here was helping Sakonna out before we continued on my way, and we can both see how that ended up.”

Zane flashed a smile and she saw his jagged black teeth like a shark’s. “Works for me aplenty. We’re headed to the south. Both of our destinations is in the south, but we’re going to trend a bit east towards the magnetic quarries. It’s good you sucked up that armor down there...that metal of yours seems to have no end to its wonders.”

She’s heard of the magnetic quarries, but never actually had stepped foot. The land was said to be fatal to step in without proper protection as the waves emitted from the land would disrupt the heart so much as to cause disastrous failure. She saw the sun creeping over the horizon and saw in its red glow a burning desire light within her to hold tight and keep close.

I’m coming. Just you wait.