The wind whistled past the auditory receptors of his helm as he descended. He twisted in the air as the ground drew closer and Corvus’ reflective shields focused to his feet, keeping the suit intact as Osin landed with the grace of a cat. Osin took in a hollow, wheezing breath as Corvus filtered air into his helmet. The tracker HUD indicated that his targets were quite far away but for the time being, they weren’t moving. Osin gave a hand signal to his pilot and the Harpy fighter disappeared over the lake and into the clouds. When his ship was out of sight, Osin slowly made his way through the city. He heard something rumbling in the distance and he began to turn his head every few steps he took to observe his surroundings, even though Corvus would alert him if it detected a heartbeat.
There was just something eerily familiar about the ruins of this city that elicited an odd feeling in Osin’s stomach. On the cracked walls, there were deep-rooted marks that looked like carvings. Figures raised their hands to the sky, praying to what seemed to be a blood-red sun. Osin stared at it and walked forward to one of the figures. His golden amber eyes traced the image and he reached a shaky hand forward to touch the wall.
He thought he heard someone crying out to him. Then, the voices began to multiply. An image flashed in his head of fire raining down from the sky and Osin’s breaths began to quicken.
He heard Corvus begin to ring in his ear. He heard his name. He heard…
“Osin!” A voice screamed over Corvus’ comms. Osin snapped back into reality and his head darted around. He was standing in the middle of a crater. “Osin, come in,” the voice called again. It was Captain Grey.
“Yes, sir?” Osin answered.
“Your heart rate was fluctuating. Are you okay?” Though his words would’ve sounded concerned coming from the mouth of anyone else, Grey’s tone was as dry and harsh as it had always been. Osin nodded, though he knew his yasur wouldn’t see.
“Yes, I’m all right. I’m tracking the targets. Corvus is telling me that they’re not moving,” he replied.
“Good. Do not waste time, devil. Finish your assignment and return to your ship. No survivors,” Captain Grey said.
His yasur’s voice faded into an electronic buzz and Osin pressed forward with little hesitation. The young boy decided to move at full speed and the Corvus suit adapted, hardening around the soles of his feet while simultaneously elasticizing around his legs. With a quick burst of speed, the ruins of Kasira became a blur to Osin. The young soldier darted through the city until he passed its perceived limits and his HUD began to hum.
Osin skidded to a halt and looked around, perplexed. The HUD told him that the insurgents were thirty meters from him, but there was nothing on the outskirts of Kasira except a barren ashy wasteland and overhanging charcoal grey clouds. The boy soldier wandered forward and began to press his fingers to his helm.
“Cori, there’s a problem? I don’t see anything. Where are the targets?”
“Eighty-six meters below.” There was a small pause and Osin heard Corvus click. “There appears to be an invisible yet solid barrier covering the entrance. EMP charge recommended. Awaiting your command.”
“Go ahead.”
There was a loud whine in the air and a low-frequency boom. Suddenly, the ground below Osin vanished and he plummeted, tumbling down into the large open tunnel. Above him, the opening of the hole and the sky outside flickered grey and blue. He suspected that the hologram had been built by the traitors to cover the hole they had made into the earth. Whatever reason they had for doing so aside from covering their tracks was lost to the boy. Frowning, he flipped to face the ground.
Osin straightened himself as the end of the tunnel approached him. Corvus let loose small rockets on the bottom of his boots that slowed his descent to the ground. As he landed, Corvus scanned and displayed the tracker HUD on his visor.
“Environmental analysis complete. No heat signatures detected. Further analysis shows a large metal construct. It is interfering with communication with the base,” Corvus reported.
Osin was confused. “Scan again, Cori. Yasur said that the ORION operatives were here.”
Corvus chirped and spoke again. “Environmental analysis complete. No heat signatures detected.”
“Maybe they’re cloaking themselves?” Osin walked forward, slowly. “Give me my AC-8R, please.” A compartment on his thigh folded open and Corvus pushed out a small black square. Osin took it into his hand and the black box, known amongst FLOCK operatives as the Acclimator or AC-8R as its official designation, extended into a sword hilt with a straight serrated blade on the end. With a few nerve impulses, Osin made the blade transparent. Corvus shimmered, reflecting the low light of the tunnel and the suit’s stealth systems activated. He slipped into the shadows and followed his tracker HUD forward.
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The cavern was quiet, Osin discovered. There wasn’t any noise at all, except the slight gust of wind picked up by Corvus’ sensors. Every vital reading indicated that the area was clear. Yasur couldn’t be wrong though, Osin thought. The traitors had to be down here.
Osin ventured further down the cavern, following the signatures on his HUD until they faded almost completely and suddenly. Frowning, Osin looked around and Corvus changed the display from it’s low-light vision to its microscopic analyzer. As he continued to walk forward, Corvus chirped softly.
“Biological samples found,” Corvus said. Osin blinked and nodded.
“Yeah, I see.” He could also hear a small pulsating noise reverberating through his headset. "Can you show me where those samples are?" Corvus beeped briefly.
"Approximately 0.1 meters ahead," the voice replied. Corvus HUD switched automatically to ultraviolet and Osin was able to see the dust particles that Corvus had identified as biological samples. Before he could ask, Corvus then identified the biological signature as human. Osin blinked at the discovery in bewilderment. Humans had been in the cavern but were they the same ones he was meant to track down and kill for his yasur or a group that had come down here before and failed?
With a determined grimace, Osin pressed forward. He wouldn't fail.
Osin crept forward, his hand at his waist ready for anyone or anything to leap from the dark cavern and attempt to surprise him. The pulsating sound was growing louder the further he went through the tunnels. There was a faint light further down that seemed to blink on and off, the hum reacting like a heartbeat. The sapphire blue light's pace seemed to quicken the closer Osin grew to it and the boy stopped just short of the source, his eyes growing wider. It was a metal cylinder, lodged into the ground. The blue light pulsated again and again. Osin stared up into it.
"Cori..." he said softly.
The cavern rumbled and the sudden shockwave caused the rocky outline of the tunnel to fall onto Osin and the ground to crumble beneath him. The young boy crashed through the earth, his metal suit clunking against the rocks until he fell with a thud to the bottom of the cavern.
Corvus whined and Osin felt glass in his face. He pulled his helm from his head and placed it to the side. He coughed and took in the hot air. He was shrouded completely in darkness, though he could fairly well with his eyes. Tentatively, Osin attempted to stand and found that there was enough room for him to rise to his full height. The armored boy stepped forward, gulping as his head whipped from side to side. Something metal clanged against Osin’s foot and he looked up. He extended his hand slowly to touch the object.
His amber eyes widened as the metal peeled back and exposed a blue light. The light passed over Osin, paused at his feet and rose back up past his face. The azure glow faded as the metal clicked, clanged and then opened.
The blue light materialized into a tall, muscled and armored hologram. His skin was a very dark blue and his eyes were a lighter shade. Osin felt his heart caught in his throat.
The man in the hologram looked exactly like him.
Osin’s fascination grew when the man turned to look at him.
The boy blinked at the hologram before he spoke. “What…who are you?”
The man cocked his head to the side and began to speak, in a language that Osin immediately recognized. It was the devil words.
“I am Asterí Inajoba, Yasur of the Kebulani people.” Osin smiled and let out a happy gasp. The hologram continued. “If you’re listening to this message, you have discovered the Ark that carried us from our home, Manzil, to this planet and a DNA scan has determined that you are not only Kebulani, but my direct descendant,” it said. Osin stared, wide-eyed and shocked. He was a descendant of a yasur? A real yasur? “You must listen to my words, my child. There is something coming that corrupted and destroyed our planet, something that threatens to do the same to this world. I will teach you how to stop it and, you, my child will avenge the loss of your people.”
Osin shook his head. He tried to recall the devil words – no, the Kebulani language – and closed his eyes. “I-I don’t understand. What’s coming?”
Asterí Inajoba paused for a moment, as if registering his question before he spoke again. “He is known in Kebulani folklore as Natasan the Corruptor. There is only one person in recorded history to have defeated him. The Bukhiye, the Golden Key, an ancient hero touched by the Gods.” The hologram paused, blinked and then smiled. “And you, my child, are the Key.”
Something triggered in Osin’s brain. The images from earlier came back to him. Many hands reached out to him. An explosion ripped through the city and left a deafening ringing in his ear. All of the charred, black hands continued to reach out to him. They had been brown like his and he saw the golden glow passing from them to his body. He heard the sounds of explosions outside of the room.
He remembered Asterí’s words, repeated by an old woman that said, “You, my child, are the Key.”
Osin remembered and he felt himself cry.