CHAPTER 10

“Hey. Wake up. HEY.”

I jolted awake, one hand still on the Tesla. The fire was still alive and roaring, and Noire was cooking something on a makeshift steel pan. “Morning, Blaze. Just started cooking. Mind helping out Gene with the other stuff?”

My stomach growled. I guess the adrenaline from yesterday really kept the hunger down. “Sure. Where do I go?” He pointed the small wooden plank he was using as a spatula towards a room at the far end of the abandoned facility.

The floor was surprisingly clean, with only a very thin layer of dust. There were piles of rubble all over the place, a majority of the stone blackened with soot and the metal melted. Several massive holes pierced the roof, and sunlight filtered through every single one of them.

I finally reached the spot Noire was pointing at - the only other room with its walls still intact. Inside, Gene was kneeling over something, his back turned to me and his left arm glowing a verdant green. A pile of potatoes lay at his feet, each and every one of them a vibrant light brown.

“Nice vegetables, man,” I said.

“Thanks.” I bent over to grab a few of the potatoes just as Gene stood up, wiping his dirty hands on his pants, which changed color in response. “Damn, that’s a pain and a half.”

“Yeah, well, you should take a look at our shirts.”

With the amount of close contact we had with… a lot of surfaces yesterday, our shirts and pants were now streaked in a litany of colors - dark blues, bright yellows, warm reds, and all other hues in between. We wouldn’t be out of place in a circus or something.

“Is there a setting to not make the little guys change with every contact?” Gene asked as we walked back to your camp, potatoes in hand.

I thought about it a little. “I could, but I’d need a computer to reprogram them. Anyway, good to see you have control over your Brand now?” My friend winced.

“I just thought really hard about being hungry, man. My Brand felt attracted to that other room, and when I touched some of the soil a few plants popped up. Turned out to be potatoes. Was trying to grow more when you saw me, actually, but no dice.”

So none of us have control over our powers…

We finally reached the campfire again. Noire was inspecting the shards from the emergency light’s glass cover, likely checking which ones were sharp enough to cut stuff. He smiled when he saw us return. “Nice, we can have fries. It’s gonna taste a little weird without oil and salt, but what can we do, eh?” I found a pair of sharp shards, gave one to Gene, and we began to peel the vegetables, all three of us silent except for the occasional growling stomach and the crackle of the fire.

I was suddenly alerted to the sound of footsteps and some grunting. I put down the potato and the shard I was peeling it with, unholstered my gun and stood up to look for the source of the noise.

“Relax, Blaze,” said Noire, not even looking up from this potato.

“The hell do you mean ‘relax’? There’s someone else here and neither of you told me?” I tried not to sound too annoyed, but I didn’t think I did a very good job at it. “Who is this?”

“Mizu. Water,” Gene replied matter-of-factly.

I sat back down without saying another word and went back to my potatoes, though I stayed alert. The footsteps and grunting got closer until someone - probably a Branded - put down two buckets of water by the fire. The stranger sat cross legged on the floor, starting at the flames, not even noticing I was there.

He was a little shorter than me, though much stockier, with broad shoulders that seemed used to hard labor. His grey eyes looked dull, not quite lifeless, but definitely losing its luster. He had shaggy brown hair and a permanent frown on his face, and a fresh-looking scar ran down the length of this left cheek. He was wearing a thick brown jacket, with a stained white shirt underneath. His cargo pants were full of holes, and one of his shoes was missing a lace.

I finally broke the silence. “Hey, good morning.” The stranger slowly turned his head towards me, nodded with a grunt, then went back to staring at the fire.

“Three Branded, like she said. Ignis, Nabaath, Skjult.” He gave me, Gene then Noire a look as he said those last three words. “All three less than a week old.”

I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess. Corporal Ysandra Duriel told you about us.” Gene laughed beside me.

“Good guess, lover boy.”

“Fuck’s sakes, Gene.” I tossed over my batch of potatoes over to Noire and he started chopping them carefully on another plank of wood. “So, uh, stranger. You have a name?”

He grunted. “Arkham. Arkham Aegirius.” He moved his jacket slightly then pulled down on his shirt’s collar, revealing the Brand on his right shoulder, shaped like a water droplet:

[https://i.imgur.com/2vWbmit.png]

“Water? You can control water?”

“I used to.” His tone was bitter. “Officially, the term is ‘Mizu’. During my first week, well…” He dropped his gaze to the floor. “I did some things I had no control over. I promised myself I’d never use this… thing again, but fate is a cruel mistress.”

He didn’t say anything else, so we started our breakfast in silence. We washed a box lid with some of the water Arkham found for us, then served the fries on it. “Bleagh. Could REALLY use salt, but shit, food is food I guess,” complained Gene after his first bite. “I really miss that bag of supplies already.”

“You had supplies?” Noire asked, one eyebrow raised. I nodded in response.

“Yeah. It was in the penthouse, but… in the heat of things, I completely forgot about it. Sorry.” I finally took my first bite of the fries - a little crispy on the outside, but soggy on the inside, and most of all was mostly flavorless. I tried my best to swallow without complaint.

“We should go back and grab it,” Gene suggested.

“Maybe. But we don’t even know where we are right now. Do you REALLY wanna go through the sewers again?” I asked, my tone grave.

Arkham snorted in dry amusement. “You idiots went through the sewers?”

“Why? What’s in there?”

He pointed a fry at this scar. “Hunters. Of Branded, specifically.” He ate it without a single complaint, as if he was used to these kinds of meals already.

“Explains a lot, doesn't it?” said Gene with a full mouth. “Can't really tell why they’re doing it, though.” He scooped up some water in his hands and gulped it down noisily.

I crossed my arms, deep in thought now. My mind flashed back to the three times I’ve been attacked this week. An Eisen, from Laura's apartment. A Skjult, who found me and Gene at the penthouse. And that unknown in the sewers.

“Hold on,” I began, something finally clicking in place. “Noire was captured by someone who WASN'T Branded.”

He nodded in confirmation. “The girl wasn't, at least. She said she… she wanted to eat my Brand,” he explained to Arkham, who snorts in derision instead.

“Deluded fools, nothing more.” He drank some water, stood up, and began walking away.

“Wait, where are you going? Didn't Ys - Corporal Ysandra tell you about the whole team thing?”

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“She did, and I expected three veterans, not three greenhorns who can't even control their Brands.”

Well, he had a point there. Arkham stood still for a while longer, waiting for the three of us to say anything else. "I-"

A loud crash interrupted him, and a shower of broken steel rained from up above, followed by the loud thud of something metallic dropping to the floor. The four of us shielded our eyes from the massive cloud of dust.

“Damn, I never thought I’d actually see Branded stupid enough to go back here.” My heart skipped a few beats - the sound was familiar, and very, very angry. I dared to look, and confirmed my suspicions.

He no longer wore a shirt, but the metallic stinger gave him away. His skin was now fully metal, the right half encased in shiny iron and the left brown with rust. His left arm hung limply to his side, heavy knots of rust weighing it down. A piece soon fell off, leaving behind shiny metal that reoxidized almost immediately. His left leg, meanwhile, looked slightly shorter than his right, giving him a wobbly, unbalanced stance.

“That Zvuk BITCH may have outsmarted me. But three freshies and a Primus?” The sound of metal grating against metal ringed in the empty facility. I tried to activate my Brand again - desperately wanting the blue flames from last night back. Instead it stayed black and completely inert.

Goddamnit!

Metal creaked as the enemy Eisen took his time inspecting the four us. No one else dared to make a sound. His eyes - the only part of him not fully metal yet - bulged considerably when he finally noticed me.

“You're that bitch's little toy, ain't ya?” he said as he stepped closer to me. “I heard you were a broken mess when you hit the asphalt. Guess rock doesn't do a good. Enough. JOB!” Steel Man charged, his unbalanced gait gone in the face of sheer rage and speed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Arkham grab a bucket of water while Noire and Gene backed away slowly, looking for an opportunity to help or escape.

I stood my ground as long as I could, one hand on the gun and another behind me.

Closer.

My brain was starting to scream.

CLOSER.

My nerves were firing warnings on full overdrive.

Finally, about two meters from being hit by a huge mass of iron and rust, I drew my gun with my right hand, trying to make the movement as visible as possible. Despite my attacker's speed, he still followed the movement - just as planned. With his eyes now locked to one point, I threw the shard of glass I was holding in my left hand, aiming straight for the brute's bloodshot eyes.

“GRRRRAAAAAAAAH!” He lost his balance almost immediately, his gait too uneven to recover in an instant. Steel Man finally fell to the ground with a huge CLANG, cradling his bleeding eye, rust-red blood flowing freely out the wound.

“OhgodithurtswhydoesithurtimsupposedtobeinvincibleohgodAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Suddenly Arkham stood over him, water bucket in hand. He waited until Steel Man turned such that his rusted side was exposed to us, then Arkham poured out the fluid all over him. The rust built up even faster now, falling out like scabs and growing back in an instant.

I winced even as our fallen opponent howled in pain. Arkham, though… Arkham looked furious, his stoic veneer replaced by a huge snarl. I grabbed him by the shoulder, urging him to go by saying, “He may not be the only one around. I know we seem fresh and untested. It might be a while before I can prove you wrong. But right now, we need all hands on deck if we wanna survive this mess. Savvy?”

He slowly turned to me, that snarl still on his face. After a few tense seconds he finally took a deep breath and nodded. “Long as you dont speak like a sailor ever again, little man.”

----------------------------------------

The Eisen was still screaming when we exited the building via a hole in the wall Noire found on the far side of the facility. “He's scouting ahead,” Gene said as we got closer. He nodded to Arkham. “Good to see you on board, man.” Arkham simply grunted in response before stepping out the hole. “Whoa, hey, relax! Noire has enhanced hearing, he can tell us if it's safe.” Our new recruit ignored him.

“I'm gonna have my hands full soon, aren't I?” I groaned. A face soon popped up - it was Arkham again, and he jerked his head towards the exit. We nodded.

The street…. Wasn't familiar to me at all. Actually, it wasn't even a street, more like a dirt path than anything else. Across the path was another facility made from the same drab steel, though only half of it was still standing; the other half was missing. Even more facilities lined the rest of the path, each damaged or destroyed one way or another.

"Are… are these ALL quarantine facilities for Branded?!" I exclaimed, looking to Arkham or Gene for an explanation.

Who thought putting Branded in these things would be a good idea?!

Gene shook his head, speechless and as clueless as I was. Arkham's face was neutral, though the way he clenched his fist gave away how he was really feeling. “Most of the Hunters came from here. With Branded in such tiny spaces… it bred anger. Paranoia. Resentment.”

“How many lost control?”

“Almost everyone,” said a voice behind us. Noire had noiselessly approached us again, his face looking a little pale. “Ten minutes. That’s how long I was in that cell for, and I still heard too much. I was lucky my cellmate had a Brand that could create steel. That wall you destroyed? Yeah, that was his.” He shook his head, recovering a bit of his composure in the process. “Can’t hear any other people aside from that big bully back inside. Either we're alone, or the only Branded around are the same as me.”

“Where ARE we?” I asked him.

He knelt down and used his finger to draw a rough outline of New Pines on the dirt. He drew a line at the very west of the city, between the circles that represented the Egg and the IC. “Mulberry.” He drew five more lines, each going a little further north of Mulberry, then connected the fourth and fifth spokes with another line. “We're about here, between Verdania and Honeydew.”

“Wait, hold on, how? The areas between the spokes are supposed to be inaccessible.” I crossed my arms, deep in thought about what any of this could mean.

“Hah, seems you don’t know New Pines as well as you think, little man.” Arkham kneeled down and we watched him add more lines. “Every area between every spoke was used for quarantine.”

I rubbed my chin. Something wasn’t lining up. “If Branded escaped from every one of these areas, how come they didn’t wreck the surrounding streets already?” The three of them stayed silent, obviously not knowing the answer either. “...forget it. We have more important things to worry about. Right now, we need access to the walkways. I have a plan now.”

Noire motioned us to follow him, and four pairs of shoes crunched the dirt beneath them. The sun had disappeared behind a bunch of grey clouds, and as we got closer and closer to the end of this area, the darker it got. Thunder boomed in the distance.

“Right,” he said, pointing at a barely-functioning door, all but one of its hinges blown off. “We go up the stairs, and it should lead to a building. I’ll go ahead as usual to scout it, just to be safe.” He touched the door, which fell down with a loud clang. He shrugged, then went up.

I kept staring nervously at the clouds. I blinked several times just to make sure, but I think they were getting darker and darker by the minute, and lightning now forked all over the sky.

“Blaze, I think we should get up there, man. Noire didn’t take this long last time.” Gene was pacing now, worried about our friend. It’s been close to ten minutes since Noire started scouting.

“....yeah, I agree. It’s a little risky, but we can’t stay here. It’s gonna be harder to get around if it gets even darker.”

Arkham was also staring intently at the clouds now, eyes squinted and Brand glowing a very dim sea blue. “There’s no water in those clouds,” he muttered as I got closer.

“What? Clouds are literally made of water.”

I could see a hint of fear in his eyes. “Not these ones.”

Without saying another word, he went beyond the door and up the stairs, making a lot of noise as he went. With a sigh, Gene and I followed close behind, not bothering to hide our presence either. We finally caught up with Arkham crouching just below the top of the stairs, the exit still closed. “What’s happening?”

A loud, booming voice from just beyond interrupted me. “TONIGHT, WE SHALL WITNESS THE LAST OF THE FRAIL, UNBRANDED HUMANS DISAPPEAR.” Even muffled, I could clearly hear the loud, raucous cheer that followed. “THE WORLD WILL BE OURS, TRULY OURS. ONLY OURS.” More applause. The hair on my arms and neck stood on end.

“BUT OF COURSE, WHAT IS A NEW WORLD WITHOUT THE RIGHT SACRIFICES?” The cheers turned into howls of furious excitement. “11 BRANDS. 11 BRANDED. THEIR DEATH SHALL SIGNAL OUR. NEW. LIFE!”

“Great. Now how do we get out of here?” Gene whispered. Arkham grunted in agreement.

“Okay… okay,” I said, wracking my brain for a plan. “Gene, I’m gonna crack open the door slightly. You need to take a picture with your phone or your camera, whichever works. Arkham, be ready to tackle the door if someone - ANYONE - gets near. They need to go down, then we run.

“If we get separated, meet me near the Egg,” I finished. It was too dark for me to see, but I just hoped they agreed with the plan. “Okay. I’m standing up now.” I double checked to make sure my Brand wasn’t glowing, then slowly stood up and reached for the door. Unlike its partner below, this one still worked, and I slowly turned the knob and pulled. The wood creaked a little, but Gene’s face was still illuminated by his phone, so there was probably no one behind it.

He slowly crawled up the stairs, carefully extending his arm and moving his phone around. After a few seconds, he drew it back, and checked the footage. “All clear.”

“Okay. On three, I’ll open the door. One. Two. Th-”

Someone had kicked in the door, destroying its frame and causing it to tumble downwards, barely missing Arkham. A few splinters got into my arm, but I was too focused on the gun pointed at my face.

“Hunters?” Another familiar voice, but thankfully this one was much more friendly.

“No sir, Officer McJoel, sir.” The moment he heard his name, he put down his gun.

“You… you’re that guy outside Hummingbird Houses!”

Thank God he recognized me. “Officer, listen-”

“No, I’m sorry, YOU three to listen first. I need your help.”