CHAPTER 6

BEEP.

Wh-where am I?

There was nothing but empty white space all around me. I could feel my body again - no pains or aches. How was that possible? Last I remember, I was about to be slammed against a wall at 50 kph.

Wait, was this… the afterlife? Oh God. It’s… it’s so empty.

“Blaze?”

I… I knew that voice. I really wasn’t surprised at that point, seeing as how many ghosts from my past have appeared in the past few hours. I desperately search for its source, longing to see her again. I’ve kept these feelings locked up for so long, but hey, I was dead. What was the point?

BEEP.

“Aria? Aria!” I screamed, though my voice was far softer than I expected it to be. “Where are you?”

“Oh, Blaze…”

A splash of scarlet suddenly appeared in the vast sea of white, and in the middle of it lay a body, her white jacket tainted by the sheer volume of blood. I ran, ran as fast as I could, ran to her somehow-still-alive body, and gave her the hug I felt I’d always owed her… if it wasn’t for my cowardice back then.

“Blaze. Thank you.” Aria held up her hand to touch my face, staining my cheek with crimson.

“Aria, I- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have ran. I should’ve stayed there with you. I should’ve died there with you!” Tears streamed down my face, the drops falling on her fading olive skin. Her green and brown eyes stared at me gently, even as they slowly lost their shine. “But I’m here now Aria. Isn’t this all that matters now? I’ve waited all my life for this moment…”

BEEP.

Aria closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, her hair matted with dried blood. “I meant it when I said I wanted you to live. Maybe even for both of us, given the chance.” She opened her eyes once again, but this time they were both green. “But this is not your time. It won’t be for a while yet, Blaze. So promise me again.”

“Anything.”

“Once you’re back out there - LIVE.” I could feel the space around us shaking when she said that last word. “You’ve always wanted to change the world, right? And now, you have a very real chance.”

“What are you-” There was a familiar stinging and burning on my right hand again, and when it was gone the singular tongue of flame had returned - my Brand. It glowed a luminous orange, far more vibrant than it had ever been before.

“Now go. Live. Change the world.” The vast white landscape slowly darkened, until all I could see were Aria’s eyes, now back to their more familiar green and brown. I didn’t look away for a second, not even as my eyes blurred, my head spun, my muscles spasmed with pain, and my bones cracked and fractured.

“LIVE.”

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BEEP.

BEEP.

BEEP. BEEP.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Once again, I opened my eyes. My vision was blurry, but I could still make out the sterile, white light of a hospital ceiling. I tried to move my limbs, but they were tied down securely against the bed frame. I relaxed a little though; the fact that I could still move all my limbs was enough for me. I could feel the warmth of my breath as it clouded a respirator. “Hey, Blaze. Welcome back,” said a voice to my left. I tried to crane my neck, but someone to my right gently squeezed my arm to stop me. The voice to my left continued. “Okay, lady, I think it’s fair to say you weren’t lying.”

The voice to my right snorted. “Please. What reason would I have to lie? If I wanted this idiot dead, I wouldn’t BE here.”

A third voice now, a little further than the other two. “Thank you. It was my fault he was even there in the first place.”

“You’re welcome. Both of you. Gene, you really should consider my offer. You’ll be with this dumbass, in the same squad,” said the second voice. Wait, why would Gene be here?

“Hm, yeah. I’ll think about it. But what about Bertram? He’s known Blaze for WAY longer.”

“Can’t have the two of the same Brand in a squad. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, really,” replied the third voice. “You’ve told me enough. I just need to find another one of your Valkyries and prove I can hack it in Babel, right?”

“Or have one of them find you, preferably. I’d call one of ‘em right now, but that’s kinda against the rules.”

There was no doubt. The second voice belonged to Corporal Ysandra Duriel, and the third was my old friend Bertram Hryst. Which meant I wasn’t just alive, I had three friends looking after me.

Friends… I smiled. I felt a little fuzzy on the inside. Either I was really happy, or I was really high on painkillers.

“Hey, he’s fully awake. And smiling.” Ysandra sounded a lot cheerier than she did when I last heard her. Maybe it was because she was off-duty?.. I liked it. “Mornin’.”

“Welcome back, buddy,” said Gene. “I saw your body, man. It was bad. But she says your Brand basically cauterized your most serious wounds.”

“Useful, that,” chimed Bertram. I could feel my torso slowly rise, until I was sitting down with the upper half of the bed against my back. My friend, he… he had a familiar mark on his left wrist - a small tongue of flame, about the same size as my Brand. So Bertram was now Branded also. “Good to have you back, Blaze.” My throat was too dry to speak, so instead I nodded as much as I dared despite my neck muscles complaining a little.

“We’re not going to interrogate you or anything today,” said Ysandra. I looked over and realized it was her hand that was on my arm. She quickly drew it away when I noticed, hiding red ears behind her long lilac hair. “I already called the staff, by the way. They should be undoing your straps.” She was wearing a thick grey jacket over a pink shirt, her armor nowhere to be seen. For some reason, she was barely hiding the relief in her eyes despite her sharp tone.

Gene whistled. “Good on you, Blaze. Man, I didn’t expect to see you again. Not like… this, at least.” I tried to shrug, but that actually hurt. “Right. I got a photo shoot tonight.” I could hear Gene starting to pack up his stuff in a bag. Meanwhile, Bertram stood up and gave me a friendly pat on the shin.

“Don’t worry about work. There’s, uh… problems there anyway. I have to find a way to attract a Valkyrie’s attention before the week is up, so I’ll have to leave you with Ysandra. Hopefully you’re okay with that.”

“He’s fine with it. He probably likes it that way, in fact.”

“Shut up, Genesis.”

“Heyo, reserve the tsundere act for our boy here.” Gene gave me a wink before leaving, with Bertram trailing right behind him.

“That little shit… ahem.” Ysandra shifted her seat closer to me, her usual scowl replaced by an unusually - for her anyway - tender smile. It felt… familiar, for some reason. “I really am glad you survived though. I’m sorry you had to come out of that place like this, but hey, silver linings right?” She stood up as a nurse came in.

“Good evening Ms. Duriel. Happy to see you awake, Mr. Alphon.” The nurse undid my straps and quickly stepped out before Ysandra could thank her properly. She sat back down.

“Things have been crazy,” she began. “You have no idea how lucky you were that I got to you as fast as I did. But really, the fact that you weren’t dead when I got to you… it’s a miracle, not gonna lie.”

Apparently, when the wind bashed my body against the balcony, my Brand immediately activated and prevented the absolute worst of the injuries. Several of my bones fractured on impact, but my Brand kept them from breaking apart completely. Three of my ribs were still beyond salvation by the time Ysandra had called in paramedics.

My skin was torn open in several places for a few seconds, both when I hit the balcony and again when my near-corpse landed on the ground. Once again, my Brand worked overtime to close any injuries shut. Any ruptures in my organs were also cauterized, preventing any internal hemorrhages and explaining why my entire body felt slightly singed both inside and out. I still got several stitches in the spots where the cauterized skin gave way due to the severity of the impacts, and my bones needed to be resupplied with calcium and other nutrients with the help of a few nanobot injections. My throat was the worst off, as some of the ridiculous heat from all these processes burned away a part of it. They were still being repaired by nanobots. I was heavily injured, and the doctors were kinda confused at my status… but I was alive.

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Until yesterday, anyway. Because while my skull wasn’t hit too badly, my brain still kinda… died.

“That’s not a joke,” Ysandra explained when she saw me widen my eyes in shock. “You legally died yesterday. I had to… pull some strings to get you back. With half the city gone, it was a hard ask… but my contact pulled through - and I had to work even harder to, ah, reboot your brain.”

Yeah, that’s the word she used - ‘reboot.’ She said she didn’t touch a single memory, though she did have to view a couple on the way to finding my final sliver of consciousness. “I’m… sorry about Aria. But you should be thankful for her. She’s literally the only reason you’re still alive. Your Brand may have saved your body, but… that promise saved your mind and your soul. It’s… strong. Strong enough to anchor you back.”

So I really was dead, and I really was about to join her in the afterlife. But she didn’t want me to. She never did then, anyway… and I very much doubt she did now.

LIVE.

Her final words resonated within me. I clenched my right fist, the one with my Brand. Maybe this was the key to finally realizing her - our- far-fetched dream. I felt hot tears streaming down my face while Ysandra watched me silently.

“Th..aaa...nk… yooouuu,” I managed to croak out after some time.

“You’re welcome. Now let’s get you back to sleep. Healer nanos work best when the body is helping with the repairs, and your body repairs itself best when you’re resting.” My upper body slowly went back down with the bed, and I closed my eyes.

I was asleep within minutes.

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It was a mercifully dreamless sleep. A doctor came by for a few seconds the next day to remove my respirator. A few minutes later Gene swung by with some junk food. Healer nanobots provided all the nutrients my body needed, so meals were unnecessary until they shut down and were ejected. Still, being able to eat just felt… right. Heh.

“Thanks for the chips, Gene.” My voice was still a little hoarse, but at least it didn’t hurt to speak. My bones and muscles also felt way better than yesterday, and I was finally able to get a proper look around the room. Ysandra had somehow gotten a private room for me, complete with a TV (which only displayed static for some reason), several chairs, a fridge, and a couch that was big enough for someone to sleep on.

And indeed, Ysandra was asleep on it. I could hear her snoring all the way from the couch.

“You lucked out with your girl, Blaze. And I don’t just mean looks - who the fuck rescues someone they’ve literally known for a few hours?”

“First off,” I began, “she is not ‘my’ girl. Second, you’re one to speak, considering we’ve known also each other for like, three hours before this. Thanks, by the way.”

“You’re welcome,” he said as he tore open another bag of chips, “but she told me everything. At least everything I needed to know. She’s been shadowing you ever since you stepped off that escalator in the Egg, and I guess she saw I was with you before you approached the greenhouse.”

“Would also explain why Bertram knows. I talked to him a few minutes after I got Branded. Speaking of, where is he? And what the hell are Valkyries?”

Gene pointed at the sleeping form of Ysandra. “Bertram said he needs to find a Valkyrie. Another one of her unit. They’re supposed to gather Branded that they deem ‘worthy’”. He made air quotes with his cheese covered fingers to emphasize that last word.

“I can hardly imagine what I did to be worthy.”

“Your Brand saved you when it was barely a few hours old, man. It helped you get inside that apartment, and it’s pretty much the only reason you’re still with us.” He took a long drink of some soda. “Aaah. That’s the good stuff. Anyway, she managed to track me down at my place. Right as I was freaking out over this.”

Gene rolled up his left sleeve all the way to the elbow. He now had a Brand that looked like a plant sprout with two leaves:

[https://i.imgur.com/VaRlPxB.png[]

“Let me guess - Nabaath?”

My friend looked surprised. “How’d you know?”

I nodded towards Ysandra. “She said she was looking for some Nabaath Branded, specifically to staff the greenhouse my company designed. Your Brand is literally a sprout, so...”

“Well, that’s what she initially told me, but I sure as fuck wasn’t believing some scary soldier in all-black armor telling me about these Brands and… their… powers.”

“So she told you about me instead.”

“Pretty much.” He gulped down the rest of his soda and crushed the can. “Even offered me a place on her team. Technically yours, actually, as our Valkyries don’t count.”

“Whoa, hold on, I’m not leading any team.”

“Yeah, she said you’d say that. She can’t really force it on you, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m following you. You’re literally the first guy that’s treated me with some decency in this city, and that alone makes you more than qualified.”

“You’ve been hanging around Ysandra and Bertram for several days. I’d like to think they’re decent people.”

“Eh, sure, but she can be a bit… rough with her words. Bertram’s a chill dude though. Too bad we can’t have him on our team. Besides which, first place counts most.”

I stayed silent. Fate certainly could be a cruel mistress. If Ice found out I was sure she’d be laughing.

Wait. Ice. My other friends. What if they…?

“Gene,” I asked, my tone serious, “what did Ysandra mean by half the city being just ‘gone’”?

He stopped with a chip midway to his mouth, obviously at a loss for words. I waited silently, and finally Gene put away the food and wiped his hand on his pants before leaning forward and starting. “I heard of what happened to Laura. Bertram managed to get the footage from your flash drive, with a little help from Ysandra, right? She showed it to us - called it a ‘Disappearance’, and the people affected she called ‘Disappeared’. That’s with a capital D, mind you.”

I could feel the symptoms of a headache coming on. “I’ve… seen some of it online. Been happening for months, but nobody would’ve believed me. But they were… rare,” I explained. “There’d be what, a new video every week? And they’d be scrubbed off of the internet very quickly.”

“Right. But the past few days, people have been Disappearing left and right. Their friends and relatives have begun to notice, especially after the vehicular accidents started piling up. But… that’s not the worst part.”

“Your Brands are fresh, but we’ve had Branded for about as long as we’ve had Disappearances.” Ysandra was now awake. Her eyes still looked a little bleary, and her hair was a mess, but she didn’t seem to care. Neither did I.

Focus, you idiot.

“You’ve heard of us. Valkyries. Technically not New Pines military. We belong to a more… ah, global system called Babel.” She stretched, stood up, then started pacing around with her arms crossed. “Initially we just needed to keep tabs on Branded and stop them from abusing their powers. The craziest ones we quarantined… but that was never going to last.” She shook her head. “They didn’t listen. Soon we were hired to collect certain Branded for special purposes. That would be like the greenhouse staff.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a phone - not just any phone either.

“Tycoon Holo, model 14. Specially modified to detect Branded.” The phone was projecting a blue-green hologram that looked like a top down version of New Pines. “It’s not perfect, because the phone only tells us if a Branded is within the city, like so.” Ysandra pressed a couple of buttons and the map was suddenly filled with white dots.

“Damn. Each white dot’s a Branded?” Gene said, taken aback. “I knew they were all over the city, but…”

He was right. There was barely a spot in New Pines without a white dot. The Market, the Egg, and all the spokes in between…

“That still doesn’t explain why you recruited me when you already had a bunch of Branded quarantined,” I pushed further, my muscles aching a little, “or why you rescued me when you specifically told me to get away from you as soon as I got to the ground.”

She was now biting her right thumb absentmindedly. The silence of the room was only broken by the crunch of Gene eating chips and the soft static from the TV. “We aren’t allowed to interfere with a Branded’s first week. But you were half a corpse already. Figured that counted less as ‘interference’ and more ‘basic human decency’.” She laughed sullenly. “Shit, even my superiors agreed. How do you think I’m here in the first place?”

Okay, that’s fair…

“As for your other point, well… Fresh Branded are… better,” she continued, more hesitant this time, “because the first few days of development are always the most crucial. We learned that the hard way when the Valkyries started recruiting Branded into teams. Think back to our mutual friend at Laura’s apartment.”

Crazed eyes… unkempt hair… a body bulging under its own weight, and a metallic scorpion-like tail…

“Bonemetal…” I muttered.

“Bone what?” Gene asked, puzzled.

“That guy who attacked us… what did you call his Brand? Eisen? He… his body growth looked out of control,” I explained, my mind now racing. “Ys used some sort of acid to slow him down, but it only worked a little. And he had this weird growth on his back. That wasn’t grafted to him, was it?” I looked Ysandra dead in the eye. “That was a rib. Or a spine. His bones were continuously being replaced by metal.”

“Not just any metal,” she corrected. “Iron. That ‘acid’ I used? It was just water with some salt and hydrogen peroxide. It oxidized the iron exponentially quicker than normal. Slowed him down enough, though I’m sure his pain was genuine." She looked proud for a split second before rolling her eyes and scowling again. “And don't call me 'Ys'.”

“So, wait. Bonemetal. As in, his bones were turning into iron?” Gene said, panic slowly creeping in his voice.

“Not just turning them, no,” I replied. “He was making iron. So much of it that it was starting to affect his body in some nasty ways.”

“Bingo.” Ysandra approached the curtain, but hesitated before opening it. “The city is dying not just because half of its people are … gone. You may want to prepare yourself for this.”

I mean… how bad could it be?

I nodded to her, and she pulled the curtains back.

The first thing I noticed was the black smoke. There was no way this should be possible, because the Dust Cap over Industria was built to make sure no pollution built up over the city. Every now and again, the smoke would thin out a little, revealing the morning sun and an unfamiliar landscape.

“Wait. Ysandra… where are we?”

“Information Center. This hospital is run by Babel, and each and every one of the staff are Branded. The patients, too.”

No way this was the IC. The buildings looked worse for wear. Windows were broken, some floors were on fire or frozen over, and every now and again a piece of rubble would break off and fall to the ground below.

Ysandra cracked open the window slightly, and the relative silence of the room was now filled with the sounds of explosions, sirens, screams, and the rough chop-chop-chop of helicopters in the distance. I winced visibly, and Ysandra closed the window again.

“The Disappearance is one thing. We can’t do anything about those we have already lost. But the Branded… well, like I said - it was a mistake quarantining them. We don’t have the time nor the manpower to control it anymore.

“This is what happens when Branded get a little out of control.”