Layla Kaneda
I thought Yun died. It felt like he did. My hand against his chest felt his heart stop. The energy in the vial that broke kept on pouring into him and me, sliding across the floor and flowing into our skin.
Yun’s body temp was climbing higher and higher, until my HUD read his temperature as 114 degrees. One hundred and fourteen. That wasn’t a fever, that was a death sentence.
But why wasn’t I getting affected the way he was? I didn’t feel hot. I felt…
My power levels. They’d been normal earlier. But as I held Yun, they filled up, then went higher and higher. It was like I was getting charged up.
Was this energy similar to aether? Was it even energy?
The alarm continued to blare, and I pushed the question away. “Focus, focus. We need to get out of here.”
Yun needed a doc and we needed to keep from getting caught. But how? The door had slid shut. Why had Ramirez done that? Were we scapegoats?
Probably. No, I had focus on getting us out before the security forces or worse came to grab Yun and me.
There was the computers. I put Yun down and ran over to one, tying at it. When it didn’t respond, I pulled out the cord set into my wrist, pushing it into the port on the computer.
The first thing that happened was a blaring warning in my HUD that my chrome was getting invaded by someone. I almost pulled the plug. Then Poy’s voice came through.
“Layla? What’s going on? Why are you logged into the system?”
His image filled my head, my HUD giving him a less detailed appearance. “Poy! You gotta help us! Ramirez locked Yun and me in here!”
“Locked in!?” Poy sounded confused. “Why, the plan was to get us out through the employee exit!”
“I don’t know! We need help!”
Poy was quiet. For a moment, I was worried. Was he going to leave us here? Save his own skin-
“Okay, done. Maintenance hatch near you should be open.” Like he said, a wall panel near me popped.
“Maintenance hatch? Why couldn’t we sneak in through that?”
“I couldn’t open it without directly plugging into the building and setting off the alarms, but all bets are off,” Poy said quickly. “Head down it, should lead to an employee lounge with an exit. Be careful. There’s some source of electromagnetic energy in your area, and it’s beginning to build.”
The tunnel we’d gone through probably.
“Thanks, Poy,” I said, feeling relief.
“Thank me if we all get out of this.”
I unplugged and rushed over to Yun, pulling him over in a fireman’s carry.
“Damnit, bro,” I grunted under his weight. “Wish you didn’t pack on so much muscle.”
I brought him to the hatch and set him down since it was only about four feet tall. I had to drag him inside. That fiery energy kept on flowing towards us even as I dragged my brother into the tunnel.
My HUD showed that electromagnetic energy Poy talked about. It wasn’t enough to damage my systems. But when I looked at my brother, the readings seemed to bounce around.
Didn’t matter. We had to get out.
The maintenance hatch was hard to get through without me dragging my brother along. I had to crawl over pipes, avoiding wires, past panels. The fiery energy flooded in after us. It was like it was trying to eat us.
Pulling my brother through that tight space, the ringing alarm, orange yellow fire chasing after us, feeling like any second someone would reach in and grab us. I felt like I was in hell.
Sweat dripped down my face. Warning signs filled my vision. I just needed to get out, to escape-
I ran into a wall. I pressed my hand against it, trying to push it. My hand found a handle set into the side. I pushed it one way, then pulled it. The wall moved with my pull, rising upwards. I moved the handle all the way, finally forcing it open, then rolling out with my brother in tow.
The energy tried to follow. I grabbed a handle on the other side of the wall and pulled hard, closing the wall before that strange orange-yellow fire could reach through.
The room was about the size of our apartment, with comfy chairs in one corner, tables, a bunch of refrigerators, and some holoscreens floating around. It was empty. Of course it was, with all the alarms going crazy.
I pulled my brother back up onto my shoulders and looked around. There was a simple emergency exit door. I walked over to it and kicked, smashing it open. I adjusted Yun over my shoulder and left.
There were alarms going off all across the complex. Screaming and piercing. Dozens of people were outside, roaming the area. I crouched. And started running.
Someone spotted me. Shouted. I ignored them. I ran for the exit, ignoring what had to be hundreds of cameras spotting me. A guy stepped in front of me. I jumped up, smashing my knee into his face, then landing on his chest and running again. There was a pulse of energy. I felt my chrome almost shut down before the excess energy from earlier fed it again. A few vehicles near me turned off.
I ignored it all. The only goal was out. Out. Out.
The gate that led outside was open, people gathering in front of it. I raised my magnet line and aimed upward. The line fired out, smashing into the top of the gate.
Yun and I flew upwards, over the crowd. I pulled the line back in and shot it out at a building at the apex of our jump, half-swinging, half-flying through the air. I let go of the line again, swinging it around to aim at the street below once we were behind a building.
The line attached to a manhole cover. I pulled it upwards, the cover popping off as I rocketed down. I landed inside of the sewers and pulled the line again, the manhole cover smacking into place again.
The inside of the sewer was wide and somewhat smooth along the walls, with a false river of filth running through the center. It smelled. I could hear sirens up top. Soon, they’d come for us. They’d send drones down here, try to find us.
My shoulders hurt from carrying Yun and pulling off all of that magnet line tricking at the same time. I ignored it. I hefted him more carefully. Then I started running. A doc. I needed a doc for Yun.
I had to head to the border between the tech zone and downtown. The closest doctor would be there, closest one who would operate on us at least. I disconnected everything I had from the web, then took Yun’s phone and tossed it into the water. They’d still be able to track us, but not as easily.
Shifting Yun, I kept moving, trying to swallow away my fear.
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Cherie Brefutan
Before Layla’s Escape
The alarm began to ring just as Cherie came running back from clearing the exit. She ran faster, meeting Ramirez and the androgynous employee as they came rushing down the hallway.
“We got the loot,” Ramirez snapped. “Is the exit clear?”
“Yeah. Where’s Layla and Yun?” Cherie asked, looking behind the blue armored man.
“They got trapped by security,” Ramirez snapped.
Cherie’s eyes widened. “What!? We have to get them out-”
“There’s no time!” the employee snapped. “You two need to get out. I’m heading to my car. If you want to stay and get caught saving two gonk trash kids, then go ahead.”
Cherie felt the urge to hit the selfish jerk. She barely held back as Ramirez pushed past her.
“Come on, we need to go,” Ramirez said. He ran, the employee following. Cherie looked at them, then in the direction they came from.
Yun and Layla…
The alarms rang as Cherie turned and ran, swallowing. She could get them out of prison maybe. Get a crew to break them out. But for now, all she could do was run before the cops came.
She kept coming up with more and more justifications for why she ran. How she would make up for it. It didn’t help.
----------------------------------------
Layla Kaneda
I don’t know how long I went through the sewers. By the time I saw the light at the end, it was night time already. I’d never felt more tired in my life. Fighting all those bots and guards. Then carrying Yun’s heavy butt. My HUD was full of warnings. Adrenaline, lactic acid build up, all the things that were burning in my body. My chrome was compensating, but it was supposed to help me be just a bit stronger than normal, not function like I was for as long as I was.
“You need to lose weight,” I grumbled at Yun.
“I’ll… keep that in…” I almost dropped him when he started mumbling.
“Yun!?” I shrugged him forward and laid him against the wall. He grabbed me to stay standing. “Yun! Hey, you okay?”
He was still running hot. My HUD bounced every once in a while as I watched him, like there was some sort of interference, maybe from the tunnels of the sewer? Everyonce in a while it changed colors though, could interference do that?
“I’m not.” His eyes could barely open. He was sweating, his hair stuck to his forehead. “I’m… on fire.”
I looked him over again. Damnit. I couldn’t see anything in particular wrong with him through my sensors. I pulled his arm over my shoulder. “Come on. We need to visit the doc.”
“Which one?”
He sounded so weak. Like when he’d gotten the brown flu years back. His throat had the same raw sound to it.
“I’m thinking of that guy, the weird one between the tech center and downtown.”
Yun looked confused, but didn’t question it. Between us, I’d seen more doctors.
At the end of the tunnel, we came out. It opened up into a massive open space, the water from the tunnel spreading into a false lake. There were tall pillars stretching upwards for dozens of feet made of solid stone, with a huge amount of empty room in between them.
In that room, in the ankle-deep water, a city had been made. A shantytown, really..
The shantytown was made up of the clear plastic bubble tents sold cheap in stores, chunks of rusty metal messily welded together to create bridges over the water and small hallways of sorts. And there were people everywhere. Men, women, children, playing, talking, and sitting on old beds. Some watched us as we passed. Most ignored us.
I guess we weren’t a new sort of sight.
One guy was cooking rabbits and cane toad legs on a spit over a fire, giving pieces of the meat to people who came up. I could see more people doing similar things.
This place was somehow both sad and hopeful. Everyone here had even less than I did. Their clothes were ragged. Some with implants could barely move them, unable to afford the Aether to give them power maybe. There were few signs of real tech down here.
Still. People were alive. Some sad, some neutral. And the kids seemed happy, playing in the water. It was so familiar.
For just a second, I felt like I wasn’t in Machitou. I was back in my first home. All it was missing was the smell of gunpowder.
I pushed on, leaving my memories behind.
We crossed the wide cistern and left that place behind us, the poor and hungry surviving as best as they could. Hopefully no one would bother them later because of us. They had enough on their minds.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Was that… real?” Yun asked me. He sounded so loopy.
“That or a mirage.” I tried to joke. I looked ahead and tried to pull up a map of the city, GPS, before remembering that I’d disconnected myself. “Shit. Um. I know we’re downtown now. But I don’t know where. I-”
Yun almost fell over. I grabbed him, looking him over. Dang it. He’d passed out again. I pulled him onto my shoulder and kept moving.
It was around ten minutes before I found a way out of the sewers, a service elevator. At least, I hoped it was a way out.
I dragged Yun inside, looking over the beat up old screen on the side of the elevator. “Okay, okay. They couldn’t just label it ‘up’ and ‘down’?”
Finally found it. Rise and descend. I smashed ‘rise’, then the button labeled ‘ground level’, and leaned Yun against the wall as the elevator shook around us. We went up for a good while, long enough for me to be worried. Then the doors opened up.
Downtown. It had been a while.
When I pulled at Yun, he was awake again. He pushed himself up to help me, moving out of the elevator. We left the dark elevator and entered a neon wonderland.
Downtown always seemed to explode in front of me that way. I’d want to stop and take things in like a tourist, watching the lights, the advertisements, the people.
Everyone knew the story of Downtown’s architecture. When Machitou was first founded, over 80 years ago, Keraunios Christodoulakis, the owner of Primordial, wanted a perfect city. A Greco-Roman based one.
So Yun and I walked past massive metal skyscrapers shaped like ancient temples. Shining neon advertisements shone on the walls of the steel coliseum set in the center of the city, an image of Tate Cairn bald and bearded face grinning out at the world. The magnetic train that went over our heads was shining with the decals of an eagle.
Even the security fit the part. Talos mechs shaped like centurions stood at the entrance to a bank we passed, joined by humans in armored forms.
Mom once said that Downtown looked as though the Roman Empire had never died. Or if Zeus had designed a city after Mount Olympus.
It was beautiful. And the same went for the people.
Everyone looked so fancy. People with cloths that had constantly moving designs on them, like flames, waves, and storms. Men and women with artfully curving horns, feline eyes that glittered in the neon lights, soft looking fur or smooth scales. Some of the crowd that walked along the streets shopping had a few bodyguards walking with them.
The guards would invariably be massive, men and women covered in muscles both real and chrome. No guns, but a few carried swords. They eyed Yun and I as we walked, while their charges ignored us in favor of talking to holograms walking with them.
I used to love Downtown. But today… something felt different.
I couldn’t explain it. There was something about the way eyes landed on me. I moved faster.
Our destination was nearby anyway. Next to the Lila Theater. In the ‘Norse’ section of town.
Yeah. Despite Keraunios’ obsession, he couldn’t control everything. A part of Downtown close to the industrial district was a sign of that. There, the Doric and Ionic pillars, the metal statues of ancient heroes, they were replaced with stave architecture, Nordic Runes carved into walls, open fire pits carved into the earth where people gathered to eat, laugh, and shop around.
A clash of cultures. Massive Greek skyscrapers going so high we couldn’t see the tops, made for Olympian gods with advertisements displaying beautiful celebrities.
But down on the ground with Yun and I? Low slung buildings a viking would have been happy to call home, built to resemble upside-down boats.
Like I said. Culture clash.
We walked around the Lila Theater, leaving the bright lights behind. Lila Theater was new, a place where shows and concerts got held, but it had been built in the center of a lot of older buildings.
We went down a set of stairs, Yun falling at the bottom. I leaned him up against the wall next to the door there and looked at the sign on that door.
Arne and Zgura lectronic Meds. Just like I’d heard, the letter E had fallen off the sign.
I knocked on the door hard, kicking it, looking at Yun. He was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked him, trying to stay standing even with all my exhaustion.
“...All those workouts and I can’t even move.” Yun laughed weakly. “Did all the cardio I could too.”
I stared at him. His eyes were looking crazy. One pupil was larger than the other. And he kept flickering in my HUD.
The door opened, and a large man with red hair and a beard poked his head out. He had an Aloha shirt on, but instead of flowers like in the movies, the shirt was splashed with different circuit boards, monitors, wires, and grids, moving across the shirt in beautiful techno patterns of blue green. He had a single tech monocle over one eye, the other a red cybernetic one. His eyes snapped over us, and I saw my name appear backwards on his monocle.
He could find who I was with a single look? Had he known, or did he have tech that could track me that quickly?
“Godsdamned, you came here!?” he yelped. His voice was high for such a large man, almost screeching. “Go somewhere else!”
“We can’t go anywhere else.” I mumbled. “It took everything I had to come to this clinic. Please. Something happened to my brother. Help us.”
A deep and bassy voice echoed from inside. “Zgura, let them in, you báichī. They’ll draw attention if you leave them there, we might as well help.”
The large red haired man looked inside, back at us, then groaned. “Aw maaaaaan. Fine! Jenny, Selego, two for pickup!”
He stepped aside from the doorway. The sounds of clacking came from inside. A strange looking metal boot came out. What stepped out made me want to run.
A war droid. Not like the Talos mechs we’d fought, but the kind I had once seen-
I clenched my fists. The droid had a single glowing red eye, panning over us. It was tall, around eight-feet, with a robust looking body. It had a big cross painted on its chest, and bits of brass on its palms, fingertips, and chest, on top of a stainless steel body.
On its right arm, a series of symbols were painted across the brass armor. I remembered some of them from school. A Hopi Healing Hand and a Berkanen rune on its wrist, a Shou and a Celtic rune I didn’t recognize on it’s forearm. Further up, a Caduceus on its false bicep.
[https://symbolikon.com/wp-content/uploads/edd/2019/09/Hopi-healinghand-bold-400w-180x180.png] [https://symbolikon.com/wp-content/uploads/edd/2019/09/NordicRunes-berkanan-bold-400w.png] [https://symbolikon.com/wp-content/uploads/edd/2021/04/Chinese-Shou-Longevity.png] [https://irisharoundtheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/The-Triskele.png] [https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.9065d5de381b7b962026c9bed1d875c1?rik=%2frHP%2fZr4Mdnx%2fw&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.pngall.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f06%2fDoctor-Symbol-Caduceus-Free-PNG-Image.png&ehk=W3AA4YTSjFCS0ua9Rq5wbi7jGU588dfvx7dLqrDlmkY%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0]
The one that hit me hardest was the Arabic word on its shoulder. طبيب, or tabib. Medic. I remembered that one too.
The droid was moving while I stared at it. It clanked over to Yun and bent to pick him up in its arms. My giant brother lifted like he was a baby. Yun groaned, my HUD flickering again.
Another droid came out of the doorway, but this one was very different. It floated forward on magnetic jets, and had a large spider-like body painted a beautiful cream color. Long robotic limbs extended out from it, with medical tools on the ends.
At least, I hoped they were medical.
As Yun was carried past the floating robots, my HUD flickered again. At the same time, the floating robot dropped, the magnetic jets on it sputtering.
“Whoa, Jenny, you okay?” Zgura asked, ignoring my brother getting carried in.
The floating robot had a screen on the front, displaying a simple face on it. It flickered for a moment, showing a confused :/ face, before it stabilized in the air. It turned to Zgura, giving him a :D [https://forums.spacebattles.com/styles/sbforums/smilies/biggrin.gif], then back to me.
“I’m okay,” I waved the drone away. “I just need to rest.”
Ignoring me, the robot extended an arm with a bright blue light on it. A small scanning sound came from the arm, and Zgura scowled at the beeps that followed.
“Rest is just one of the things you need. Get in here,” he reached down and grabbed my arm, pulling it over his shoulder and bringing me inside.
The store looked like it had once been a bar. It had the counter at the center of the room with shelves, but with medical equipment everywhere, and brass surfaces everywhere someone might touch.
Yun was laid down on a table, with the war bot looking at him. A man was looking over Yun with a tablet in his hand. The man was thin, tall, with a shaved head, dark black skin, a small goatee, and some glasses. He was wearing a clean white set of robes, an armband carrying a set of syringes filled with fluid. He had a monocle just like Zgura’s, and he was staring at Yun.
“Sit,” Zgura lowered me on the table next to Yun’s and glared at me. “Arne, we’d be better off just leaving them on the street.”
“First, do no-”
“I’m not a godsdamn doctor!” Zgura said.
“I know. You don’t have to help, you know?” The taller man looked over at him and smiled. “I can handle this.”
“‘I can handle this’,” Zgura said mockingly. “Like you picked up a degree in chrome fixing.”
Zgura sighed, rubbing his face. “All right girl, open up your firewalls. I need to dig into your hardware.”
“I’m fine,” I protested, confused. “Just help my brother!”
“Help him with what, his eating habits?” He pointed at Arne. “He deals with meat. I deal with metal. And yer metal is looking rusted.”
“It is?” I didn’t feel like I was hurting. My HUD was still flickering, so I couldn’t tell from my systems diagnostic.
“Just sit there and-”
Zgura’s next grumpy line was interrupted by the lights shutting off. He looked around, befuddled. “What the hell?”
His monocle shut off as well. He tapped at it, the screen flickering, then winced. I fell onto the bed and groaned when my HUD went fuzzy. Now that I wasn’t carrying Yun through the city, I felt aches and pains from all across me. My fingers felt swollen, my head was starting to hurt. And the flickering of my hud didn’t help.
“Now that is interesting,” Arne said. I tried to listen, but it was getting harder. He spoke for a bit, before Zgura cut in.
“These two have a bounty, we should-”
A bounty! What!?
I tried to force myself to stand. The last thing I saw was Zgura frowning down at me. Then he pushed me down into the table, straps popping out and surrounding my wrists and ankles.
My HUD flashed a ‘Warning!’ in violet across my vision, then I blacked out.