Fragment of Destiny

Samuel ejected his unfired mag of standard rounds and with a fluidity of movement that comes from countless repetition, slapped in his only mag of MPR’s. Seth’s rifle clattered to the floor as Samuel’s first shot zipped past him burying itself in a hulking malravian before detonating. Seth drew his fuse saber and cut down the wounded malravian in one swift motion. Their victory was short-lived as more malravians forced them to retreat under cover from a flash grenade.

“Shit man, he said we had time to get out of here,” Seth shouted as they bolted down the next hall.

The sound of gunfire was nearly continuous as enforcer and insurgent alike would be fighting for their lives against the incoming horde. Samuel could sense something coming, he could feel the alien emotional state and an insatiable desire for violence, but he could not tell from what direction. A moment later the floor in front of them exploded in a shower of rock and dust. Seth tossed a grenade in that direction and pulled Samuel down a side passage that dead-ended with a locked door.

Seth kicked in the door with ease exposing a small medical lab and began searching for a way out. Samuel dropped to a knee and leveled his rifle down the hall.

“No exit!” Seth called from behind as the first malravian rounded the corner and began barreling toward them. Samuel squeezed the trigger, and the first malravian dropped to the floor only to be followed by a second then a third.

The fourth malravian was different. Instead of a hulking beast, it was much smaller and looked almost human. It was also much faster and the first shot went wide tearing up a large chunk of wall. Thick red blood sprayed across the hall as the second shot connected. The malravian’s left arm was reduced to a ragged stump yet the beast stumbled only slightly as it closed on Samuel with unnatural speed.

“Seth!” Samuel yelled as a large bone blade nearly the length of its arm emerged from under its skin. Seth pushed Samuel aside parrying the claw and sending his blade through the beast in one quick motion. Even with the saber driven through it and missing an arm, the beast would not die. Pushing the monster away Seth retrieved an automatic pistol from his hip and emptied the entire thirty round mag into the malravian before it collapsed to the floor.

Tossing his spend side arm Seth retrieved his saber and cut off the beast’s head just to be sure. There was little time to gawk at the decapitated monstrosity as more seismic activity drove them back the way they had come.

With this part of the insurgent’s layer off the official grid, they were running blind, and everywhere they turned it looked the same. Blood and bullet holes, chard stone from grenades, human and malravian bodies alike strewn in heaps. Samuel turned down passages at random hoping to find a way out as he attempted to hail Elroy. Soon they were being corralled down another dead end.

“I will hold them off. Just find a way out of here.” Seth said as he stood his ground in front of the incoming mass of malravians.

Samuel tried the coms again but the signal was weak and kept shorting out. Training his V-2 on the ceiling at the end of the tunnel Samuel put the weapon on full auto. Within seconds he had spent over half of his precious MPR’s but he had breached a hole and the signal strength jumped up enough to make contact.

“Elroy come in, do you copy?”

“I read you, Samuel, what’s your situation?” Came a crackling reply after the longest two seconds of Samuel’s life.

“We are trapped on one of the lower levels and need a way out is there anything you can do?”

“Hang on… ok, I see you. Yes, there is an exit tunnel to a skimmer dock on the floor below. You will need to get to the stairwell I am marking it for you now.”

An orange dot appeared with a distance marker. It was close but still too far away with a tunnel full of malravians bearing down on them.

In this narrow space, Seth had the luxury of fighting the malravians one at a time cutting them down as they trampled over the corpses of the fallen, but even so, their hall was getting progressively shorter. Hands shaking Samuel took aim at the floor near the pile of rubble from the ceiling. Despite the chaos of these tunnels they seemed to have an oddly symmetrical pattern to them, Samuel only hoped the pattern continued a level deeper. Fragments of stone shot in all directions as he expended nearly all of his MPR’s to chip away a man-size hole in the floor.

“Seth I got a way out let’s go!” Samuel shouted.

At once, Seth broke combat and sprinted past Samuel. With only four shots remaining Samuel held back the malravian advance long enough for Seth to squirm his way through. 3…2...1. Samuel’s dampeners flared as the last round left the barrel. sliding for the hole Samuel armed a flash grenade and left it on the upper level.

Samuel breathed a sigh of relief. Not only was the tunnel clear, but there were also no signs of combat and the stairwell marker blinked in his HUD updating its position. A moment later the marker went solid showing the stairwell's exit at the end of the hall.

Running at a full sprint Samuel discarded the empty mag and slipped in the last of his standard rounds. Adjacent from the stairwell, Seth had ripped a set of double doors from there hinges exposing a long ramp that would take them to the surface. Behind them, the hall flowed like a sheathing liquid as malravians poured from the crumbling opening. Samuel felt a sickening dread wash over him as the first of the malravians rounded the corner and started up the ramp. As fast as they were they would be easily overtaken before they reached the exit. Seth knew it too and Samuel felt a stern sense of resolve beat against his wavering barrier.

“Go I will hold them off,” Seth said as he turned to face the incoming horde no more than a quarter way up the exit ramp. This was not the same as the narrow corridor where Seth had cut them down with ease as they stumbled with blind aggression onto his blade. Here he would be quickly surrounded and overpowered.

“Negative we are both getting out of here that is an order,” Samuel yelled.

“Order or not, I can’t let you die down here sir,” Seth said as he stood fuse saber at the ready like a foolish hero about to die in a blaze of glory. Samuel had no time to protest as the butchering began in earnest.

The normal malravians fell quickly their hulking carcasses clogged the floor as blood and gore splattered the walls. It was the other’s that gave Seth trouble but he fought savagely slaying two of them even as he was forced to give ground.

Seth had covered nearly half the length of the exit ramp with malravian blood when the advance suddenly stopped. The many hulking malravians backed away, looking almost docile. At the end of the ramp, another of the smaller malravians entered the tunnel only this one seemed to be cloaked in a shimmering purple and black mist. Seth stood defiant his sword at the ready as the lone malravian slowly approached. Instead of engaging in a reckless attack as the others had it simply held out a hand causing Seth to scream in pain.

The bloodied fuse saber clattered to the stone floor, and Seth collapsed to his knees, as a small sapphire object shot from under his armor. At that moment Samuel could have left. The exit door was only a few steps away. Instead, he leveled his rifle and fired. The malravian seemed not to care as the hail of bullets disintegrated the moment, they hit the mist. Samuel watched in horror as Seth’s sapphire crystal quickly faded to a dull gray, a purple mist extracted from it, as the remains fell to the ground in a pile of ash.

Samuel felt every fiber of his being screaming for him to run but he could not move, his barrier shattered as Seth’s tormented anguish overpowered him. With each new scream from Seth’s lips, Samuel found himself drowning deeper and deeper into a well of torment.

With deadly grace, the malravian thrust its massive claw, twice the size of its forearm, through Seth’s chest. Suddenly the crippling anguish stopped releasing Samuel from its debilitating hold. Seth, not quite dead, reached for something in his ammunition pouch. The object dropped to the floor as a sneer creased his dying face.

Samuel took one look at the object Seth had dropped and scrambled for the exit. A moment later a massive explosion knocked him to the ground sending gouts of flame and debris over his head. Who the hell brings demolition charges on this kind of operation! Not looking back Samuel pulled himself to his feet and continued to run.

The bay door was sealed and it would have taken those demolition charges to breach it but then he realized that wasn’t the door Elroy had marked for him. The was a service stairway next to the exit. It was locked but nothing a few bullets couldn’t fix. Nearly ripping the ruined door from its hinges, Samuel bolted up the narrow stairs and slammed into another door so hard it ripped the locking mechanism from the stone and sent him hurtling into a sub-level skimmer bay. Blessedly the grid in his heads-up display came back online as he once again entered a registered area.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. Something emerging from another tunnel exit. His scanner picked up the presence of a weapon and the silhouette turned red, without thought or hesitation he opened fire. A human body crumpled to the floor and a handgun skittered across the concrete bay. Samuel leveled his gun on a second figure but stopped. They were unarmed, a civilian.

The second person, a woman, screamed in terror as she collapsed into a ball with her arms in front of her blood-stained face. She began to sob uncontrollably realizing Samuel was not about to shoot her. Immediately Samuel gasped for air as the woman’s terror nearly overpowered him. Focusing his mind, he redoubled his strained barrier. He could not afford to be crippled again, not now.

By now the woman was screaming the dead man’s name hoping against hope that perhaps he was still alive. Upon approaching the body Samuel saw a black spherical device protruding from a now blood-stained satchel. Reaching for the device the woman gripped his arm with a firm hand as she turned her grief and rage on him.

“No!” She screamed and attempted to shove him away.

“Calm down!” Samuel commanded as he clenched down on one of her flailing arms.

Tess was still struggling to process what had just happened. Instinctively she found herself huddled low to the ground Yami’s warm blood spattered across her clothes and the wretched taste of it in her mouth. She expected at any moment she would be next, but the shot never came. Instead, she looked up to find a faceless enforcer running towards her.

Frantically Tess looked around for Yami’s gun, but all she could see was the blood-soaked body of her friend. For a moment she held a shred of hope as she clutched at his shaking hand. His name rang in her ears as she called to him over and over willing for him to move, to show any sign of life. Then the enforcer was on her. She heard herself scream something unintelligible as she attempted to shove the enforcer away. With a grip like an iron shackle, the enforcer clamped down on her flailing arms.

“Calm down!” The enforcer commanded, and at his words, Tess felt constricting ice begin to form in the pit of her stomach. It cracked and radiated outward in fits and starts until it had completely consumed her. Gradually the ice faded, and she could feel her heart begin to settle. She looked from the enforcer to Yami’s dead body. She should have felt what? fear, anger, desperation? Instead, she felt nothing. She knew her friend had just been killed but neither the image of his corpse or the feel of his blood on her sparked any emotion.

“We need to go now!” The enforcer yelled as he stooped to retrieve something from Yami’s body. Suddenly her mind snapped back to why they had been running in the first place. The enforcer was right, they needed to move and fast.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Tess reached into Yami’s pocket and retrieved the key to his personal skimmer. She popped to her feet nearly losing her footing in Yami’s pooling blood.

“It’s this way.” She said and waved for the enforcer to follow as she dashed for the skimmer.

Sliding the key home, the skimmer roared to life. Looking back the enforcer seemed to be having a moment’s regret at killing Yami. Then an explosion overhead brought the murderer to his senses.

Tess waited bouncing on the balls of her feet for the enforcer to join her. Now that she thought about it, it was a good thing she had not been able to reach Yami’s gun. Since coming to Raiden’s Den, she had never been allowed to use the skimmer by herself and as such, she did not actually know how to use it. Always Yami or Admeta had accompanied her. Had she shot this enforcer she would likely be attempting her escape on foot.

The enforcer slung his rifle over his shoulder and slid behind the skimmer’s controls. Tess straddled the skimmer behind the enforcer holding tight around his waist as they lifted off and accelerated out the long exit tunnel. On the surface above, the streets had turned to chaos. Dusk blades swooped overhead raining down death upon the subterranean invaders. Civilians fled in every direction and enforcer skimmers rallied to clear a path. The small personal skimmer accelerated attempting to catch up with a fleeing convoy.

Dust and cement showered the road in front of them as it burst apart, letting loose a flood of malravians. The skimmer jerked and Tess was nearly thrown as they ducked down a narrow side street. The stupid enforcer didn’t know anything about Crescent. He had just led them to their deaths. A moment later they sped into a dirt courtyard as the enforcer nearly plastered them against the fall wall.

The enforcer slid to the ground like some fool who was about to die trying to fight a thousand malravians.

“Hurry up get off! All the paths ahead are swarming with malravians already. We have to get on the roof for extraction.” The enforcer shouted.

Starting with a run, the enforcer used the skimmer as a springboard to catapult within reach of the roof then pulled himself over. Tess followed suit and strong arms hoisted her the rest of the way up.

Looking out over the city, fires raged across the long arc of buildings as the enforcers attempted to keep the horde of malravians at bay. Within only a few moments it became apparent that warring with the malravians over Crescent was a lost cause. At this point, the enforcers were only still here in an attempt to rescue as many civilians as they could before the city was overrun.