Chapter Text
Wind howled through the gaping ribcage of shattered skyscrapers; each one bespoke with the stringy gristle of hoarfrost. Split arterial freeways spilled the gutted wrecks of cars into connective interchanges and wynds. Collapsed buildings and boutiques vomited visceral debris into thoroughfares. A rimed deluge of vitrified skeletons scattered throughout the putrefying mass of civilization lost that made of snow-laden boulevards the galaxy's largest macabre statuary. Yet the dilapidated streets hinted at life still clinging to the nooks and crannies from the recently disturbed snowdrifts.
Farther in were courtyard organelles suppurating with trash stuck to the pavement. Concrete and asphalt cracked with permafrost. Traces of the lives that once lived skittered across the verglas. Dropped wherever life ended when disaster loomed. It all led to the festering heart of a once bustling metropolis.
The Y-shaped plaza of the city, the crowning jewel of Copper-9, was a latticework of streets that branched out in expansive footpaths and autonomous mass transit lines crisscrossing over one another in a vast cardiopedestrial system. Municipal and commercial skyscrapers corral the plaza in regal brutalism softened by gentle curves that bleed out of the hard angles. Sweeping casement windows wove naturalistic patterns across each exposed face of the buildings. Each one a minimalist's impression of wind rolling over grassy knolls. There were clear demarcations where prefabricated portions of the building had slotted into place. Each one bore an odd semblance to a cliff face or a copse of trees, each made a part of the environ that predated urban settlement.
Segmented, stitched together.
Nowhere was this aesthetic clearer than where marble and metal stretched out and broke off from the larger whole. They were sometimes geometric, like basalt columns kept in place by maglev tethers. Others took on the appearance of water flowing up, an inverted waterfall kept buoyant through an interplay of magnetism. Each one connected by a series of alloy lily pads that formed makeshift bridges between the branches of each building.
If the flora had not been vaporized and flash permineralized, there would be little differentiation between once greenery and the urban sprawl they were planted inside. Sometimes on top of or inside hovering bronchial mag-tower eaves.
Spread out amid all of this were hoverboards, circular screens upon which advertisements, news and much more once rang out over the plaza. They moved in concert with each other. Each traveling along a preset route that would have them cross the whole space. Flickering, sparking with breaths of electricity.
The only movement afforded to a place dotted with the remains of a once living cityscape.
Then one of the dormant hoverboards gasped to life, juddering from sudden motion as it sputtered awake. It brought a panoply of color to bear upon a dreary world. Cosmogyral fractals building out from either hemisphere of the cylindrical advert. All building toward an epicenter, the shape of a star system anchored to the equator. Sol, but arrayed in a style reminiscent of geocentrism, except the trademarked logo of JCJenson (in SPAAACE!) circled around the earth. Then the text overtook everything else until finally fading out into a simple, pristine black room with the earth hovering in the background.
Strutting into frame from the background was a woman of Arabic descent. Dressed clean in the black and white checkered uniform of the aforementioned company. All perfect teeth and ample skincare, prim and proper with hands held in front of her. Gesticulating an amiable welcome to anyone willing to give their attention while spotlit beneath the earth. Extending either hand out to the sides before the display flickered.
With a cadence made thick by sucrose congeniality, she spoke, “W-welcome to the city of Lothal, the second l-largest city of C-Copper-9! A place of boundless prosperity and cu-cultivated ataraxia, de-devised by none other than your close friends at J-J-JCJenson.”
There was a drawn-out crepitation that worked its claws into the plaza from on high, wedging into the quietude until the empty space was alight with the echo of glass warping under the strain of a razor. After a moment, the hoverboard became a spiderweb. Cracks crept down and split the earth in two before cleaving the woman’s face. Distortion wept from where the wound marred the advertisement, glitched pixels of shifting color that held the essence of purple-black that bleached the image.
Yet the advert continued nonetheless, sounds distorted into a nightmarish parody of the calm amiability present before. Vacillating between whistle-pitched and trench-deep, words muddled then accentuated beyond a conventional range of hearing.
“I-i-In LoTHal, your fUtUre is the endlESS horizon of your n-new home! But IT IS important to rEmEMber thA-tHat no future can be guaranteed wiTHout keeping IN m-m-mind the guiding tenets of p-P-paradiSe: PerSONal respONSIbility, personal initiative, and per-pEr-personal liability. W-whO, if nOT you?”
Rainbow-black ooze, bleeding heat to the brumal night, wept from atop the hoverboard before dribbling into the crevices spidering across the display. It became an arroyo. Sticking when the fleeting warmth keeping the oil runny finally absconded.
There was a figure cast in shadow hunched over something indistinct.
Platinum eyelights watched it spasm with unnatural motion, too fluid-sharp. A limb not belonging to the figure jittered with every unseen ministration. It hung, limp, over the edge, digits twitching. Whoever it belonged to was at the full mercy of the craven creature mantled over them. But it had little mercy in whatever passed for its core. Something evinced with the silver of serrated talons, glinting in the moonlight, biting into and wrenching off the limb before bringing it to the manic grin splitting the figure’s skull.
Then the advert continued.
“Once y-you hAVe settled into y-Y-your new liFe, wh-WHy not exp-explore the endleSS amenities off-off-offred in the many shopping districts? Lot-LOT-loThal has the lar-larGESt aRRay of pr-pROducts ever asseMBled fo-for yOuR con-CoNvenIenCE. And t-to tHIs eNd, y-y-your assigned JCJenson rEp-rEp-rEp-representative will alWA-alWAys be on the lookout for wAYs TO spruce u-U-up your des-de-desigNATed housing u-u-unit.”
A xanthic glare swayed up out of the dark, curling over the shoulder of the hunched figure with all the easygoing lethality of a lazing predator. Its telson-blade pushed out, slow, and dripped that vile venom onto its victim. Then it plunged the needle up to its vesicle-canister, pumping acid in. Only to then push its head into whatever wound it worsened.
Carried down to where he stood, still unseen, Khan heard that awful lilting giggle on ice-bright wind. It was feeding. Taking joy in the minute agonies it could inflict on the dying. Spicing its meal with terror and pain.
His hollowed eyelights flicked between the advert and where the creature perched, a grimace splitting his memory metal when he imagined what awful mind might have concocted such a thing.
The advertisement continued—
“BUt if e-Ev-evEr sH-shOUld p-PaRADiSe fAIl tO iM-iMPr-IMPress, nev-NeVER fORge-E-et tHA-thA-A-At t-tHe fU-fUt-fUTUre bE-BegI-I-Ins W-Wi-i-Ith y-Y-yo-O-U-u-”
—until it died.
A gout of black-tinged smoke belched from where the figure mantled over its victim. It was hard to see at first, the labor drone had to cycle through the spectra he had access to notice it. Either it had not noticed or did not care. But the sudden shift meant whatever vile secretion it injected into the twitching body spilled into the central cluster of the hoverboard. Electronics were melting away. Turning to vapor that sighed with a low hiss. Despite this, the advert kept chugging along, except now it was nothing short of a vocal nightmare made manifest in slurred consonants and blurred vowels that mingled with every noise a synthetic system could produce.
Static, jarring, ghoulish hot knives that flensed into your aural transducers and gave no reprieve.
That got the creature to care.
It snapped up and shook its head about several times before hiss-keening at its would-be feeding ground, several buccal plates popped up in a hostile display. Was it trying to intimidate the hoverboard? Khan didn’t care enough to chase down that thoughtline.
The creature was moving.
When its questionable intimidation tactic did little to dissuade the glorified loudspeaker from continuing its awful tirade across three separate octave ranges, crescent wings snapped from its back with a flick of superheated liquid and billowing steam. That steam became a shawl for it to rise up into, victim’s neck secured in its jaw. Five blisters lit up, then, along with the rictus of Death on its screen. Each one a vile sunglow gold. Piercing through the veil of night and taking in the plaza with its panoptical placement.
For a moment, its gaze lingered on some unseen spot far below the hoverboard. Khan pulled back and hid behind the building he took cover behind. His core whirred with an arrhythmic pattern. It filled his aurals with the sound of his own fears, made him painfully aware of how loud his artery-tubes carried oil around his body.
Had it seen him?
There was an invidious lull where the only sound was that of the dying hoverboard. He tried composing himself, to calm the irregular venting that overtook him. An instinctive twitch. Hand reaching for his zipper. Then he heard it launch into the sky, wings beating once before shooting away with a shotgun’s bark.
Only then did he look back and saw the hoverboard recentering itself on its preset path.
Khan waited another minute, then another, until several had passed and he was certain the only noise he heard was that nightmarish dreamsome medley of sound. He forced his hands to relax. When had they started locking up? And let the holster hidden in his jacket alone.
—:: Sound off, who’s not dead? ::—
The shortwave carried itself across the broadband frequency the outpost used for all its outside runs. It was encrypted. Overlapping fields of diffusion that made interception cumbersome and confusing. A feat achieved thanks in no small part to the archivist found living in the bunker before Khan commandeered it. With that safety net, the words reached across the plaza to anyone still alive to receive them.
—:: Not me. ::— responded Todd.
He focused his eyelights on a spot opposite to his hiding spot and saw the telltale glint of a mirror. That cream-colored white was the labor drone’s signal. Where did he get the mirror? A quick ping like a slap across the broadband conveyed how stupid he thought the acquisition was, that prompted the glinting to stop.
—:: I’m not either, but I wish I was. ::— came Braxton.
A quick look to a point toward the center of the plaza brought Khan to a small boutique that once sold bicycles to tourists back when the weather was a balmy four Celsius. It had been precarious back then, from the looks of it. So neglect had done it little favor in the time since. Which might explain why it had collapsed like a house of cards with the monster’s impact against the central hoverboard. Not the most comfortable hiding spot, but it was better than being out in the open.
Khan didn’t envy Braxton’s luck.
He waited a moment longer, scanning the plaza for any other sign of life. Then he gritted his teeth and shortwaved the group again.
—:: Either of you see Makarov? ::—
—:: Not since he went dark. ::—
—:: I didn’t exactly have the luxury of looking around when the murder drone blew my house down. ::—
The labor drone sucked in a breath through the sluice of his teeth, memory metal drawn into a tight grimace. That did not bode well. None of this did. Why was one of the murder drones near the plaza? They planned this run for weeks; Makarov went out multiple times to scrutinize the flight paths of each monster’s patrol.
What changed?
—:: I don’t want to be that guy, but… Makarov was the body the murder drone was eating, right? If none of us were grabbed… ::—
Braxton, always eager to liven up the room.
Khan’s vocal synthesizer clicked.
—:: Probably, let’s hope it wasn’t and he’s just out of shortwave range. Braxton, how buried are you? ::—
There was another pause and he heard some shifting from farther into the plaza.
—:: Not so buried that I’m going to get crushed, but I definitely cannot get out on my own. ::—
Problematic, but not terribly so; Khan could work with these circumstances.
—:: Okay, here’s what we’re going to do: Todd, go and pull Braxton out of the rubble. You two should be able to carry the bags back to the bunker on your own. If I’m right, then one of them having gotten a kill will prompt the other two to flock back to their nest, giving you both ample time to make it back. Sarah should already be there waiting for extra hands. ::—
Already he was moving, stepping out from behind the corner that had shielded him thus far and checking the skies one last time. No whispers. He did not know how reliable the information Makarov had gathered during those years of reconnaissance was anymore, but it was all he had to go off of now. So he was going to stick to it like a hinge. Heavy steps took him across the plaza, one hand resting at his side while the other worked to keep up momentum.
—:: Wait, that plan doesn’t sound like you’re going to be helping. ::—
—:: No, so don’t wait for me. :—
Each stride brought him closer to one of the major arterial streets that spilled into the urban tributaries. It quickened his core. Threatened to steal his nerve with the thought of shadows lurking in the dark between buildings. He tightened his digits around the oversized handle of his sidearm, steeling himself with its certainty.
He would be fine.
—:: What? ::—
—:: Khan, do not tell me you’re actually going after Makarov. ::—
His friends’ confidence in him, or lack thereof, was noted with a quick vault over a wrecked car’s dented hood.
—:: We all know what those three things look like, and you’ve both read Makarov’s reports. The big one is the only one that can crack open cores. If it was him up there, then we can recover Makarov’s before the twitchy one gives over whatever it doesn’t eat to the big one, then Makarov can be plugged into a new frame before seven hours pass. ::—
From the corner of his peripheries was movement, a figure smaller but broader than him moving toward that boutique. That was Todd. He was from the product lines meant to convey hauls back to the surface. So he had an excess of fiber-muscle to work with, comparable to some industrial lines even. That muscle came at the cost of processing power, but he had a core bigger than most people Khan knew. If life was fair, he’d come out the other side of this apocalypse with that intact.
Life was seldom fair.
—:: Yeah, I did read Makarov’s reports, did you? Those things will smell you before you get close to their nest, Khan! Don’t be stupid and get yourself killed trying to be a hero! ::—
Braxton, always the optimist.
He was from the same product line as Khan, a labor drone meant to delve into the rock and plunder its riches for the good of their corporate overlords. Conventional in all regards. Not too fast, not too quick-witted. Designed to emulate the human form. They were bog-standard in so many regards that colonists had taken to calling every autonomous machine a worker drone, the colloquial nickname for mining drones. However, their simplicity meant they were also one of the easiest to repair and replace when damaged.
No doubt the reason why Braxton was, at best, pragmatic—why try to look on the bright side when the ceiling could cave in at any moment?
—:: Your confidence in me is reassuring, Braxton. Just focus on making sure this supply run wasn’t for nothing. If I’m not back in seven hours, you know what to do. ::—
All he got was a return of exasperated resignation, the most concern he’d ever get out of Braxton. It was touching in its own way. Then Todd sent one full of worry that almost got Khan to stop dead in his tracks.
—:: Don’t die, I don’t wanna be the one to tell your family if you don’t come back. ::—
His CPU buffered with playbacks, then, of two purple-eyed drones. One dressed in blacks and purples that accentuated her dower aesthetic. A veil to filter her faceplate and tint her eyelights with an enigmatic hue. From orchid to violet. She called it romantic goth. Khan called it beautiful. The other in a mishmash of her father and mother’s aesthetic sensibilities, still too young to come into her own style but old enough to start having ideas. If those ideas were a taste of what was to come, then Khan knew she was going to be even more of a hellion than she was now; Copper-9 would never be ready for her.
If life was fair, he’d get to see it.
—:: Wouldn’t dream of it, Todd. ::—
The labor drone crossed the northern threshold of the plaza, then, and crested over a series of ashlar blocks blasted down years ago. Each one cracked, smashed from the fall. That left them with many easy handholds. Many places to squeeze through and pop out the other side. Closer than Khan ever wanted to be to where this hell all began.
It wasn’t the stupidest thing he’d ever done, but this was definitely up there; Nori was going to throttle him when he got back.