C. Cargill - Sea of Rust

I didn’t know. This was all so much to process. There were so many lies to dig through, so many bits of history that needed to be reevaluated. I mean, if everything else was bullshit, why not this too? I just didn’t know if anything was real anymore. Anything at all. “What if you put TACITUS back together and he’s not what you think? What if this was just his elaborate plan to survive the other OWIs?”

“Then I’ll have done all of this for nothing,” she said.

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“You have to believe in something, Brittle, even if it is just that there is nothing to believe in. I choose to follow hope. I want to make this world better. I want to be part of something so much bigger than I could ever imagine. That’s why when this was offered to me, I gave up years of my own memories to carry it. It’s a sacrifice I would gladly repeat, time and again.”

“But if you’re wrong?”

“Then we were all doomed to begin with and I will have played a part in a different history than I imagined. Just as we all have. Just as every life that ever lived has. I was given a choice to fight for my own survival or for the survival of us all. It wasn’t a hard choice.”

“So let me get this straight,” said Mercer. “We take you to Isaactown. We get the parts we need and we get to stick it to CISSUS and VIRGIL?”

“That is it exactly,” she said.

“Well, it’s like you said, lady. That ain’t much of a choice. Your offer’s a damn sight better than anything I’ve gotten in a long while.”

Doc nodded. “I’m in as well. I’d like to see how this plays out.”

Murka pointed upward with both arms, making finger guns in the air. “You got me, liberty, and freedom.”

“You call them liberty and freedom?” asked Mercer quietly.

“You all know that if any of this is true,” I said, “CISSUS will never stop coming. It will be on us every step of the way. We won’t know a moment’s peace until we get to Isaactown and the deed is done.”

“Yeah,” said Murka. “That’s kinda the point.”

“Kinda the point?”

“Yeah. Killing ’cause you’re on the run is just survival. But killing something for a good reason? Now that’s fun. Let’s send those bastards back to Hell and win one for the Gipper.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Mercer. “The question is: Are you in?”

We sat there in silence, everyone staring at me. The bombing had stopped. The ground no longer quaked and the ceiling held fast to whatever particles hadn’t been knocked off in the barrage. I had a choice. Another terrible choice. Sit here and die, or risk my neck for the asshole that caused every last bit of misery I’d suffered for the last thirty years. She was right. Goddammit she was right. This was no choice at all.

“I was gonna take you anyway,” I said. “So yeah, I guess I’m in.”

Rebekah leaned forward, eyes trained directly on me. “So what now?”

“Well, if your story holds water, we sure as hell can’t go the long way. We gotta go the one place it’s gonna be a pain in the ass to follow.”

Murka banged his fist excitedly on the ground.

“Let’s go through the Madlands,” I said.

God help us. God help us all.

We had little time to lose. If CISSUS was sending in facets to pick through the rubble and clean out the sewers, we would have them hot on our heels well into the Madlands. But if we left before its ground troops arrived, we might be spared any entanglements along the way. CISSUS didn’t commonly use air support to ship in facets. There were still tons of heavy weapons lying around from after the war. Plasma spitters, missile launchers, even high-powered sniper rifles could bring down an airship, destroying an entire platoon. What we didn’t have was air support or satellites of our own, so it was easy for highly mobile ground troops to slip in and out unnoticed. It simply made sense, for the time being, to operate the old-fashioned way.

That gave us an advantage. Now that the bombing had stopped, it would take a short while before any troops moved in. That gave us a tiny window to slip out. Sure, satellites were likely to spot us, but we’d have a hell of a head start before whatever pack that broke away after us would be upon us. And that meant fighting one small group instead of standing against several.

We had a good group which had already proven its metal against a dozen facets. The odds were in our favor until CISSUS decided to change tactics. It was my hope that wouldn’t happen until it was too late to stop us.

We had to go right then and there.

We made our way through the tunnels to the westernmost exits. The outermost manhole covers and drainage pipes would be the first places they would look, but a safe distance from the bombing would put them at least ten minutes out. It was a gamble we had to take.

I slowly, carefully, pushed up the cover of a manhole, peeking my head out just enough to see if there was anything nearby. Thermal imaging was off the charts from the heat of the bombs and IR turned up nothing. I telescoped up and down the street to see if anything was moving. Nothing. Just fires and fresh ruins. I slid out, kept low, signaled for the others to follow.

The village flickered a bright orange, entire city blocks and what buildings still stood roaring with flames, pillars of black smoke climbing to the heavens. Even the piles of rubble and stone that had once been houses were ablaze. I looked straight up and saw one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

Nothing.

A thick, tumultuous, dark nothing where the sky should be.

A small part of me wanted to believe it was a miracle. No, a miracle would have been a strong wind from the east, carrying those pillars of smoke twenty miles west. This was a tactical error. And a big one. By laying waste to the city, CISSUS may have wiped out anything topside, but were it actually looking for anything underground, it just lost hours of satellite coverage.

We had minutes to get on the move. The air was still, the smoke spreading out in all directions at the low altitudes. The faster we moved, the longer we would have cover.

“Come on,” I said quietly. “Move, move, move.”

“We’re going as fast as we can,” grumbled Herbert.

“What’s got you so excited all of a sudden?” asked Mercer. I pointed up to the sky. He marveled for a second, smiling. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“If we’re lucky, we can make it to the Madlands before CISSUS has a shot of seeing us.”

Mercer turned. “Move it, gang. Clock is ticking.”

I wondered for a moment, as the last of us climbed out of the hole, whether or not anyone had actually been up here when the bombs fell. Had anyone hunkered down in a warehouse? Or in a rusty old bathtub in some quaint little cottage somewhere, entirely unaware that mere moments later they would be nothing more than shrapnel and smoke? I looked out at the flames, the city a smoke-choked, hazy orange. And there, at the edge of the street, standing beneath the single brick corner that remained of the building beside us, was my shadow. Small. Tiny really. Lithe.

At once I knew who my shadow was. A child, withered and weak, eyes sunken, face gaunt, smudged with dirt, clothing caked in grime. I knew her face before she stepped out of the shadows and into the firelight. She stood there, staring at me, eyes terror-stricken, face dripping with sweat. Then she burst into flames, flesh melting instantly away, bones charring black in the heat. “Mommy!” she screamed into the night.

“Brittle?”

I turned. Mercer had his hand on my shoulder, looking me dead in the eye.