ASHEN REIGN - Episode 2
Suzie was huddled beneath a decommissioned quikpod, watching the two unsuspecting colonists through her binoculars. They finally finished whatever weird shit they’d been doing with the node the past three days, left their DogWalker and made their way into a great hole in the side of a nearby building. They were heading up, Suzie knew it. And that meant the lifts were working. The only people who went into buildings were those wanting to get a view from the top.
Well, she would give them that.
She whistled, and Marc and Richard appeared from the shadows. Marc carried the long-dead charger machete he’d once stolen from a grunt-level mech, while Richard carried nothing. Richard was large enough to intimidate any human, weapon or no.
“We go up after them,” she instructed. The men nodded. Marc looked nervous, despite the imposing machine he wielded. None of them really wanted any trouble, but survival was synonymous with trouble here. Supplies rarely came without conflict and violence. Just because they weren’t colonists doesn’t mean they didn’t deserve to live. They were almost a colony at one point, until whatever twisted machine intelligence that was running this hellscape decided to invent the fucking Torrent.
“No deaths this time.” Richard said bluntly. She liked it when he was tough with her. Marc was a decent lover, but he wasn’t tough with her like Richard was. She could tell Marc loved her though, the way his face was screwed up after her and Richard fucked. But love was boring. Richard scared her, excited her. She couldn’t control him.
“I know. But come on, it was hardly my fault. We didn’t know where he was running off to.” The gutter rat had scurried into the shadows but Suzie was quicker. Sometimes she felt she should simply honor her primal instincts. She was good at surviving here, and her companions often did nothing but hold her back.
Elys took in a small conflict in the distance; tiny, pulsing purple and orange glows amid fiery explosions, figures, like insects from here but monolithic to humans, engaged in savage brawls and gunfights that spread like swarms of locust across square miles of razed cityscape. He usually would make up stories for the battles, trying to add some meaning and weight to his observations. Today felt different, like he was lost in uncertainty. As he watched the automated brutality all he felt was anger and futility. What could possibly be overseeing such destruction, and what was it all worth?
Desnum wept quietly. He told Elys he was fine, but Elys knew it would take a little more processing than that. He wiped his eyes and looked away from the terrible majesty of his world to the warped, alien shapes of the rooftop.
Three people stood watching them from the roof entrance.
Panic gripped him further. He managed to gasp. Elys turned and snapped into a stance Desnum had never seen before. One foot before the other, arms down and a calm intensity to his eyes. He was locked onto their intruders in a way that almost scared Desnum more. He said nothing, as if daring his attackers to approach.
A voice came down on the wind. A woman’s voice.
“You're gonna wanna hand over all the tech, all the protein, and all the water. Oh, and we’ll take authorization of your DW too.”
Elys said nothing. Desnum was fully panicking now. Was Elys just as scared as him, or did he have a plan? Were these guys going to take their stuff? Would they not just throw him and Elys off the roof after robbing them? Was this it?
Suzie was getting annoyed. Why weren’t they saying anything? The older man looked too confident, like he had some hidden weapon or trap set. Whatever weapon he had, it would be no bigger than a machete. The slanted roof was steep but with the right footing they could get down there.
“Marc,” she hissed. “Get their shit.” Marc’s eyes were laden with fear as he scanned the roof for a safe walk over. “Go on!”
“This doesn’t look safe, Suze.” He took a couple steps forward and stopped again. “It looks slippy.”
“It's dry concrete, get yourself down there. You’re the one who’s armed.”
Marc took another step and his foot shot out from under him. Suddenly he was on his back, screaming shrilly and sliding all-too-fast towards the colonists.
“HELPSUZIENOHELPFUCKHELPSTOPMESTOPMESTOPme…”
The older colonists took a step to the left and allowed Marc to plummet from the edge of the rooftop. Suzie’s gut churned at the thought of the distance he was falling. But they’d come too far now. They needed that water.
“Come on.” She said to Richard. “We can make it. He wa a fucking idiot. It’s too big a payoff with the DW, we have to get it.”
Richard scowled at the rooftop and then at Suzie. He sighed deeply.
“Come on! Get your ass down there!” She grabbed him by the arm and began to pull. “Do your fucking job!” Richard’s knee buckled slightly and he grunted, righting himself before taking Suzie by the back of her neck and throwing her like a ragdoll into the death-slide. She didn’t scream words, like Marc did. She simply screamed.
A piercing, wind-splitting scream to rival the sentry drones.
Desnum braced himself. The woman was sliding now too. What kind of kamikaze lunatics were these people?
No, it wasn’t that at all. She’d been thrown. The big guy had thrown her. Why?
The woman was approaching Desnum fast. He braced his footing as it occurred to him just how unsafe he was. Elys watched him intently, but could do nothing else in the seconds they had available.
Her scream continued as the woman’s body reached him. Her flailing arms grasped out.
And clutched Desnum’s right ankle.
Terror froze his veins and Desnum kicked out frantically. The woman’s grip fell as quickly as it had closed in, and she tumbled from the remaining roof with another guttural yelp.
Desnum and Elys looked up at the remaining man, a giant of a man, even from all the way up there. His hands were raised.
“I’m just gonna walk away. I’m sorry. She made us do that shit. I’m gonna leave you alone.”
The voice came downwind. He was turning his back to them, and then he was leaving. Desnum heard a scurrying sound and saw that Elys was after him, sprinting effortlessly up the slanted roof towards the exit door. The man was a predator. Desnum was suddenly terrified of him, but followed all the same. He was, after all, still more scared of the roof.
The elevator was two floors down, and Desnum finally caught up in the circling stairwell just as Elys snapped the giant man’s neck like he was twisting a cork from a bottle.
Sickness fell into Desnum’s stomach as he fell back into the stairs. A strange numbness overcame him. Could Elys do that to him if he saw fit? If Desnum was to jeopardise the safety of the people by, oh say, sneaking a cat into the encampment, could Elys erase him too, just as quickly?
It didn’t quite bear thinking about.
Elys looked up and his expression turned from cold steel to concerned grandpa. Then it fell somewhere in between.
“Come on.” He told Desnum.
They took the elevator back to their level and exited through the blast hole, back onto their suspended trackway. A strange texture to the track made his vision go funny, and Desnum realised that one of the ‘raiders’ must have hit it on the way down. Whoever it was, they were now a fine, red film across the metal work of the walkway. It was an odd thing to see a human reduced to.
They packed up the DogWalker and fixed the node together again. Thankfully nothing was affected by the misted corpse.
It was then time to head back to camp. The walk was a long one, but there’d be no telling when another live node would be detected, and who would be called out to it. Between now and then could be days, could be months.
For now, they were on their way home.