Anthem's Fall (49 page)

“Nerol, please—
please
—show me some compassion. For god’s sake not in front of them!” Darien breathed, his face mortified with embarrassment.

“Were it not for my interception of you two and your genocide, everyone in this city would be dead!” Gravitas screamed down at him. “You dare attempt to slaughter so many souls and then ask to be shown compassion? You
dare
?”

“I’m sorry . . .”

“If you really are sorry, good. But that doesn’t excuse you for your actions. You are broken beyond repair.”

Gravitas turned to the growing cluster of shocked spectators, who seemed unsure whether he was friend or foe. Closest to him was a group of teenagers standing beside the hood of a recently abandoned Toyota. They could not have been older than high schoolers. One of the girls in a pink hoodie was shaking from head to toe and being held up by two of her friends. All of their faces were overflowing with fear.

“Mortal!” Gravitas roused himself and roared in English to no one in particular. His voice carried across the disbelieving onlookers as he moved his gaze from face to face, every camera phone recording the display. “These giants—though very powerful—are mortal! They are like me. We are not deities, or the agents of any god or devil. There is nothing,
nothing
, magical, religious, or supernatural about us. We are simply more advanced! We are in every way as fallible and foolish as any of you. Do not despair and give in to anguish, for not all of our race are as coldhearted as those who have attacked Chicago, and justice will be brought upon them. You are not alone in this fight.”

Darien flailed violently on the ground. Gravitas reached down and grabbed him. He pulled the behemoth up to an unsteady standing position, and pushed him against a street lamp that bent behind his shoulder blade. Darien leaned into the iron and wheezed heavily.

“Y-you stupid little . . .” Darien gasped. “V-V-Vengelis is going to slaughter you.”

Gravitas stared at the grotesque Imperial First Class soldier, and again spoke in English, this time just to Darien.

“This is for what you would have done to Kristen Jordan.” Gravitas lowered his voice even more. “This is for what you would have done to Ryan Craig.”

Without another word, Gravitas cocked his right fist back, ready to execute Darien with one final killing blow.

Just before he uncoiled his strike, a sudden and distinct popping sound emanated from the sky to the north. Gravitas instantly recognized the noise as a rupture of the sound barrier, and for a split second his eyes widened in surprise as he turned his face to the direction of the sound.

CRAAAACK!

A strike like nothing he had ever felt in his life connected with Gravitas’s face. His world rolled back, and he felt himself lift and jettison across the street. Gravitas crashed headfirst straight through a building and his body erupted out the opposite end. His back skipped brutally off the pavement of the street beyond. He reached his arms out to steady himself, but his fingers clawed right through the pavement and he flipped backward, smacking into another building and crashing through the exterior wall. Like a wrecking ball he rolled across the first floor of an office building. Desks and cubicle partitions were hurled and thrown in every direction as the veritable typhoon traveled across the office floor.

At last Gravitas’s stunned body came to rest, sliding to a stop on his back. Gravitas stared in shock at ceiling tiles and a faintly whirring vending machine. His ears rung and his vision filled with blinking colors. He shook his head and looked dizzily past his legs at the tunnel of destruction his body had bored. An unobstructed path like the trail of a meteor led to where he had stood a moment previous; even cars had been tossed aside by the force of his body.

It felt as though something immensely heavy was forcefully pressing down on his face. Gravitas placed a shaking palm across his cheek and pulled it away to see startlingly bright red blood on his fingertips. His cheek was cut below the eye. Gravitas could not remember the last time he had seen his own blood, and he stared at it in wonder. Whoever hit him was immensely strong, stronger even than Master Tolland.

As he looked at his blood stained fingers, Gravitas knew he had just become acquainted with an Epsilon. He unsteadily rose to his feet and oriented himself with a shake of his head while wiping his bloodstained hand brusquely on his armor. He was not concussed, just rattled. The wind had been knocked out of him, and his breathing was uneven.

There was no other option, no space for reservations or second thought. He had to be victorious.

The warrior side of Gravitas, the animal side, closed its eyes. He transcended into a steadied and practiced concentration. He inhaled stability and exhaled doubt, he inhaled focus and exhaled insecurity, he inhaled strength and exhaled weakness. Powerfully and deeply his chest heaved again and again, each time his breaths becoming stronger and more furious. He allowed himself to absolutely seethe, and he let rage claim him.

At last he exhaled, and when his eyes opened there was a searing fire burning behind them. The entire office seemed to explode as Gravitas Nerol erupted like a raging bull, and charged back through the tunnel.

This was the fight he had waited for his entire life.

V
engelis watched with a wary expression as the mysterious warrior clad in Imperial Armor reeled backward from his punch. The man’s body crashed straight through the building across the street and tumbled out of sight beyond. Deep ringing echoes from the massive strike traveled up and down the avenue of tall offices like the deafening crack of a whip.

The people on the street corner instantaneously scattered, cupping their ears from the sound of the blow and bowing their heads to the pavement. Vengelis remained perfectly still and ready. As the dust cleared, he could see straight through the wrecked building and into the street beyond, where his unknown aggressor had slid and disappeared into a trail of rubble leading into the building one block over.

Vengelis’s eyelids shook, not in fear, but in concentration, as he stood at the ready over the wheezing and whimpering Darien. Whom had he just hit? No one was strong enough to defeat Hoff and Darien at the same time, save for a few Royal soldiers.

“M-my lord. I’m . . . s-sorry,” Darien gasped by Vengelis’s feet. “Thank god you’re here. My . . . my
arm
!”

“Shut up,” Vengelis whispered, his voice cold and callous. His eyes were still locked on the burrowed tunnel of carnage.

“H-he’s . . . like you, my lord. Nerol s-son. Royal . . . blood . . . 
trained
 . . .”

A hushed moment passed where, perhaps just in Vengelis’s focused mind, the entire city block seemed to become still with a pulsing medium of apprehension. Then, the muffled supersonic popping sound Vengelis had been waiting for sounded from the loose debris two blocks over. Vengelis grimaced uncertainly as the mysterious young man sprinted back through the tunnel and charged toward him. His eyes suddenly widened in stunned shock as he realized his antagonist’s astonishing speed almost before it was too late. Vengelis had barely enough time to raise his forearms to shield his face before his attacker was within striking distance.

The strange warrior unleashed his own equally powerful strike upon Vengelis. The mighty fist smashed into Vengelis’s crossed forearms with a pulverizing strength like Vengelis had never before felt, save perhaps against the Felixes. Vengelis’s arms flew to his sides in absorption of the punch, and he staggered backward several steps, nearly falling onto his back. Behind Vengelis, the shockwave of raw energy that traveled past the mirrored windows from the blocked punch had a bomb-like effect on the outer wall of the office building. Darkened panes of glass shattered outward all the way up to the fiftieth floor. Millions of tiny shards fell from the lofty heights like torrential sparkling raindrops in the sunlight, chiming noisily against the pavement and upon the two warriors’ impervious shoulders.

The two young men stared at each other wordlessly through the cascade of silvery glass. Not crude and ungainly like most Primus soldiers, the two idols each stared at a strikingly similar manifestation of their own Sejero purity. They were young and lean, relatively thin of shoulder, with striking looks.

They were equals in kind.

Vengelis glared at the dark-haired stranger. The young man was within a year or two of his own age, and perhaps an inch taller than he. He was clad in Imperial First Class Armor, yet Vengelis could not place his face. Vengelis would have considered him a human imposter if not for the startling pain that throbbed through his forearms from deflecting this young man’s strength. Although this stranger’s cheek was bleeding, Vengelis could not believe how little damage his punch had done.

Yet even in the midst of his total confusion, and the pins and needles in his forearms, Vengelis’s face remained a portrait of cool. His calm countenance veiled even the slightest indication of his pain or rising bewilderment. Vengelis watched as the stranger’s eyes fixated momentarily on the Blood Ring before returning to meet his gaze.

Vengelis at last broke the silence, his voice carrying over the shimmering shards of glass that fell seemingly from the heavens.

“Who are you?”

“Ryan Craig,” the enigma replied.

Vengelis looked doubtfully to his Imperial First Class armor and shook his head slowly.

“No, you aren’t. What’s your name?”

There was a long silence between them, interspersed only by Darien’s guttural moaning from the pavement.

“My name is Ryan Craig,” the stranger said. “Though there was a time when I was called Gravitas Nerol.”

“
Gravitas
Nerol?” Vengelis repeated, glaring at him disdainfully. “
What
?”

“You might know of my father, Pral N—”

“Of course, I know Pral Nerol,” Vengelis said. “But you’re lying. Pral Nerol’s son is dead.”

“Then you must believe in ghosts to be speaking to me.”

This statement left Vengelis speechless for a moment, but he then shook his head in stern disbelief. “Pral Nerol’s son died in space during the Orion campaign. I remember reading the report. It was the transport accident; he died with Bronson Vikkor.”

“And yet here I am.”

“Here you are . . . and quite riled up it would seem.” Vengelis frowned as he regarded Gravitas Nerol, coming to the conclusion at once from the radiating pain in his forearms that this stranger must be telling the truth. “I take it you’re the one who traveled here on the
Traverser I
?”

Vengelis saw a flicker of confusion pass across Gravitas Nerol’s face at the mention of the ship, but he merely nodded. “Yes.”

“Why? What the hell have you been doing here?” Vengelis looked about the glass-strewn intersection and frightened faces hiding underneath anything and everything against the killing rain of glass. “You’re the son of Royalty for god’s sake.”

“I have been living. Your father banished me from Anthem upon my return from Orion.”

“What are you talking about? Upon
what
return from Orion?”

“When the transport arrived on Anthem, Emperor Faris banished me for—”

“You’re lying,” Vengelis interjected, frustration and contempt growing in his voice. “I have never heard of my father banishing anyone—let alone the son of a Royal family.”

Gravitas shrugged. “Believe what you will. Your father exiled me for killing Bronson Vikkor. I find it strange that your general, Hoff, knew of this, and you do not.”

Vengelis flexed his wrists forcefully to dissipate the throbbing in his forearms. He then rolled his eyes impatiently and, unexpected even to himself, reached out to shake Gravitas Nerol’s hand.

“I don’t have time for this. I am the emperor now, and I pardon you of whatever petty war crimes you committed in the past. There are more important matters at hand. You’re the son of Royalty, and our race needs a pure bloodline such as yours during this desperate hour.”

“These are my people,” Gravitas ignored Vengelis’s outstretched hand and looked to the nearby humans shrinking away from them. “And it is to the cause of their desperation that I will rise.”

Vengelis glared at Gravitas with growing distaste.

“Look around you. Do you see the Imperial First Class with me? Do you see the Imperial Army razing every city on this archaic globe and the ranks of the Royal Guard standing by my side? It was just three of us—two now because of your recklessness. I will only ask once to take my hand and help us in—”

“Leave,” Gravitas Nerol said, his voice rough and furious. “Leave this place now, and never return.
I
will only ask
you
once.”

“Excuse me?” Vengelis smirked, though his nostrils flared in rage. His outstretched hand fell to his side as he let out an arrogant chuckle. He shook his head and regarded Gravitas Nerol with amusement and condescension as the strange Royal son held his ground. “Are you threatening me?”

“If I must.”

“All right,” Vengelis nodded. “We can go down this path too. You did murder my Lord General after all.”

“Put him down like the savage dog that he was, yes.”

Vengelis raised his eyebrows. “Not much sense of honor for the son of a Royal family.”

“You speak of honor after ordering the slaughter of innocent people?” Gravitas asked.

“That word you just said,” Vengelis held up a palm, “I’m entirely unfamiliar with it.”

Gravitas Nerol inclined his head. “What word?”

“In-no-cent,” Vengelis enunciated each syllable slowly with a grave and humorless look. “I only know of its synonym. Weak.”

“You sicken me.”

Vengelis shrugged his shoulders. He had been right to come investigate Hoff’s dying statement that Nerol had been on Filgaia. The concern that Pral Nerol was here or that the Felixes somehow traveled to Filgaia had now dissipated. It was time to end this trivial exchange. Remnants of his people were surely hiding hopelessly in the ruins of Sejeroreich and every city of his empire, and a scientist capable of helping him was within his grasp. He needed to get back to Kristen Jordan as swiftly as possible.