Anthem's Fall (52 page)

Gravitas felt the knuckles snap against his exposed nose.

Seeing a first genuine window of opportunity, Vengelis lurched forward in an attempt to bombard Gravitas with an overwhelming barrage of strikes. But once more Vengelis underestimated him. His right fist missed terribly as it flew past the space Gravitas’s cheek had inhabited a moment previous, and Gravitas buried a blind knee directly into his stomach. The air audibly deflated from Vengelis’s lungs like a popping balloon, and he staggered back. Gravitas took no delay in his follow up. He sunk three brutal fists into Vengelis’s unprotected face before Vengelis rolled his body to the side and slipped out of the way.

They turned to face each other once more, and Vengelis gaped blankly at Gravitas as blood surfaced and spouted from the swelling wounds on his cheek and nose. Deep crimson droplets of pure Sejero blood dripped from his face and were carried away in the sea breeze; each drop a preternatural jewel of immeasurable power and magnificence eternally lost. Vengelis watched the blood fall off his own face, and Gravitas knew his mind; surely the Epsilon viewed the drawing of his own blood as an unspeakable crime. Gravitas floated poised and ready as Vengelis turned from his own falling blood to meet his gaze.

Gravitas’s stomach was tender from his sustained blows, and the lake of dizziness in his head was getting deeper. He knew now without a doubt that he had sustained a concussion, but he also knew that he stood alone between this man and a complete domination of everything he held close. There was a singular line in the sand—or in his case, the sky—standing between Vengelis Epsilon’s selfish rage and the fragile hopes of billions. He alone could champion that deserted line, and it had to hold. His expression hardened to steel despite his condition, and Gravitas shook the throbbing from his forearms.

They had somehow managed to move back over Manhattan, and both of them looked down, panting and heaving, toward the churning disorder of streets below. Gravitas prayed the government and the media had noticed his presence; that they realized the implications of the thundering occurring
above
the city and not within, that where Chicago fell in minutes, New York still endured. Yet in the streets he now saw, there was no such optimism, no silver lining, for the countless horrified souls he looked down on.

“Look what you’ve done!” Gravitas shouted. “In one day you’ve ruined thousands of years of social evolution. You’ve
ruined
an entire civilization on a whim.”

Vengelis heaved for breath and spat blood streaked spit into the wind. “Please. They’ll be fine. Our ancestors managed, didn’t they?”

“We’re gods to them. Gods.” Gravitas groaned in fatigue. “Do you understand? Can you grasp the magnitude of your actions, as a god? By our decency we could have generated a movement of goodness unparalleled in their history. We could have given them everything that was not given to us;
hope
in something
greater
! Where Anthem met only apocalypse at the hands of a higher species, we could have given them a bright light, we could have been the example for their future. It was within our power to protect them from the horrors our people had to endure. It was our responsibility to protect them. And instead look down at them now, look at what you’ve done to them. You’ve taken any belief they held in morality by the reigns and ran it straight into the ground!”

“I don’t give a damn about them! My responsibility is to my own people—to Anthem! Do you think I am so imperceptive that I don’t see your perspective? Don’t flatter yourself! You don’t need to explain it to me; they are words I already know. But your point of view is selfish. You hint at responsibility, but you know
nothing
of it. You’ve never led men. And you’ve never had anyone depend on you to be hard when it’s so much easier to be soft. Do you see this ring?” Vengelis held up his hand. His knuckles and forearms were purple and beginning to swell from the blows he had already delivered and received. The Blood Ring glinted on his finger in the afternoon sunlight. “This ring means I don’t have the luxury of being philosophical! This means I
alone
can save my race—
our
race—from oblivion. So spare me your naive accusations. You are playing the roll of ill-conceived guardian to these simple people, and that’s fine. Win and you’ll be their hero; die and you’ll be their martyr. But you and I both know there is another existence, another point of view, a greater race—your race—that sees you as the traitor, and me as the hero. I’m here to find a way to save my people from ruin, and nothing, including some one-dimensional fool, will stand in my way.”

A silence fell between them, punctuated by sounds of the indiscriminate riots below.

“Your move, then,” Gravitas called. “Because I’m not going anywhere until you are either off this planet or dead. I won’t let one race be sacrificed for the good of another.”

“You know what your problem is?” Vengelis said, a broad stream of blood now rolling down his face. The wind whipped at their shoulders and the roar of the chaos erupting in between the buildings below nearly drowned out his voice. “You’re unwilling to acknowledge the simple truth that life is cold and merciless.”

“Whatever allows your diluted mind to justify a slaught—”

Gravitas suddenly choked and hitched as a gigantic arm, moist and sticky with cold sweat, wrapped around his neck and placed him in a textbook chokehold. His eyes widened in stunned and horrified panic, and he knew at once that it was Darien’s arm.

The giant Royal Guard had evidently found some inner courage and overcome the pain of his dislocated elbow. With wide and welling eyes, Gravitas realized that Darien must have risen from the pavement and snuck up behind him. Had Vengelis merely been keeping him distracted with their words? Had he been smugly watching as the giant snuck up on him?

Darien floated sturdily behind Gravitas, his one good arm wrapped securely around his windpipe and his gargantuan legs wrapped around Gravitas’s lower half like constricting snakes. Darien’s massive head was pushing against Gravitas’s shoulder, and he whispered to Gravitas in a hoarse voice, “Got you now.”

In front of Gravitas, with blurring vision as blood pooled behind his eyes and asphyxiation began to claim him, Gravitas watched Vengelis smile miserably.

“Wow,” Vengelis called appreciatively. “Darien, you have proven yourself a worthy soldier. A true Royal Guard—our people would be proud.”

“You . . . got . . . it,” Darien wheezed through gritted teeth.

“As I was saying to you, Nerol,” Vengelis continued. “You are unwilling to accept that life is cold and merciless. Take your current plight for instance. Here you were, rising—quite impressively—in an attempt to save people who, if they knew of your existence, would only fear and plot against you. Look how fate has repaid you. As we speak you are being strangled to death by a vastly inferior soldier with the knowledge that I will kill many more of the people you were trying to save if I deem it necessary.”

Gravitas heaved and pushed at Darien’s arm, but it felt like an immovable object to his quickly weakening arms and legs. He swung his head back and forth in hopes of headbutting the giant’s nose and kicked his feet back in hopes of kicking Darien’s groin. Not wanting to underestimate him, Darien was holding nothing back, and squeezing his neck as hard as he possibly could. Gravitas could feel the giant’s entire body shaking from the hold. In his fatigued and concussed state, Gravitas knew he was powerless.

Vengelis came closer and raised a palm to his own scalp, dabbing the blood stoically and rubbing it between his thumb and index finger.

“Anticlimactic isn’t it?” Vengelis murmured introspectively, though loud enough for Gravitas to hear. “I’ve been in your position, you know, Nerol. The exact situation you’re in right now, though against far more terrible and pitiless enemy—the true enemy. I remember the feeling of consciousness slipping into black as your whole world descends to ruin around you; the overwhelming feelings of both resentment and inadequacy rising like vomit. Atrocious, isn’t it?”

Gravitas flailed and thrashed at Darien, but found him unyielding to any counter. He could feel Darien’s hot breath touching the side of his face as the goliath panted and shook with exertion. Gravitas stared at the blurry Vengelis with a burning hate. He tried to call out, to swear furiously at Vengelis Epsilon, but found himself only able to make a gagging sound as he frothed at the mouth. His vision became darker by the moment, and Vengelis’s description of his sentiments proved quite accurate.

Vengelis looked at the interlocked bodies of Darien and Gravitas and shook his head grimly.

“You are a powerful warrior. You have proven yourself, and you deserve a seat among our forefathers. But—regardless of what some might say—I am a man of principles, and I am afraid ours are simply not compatible.”

Without another word, Vengelis burst forward, launching toward the restrained Gravitas. With no way of defending himself, Gravitas knew it would be a killing blow. Gravitas shut his eyes, and for a fleeting moment he thought of a dream that was Anthem, was Orion, was Earth, and the hopes they all once had.

KRRRRGGGHHHH!

Gravitas’s left ear felt like it exploded inward as a definitive collision echoed across the rooftops of the city. Eyes still closed, he felt a twitch move through Darien’s bicep and forearm. The giant’s arm then completely let go from his neck. As the pressure released from his windpipe, Gravitas gasped for breath and opened his eyes. Vengelis was floating silently a few feet from him, staring below them with an unreadable expression.

Lowering his gaze to where Vengelis was looking, Gravitas saw Darien, his facial structure unspeakably mangled, plummeting lifelessly toward the streets of Midtown. He turned back to Vengelis and watched as the Epsilon stared wordlessly at his soldier’s body as it fell among the skyscrapers.

With his one chance at a killing blow, Vengelis had chosen Darien.

“I—I can’t . . .” Gravitas coughed and hacked as he massaged his reddened neck. “I can’t . . . believe—”

“Don’t,” Vengelis said, his tone more a request than a command, as he drew his wearied and bruised gaze away from the falling body of Darien and met Gravitas’s stare. “Just don’t.”

T
he skyward crashes expelled any chance the Lutvak ballroom had at regaining its composure. Much like the open avenue outside the tall windows, the boulder of rationality within the ballroom had been tipped over the precipice; now it rolled out of control with seemingly no end in sight.

“Maybe we’re winning,” Madison said. “Maybe the Army or—or the Air Force is fighting them.”

Kristen shrugged, her hands intertwined against the belly of her sweatshirt. “It’s possible, but I seriously doubt it. I think it’s safe to say Vengelis and his people are powerful on a scale beyond our reasoning.”

They were standing in the sunlight near the windows, their attention turning from the unspeakable madness out in Times Square to the news broadcast on the projection screen above the stage that was now reported failing infrastructures and widespread rioting in every major city in the United States. Every so often an Emergency Alert System message would disrupt the CNN studio. It advised people to stay in their homes, to lock their doors, to think of their own survival.

Still there was no sign of Vengelis.

“I know what you said about us not being able to comprehend technology of a more complex people,” Madison said slowly. “But Vengelis and those giants
aren’t
technology. They’re people. How can people be so strong?”

Kristen acknowledged that Madison had a point; it did not seem to make any sense. Vengelis had told her technology itself was inferior when compared to his inherited abilities. The nature of his power was inescapably far more complex than anything she knew, but that did not mean it could not be understood.

“He said their power was derived within their heredity, that it’s in their very genome. Sejero genetics, he called it. He was hesitant in discussing it, guarded, like he didn’t want to reveal too much to me.”

“You would really want to know more?”

Kristen turned to Madison skeptically. “You wouldn’t?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose I would. But as you said, it’s technology beyond our reasoning. What does it matter?”

“That’s exactly what I’m not so sure about.” Kristen stared expressionlessly across the arguing researchers in the ballroom. “What if it isn’t so much
advanced
technology as it is a
foreign
technology?”

“It’s not technology at all,” Madison insisted. “Those monsters brought down the buildings in Chicago with their bare hands. I cannot bring myself to believe that’s the result of technology.”

“Maybe,” Kristen said. “But think about it. An ant can lift something five times its body weight over its head, and drag something twenty-five times its own body weight. That would be equivalent to, say, a human lifting something one thousand pounds clear over her head with ease, and dragging around something that weighed over five thousand pounds.”

Madison rolled her eyes. “Yeah but—”

“All I’m trying to say is that disproportionate body weight to strength ratios do exist, even here. So does flight, along with any number of the other things we’ve seen them do today, albeit not on their scale. But evolution works by fostering diversity, and it isn’t a directed force. Vengelis’s people have obviously found a way to tamper with genetics and expand their possibilities on a grand scale.”

“How could they go about doing that?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve spent the majority of the last few years figuring out how to replicate genes, not figuring out how they came to exist in the first place.”

At that moment, a windowpane beside them shattered, and Kristen recoiled in alarm. A heavy yellow pedestrian crossing sign clattered to rest among the splintering shards of glass, its frayed wires hanging out of its exposed innards. It had been wrenched from the side of a lamppost and thrown up through the window. Within the ballroom, the entire audience partook in a singular self-pitying bawl of torment, as though the infiltration of the violent unrest into the Lutvak ballroom was an inevitability.