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I woke up slowly, and I was surprisingly comfortable. I was asleep large bed with all silk sheets for what felt like a long time as I regained consciousness, sort of. I felt bandages around my torso, and I could tell the room was a comfortable temperature even though I was nice and warm all curled up in a ball with the sheets up to my nose. I didn’t open my eyes since I heard voices. Every cell in my body wet on edge when I heard Trenxi in the same room.
“You did very well, 98-1.” He said calmly, “Are your wounds healed?”
“Yes, sir.” I heard Cloud reply…or was it him? Something was off about his voice, did he sound sad? Remorseful?”
Yeah, right…
“We’ll have to fix that scar; you’ll be useless with something so obviously different from the true Anan. Akhy had always made problems like that.”
“Sir, will Lady Ragnarok be alright?”
“It’ll take a lot more than that to kill her. The first poison you injected into her arm worked nicely in making her so susceptible to weakness from injuries.”
“What about the real Anan? Will he really come looking for her?”
“Perhaps, but he won’t find her. We’ll need to keep her in a coma for about six months after I talk to her, than return her to mutation. Now that we know females, especially virgins, gain powers the best, the rest of the specimens in her series will be selected carefully. Akhy is hardly needed anymore, but I find her connections to Skyevi very interesting. Akiko told me much of them after she ‘died’.”
“Is Anan also legally dead?”
“No, being Anan didn’t enter the project as Akhy did, he is still legally alive. 98-1, you seem very interested in Ragnarok, do you harbor any feelings for the woman who tried to kill you?”
“N-no, sir, of course not.” He stammered. “I only know what you’ve told me of her, she didn’t say anything important when we were talking…”
“You are dismissed. In the future, do not lie to me.”
“Yes, sir.” I heard him say as he left the room.
I opened my eyes saying,
“So, he was a duplicate.”
Trenxi turned around and looked at me, his face staying expressionless. The room was all white, spherical, and Trenxi with his black hair and eyes was a direct contrast. He walked over to the bed I was asleep in, his lab coat fluttering slightly as he said,
“Good morning, Akhyia Ragnarok. I thought you were awake, how does it feel to realize you fell for a replica of your companion? I figured it would be a nice pun since I killed a replica of your sister and buried her with a grave that read, ‘Akiko Ragnarok’, as you know.”
“I figured it was a sick joke like that.” I said coldly sitting up, my wound objecting.
“You look very much like your sister, Akhy. I might not have taken you in as a mutant if I’d known you’d grow into a fine young woman. Though compared to your sister directly, your bulky shoulders and lack of femininity are distinctly unattractive.”
“Shut up, you old cad.” I said automatically. I saw him sneer slightly as he said,
“I suppose you heard most of my conversation with 98-1, correct? Though he did bring you back, his personality is a failure, and he’s nothing like real Anan though, so I’ll probably dispose of him.”
“Still playing god with their lives, huh?”
He sneered evilly saying,
“Isn’t the last thing you said to me before being put into that coma that lasted five years, ‘you have no right to play god with their lives’?”
“I suppose it was, and that is relative how?”
“I suppose you’d like it if the real Anan was a little more like 98-1? 98-1 isn’t cold or merciless, needless to say I have no reason to let him live when I could make one thousand other replicas of Anan. Though, now that I have you again I doubt any more will be needed.”
“Where’s Akiko? And why do virgins so compatible with your psycho experiments?” I demanded, wishing I had my katana.
“I believe it is time you rested, Lady Ragnarok. You’ll aggravate your wound if you get too excited or angry.” He turned around and stood in front of the automatic doors and said, “Good night, Lady Ragnarok.”
I reached my hand up my right pant leg and pulled out the small pistol. I fired one shot and Trenxi’s back, and I was sure I heard him laugh as he fell against the wall and on his side. I jumped out of the bed, pulled on my boots, and ignored the pain coming from the wound as I ran to the door.
I stopped at Trenxi’s corpse wondering to myself,
Is he really dead?
Of course he is, he may be psycho but he isn’t immortal…right?
I bent down beside him, and stole his two pistols; they both were twenty-shots. He was smiling madly, his eyes still open.
I cast one last look at him before I ran out of the room and down the hall. I had no idea where in the building I was, or if I was back in Nioglow or not. All Twi-LIGHT bases had the same basic set up, I ran down the hall until I got to an elevator, and saw I was on the tenth floor. There were another forty floors above me, all of them large and wide. Twi-LIGHT buildings were similar skyscrapers, but they weren’t tall and skinny, they were wide and long. All Twi-LIGHT buildings were one hundred floors, fifty above round and fifty underground.
I couldn’t help but wonder if Trenxi put the expenses of five years of Twi-LIGHT construction on credit cards and always had the plan on killing out parents after he married Akiko, the building probably cost a few billion dollars to build.
I pressed the button for the ground floor, getting my idea of they lay-out from what I remember of the Nioglow headquarters. Nioglow’s base was two hundred floors total, double the size of the other Twi-LIGHT bases. I was surprised to see I wasn’t in Nioglow, since Trenxi never left Nioglow in the time Akiko was still alive.
I stopped myself when I realized I was tapping my foot in impatience. The elevator doors opened and there were two girls in Twi-LIGHT researcher uniform laughing about to enter. They both froze when they saw me, since civilians weren’t aloud in Twi-LIGHT buildings. Either that, or if they were higher-ups, they knew I had a bounty on my head and am legally dead. I pointed Trenxi’s pistol and the one woman’s forehead saying,
“Don’t say a word.” I stepped out of the elevator and kept my pistol trained on the terrified employee before turning around and bolting. I knew I’d have even more security after me in a few minutes.
Damn, I took the central elevator… I thought to myself when I caught a glimpse of a digital map on the wall. I reached the exit in a few moments, and I saw the security devices attached to the doors and fired two shots, shattering the locks. I pushed through the doors with my shoulder ignoring the receptionist calling security and the other employees.
I stood in front of the building and I was met with a platoon of twenty armed soldiers. I stopped cold in my tracks and cast a look back into the building, and saw more soldiers arriving…I was surrounded.
“Drop your weapon.” The female officer said pointing her machine gun at me.
I heard a scream and a body drop in the reception area and I glanced backwards to see who it was causing the commotion. I saw Anan’s replica holding a short woman in the a white lab coat and with only an ID card showing she was a Twi-LIGHT worker. He had his blade against her neck and proceeded to push her out the building next to me.
Why the hell is he helping me?
“You know who this is.” He said addressing the Twi-LIGHT soldiers, “The main engineer of the Skyevi generator, who’s also in charge of keeping her power contained. If she dies, you’ll have a hell of a time controlling you toy.”
I recognized her suddenly her suddenly as the woman who had been begging Trenxi to stop the power transfer from Skyevi to Akiko, if Trenxi and here were here was Skyevi here too?
The soldiers lowered their guns and “Anan” let go of the woman and grabbed my wrist pulling me along at a run around the corner of the building and into a poorly pit passage of stairs at the corner of the building.
“Why the hell are you helping me?” I demanded as we ran down the stairs.
He handed me my katana saying,
“Because Trenxi is going to have me killed anyway.”
“That still doesn’t give you any reason to help me.”
“We’re going to be entering an underground garage, I hacked the system so the back exit is unlocked. I got your motorcycle back too, I made sure there weren’t any trackers on it either. We’re in Myildaypain, you’re friend, the real Anan Nimbostratus, is in the city. So is Kinomyano, Anan was at Neivila, but I don’t know exactly where.”
We entered the underground garage, and I glanced around quickly to see all the other cars and trucks parked, but “Anan” didn’t stop so I kept on following him.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re doing this.”
“Because you’re the only one who treats me like a human, not just a tool.” He answered simply. He stopped and ran behind a large eighteen wheeler and tossed me the keys to my motorcycle that sat in the shadow of the large truck. My backpack hung on the handlebars. There was a large open garage door in front of us, it lead onto a road upward that would get me to the surface.
“You shouldn’t stay here.” I said as I started up my motorcycle and wrapped the straps of the backpack around the tip of the metal tip on the first tear and wedged it in a spot it would stay between the metal tear and the long leather seat. I always liked this design of motorcycle; since the long seat was the top of a long solid half-cylinder metal piece that covered all the mechanics. There weren’t any pedals either, just gas controls and breaks in the handle bars. The bottom metal tear had solid bottom with grips. That’s where I jammed my backpack, in that enclosed part.
I’d better keep my gun in hand, I still don’t know if this is an act. It would be just like Trenxi to set up some plan like this and use a flaw as a perfect trick.
“I’ll be fine, you need to get to Myildaypain. Twi-LIGHT doesn’t have a base there, so you only have to worry about the police.”
I nodded saying,
“Thanks.”
“Be careful.”
“Same to you.” I said but when I was about to step on the gas he said,
“Wait! One more thing.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pendant and broken chain saying, “This is from the woman who designed the Skyevi generator, I don’t know how it works but I’ve seen her insert in a special lock a few times.”
I pocketed it saying,
“Thanks, I think. We’ll probably end up seeing each other again if neither of us is killed.”
“I hope so.” He said as I sped out. The tunnel wasn’t lit, but the light from the top was enough. I emerged on a city road surprisingly far away from the Twi-LIGHT building. I had a choice: right or left.
“Better back it left…I think that’s south…” I muttered as I sped down the road. The wind on my face felt good, since I’d been wondering through caves for a little too long. After awhile, I started seeing signs:
Myildaypain: 130 Miles.
I was speeding along at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, so it was going to take me a little over an hour at this speed…or I could go one hundred and fifty miles an hour and get there in under an hour.
I looked down at my GPS seeing it was noon. It was a day after what I remembered it being. No surprise, though I didn’t expect to be in Zilernegel, a large city before the small port city o Myildaypain. There weren’t any skyscrapers or apartment building complexes in Myildaypain, no automatic doors either. I doubt the place had changed much in the last few hundred years.
I looked down at my gas tank, and contemplated getting gas before deciding I’d wait until I met up with Cloud and Niketa again.
“At least I can lie and say I was after this pendant…” I muttered pulling it out of my pocket. I looked at it a second even though I did a double-take when I recognized it. It was clear smooth crystalline sphere, with a pure gold figure of an archer inside of it.
“How the hell…?”
The pendant had been mine, it was a key of a sort that would let a person into the old underground of the castle and access Skyevi. I shoved it back into my pocket, confused and displeased.
It was around one twelve forty-five when I saw spoke in the air rising from over the trees in the distance. I felt my stomach lurch as the small of smoke filled the air. I stopped when I reached the top of the hill I’d been speeding up. I saw Myildaypain all right; burning and crumbling. I regained my bearings and sped forward, hoping the roads were clear. I sped into the town, even though I had to stop since a burning trailer blocked the road.
There were burning condos and storage buildings at the beach line, along with large ships that had fires burning on their bows. I heard yelling, buildings collapsing, and even though it was at least one-hundred and ten degrees I felt cold.
“You’re gunna pay for this…” I muttered quietly, pulling to the right and taking a short-cut to the beach line. When I saw it over the dunes, I saw a large amount of the citizens of the city at the waterline, half of them getting burns treated. Oddly, I didn’t see any police officers or any other officials of the sort.
“Dammit…” I muttered looking down the lines of condos on fire. There were burning buildings on the road to my right, and there wasn’t any road to my left. They were all three stories or more too. I took a deep breathe and sped down the road, determined to reach Maaya’s old address. It was on old little sea shack on the dunes, most likely illegally built, but it would catch fire quickly since it was so old. They had to have a new phone jack installed to get broadband, since they weren’t enough pings in the ping test.
Any houses that had grass in the front yard, were burning quicker and hotter. I was sweating and cursing as I slowed down when I heard crying. I ease to a stop and looked at the condo before me. I looked to the far most right window on the top floor of the building and cursed watching the smoke trailing out of it. I heard a little girl’s screaming, and the front door wasn’t engulfed in flames.
I didn’t turn off my motorcycle, since I didn’t know if all the heat on the poor thing would cause it not to want to start up again. The metal tears, though they had a high resistance of heat, were more than warm. I drew my katana and ran forward feeling the door before kicking it inward. The hinges were rusted away. What puzzled me was that there weren’t any cars or anything in front of the building, from the parts that weren’t swallowed in flame it looked like it needed a paint job. To be truthful, it looked condemned. I looked to my right and left, there were flames on both sides but the staircase upward wasn’t on fire.
I pulled the collar of my shirt up to filter the air a little before running up the stairs. My eyes were tearing from the spoke and heat of the house. It was three floors, and I felt the stairs getting weaker and weaker under my feet. I put my foot on one, and landed face forward since I was taking two at a time and it collapsed out from under me.
I held on to my katana and dug in into the wood and pulled myself to my feet and continued onward, careful not to touch the metal handrail. I ran down the flame-less top hall to the room I heard her cries from. The hall smelled like urine, and the wall paper was pealing. Did I mention the carpet was threadbare too?
I felt the door for heat, felt it, and kicked it in anyway. It fell forward, hinges giving out completely. It landed on the small patch of fire in the door, and the thick wood door started to smolder as I hoped over it. The girl was huddled up in the corner, her face and white dress smeared with ash. She looked up at we with wide eyes, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. Her blond hair was also smeared with ash, and a strap on one of her sandals was broken. She clutched a stuffed cat to her chest as I held out my hand saying with a smile,
“Hey there, what do you say we get out of here?”
“W-who are you?” The little girl stammered.
“Akhy, what’s yours?”
She swallowed saying,
“Kairi.” She replied, “My kitty’s name is Megami.”
“Nice to meet you Kairi, but we need to get out of here.”
“Mommy told me not to go with strangers.”
“I told you,” I said gently still smiling, “I’m Akhy, I’m looking for my friends, and I like cats.” I added the last part, since she seemed to relax a little when is said that. She stood up and I instructed her to hold on around my neck. She clung to me tightly and felt her shaking as I ran out of the room and down the hall. I jogged down the stairs, careful not to lose my footing this time.
“Mommy said it’s dangerous to run with knives.” She said, apparently referring to my katana.
“This is a katana, it’s a Nohinog sword.”
“Are you a bad person?” She asked clutching her cat.
“No, it’s my job to protect good people from bad people.” I replied, lying really.
I stopped a few steps from the landing of the first floor and saw the flames crawling up the stairs. I looked down the small entrance hall and saw a door on the other side that so far, had no flames around it.
“Hold on.” I said hooking my katana around the rail, the guard of the hilt leaning against the metal. It slid down a few inches as I used to catapult us over the hot metal rail and we were tumbling into the fire. I felt my heart jump into my throat as my katana slid out of my grip and I grabbed the blazing hot metal railing Kairi holding on to my neck for life since I didn’t have my hand under her for support and more. I opened my eyes and jumped forward letting go of the rail. I didn’t look at my hand, even though my the stars it was making me see I guessed it was pretty badly burned. I grabbed the hilt of my katana with my bad hand, since the blade was in the fires I didn’t want to burn my good hand. I supported Kairi again with my forearm, my hand throbbing too hard to do anything with it. I jogged to the door, kicking it outward. Thank goodness for old fashioned hinges that rust.
I kept running until I stopped and fell to my knees on the sand twenty-feet away from the burning condo. Kairi let go of my neck, and shook my shoulders as my vision blurred as I felt warm liquid sliding down my left leg. How long ago did my wounds start bleeding again? I struggled to stay conscious, even though I was losing the battle. I heard somebody running toward us, even though I couldn’t move.
I felt somebody catch me as I fell forward, blacking out.
It was black, but I was still thinking. I heard somebody calling out my name in the distance, even though I wanted to sleep. I listened for a moment longer, recognizing the voice as my line of through trailed off.
I opened my eyes slowly and struggled to sit up.
“You shouldn’t move, you’re badly wounded.” Cloud said gently pushing me back down. I looked around to see it was twilight, and I we were on the beach. There were people bustling around not far from where I was laying down, and I saw Niketa bandaging a wound on a woman’s arm.
“Akhy! Akhy are you alright?” Kairi yelled jogging over to me.
“I told you not to yell when she woke up.” Cloud said sounding a little irritated as she bluntly ignored him. Cloud was kneeling down next to me, his arm around my shoulders supporting me as I sat up saying,
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” He contradicted, “You’ve got a wound on your torso, and a long cut on your left leg. That’s not even mentioning the burns on your right hand.”
I looked down at myself noticing I wasn’t wearing the same cloths as I had been. I was wearing cut-off shorts and a white sleeve-less shirt. There were bandages around my leg from my thigh down to the middle of my shin. There were also new bandages around my other wound, and my right hand was also bandaged.
“Niketa took care of your wounds, she also put some kind of gel on your hand.”
“Aloe, probably.” I muttered.
“Aloe?”
I have him a look asking disbelievingly,
“You don’t know aloe vera cream is?”
“No, why?”
“You’re that thick-headed?”
“It’s burn cream, right?” Kairi chimed in sitting down next to me. “Mommy used to use that on me if I got a burn.” She lifted up her stuffed kitty saying, “Megami and me are glad you’re okay.”
I could tell Cloud was about to ask something stupid along the lines of, ‘who the hell is Megami?’ so I cut in with,
“Where’s my katana and motorcycle?”
“Your motorcycle is over there, as is your katana and backpack.” He said pointing to the right where I glanced and saw my katana and pistol sitting on the seat. Cloud’s motorcycle stood next to it.
“Kairi,” I said addressing the cheerful and peppy young girl, “Go into the outermost pocket of that red and silver backpack and take out the laptop in there and bring it to me, please.”
She nodded and hoped up, running over to the backpack with her kitty in her arms. I pulled out my silver laptop and carefully walked back with it in her hands, case and all. The hard metal case was in the same pocket the laptop, since I hadn’t taken the time to put it back in the case last time I used it. She rested the laptop on the case next to me careful not to get sand on it. I opened it and turned it on and checked my e-mail. I saw what I was looking for; a e-mail from Rei from today. I opened it and there was only one line:
Meet you in Myildaypain tomorrow.
I smiled and turned off my laptop saying,
“She’s going to get a nice surprise.”
“Your note under your screen name is ‘Fear my Spongy Circus Peanuts of Doom!’?”
I smiled saying,
“Yup.”
Kairi looked at us asking innocently,
“Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Hell no!” We chorused simultaneously. I saw a little evil smile spread across her small face as she said,
“You’re bad liars.” She turned around and started skipping over to Niketa as she said, “I’m going to go help Niketa now.”
“Did she tell you anything about her past?” I asked idly.
“Not a word, she only would talk to Niketa. She did say I was creepy though.”
I smiled slightly saying,
“She’s a good judge of character, you are pretty creepy when you want to be.”
“Thanks.” He said sarcastically. Neither of us said anything for a long moment until he asked,
“I hope you have a damn good reason why you disappeared.”
“I’m a loner.” I said simply, “I don’t work well with people.”
“That’s not a good reason. You nearly got yourself killed for something more important than that, I’m sure.”
“I thought Twi-LIGHT would leave you and Niketa alone if I went off solo. Trenxi knows better than that though.” I paused before adding, “He made a replica of you, and sent him after me. I didn’t learn he was a replica until I was at Twi-LIGHT. He helped me escape, and gave me the key to the Skyevi generators, but since Myildaypain is ashes now I guess it was a trap after all. We need to get out of here though, Twi-LIGHT will probably be here my dark. We need to get going, it’s already twilight.”
“You’re in no condition to go anywhere.”
“Either that or we condemn the lives of all the civilians. Trenxi will expect us to stay the night, hence why we need to get going. If we’re gone when he gets here, than he won’t kill these citizens. Nobody would ever know how the died with him as the president if he got here first.”
“We still have Kairi to worry about though, she could tell them a lot about us. She’d be able to verify who we are.”
I felt drowsy and tired, and was just about done playing the ‘I’m fine’ act for a little while. Than again…did I really kill Trenxi? It didn’t feel like I did, I still felt like I was being watched from eyes not near me.
“I know, I know…” I muttered. I rested my head against his shoulder muttering, “Why does playing hero always royally screw me?”
“You did the right thing though.” He said as I nodded off.
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