Chapter Seven

“The queen was found?” Zafir muttered for the umpteenth time since the previous day. He paced his office while I lounged in a chair. “It’s all well and good she’s been relocated, but if the conflicts don’t die down, then we have another problem.”

“I think we already have enough on our plates to deal with,” I remarked. “There’s way more crime in the other sectors according to the reports you showed me. I can’t stop all of it myself, while also patrolling the Syldrari Sector and training the others. Something has to give.”

“Training can wait. I have plenty of study material I can give them.” Zafir pivoted to look at me. “I’ve decided. You will make nighttime activity a pattern for Lethe. People will be less likely to suspect ‘Elara’ due to your day and afternoon patrol schedule.”

“Okay, and if people still press that angle?” I frowned.

“We can fake footage of you elsewhere at the same time as Lethe’s activity. To be safe, such footage will show you in headquarters and not out in other sectors, which could be easily disproved.”

I nodded faintly. “Okay. We’ll see. So, off to do Lethe things?”

“Indeed. And be cautious. There are already plenty of humans who want to capture you,” Zafir warned. “If they try, kill them.”

“Right. Will do.” I got up and made my way to the garage, summoning my suit as I went. Despite being human, however human I even was after the Incident, I hadn’t had much interaction with the human sectors.

My hopes weren’t very high.

“Lethe, wait!” Sarah called from behind me. “Are you sure about this? Once you kill people—”

“I’ve killed people before. This time, at least, I’ll have control over who I attack.” I kept walking, then mounted my skybike. Guess Sarah didn’t go feral after the weapon was fired?

I sped off without giving her time to respond. People needed to stop questioning my choice as if there’d been another option. The best I could do was to try and keep my morals straight. Kill criminals and monsters, try to manipulate the government into treating non-humans like people… Fuck. I’m not sure which ones harder.

My skybike took a sudden turn toward a section of the city where no lights were on. I frowned as Zafir’s image popped into view in my peripheral.

“Sorry, change of plans.” Zafir nudged at his glasses, his expression one of concern. “Our bosses want us to look into rumors of a rogue faction taking up residence in the Dead Sector. We aren’t detecting any life signs, but if there are people using it as a base you should be able to find evidence.”

“Dead Sector? What is it, a cemetery?” I glanced around, noting that the lights and other vehicles were becoming more and more sparse by the second.

“Nothing quite so pleasant. There was an accident there decades ago, rendering everything in the radius aetherically inert.” Zafir shook his head slowly. “The details are above my clearance level. My impression is that something went awry with a prototype magitech weapons platform, but that’s merely a guess based on the extent of the damage.”

“Well, guess I’m taking a look regardless…” I shook my head as the skybike slowed to a stop beside an imposing gate. A lone pair of soldiers hastily opened a side door, permitting me to walk through. Idiots. Do they want my connection to the military to be discovered?

Once inside, it took my eyes a moment to fully adjust to the darkness. As far as the eye could see there was just…wreckage. There were a few buildings that kept their first and sometimes second stories, but most of the sector had been obliterated. Despite the sheer amount of warped and broken concrete, steel, piping, and other building materials, the place felt oddly…empty. Silent. So silent, in fact, that I realized I couldn’t hear the bustling city behind me through the massive walls erected around the ruined sector.

…they really think a rogue group is out here? I carefully started picking my way down the segments of a broken street that looked as if it had fallen from somewhere above. Or, are they perhaps putting me out to pasture?

“Anything?” Zafir prompted.

Well, maybe not yet. I released a small sigh. “I’m barely fifty feet in, and you’re making it hard to see.”

“That place is dangerous, it’s important that I—” Zafir’s voice and image glitched out before disappearing entirely. All that remained on the inside of my visor was the faint traces of alien language and icons I didn’t know the meanings of.

Great. I quietly adjusted, letting my gauntlets slide into place. Even if a rebel group wasn’t out there, that didn’t mean there weren’t beasts, monsters, or some other problem.

The ruins of the sector struck me as more and more strange as I made my way through it. There were dozens of broken machina, as if a battle had been waged using them. Despite all the devastation, there were no traces that people had died. No organic remnants whatsoever. There weren’t even weeds growing out of the cracks or in the dirt.

With my curiosity growing, I decided to make my way up to what looked like a newer, less damaged construction. A dam…?

I made my way along the top of the dam, my gaze scouring the ruins below. There were no signs of activity in the sector aside from me. It was a wild goose chase…but an interesting one. Rumors of renegades my ass. Something else was going on. I placed my hands against the ‘rail’ and looked out over the sector, then at the bustling city beyond.

Such devastation…such fun. I gripped the rail tighter and pulled myself back. No, not fun. Tragic. The people here would have been helpless, like—

The faint sound of movement behind me, of boots landing quietly against the concrete, was followed by a deep, melodic voice colder than any I’d heard before. “It was probably like shooting fish in a barrel for your government. Or, perhaps, even easier. Your kind do so adore giving up their lives for fleeting, half-understood ideals.”

I slowly turned to find a cloaked man standing a few feet away from me. He pulled down his hood, revealing a smirking human face. Right. The guy bashing humans is a human. I highly doubt that.

“What do you—” I cut myself off when I heard that my voice modulator wasn’t active. What? Just how much is nonfunctional? The fuck is going on?

“What do I want? Many things.” He smiled, beginning to walk toward me. “Right now, I want an interesting fight—and since you need to be dealt with…” he flourished with one hand, summoning a long sword. At the same time, his human pupil elongated into a slit, and several smaller pupils opened around it, each at a different size until they stabilized. “…entertain me.”

Fuck, Syldrari! I darted to my right to evade a swing of his sword, then pivoted into a defensive stance. His blade hadn’t touched anything, yet several inches of concrete had been blown away. What…how am I supposed to fight… Fuck it!

“That was a quick turn around,” he remarked, catching my fist in one hand. “You made a mistake involving yourself with Syldrari affairs. It’s past time I fix that mistake for you.”

“I just want to help!” I snapped, twisting out of his grip and aiming a kick at his solar plexus—if he even had one. “If surviving a Resonance Incident means that I get stuck with a weird suit and inhuman abilities, then I—”

My head swam briefly, disorienting me long enough for the Syldrari man to grab me by the wrist and fling me at the nearest wall. I managed to catch myself against it and spring back at him, punching his sword out of my way.

“So entitled.” He slashed out at my shoulder with his sword, then narrowed his eyes when no cut was left. “So it’s true. The suit you ‘survivors’ manifest is Syldrari technology. I wonder…are you mere thieves, or…”

Fuck. What is wrong with my head? I shifted into a defensive stance. It was almost like his presence alone was disorientating and disarming. Every word out of his mouth made it worse. At the same time, I could feel my consciousness attempting to slip into its feral state.

“I believe I told you to entertain me.” The man took a few steps toward me, then stopped for some reason. “That—”

“Shut up!” I snarled, launching at him with more speed than I knew I had. My fist slammed into his shoulder, I followed through, using momentum to forcibly turn him. He recovered quickly and swiped lazily at me with his weapon.

He easily blocked, parried, and sidestepped my barrage of strikes. The more he did, the more smug he looked, and the angrier I got. Finally, something within me snapped, and with my next punch, a cacophony of elements exploded down my arm and into the Syldrari’s chest.

“Hmph.” He smiled, not at all the desired effect, then took a deep breath. When he refocused, there was a look in his eyes that made the feral recoil in fear. Without any other warning, he moved fluidly into a series of strikes so smooth and precise it was like he was dancing.

I instinctively blocked with my gauntlets, doing my best to guard and deflect against the rapid onslaught of attacks. He didn’t stop until my feet were close to the far northern end of the dam, and I’d caught the sword between my palms. Where we’d been, pieces of the structure were cracking and falling apart

“Why did you sto—” A sudden urge to start coughing interrupted me, and I did so with so much force I nearly keeled over. When the fit subsided, I saw splatters of red and blue all over the concrete and my gauntlets. What…

“Hmph, so concussive force still penetrates your ‘armor,’” the Syldrari stepped forward, his boot landing in one of the stains. He gripped me by the neck, lifting me to his eye level. I dug my fingers into his forearm, the urge to fight nearly overwhelming all thought. “Ah, so you adore fighting, do you? How endearing. So weak, yet you don’t let that impede your feistiness.” He paused, glancing at my gauntlets, then down my body and finally to the blood on the ground. His lips parted in surprise briefly, before a serious, dangerous expression overtook it and he slammed me back-first into a wall. “What are you?”

“Resonance…survivor…” I managed to get the words out.

“That isn’t an answer… Do you have another answer?”

“…no…” I choked.

“The government doesn’t know, the military doesn’t, you don’t…tch.” His gaze filled with utter coldness again. “We’ll meet again, when you’re more entertaining… I’ll do you a favor, this time, and get rid of these hints that you may be more than human. After all, breaking you out of a test tube is far more effort than I want to exert.”

“I’ll—” I started with a snarl.

“—kill me? How quaint.” He dropped me to the ground. “Stay put.”

I, apparently, had no say in the matter. A sound pierced my very being, and my brain just…felt like it shut off.

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