Chapter 15 #2
“Beckly,” Mira interrupts, tossing her bangs, “let’s cool it, okay?”
“It’s an old superstition,” Beckly continues like he can’t help himself. “Probably meaningless. But if I were taking up a dead man’s post, I’d be nervous flying with the pilot who let—”
I’m on Beckly before I can think, fisting his collar with both of my hands. “Do not,” I snarl, “fucking finish that sentence.”
There’s a sudden bubble of silence. I release Beckly with a disgusted shove. All the blood has drained from Lament’s face, and I can hear his shaky exhale, even as he says, “Keller. It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Keller’s right.” Mira looks alarmed. “Beckly, that was out of line.”
“What?” Beckly spreads his hands like he’s genuinely confused. “I was only saying—”
“Nothing,” I snap. “You were saying nothing.” I put my hand on Lament’s shoulder and gently nudge him away, even though what I really want to do is punch Beckly in his stupid face. Lament and I walk out of hearing range. I scrub my hands through my hair. “What an asshole.”
Lament looks a bit winded. “Yeah.”
“He’s like a storybook troll in real life. Like a blobfish if you sucked out all its brains. I’ve never known such a miserable excuse for a human being.”
Another half-hearted, “Yeah.”
“We’ll report him,” I declare. “He can’t be allowed to say things like that.”
Lament shakes his head. “He’s not worth the effort.”
“But—”
“Really.” Lament tips his head back to look up at me, which is how I realize we must be standing fairly close. “I promise, he’s not worth it. And I don’t want … I don’t want to open all this back up. Can we just let it go?”
I don’t want to let it go. But Lament’s eyes are still slightly red from our earlier incident with the reporters, his color drained, mouth tight.
I wonder how much of this he’s had to deal with since Bast’s death.
It’s one thing to grieve someone surrounded by those who support you, but he’s at odds with the Legion, at odds with the press, and now apparently even his own comrades are dealing blows.
“All right,” I say, because he’s had enough opposition today, and I asked him what he needs, and he’s telling me. “All right, Lament. Yes. If that’s what you want.”
We link back up with the rest of the Sixth and continue our loop as a team.
Jester is broadcasting the countdown on his visor (Twenty-three, twenty-two), and though I wasn’t worried before, now I’m starting to feel nervous.
Why are all these people gathered? What happens when the magmor reaches zero?
Despite our continued questioning, we haven’t been able to get a clear answer from anyone.
“The city’s law enforcers are supposed to meet us here,” Vera says, standing on her toes to try and peer beyond people’s shoulders. “But I can’t see them.”
“You can’t see anything,” Youvu Hum replies. “You’re child-size.”
“Watch it,” Avi warns.
“Toph,” Vera calls. “Any sign of local backup?”
The mechanic shakes his head. “Nothing.”
Ten, nine.
“Let’s form up,” Vera orders, signaling to the Fifty-Seventh. “Block pattern.”
Like a well-oiled machine, our two fleets move into a tight square formation.
I take the traditional gunner’s spot at the front, along with the Youvu Hums (hand-to-hand), Avi (explosives), and a few of the Fifty-Seventh (their fleet is stacked with defense-based specialties).
Beckly ends up at my side, and I’m annoyed to discover he’s a gunner, too.
Three, two …
The crowd suddenly surges, and there’s a gasp and a cheer, and then—
A larger-than-life hologram of Ran Doc Min materializes over the throng.
I tense but hold position as the image expands, flashing white before settling into a visible mirage.
And it’s—well, first, it’s huge. Doc Min has a long face, a thin nose, pointy chin.
His hair is done in a perfect coif that seems to accentuate his cheekbones, and he’s wearing a cape with a high collar that makes him look like some kind of comic book villain.
I’ve seen Doc Min’s picture before, but never like this, never blown up ten times its normal size over a madly roaring crowd.
The effect is consuming, a little bit heady.
I glance at Lament, who raises his brows in a What the hell? expression.
Then Ran Doc Min begins to speak.
“Citizens of Venthros, hear me now.” The Determinist leader lifts his hands like a sun god in a painting. In reply, the crowd chants, He speaks, we hear! And, from the Randomists in the distance: Show us the simulation!
“I come today,” Doc Min’s hologram continues, “in the face of change. Planet Venthros is one of bounty, and you have been its good and noble stewards, but now you must be warned. There is tragedy on the horizon, the likes of which Romothrida has never encountered. This, my simulation predicts.” Doc Min pauses in a way that should seem theatric given the pomp of his appearance and that ridiculous cape, except it just …
doesn’t. It’s his voice, I think. The guy has a low-range baritone that somehow makes him sound both intimidating and grandfatherly at the same time. I can’t look away.
Doc Min proceeds. “As we all know, Mount Kilmon is the largest singular volcano on any inhabited planet, and one of only a few that erupt on a predictable schedule,” he says. “This is an eruption year, and while eruptions always cause devastation to Venthros, this year’s will cause more than most.
“FPS predicts that when Mount Kilmon blows, the ensuing smoke will contain a rare, poisonous gas. The gas is called voroxide, and it spreads like a plague, infecting everything in its path. The destruction will start on Venthros, fueled by the eruption. From there, the gas will seep through the atmosphere, spreading through space and reaching other planets as well. Livestock will die, people will turn against each other—”
“Bullshit!” someone yells from the crowd’s center. “Your predictions are bullshit!”
“—but with this bleak news comes hope. I have been developing a neutralizer to ward against voroxide. It comes in the form of an inhaler and is administered one dose per person. If you take a puff, you will be protected from the gas. Your families, friends, communities—”
“We don’t want your damned neutralizer!” someone else calls. “Leave our planet alone!”
“—all will be safe. I can offer you this neutralizer, and in exchange, I ask for only one thing. Join me. Pledge your allegiance to my movement and help spread word of what has happened here. How I used my simulation to save your planet and your loved ones. Put your faith in me, and together, we can work toward a future of knowledge—”
“We said,” comes yet a third voice, “we don’t want your fucking neutralizer!” The woman—a Randomist—hurls a bucket of gray sludge at the hologram, but it passes right through and lands on a Determinist on the other side.
The victim of this assault pulls out a ray gun.
People scream. Everyone ducks. I yank out my own ray gun and fire.
The Determinist’s weapon flies from his hand. There’s a split second where his arm is still extended, his fist closed around nothing. He blinks at his empty fingers.
Chaos ensues, like the shattering of glass.
Half the gatherers flee at the sound of gunfire, while the other half produce crowbars, wooden bats, rocks—items they’d hidden in their jackets and bags.
I hold steady as a line forms down the park’s center, Randomists and Determinists squaring off for battle.
Someone lights a smoke bomb and tosses it into the mass.
There’s a crackle of electricity, a burst of fumes, and all at once, the two sides are fighting.
Ran Doc Min seems unaware of the chaos. His hologram is still speaking, but no one’s listening. It’s all smoke, screams, and the smell of burning asphalt. Our fleets loosen formation, giving each other room to fight. Soto’s law enforcement is still nowhere to be seen.
“On your left,” Lament warns from his position behind me, dodging a flying soda can.
I look to see a civilian with a rifle. She’s using it like a battering ram, which makes my skin itch with wrongness—firearms should never be employed like blunt weapons—but a quick blast from my ray gun (using Disintegration Mode and actually taking aim this time) blows the weapon to cinders.
“Three o’clock,” Lament says, grabbing my shoulders and spinning me around.
I let off another blast (this time it’s a man with a machete) and ask, “Am I supposed to disarm this mob one person at a time?”
“Could you?”
“Yes,” I snarl, rapid firing now, eating up a Determinist’s ray gun, a Randomist’s club, a—wait, is that a sword? I’m aware of Beckly lowering his ray gun to glance at me as I say, “But I’d sort of hoped for a quicker solution.”
“You’ll have it,” Lament says. “We’re just buying Avi time.”
“Time for—” What? I don’t finish, because at that moment someone throws a crowbar. It windmills through the air, heading straight for Beckly’s head. Only, Beckly isn’t paying attention. His eyes are still on Lament and me.
I may or may not sigh before shooting it.
“Oh,” says Beckly as he whips around, watching the cinders from the dissolved crowbar float over him like snow. He seems, for a moment, too stunned for words. “Um. Nicely done, Hartman.”
Lament’s hands return to my shoulders as he continues pointing me toward every new danger.
It’s not lost upon me that if he’d ever let me fly with him, it’d probably feel something like this—Lament in command, pointing, guiding, while I blow shit to pieces.
The air is hazed with fumes. His voice comes in close at my ear.
“For the record, I wouldn’t have blamed you for letting that crowbar go. ”
“The thought,” I say archly, “never crossed my mind.”
I continue disintegrating people’s weapons while Avi fiddles with a small grenade-like object she’s pulled from her backpack.
Overhead, Ran Doc Min’s hologram motions as he speaks, still unaware that his audience is no longer hearing him.
Toph has a microphone (though really, his voice is loud enough that he doesn’t need it) and starts bellowing, “Evacuate the area, Time Stopper incoming, you have sixty seconds.”
“What’s a Time Stopper?” I ask Lament between blasts.
“Jester’s invention. It goes off like an invisible bomb to freeze everyone in the immediate area.”
“Jester invented that?”
“He’s a genius,” Lament says. “Didn’t you know?”
Though I’m not familiar with the Sixth’s Time Stoppers, the crowd must be, because they hear Toph’s warning and begin to scatter. Avi holds up three fingers. Toph sees this and booms into his loudspeaker. “Final warning. Time Stopper in three, two—”
Avi unsticks the pin from her grenade and hurls it into the crowd. There’s a puff of air, a little zing like static, and then—nothing. No explosion, no crash or bang. I watch a shimmer ripple out across the crowd like heat over a fire. The noise abruptly dies. A swath of people freeze on the spot.
“Oh,” I say, lowering my gun. “Wow.”
It’s unclear whether the frozen people are still lucid.
They’ve halted mid-action, like someone pressed pause on a movie.
There’s a man with his arm thrown over his eyes.
A woman lifting her skirt to flee. The magmor with his loudspeaker.
It’s a bit jarring how quickly this went from a battle zone to just …
stillness. My ears are ringing in the sudden absence of noise.
Ran Doc Min’s hologram is gone. The Time Stopper didn’t entirely cover the park, and a few stragglers on the fringes flee the scene.
My eyes snag on one woman in particular, holding one of those yellow Determinist flags.
She’s wearing a gray cloak with a hood, but she looks back at me, and I catch a slice of her face.
My blood goes cold.
As fast as she appeared, she’s gone, vanishing into the city with the rest of the Determinists, but that does nothing to slow my pounding heart. A breeze cools the sweat on my skin. I can feel every ridge of my ray gun where it presses into my palm.
That woman was my mother.