Thunk

Thunk

Thunk

Miles burst through the door of the necromancer’s lair, his eyes wild. His bow was at the ready, the glinting arrowhead reflecting the sterile lights above. He aimed at me for just a moment before he lowered the bow slightly. “Hey kid.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Had me going. Seemed like you were actually worried before you opened your mouth.”

“Calling you kid wasn’t bait, you paranoid bastard. You just… remind me of someone.” Miles seemed to regain himself, and crossed the room to crouch down next to the body. The corpse was lying face down, the white front of the bald man’s jacket stained completely red. His head was turned to the side, a single crossbow bolt impaled in his left eye.

I gagged, held a hand to my mouth, and turned away as Miles poked at the corpse.

“Didn’t fight much.” Miles said.

“No.”

“No defensive wounds. No other visible injuries.”

“He thought he could talk his way out of it.”

“Immortality or sob story?” Miles asked.

“What?”

“When he tried to weasel. Did he offer you immortality or tell you a sob story about a loved one who died?”

I didn’t bother hiding my surprise. “Sob… story. Spent the whole exchange pontificating over his dead daughter. You’ve dealt with more than one necromancer.”

“Just a guess. He fell face first, but not very far. ” Miles emitted a low whistle. “Jesus. You made him kneel? Why not make it easy on the both of you and shoot him in the back of the head?”

“It’s not supposed to be easy.”

“No, I guess it’s not.” Miles grunted as he stood from his crouch and crossed the room to me. I felt his cool gaze as I ignored him and filled a syringe with the proper mixture of drugs and injected it into one of the unconscious User’s IV.

“That your first?” Miles asked quietly.

“Not exactly. But this was… different.” I answered, matching the quietness of his tone, letting vulnerability leak in.

“How so?”

“The first one—I remember walking in. Losing myself in rage and grief and… something else. The last thing I remember was looking at a table covered in cigarette butts, and seeing a knife.” I shivered. “Then it all goes hazy.”

“You blacked out.”

“Yeah.”

A hand gripped my shoulder. “What you did here was hard. I know it’s literally the last thing you want to hear right now. And what I’m about to say will feel hollow and pointless. But this was the just thing. The right thing.”

I paused in the middle of refilling the syringe. My lip quivered. “He begged.”

“Of course he did. They all do, eventually. People capable of what he did will do anything to stay alive, to perpetuate their black stain of an existence.” Miles shook his head. “You’re not a monster for making that call. You just didn’t buy his bullshit.”

“Let's… not talk about it anymore.”

“Sure. Of course, kid.” He released my shoulder. “Eventually, you’ll need to. Doesn’t have to be a shrink, could be a loved one, or a friend. Just don’t bottle it. For now, let’s focus on all the people you saved.”

I cleared my throat, relieved. “One useful piece of information that came from talking to him was what he used to put them under. Propofol. Ideally, we’d reduce the dosage and let them come out of it on their own, but as you know, we’re under a time constraint…”

We moved the body into a storage closet at my suggestion, so the first thing the recently revived saw wasn’t a corpse.

Miles watched attentively, paying attention to the dosage as I filled the syringe and injected it in another IV bag. Then he grabbed a spare syringe from the large medicine cabinet and worked on the beds opposite of me. Most of them didn’t wake up immediately, groggily regaining consciousness.

There was one exception. A boy, somewhere between my and Ellison’s age, gripped my arm. “Let me go, please—“

I shushed him gently. “Easy, easy. You’re safe. Roderick sent us. We’re the rescue party.”

It took a while to get them all up on their feet. A few of them, pissed off and looking for an outlet, heard the explosions and volunteered to help. Miles and I managed to talk them out of it. Even the most lucid among the survivors were disoriented and unsteady. Not exactly in fighting shape.

Once we’d revived the rest from the other wing, nearly forty people stood around, migrating closer and closer to the door, eager to leave. I’d never received so many teary-eyed hugs and handshakes in such a short span, and the overload of attention and physical contact was making my head spin.

I came to the last bed and injected a syringe filled with saline into the bag. The User in question immediately stirred.

“Not. Yet. Give it a few more seconds.” I whispered, glancing around to make sure there was no one looking too closely.

Vernon stilled. Then, after nearly a minute, began to rise, doing an excellent job of reflecting the perplexed expression of someone who’d been under and had no idea why. I stepped back from him and helped him to his feet, going through the facade of filling him in on the situation.

It was a close thing, getting this all set up before Miles came crashing through the door. There was a splotch of blood on his shoulder, which I quickly covered by draping a bedsheet around his neck.

Vernon had helped prop up the man he’d failed to revive, holding him up in a kneeling position, so I could get the shot trajectory correct. Rushed as we were, I couldn’t afford to get that wrong. If I’d simply placed the body on the ground and shot the man in the head, Miles likely had the experience to realize the shot was inflicted post-mortem.

It was lucky as hell that all of these people were put under before they were brought to Vernon, and that the ones he’d revived were too out of it to remember him.

My main worry was that one of the survivors would recognize the body. I was worried that Miles would see through my justification for removing the body, but he seemed to find it perfectly reasonable.

“Tell me the plan again,” I whispered, adjusting the sheet on Vernon’s shoulders.

Vernon’s expression was frazzled, and he kept glancing at the people around us as if they’d turn on him at any moment. “Stay with the group until we hit the first floor, then branch off. Head to the emergency exit and head east.”

“And what are you going to tell the suits?”

“You’ll supply me with cores in exchange for recruitment. To meet you in four days at noon in lakeside park. Wait. Four days, counting or excluding today?” Vernon asked.

“Thursday.”

“Got it.” Vernon nodded. “Thank you. For everything.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” I left him there, and rejoined Miles at the front.

“Okay,” Miles looked over the crowd. “Congratulations. You’re not dead. Here’s how we keep you that way.”

/////

The maneuver was simple enough. Roderick had transport waiting to extract a block away. We’d take the survivors down the now cleared stairwell and back the way we’d entered, giving them the chance to re-arm themselves at the stockpile before vacating the building. From there, they’d be taken to region three. Locals and members of Roderick’s Lodge would disembark there and either continue to search for lux if they felt able, or help with reinforcing fortifications.

At every step, I kept waiting for something to go wrong. Reinforcements from the suits arriving at the worst possible time, or the remaining mercenaries withdrawing just in time to catch us in the bottle-necked stairway, or the small group I led here finally succumbing to the superior enemy force.

None of that happened. Miles and I were able to get the remaining survivors to the extract point.

When I returned to the front of the storage facility, everyone was still alive. I used to cover as the group fell back, battering down anyone who realized what was happening and tried to push forward with There were several more bodies strewn on the ground, and likely more out of sight that had fallen to the artillery. But it was far from the bloodbath it could have been.

Astrid and Astria helped cover the rest of the team’s retreat and were among the last in the APC, Miles jumping in after them. He extended a hand to me. I took it, and sat hard on the bench as the APC whipped around. We jostled as it climbed the curb, completing a frantic half-circle before we took off towards my region.

Numerous bags of Lux illuminated the interior.

We won.

This was enough, wasn’t it? Realistically, the twenty-five lux would fill the receptacle, or at least get it close. I’d done my part, with as much due diligence as I could muster. My eyelids were heavy. The seat beneath me was nothing more than a simple bench with an under-stuffed cushion that belied the metal frame beneath, but at that moment, it felt like the most luxurious thing in the world.

It was all going to be okay. I could rest now. There were thousands of other people in my region. On the off-chance what we’d just claimed didn’t push us over the top, it would be close. Someone else could handle it. I couldn’t micromanage everything.

Sleep nearly took me.

What happened the last time you felt safe?

shattered the reverie.

My eyes snapped open. It took an inordinate amount of effort to pull up the timer.

No choice. If I lost consciousness, there was no telling when I’d wake up. Had to push through. Just a little more.

“Tell the driver to stop. I’m going to go.”

Miles said something inaudible. When I shook my head, he leaned in closer across the aisle. “Come on, we’re golden. Twenty-five isn’t enough for you?”

“What can I say, I’m… insatiable.” I reached up, using the personal railing that ran the length of the vehicle to haul myself to my feet.

“Just wait ‘till we get back to the region,” Miles warned. “Bad idea to stop a convoy when you’re an HVT.”

“A what?”

Miles pointed to the lux. “High-value target. We’re a fucking piñata just waiting for some thumbsucker with a bat.”

“Right.” I admitted. My judgment was slipping. I wobbled unsteadily on my feet, punching the button to lower the ramp, stopping it just before it made contact with the blurring road. “I’ll ride the bike out.”

“Gonna burn yourself out. Crazy motherfucker.” Miles shook his head. Still, he withdrew from one of his many pockets and handed it to me. I took it and sheathed it at my side.

“Maybe. But I’d rather be crazy than dead. Make sure the lux gets where it needs to go?” I asked.

“Done. If we don’t see each other before this shit-show is over, find me after. It’ll be worth your while.”

Everyone on either side shifted upward to make room as I summoned my motorcycle. It had several deep gouges on the sides. It stalled at first, then roared to life on the second turn of the key.

A small hand pulled at my arm. I turned to see Astrid, who immediately looked away in irritation. “Astria asked me to pass along a message. She wanted to thank you for saving her.”

Beyond Astrid, still seated on her spot on the bench, was Astria, who smiled and gave me a small wave.

“You would have figured it out.” I shrugged. “Eventually.”

It was meant to be an olive branch of sorts, but Astrid shook her head, clearly not buying it. “Stay alive.”

“You too.” I turned my attention to Miles. “Message me if what we have fills the receptacle. If we finish ours, I'll help the other regions as much as I can.”

“I’ll keep you updated.” Miles said. He seemed to hesitate, wanting to say more, but eventually held his silence.

Next to him, Grayscale stared at me like I was an idiot. It was a reasonable reaction, all things considered.

“Ready?” Bob called to me from his spot at the front, one hand poised over the metal divider that separated driver from passenger. Chastity was slumped over on his shoulder, unconscious and snoring.

I nodded.

Bob slammed his fist against the divider. The APC’s brakes squealed.

I hit the throttle and the bike screamed, wobbling once as I hit the pavement but leveling out, picking up speed as I left the boiling cramped space of the APC behind. The easy lux that landed around the outskirts of the city would all be gone at this point. Realistically, there was only one place where I’d find more. It was also the one place I’d been trying to avoid.

Steeling my nerve, I began to navigate towards downtown.