Emerson Fortier
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Chapter 52 - Inevitability
🕑 Added 2022-11-13 18:00:07 +0000 UTCSome part of Yi Cao knew what was waiting ahead of them in the concourse long before he picked Xialu out from the swirling crowd. The knowledge started as a prickling across his neck, a chill wind running down his back, and the sense of being watched from somewhere just behind and above. He glanced behind once or twice without spotting anything, even scanned the ceiling. More pedestrians, anonymous in their masses, veiled by the mess of light tubes, and flying constructs, and floating trash that lived at the center of every concourse.
It took one of the girls jostling him and asking if everything was alright for Yi Cao to realize he’d stopped and look ahead.
Xialu waited for them only a hundred yards ahead, eyes trained on Yi Cao while the stream of Pedestrians split around him like a shoal of fish around a stone, until he moved, then they got out of his way.
Xialu kept one hand on the flying sword sheathed at his hip.
Bo Bo babbled something in his ear about protocols and maximum lethality, but the blood racing in Yi Cao’s ears drowned him out as his heart thundered a hundred miles a minute and his artificial lungs struggled to keep up. His arms shook, his metal fingers rang like bells, and his augments suddenly felt less like new limbs and more like thousand pound anchors nailing Yi Cao to his spot on the street.
“This guy again.” Kalemal said.
Xialu stopped when he was only ten yards away. He kept one hand on his sword, but smoothed one side of his mustache with the other as he studied Yi Cao and gave the girls a cursory glance.
“Yi Cao. Going native I see.” The mercenary’s voice cut through the blood thundering in Yi Cao’s ears and the world suddenly consisted of nothing but Yi Cao and the man that stood in front of him. The mercenary nodded towards Yi Cao’s augments. “I might not have recognized you with those eyes.”
Yi Cao didn’t reply. He felt like the surgical scars along his chest were going to unzip and spill his guts, original and replacement, onto the floor any minute.
Xialu glanced around the concourse carefully before refocusing on Yi.
“I’ll make this plain and simple.” He reached into a pocket with his free hand and pulled out a small card emblazoned with some symbol dominated by a massive gear. “I hereby arrest you under the authority of the Nine Spears Security Group for suspicion of collusion with a technomancer of unusual power in the night life district. Any attempt to resist this arrest authorizes me for the use of any and all means to detain you, up to and including the lethal use of Ki.’
Metallic bits of the card in his hand flashed in the light from the tubes above them.
“Do I make myself clear?”
Yi Cao remained silent while his mind raced.
“Good,” Xialu said. He put away his card and gave Yi Cao a thin smile. He twitched his fingers at him. “Hand over your weaponry, and any sources you have on your person.”
The weight at Yi Cao’s neck suddenly felt a hundred times heavier.
Kalemal’s hand on Yi Cao’s arm snapped him out of the adrenaline stupor and he looked down to find her looking at him with her pupils huge and terrified. “Yi Cao, what’s going on?”
“He’s under arrest,” Xialu told her, “why don’t you step aside.” Yi Cao looked up and found the mercenary’s eyes boring into his. “No need for the girls to get involved.”
Bealtiel snorted. She stepped up on Yi Cao’s other side and looked at him. Yi Cao had no idea what to make of her expression but she crossed her arms and looked to Kalemal. “Why don’t you get out of here Kal.”
“Why?” Kalemal hissed. “What are you doing?”
Bealtiel turned to Xialu. “This is no arrest,” she said, “is it?”
Xialu frowned. He looked to Yi Cao and Yi Cao caught his thumb loosening his sword in it’s sheath. “I’m not playing games with you this time,” he said, “I have the governor’s own authorization to carry out this arrest, and your advanced friend won’t save you. Surrender the source, or I will kill you.” He glanced at the girls, “get involved-”
He didn’t have time to finish the sentence.
Yi Cao jerked his hand for Bo Bo’s holster.
Kal gave a little shriek as his metal hand tore from her grip.
There was no way to out draw a cultivator in the node opening stage though. Yi Cao’s palm hit the butt of his pistol at the same instant that the other man’s sword shot from it’s sheath and flew for Yi Cao’s face.
Yi Cao had time to scream in defiance before something flashed and the sword ricocheted off a sudden field of light that jumped between them.
Everyone, including the crowd of pedestrians around them, froze for a fraction of a second as the sword clattered to the floor and skid to stop at the feet of some random passerby.
Bealtiel hissed and shook out her hand as smoke rose from a blackened square across her palm.
“What the fuck was that?” Kal shrieked.
Bealtiel snarled as the thorn tattoos across her forearms writhed and slid out of her skin. She stepped forward and the wires shot from her wrists as an unexpected lash aimed for the mercenary’s face.
Thunder boomed as the whips converged on him. Xialu shot backwards and raised one hand as fog billowed from the ether to fill the corridor and Yi Cao raised his pistol to aim for the cultivator’s last place.
“Run!” He shouted, then Bo Bo screamed with laughter as he spat a barrage of glittering needles into Xialu’s last location.
Someone beyond the cloud screamed, and pandemonium broke loose among the crowd of pedestrians still gathered around the pair of cultivators and two whores.
Lightning cracked across the cloud bank now obscuring half the concourse in front of them as Yi Cao poured fire into it.
“Target obscured.” Bo Bo told him calmly through his earbud.
Bealtiel whipped around, the twin lashes of black wire extending from either wrist whipping around her arms to coil in loose loops up to her elbows as she sprinted towards Yi Cao.
Yi Cao’s pistol ran out of ammunition and he fumbled for the button at his holster as Bealtiel grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him down the hall. “Come on!” She shouted.
Yi Cao got his second magazine into the pistol and let out a spray of uncontrolled fire into the cloud as he turned to follow her up the concourse away from the boiling clouds. He spotted Kal sprinting ahead of them, blonde hair flying behind her while other pedestrians scattered to get out of their way. The sword spun off the floor as they ran by and shot towards the cloud while thunder rumbled behind them.
Yi Cao body checked Bealtiel just as the sword flew past his shoulder. They tumbled onto the yellow tiling together.
Lights shattered as the sword curved up to come at them for a second time, but gravity did funny things around the lighting tubes and the blade wobbled as it tried ot battle two different gravity fields while flying accurately towards them. Yi Cao rolled and spotted Xialu silhouetted against his own clouds.
“Shoot him!” Bo Bo screamed, and Yi Cao did, or tried. The cultivator blurred as Yi Cao fired and heard the sword smashing through light tubes in the concourse above him before falling to the floor while his needles flashed through the thin air.
The sword slapped the floor yards in front of them, rebounded, then rebounded off the wall next to it before flying off towards the cultivator now standing on the wall opposite them.
Yi Cao yanked his pistol barrel towards the man but the flying sword whipped around to slap the needles out of the air as the cultivator raised the palm of one hand.
Lightning sparked from the other man’s finger tips, and every muscle in Yi Cao’s body tensed.
The boom of thunder reverberated in the close confines of the tunnel as the power discharged from the cultivators hand. Light tubes shattered wholesale for a hundred yards in a sphere around them, and Bealtiel screamed as her she caught the lighting on a second field of projected light.
Bo Bo emptied as Yi Cao’s eyes buzzed wildly to adjust to the flash of light.
Bealtiel scrambled to untangle herself from Yi Cao as Xialu caught his sword. “Kill this fucker!” She screamed.
Xialu threw, and Yi Cao roared as the sword slammed point first through one of his hands to send him spinning down the concourse away from Bealtiel.
Yi Cao let out of a strangled scream as the point ripped through part of his ear. Bo Bo shouted something about damage but Yi Cao could see the sword sticking from the palm of his shattered hand. He dropped Bo Bo and grabbed the long spur of the hilt with his still functional hand just as the sword started to draw itself back through the shattered brass plating.
He held on as it dragged him part way across the room, then dropped it and let the blade scrape free when he saw clouds gathering around Xialu and rumbling with thunder.
He scrambled for the pistol but a black wire lashed in front of him to scoop it from the ground before he could retrieve it. “Give me that!” Bealtiel shouted.
The wire reeled it to her and she snapped it up to point it towards the cultivator.
If he’d known it was empty, they might have died then. Instead, the clouds boiled forward once again as the cultivator shot away in his own cloud of mist, and Bealtiel was left shaking the pistol while it told her calmly that she required authorization to use the pistol.
She ran to Yi Cao as he picked himself up and shook it at him. “Authorize me!” She shouted.
“Authorize her.” Yi Cao told the gun.
“Authorized.” Bo Bo said calmly from the gun. “Please reload.”
Yi Cao fumbled out a clip of needles and tossed them to Bealtiel as they both started to run. Thunder rumbled behind them, but the lightning strike that flashed towards them turned as it came to arch and dance through the surviving light tubes, blowing them to shrapnel that sparked and flickered in the sudden darkness.
Yi Cao pushed himself to his feet as Bealtiel shoved the clip into the pistol, and they turned, as one, to sprint away down the hall.
Kalemal hadn’t waited for them. She’d sprinted a hundred yards down the hall and hidden alone behind a mesmeric stone that still glowed with the image of a bowl of noodles adorned by a sunny yellow egg.
Bealtiel snagged her as they ran by and thunder rumbled behind them.
“What are you doing?” Kal shouted as they ran.
“What does it look like? Bealtiel asked.
Thunder mingled with the muted screams of onlookers echoed up and down the hallway as they ran and Bealtiel whipped around to fire bursts of silver needles down the hall into clouds still flashing with lightning a hundred yards away.
“He doesn’t give a shit about us!” Kal shouted at her. She grabbed Bealtiel’s arm and tried to pull her behind one of the mesmeric stones, but Bealtiel shook her off and glared at her as she continued to run alongside Yi Cao.
Kal skidded to a stop. “Leave him!” She shouted.
Lightning cracked after them and Kalemal shrieked as Bealtiel and Yi Cao both ducked, but the lightning crashed through the shrapnel floating above them again, illuminating the hall in long blue shadows and flashing from the eyes of those who cringed and hid behind other mesmeric stones, or in the doors to various businesses buried in the floors walls and ceiling of the concourse.
The lightning twisted into some mechanism a hundred yards beyond them and it coughed, before the twisting blades of its arms began to groan and smoke as they spun down above the glowing hole of a second concourse connected to this one.
Something else shot above their heads, and Yi Cao caught a glimpse of Su Xialu riding the spur of his sword and spinning wildly as Bealtiel sprayed fire in his direction. More clouds blurred from nothing as he landed in the darkness beyond the pit, and lightning flashed within it’s depths. Much closer now.
Yi Cao’s eyes buzzed and ratcheted in and out of focus wildly as they tried to adjust to the flashing darkness. Despite his cultivation Yi Cao had fallen behind thanks to his metal leg and Bealtiel turned back, silhouetted by the flashing clouds, her twin articulated whips curled around her like vipers.
“Just leave him!” Bealtiel shouted again.
Yi Cao pushed past the girl and Bealtiel turned to follow as Su Xialu appeared at the head of his personal storm.
He didn’t staggerhis attacks this time. Lightning and the sword both whipped out together, within seconds of one another. The lightning crashed into a mesmeric stone and blew it and the people hiding behind it into a smoking ruin, followed an instant later by the sword whipping towards them with enough force to crack steel plate.
Bealtiel’s palm flashed and smoked as the field of light deflected it again, then Bo Bo laughed as needles ripped through the air towards the mercenary cultivator.
Only Xialu wasn’t there anymore. Only clouds billowed in his place, flashing with thunder, and stirred by the shining needles ripping through the banks of fog.
Yi Cao used his good hand to press his source to its key scripture and felt the bubbling aspected power course through the channels of his budding foundation.
The sword crashed through the layer of shrapnel floating in the middle of the concourse on its way back to its master as the pit to the next concourse drew closer.
“Only one more of those shields!” Bealtiel shouted.
Yi Cao didn’t think he could move any faster, but when flashing orange lights lit along the walls of the concourse he felt the pull of memories from Elleppu station and hurled himself towards the pit with even greater zeal.
They leapt just as the sword shot towards him.
He threw his Ki at it.
The world roared as space expanded.
The blades of the mechanism whirling over the pit to the next concourse slowed as still functioning light tubes drifted out of it to shatter on the smoking machine.
The sword continued to fly forwards, losing momentum as it crossed the growing space between it’s master and it’s target, but by the time it cleared the sudden expansion, Yi Cao and Bealtiel had already jumped and the blade slapped into the side of the concourse a dozen yards behind them.
The roar of the expansion technique died in a low boom as it collapsed. Shattered light tubes rained onto the concourse around them as both Yi Cao and Bealtiel dove headfirst through the central gravity free zone between the floors.
Light tubes and trash pummeled Yi Cao as he fell. He felt sharp jolts as some of the light tubes snapped across his raised forearm and his eyes fuzzed while his artificial limbs twitched at the sudden jolts. Behind him, Bealtiel sprayed the entrance to the concourse with needles while thunder rumbled and the summoned clouds moved to obscure the entrance.
Yi Cao pushed with his Ki, pulled it, into himself as he felt the gravity of the floor reach for him to separate him from his rapid fall down the long tunnel of the second concourse. He almost lost the technique, but in the last second, felt it stream into him as he transformed into the space around him.
People ran from them everywhere. Tiny figures within himself, legs pumping out a rhythm of vibration against the floor that created minute tremors in the fabric of space.
One figure, alone, shot above the mouth of the tunnel he’d just shot down while a line of little metal darts tried in vain to connect a second figure hurtling down the tunnel through its center where space folded itself into a long trench between floors that should have been walls or ceilings in a sane world. Tiny constructs, humming with energy, lifted from docks in the walls ceilings and floors of the tunnels around them to turn in the direction of the battling pair. They encircled them. Blocked off the halls in every direction, drew together in ranks five or six deep while weapons intended to subdue without killing powered to life.
In his panic, power flowed through him and his awareness expanded, beyond the blockades, beyond the confines of the stone keeping the void at bay, beyond the battle in his immediate vicinity to the war waged between machines and inanimate stone in the realm beyond. Then a tiny figure, the one at his center, reached for the other figure falling with him towards the distant blockade, pulled her to him with a broken metal hand and wrapped his arm around her before he pushed, and felt the space between himself and a not so distant point within the stone, beyond the small blockage of piss bots hovering between them and freedom, disappear.
The world reverberated with a sudden thunderous boom, and the lights through the entire tunnel exploded in a shower of broken glass, plunging the second concourse into almost utter darkness.
