Battle of Genre Round Two: Action/Adventure
TheOrganization Versus Devour
Click me for the BoG R2 Main Thread for additional info!
Welcome to a Round Two Battle Thread for the BoG Tournament! Be mindful now, as your votes are the determining factor to who takes the win!
For a few reminders though:
Spoiler for REMINDERS:
Show
Votals
Simple. 5 points per vote.
Comment and Critique
CnC is important for a writer to flourish and grow in his craft. Giving some will benefit the writer and you as well! A point will be given to you and tallied overall at the end of the tournament [this is a separate tally]. If your CnC proves to be substantial [ergo something that helps the writer improve rather than just saying its good or my favorite part is this] an additional point is awarded.
Now without further ado here are the works of our would-be Masters of Genre!
TheOrganization - Genesis of Ares
Spoiler for The Genesis of Ares:
Show
Prologue:
The Martians were a forsaken race.
The red planet was no place for man, let alone life. The air was a thin soupy miasma of red dust and carbon dioxide so toxic that it would kill the plants before they had the chance to die of thirst. Even the memory of water was scarce, save for the frozen ocean up north near where we lived. Worse still, the Sun, the bearer of warm life on the Earth, morphed into a cold distant reaper bringing not warmth but radiation that would shred you from the inside. From our underground oasis, we could escape all these demons, except for the most insidious and inevitable of all, Gravity.
On this little hell, you weighed only a third of what you would on Earth. Fun for perhaps a week, until your bones started to crack from getting out of bed too fast. Metabolism and digestion slows to a halt, which takes the rest of your insides and pulverizes them. At best, you could look forward to weeks of fatigue broken up by diabolical versions of the common cold and explosive diarrhea. Luckily, we’ve been in space long enough to mitigate most of these effects. A daily regimen of chalky pills, tasteless food, and strenuous activity is enough to make long term survival viable and on somedays even pleasant. Unless of course, you were unfortunate enough to be born here.
That being said, only a third of all pregnancies were full term, and of those only a third of those fully formed infants took their first breath. From that few, birth defects were the norm, and those poor children rarely ever made it to adolescence alive. The handful that did awaited a short lifetime of pain and suffering. These tortured souls are the Martians, the children of a red sky.
And because of this Martians were the most important people of our era, perhaps even all of human history, simply by being alive. Mankind’s future was the stars after all, and if we could understand how they could survive, if we could keep them alive, then humanity had a chance among the stars. If they died, so did we. In the truest sense of the word, the Martians were royalty, more important than the momentary masters I choose to leave behind.
Such was the importance of Aelita, the princess of Mars. The daughter of an engineer and a doctor, and the eldest living Martian. To say she was alive was an understatement. She practically exuded life, defying the red planet’s thirst for blood. She was strong, healthy, and vibrant, a beacon of hope among the desolation. With her all of the turmoil of living on Mars blew away with the dust. In spite of the multitude of tests, exercises, and supplements she endured in addition to our daily bread, she smiled through it all. Her opal eyes, a trait unique to the Martians, sparkling though the dimly lit caverns of Paradise. An angel born from hell.
At only twenty one, she was the youngest elected to the Council, and became its head at twenty three. True be told, from what I knew of her, she preferred the cold, harsh, and bloody desert to the warmth, comfort, and safety of the council chamber. But I also knew that she loved the people of Paradise more than anything else, so she served faithfully and passionately. She even convinced me to run for council with her and to my dismay, I was elected as well.
But who was I to refuse her? I, who owed her my life and would give my own for hers without hesitation. Is it fair to say that I loved her? That I loved the way she would curl her black locks when lost in thought? Or how she would always reach out to help a fallen soul like she did for me years ago? Then again, she was always immersed in love.
Her brethren adored her, the colonists cherished her, and her murder tore it all apart.
1:
As the first human settlement of the red planet, Paradise was unique. Granted, Limbo was the first human colony in space, but like the International Satellite Stations around Earth, it was merely a pure research station where scientist would go, test their experiments and come back within months. Unlike our home, the moon was completely devoid of any kind of useful material whatsoever. Without any kind of atmosphere to catalyze into oxygen, without any sufficient building material, and without water, long term settlement was basically impossible. Not to mention, the scaly tentacles of the nations of Earth easily hugged that of Limbo.
Paradise was different.
At best, a trip between here and Earth was about six months, and that was only when the planets were close, which happened every two years. Suffice it to say, you couldn’t simply run a few tests and take the next transit home. As in my contract, many research scientists came here for a decade or so. Even more became colonists, pioneering man’s conquest of the heavens. And despite the harshness of the red planet, children were born, the Martians, who knew no other home. Being so far away from Earth, its only influence here are what the colonists brought with them. No nation controlled Paradise, no culture dominated it, and no human settlement like this had been founded before.
Like the ancient settlements of villages both birth and death were concerns of the entire community rather than a cursory remark on antiquated articles of print media. The death of the Princess was no different. An especially murky shroud of despair hung over the settlement. Outside the morgue, I sat, barred entry to say goodbye to my long friend. Unlike the colonists, the details surrounding the death of Martians was kept highly confidential. Only the council, certain medical professionals, and specific biologists were kept privy. As both a member of council and a biologist, I was typically always informed.
My relationship with her would invalidate me from a normal investigation on its own. As a murder, the regulations become much stricter, only the head and a handful of council members were kept in the know. Necessary medical personnel were only informed on a need-to-know basis. That being said, this was only a contingency…this was only ever meant to be a contingency. Murder, on a planet devoid of life was inconceivable. I knew all of this, and yet I sat there outside the morgue, fists clenched together in rage.
I felt a cold, soft hand on my shoulder pulling me from the depths of internal turmoil. I looked up to see a pale, wrinkled face wrapped in thin grey strands of wispy hair. Cold grey eyes starred back at me, affirming my circumstances and yet reminding me to keep my own emotions in check. The old lady was councilwoman Gol, Aelita’s Aunt and one of the earliest colonists. At her behest, I waited here in this dark den of death. Nothing but a miracle would bring me here otherwise. The old woman, never one to waste time, spoke to me bluntly and succinctly. It was a nice change of pace from the droll diatribes of most of the colonists, who spent the majority of the time figuring out what they were trying to say rather actually saying it. That being said, it is also much easier to detect their sincerity.
I expected her to offer a few conciliatory remarks, thank me for waiting so long for her, and regret to inform me that due to my relationship with Aelita and various other contrived reasons I would be unable to participate in the investigation how she passed. Despite her own familial relationship to Aelita, her tenure on the council made her the provisional head, leading to a strange conflict of systems. Again, it was never truly meant to be implemented. What I didn’t expect was what happened next.
In her hands was a silvery badge with crimson outlining. Engraved in the center was the title “Arch-Adjudicator” with my name “Misha Komarov” emblazoned below. These adjudicators we’re responsible for investigation and preventing rule violations. It is important to realize that on Paradise, there is no such thing as crime and no such thing as Police. The adjudicators merely make sure the system is running and if there is a failure, how did it occur. Among its various powers, include the ability to access most high level departments without credentials. Unlike normal adjudicators, arch-adjudicators have unrestricted and unregistered access to perform their investigations. Furthermore, the role could not be volunteered for as the position is temporary and rarely utilized, only designated by the Head or Interim Head.
Taking the card from her frail hands, I could now make out the tumult of emotions under the clouds of her eyes, desperation, sorrow, grief, and anger. Their weight burdened the thin plastic card I now wore beside my heart. Without a word, I left her behind and walked up the stairs to the main pavilion of Paradise. Despite my dislike of Gol, she granted me the one thing I really needed then. The ability to act. After discovering her...like that…all I could do no, all that I was allowed to do was sit and wait. But now, I could find it on my own. I could seek out the truth for myself.
2:
Truth was dangerous.
It had the ability to warp people’s minds, to hijack their feelings. Such truth rendered many unpredictable, and when you are unpredictable, you make mistakes. On Paradise, mistakes could not be afforded. Everything was held together by a fragile strand of trust and cooperation. Imagine if the circumstances of Aelita’s death were known. Almost, immediately the question of the perpetrator would arise. From here, Paradise would already be lost. Distrust and Discord would rip through the settlements, the farms, the enrichment centers, all the way to the observatories on the surface, compromising the immune system and exposing us to the elements. Even if I gave them a murderer, the anger and hate would surely boil over and scald the colony for years to come.
So we told no one. It was public knowledge that the princess had fallen, but only a handful knew she was slain in cold blood, a secret we would take to the grave.
As a biologist who dabbled in medicine himself, I was immediately aware of what Aelita’s autopsy investigation would reveal, Acute Respiratory Failure. Her lungs, despite being stronger than any other Martian and most colonists had collapsed due to low pressure unfiltered air. They would probably also find that her blood was filled with carbon dioxide and nitrogen, almost entirely devoid of oxygen. I knew all of this, because I alone watched her die.
4:
It could only be a Colonist. This I knew from the beginning. The Martians aren’t perfect though. Despite their uniqueness and their fortune, they are flesh and blood humans like us. If this was an accident, the possibility would be there…But it is impossible for this to be an accident. To say that premeditated murder is outside of their capability, is probably the most reasonable conclusion of all.
Acute Respiratory Failure is an impossibility in our modern suits, unless of course the system was sabotaged. The portable air filters within the suits are the same underlying technology that provides breathable air to the underground chambers of Paradise, so it’s safe to say they are very reliable. If these systems had an underlying fault, it could spell doom for the entirety of life on this red planet. That being said, when we examined the systems of Aelita’s suit, the damage was extensive and obvious. The lines feeding oxygen into the filtration systems were unscarred, but those collecting waste air and reconstituting it were violently slashed. No…It only appeared to be violently slashed. Only a sharp blade could make internal cuts like that, and the killer would have needed to know how to open the filter module in the first place.
Despite the high resourcefulness of the average colonist, only a member of the engineering department would have the tools and the expertise required to open a filter module at all. In truth, this fact alone basically handed us our prime suspect on a serving tray. You see, all suits undergo regular maintenance every twenty days. During maintenance any damage or defect will be discovered and rectified. It is this same underlying principle that lies at the foundation of Paradise. An automatic diagnostic is also run daily and every time the suit is activated, but it is less accurate. Had the suits we had worn been a day old rather than fresh off the cycle, disaster would have been averted.
The murder was by chance.
I had never known Aelita to be anything less than lucky, you had to be just to survive as a Martian. I, on the other hand, was hurled to near death by an unearthly dust storm within hours of arriving. Aelita even gave me the nickname “Misha-fortune”. Perhaps, I was wrong in the beginning. The target was merely chosen at random it seems. A chilling conclusion for sure. If the murderer was doing so indiscriminately, then a second victim was inevitable. A murder can be quarantined and disposed of, but a serial killer is an epidemic. An epidemic could wipeout the colony much faster than anything this warlike planet could throw at it.
That being said, the murderer was careless. Almost too careless. Every suit is tagged and logged when activated or in maintenance. The suits in a maintenance cycle are grouped into batches and each batch is numbered and tracked by the computer systems as well. Both Aelita’s and my suits where both out of batch 7, the first batch to come out for the day. Furthermore, any engineer who logged in and had access to the suit batches did so with their own tagged IDs. Chugging through the data, I chuckled at the ease at which this case proceeded. Which was why what occurred next stropped me right on the tracks. The ID belonged to Leyla Zarathustra, Aelita’s mother.
5:
Had I been naïve? In my desperation for the truth, was I too hasty? Or was I desperate for something else, vindication perhaps? No. The clues led me here for a reason, this was either the killer’s incompetence or the killer’s overconfidence. Then again, it was just as likely that this was a dead end. If the killer used Leyla’s card to frame her, or at least, disguise himself, he still needed knowledge of how the systems work, which wasn’t exactly public knowledge. The only way he would know for sure is to talk to her. Thus I spoke to Zarathustra.
Leyla and Gol were opposites.
At first glace, the twins were identical. The same held true for every subsequent glance. The similarities end their however. Unlike Gol’s grey locks, streaks of vibrant brown in her hair defied the inevitability of aging. After all, Leyla came her much later, chasing after her older sister. Not only was she warmer than Gol, but she was clearly more motherly as well. Leyla reminded me of my own Mamochka. This woman would never harm her own daughter.
This fact was proven by hospital logs verifying her guilt. All day yesterday, she was receiving treatment for MIGS, a seasonal illness brought on by the changes in the planets gravity. Every winter, a third of the atmosphere freezes out over the poles, slightly increasing the gravity. Every summer, the frozen carbon dioxide sublimates and returns to the atmosphere, decreasing the gravity. While the change is gradual and minute, those that become sensitive to it can periodically experience MIGS. While not fatal, it results in debilitating levels of fatigue and nausea. Clearly, it was impossible for Leyla to be the culprit.
I had no choice but to consider who else could have had access. Leyla’s card had to have been stolen. This much was undeniable. Her card was used to continuously register her for treatment as per protocol up until a few hours last night. The killer would have to have taken it around that time then, because the card was used only a few moments later at the engineering department. Unfortunately, visitor registration only showed Leyla as having a single visitor, her faithful daughter Aelita. It stands to reason that Aelita’s father visited Leyla as well, but records have him working well throughout the evening on multiple MIGS cases let alone his wife’s. Suffice it to say, he had no opportunity at well.
Only Aelita, the victim, had visited the room.
Perhaps someone else had entered the room and taken her card? If the killer had engineering experience then it was feasible that he could bypass the hospital security and take a Leyla’s card as well. And if he bypassed the security, then the suspect wouldn’t even show up in the visitor log. But then why not just bypass security at the department at well? Looking down at the silver red trimmed card on my chest, I shook the wild supposition from my head. System security was one of the fundamental strengths of Paradise. Good record keep systems and the counter measures that kept them secure kept the colony from self destruction. The only way to bypass both hospital and the engineering department’s security systems without registration is through the way I just did, as an Arch-Adjudicator.
Before I could continue to mull over my thoughts, I received a call from Councilwoman Gol. She wanted to see me immediately. Confused, I headed back to the hospital, my synapses firing erratically to try and make sense of all the contradictions and conflicting evidence. None of it made sense at all. Everything I had pointed to Aelita. Had this been an exercise in futility, could all of this happen by chance? How could the victim, be the murderer? These questions sparked wildly in my head, lighting my thoughts on fire, and overwhelming my mind with an inferno as I continue down the hall to the room that Gol had summoned me too. Out of habit, I swiped my regular ID at the door, but to my surprise, the handle lit a familiar blue and green, inviting me in. Eyes that caught the light and radiated it across the room in every hue shown back at me.
Devour - Five Second Eternity
Spoiler for Five Second Eternity:
Show
The earpiece was annoying enough without having to take orders from faceless agents. David could tell from the way they spoke and conducted business that they were cold. Detached from the real world. Their coldness belied their disregard for human life and their secrecy meant they could be up to nothing good. He hadn't even heard of I.R.E before, but apparently they were huge.
Honestly though, none of that mattered to him. What mattered was the five million dollars they paid up front for his services. That mattered a hell of a lot.
"Alright, I've got it in sight." He whispered. David was on the trail of an athletic man who held a metal suitcase in his hands. He stride was long and he walked quickly, giving David a very hard time of keeping up without blowing his cover. Fortunately, that wouldn't be a problem for long. "The guy who has the suitcase is tall... He's got a white baseball cap and a grey shirt. Know anything about him or how he managed to get that suitcase?"
"No. He is acting independantly." The voice of the agent rang loudly into his piece, making him frown. "His name is Kyle Martez and he has eluded our men multiple times. His reaction time is faster than what any human should be capable of, and he has responded to unseen threats before he having any knowledge of them. We think he is one of your kind."
"One of my kind." David curled his lip. "Whatever. I don't think he'll be a problem."
"Good. That is what we expect."
The line went dead.
Sighing, the man scanned the streets to get a map of the area in his head. Just two days ago he was living normally, safely in the cover of being just another ordinary man. Now, this company and its army of prickly telephone warriors seemed to know who he really was, and they were willing to pay truly ridiculous money for equally brainless work. He just had to get in, get out, and then a comfortable life in relative safety would be his. Just like that.
Agencies like I.R.E had sprung up like weeds after NATO collapsed and the Constitution got shredded and rewritten in the name of global security. With the fall of Democracy came the shrinkage of the Government, and in the vacuum of their presence came the rise of the next in line: bearing power and untold riches. Fifty wealthy families gobbled up fifty states in less than a year, and they dug their roots deep into their new territory, strangling it until America resembled the next generation of some Chinese dynasty.
Sometimes David thought he was living in some cheap thriller story.
"Get the suitcase and get out." He told himself one last time. Looking around, he snapped his fingers, and he vanished from his spot in an instant.
There were no sound effects. No puff of smoke, no dramatics. One moment he was walking with the stream of people who trekked through downtown Chicago, and in the next he was on the other side of the street, leaning on the outer walls of a crowded bus stop.
He paid no mind to the confused glances of people who noticed him. They had bigger things to worry about than how he got there. Instead, David's attention was fixed on Kyle as he made his way along the crosswalk of the jam-packed street, coming closer and closer with every step. David's muscles tensed involuntarily, leaning ever so slightly forward... But as Kyle stepped off the pavement and came in range, he shifted his weight. The suitcase casually switched from one hand and into the other, opposite of David. Kyle's bare hands meant that he couldn't just warp off with it without taking Kyle with him, and there was no way he'd get the leverage to yank the suitcase free from here.
Dammit, let's try a different approach, then. He thought, pushing off of the bus stop's wall. "Hey! Buddy!" David called out, quickly stepping out and into stride with the man, who eyed him suspiciously. "You got something on the bottom of your suitcase--"
"What do you want?" Kyle interrupted sharply. His voice didn't fit his muscular frame. He sounded intelligent, and his eyes seemed to stare straight through him.
"Hmm? I just--"
"No, what do you really want?" He interrupted again. David's jaws shut with an annoyed click. He hated being interrupted. If he didn't know better it almost seemed like Kyle knew that--for his scowl was briefly tinged by a suppressed grin.
"Listen, I know you want this suitcase. You can't have it." He continued, curt. "I also know that isn't going to get rid of you, but I'm going to tell you now that you won't be able to steal this from me. You just can't." David opened his mouth again to speak. "I'm not saying that as an insult," Kyle continued as if reading his mind. "It's a statement of fact. Bigger guys than you have tried.
"I think you're making a hell of a lot of assumptions." David found his tongue. "What, do you think you can tell the future or something?"
Another grin slipped from behind the mask, and suddenly David knew.
Something in Kyle's expression changed at once as he realized he'd slipped. The mask of assertive curtness fell away to something else, but David didn't think it was anything but another mask for a second. "You're different from the rest of them, aren't you?" The man grinned. "Come with me. Let's talk this out, then." Without looking, the man guided them from the crowded masses of people and into a modest clothing store. It was dim inside compared to the brightness of day, and the place smelled like overused air-freshener. They were ignored as David followed this strange man into an empty corner of the shop, where he turned to face him, and without another word he dropped the suitcase to the ground, eyebrow raised. If David didn't know better by now, he would have went for it then and there. Now he knew to play his cards close to his chest.
"Let's negotiate then." Kyle smirked as if he had remembered something funny. "What do I need to do to get you off my tail?"
"A bribe of a few million dollars would be a good place to start."
The smirk transformed to a laugh. "You're joking, right? I know you've figured what I can do, but that doesn't fix your problem. You literally cannot catch me off-guard. That's why you haven't made your move already."
David grunted, thinking. He needed something that would do just that, and he knew just how to do it. In 30 seconds, he was going to reach out and punch Kyle square in the face, mid-sentence.
Unless he reacted. And if he did, he would know exactly how far in the future this Kyle fellow could see. He would figure out his plan from there.
"How are you so sure you can't lose me if you don't know what my trick up the sleeve is?" David spoke again, stretching for time. "In all my planning, I haven't reached a point where I could use it. My trick could be literally anything. I think you're the one who's at the shorter end of the stick here."
"That won't take me long to do, David." Kyle dropped his name with a wicked grin, startling him so much that he almost lost his count. "The future isn't set in stone. Every second, every millisecond of the present can be analyzed. In one instant I, can make a decision on what to do next. My decision will change the immediate future, and this lets me see what happened if I were to do that. This in turn gives me new information..." The grin spread further. "And then the next millisecond passes and I can try a new decision once again until I have the future I want. For example, I asked your name just a moment ago." He shrugged. "You said it was David. Then I decided to say something else, which is this. Now imagine, how easily will I be able to find out what you can do?"
He hadn't reacted yet. David bumped his punch count down to ten seconds.
"Right now, I might be trying all sorts of different things to make you react the way I want you to. Sooner or later--" In that instant, Kyle's grin fell apart like shattered glass. He flinched back.
And David changed his mind. He didn't throw his punch. He changed the next five seconds of his future.
"You can only see five seconds, eh?" Now he was the one grinning. His adversary looked completely dumbstruck and the satisfaction of seeing Kyle at a loss for words was unreal. "How does it feel with the shoe on the other foot?"
"You'd be amazed by what can change in five seconds." Kyle muttered, pulling himself back together. After a moment of contemplation, he picked up the suitcase from the floor and shook his head in disbelief. The smile he wore now was genuine. "That was clever. You got me there, actually." The hand holding its treasure raised high into the air, dangling precariously between loose fingers in the space between them. "I'm beat. Go ahead and take it."
The suitcase fell.
David had no time to think, except to be shocked by what Kyle was doing. Five million dollars floated less than a few feet away from his face. There was no way that guy could stop him in time, and in an instant the decision was made. With a gasp of exertion he lunged forward--
And in his state of mind, he did not see as Kyle reared back and smashed the side of David's head with a well-aimed punch. His fingers brushed the suitcase handle by millimeters and fell away, sprawling into a rack of clothing that tumbled down with him.
"Teleportation. That's all, eh?" Kyle mocked as David struggled to remember which direction was up. The other man stepped away and back towards the city. "Catch me if you can, asshole! You know I'll see you coming!" He dashed away through the aisles and was out the door before in mere seconds, before David had even picked himself back up. By the time he was back on his feet, Kyle had disappeard among the crowds.
"Ugh." He shook his head, trying to see straight again. The dizziness was gone, but the pain was not in the slightest. Fortunately, pain meant nothing with the stakes at hand here. In a blink, he vanished and reappeared at the door before stepping outside himself, measuring how high the buildings in this block were. In the next instant he was standing upon the rooftops, staring down into the living stream of ignorant humans below, watching closely for something unnatural.
Static clawed his ears for a moment as his with I.R.E came back online. David groaned. "Do you have the suitcase?" The voice both asked and demanded.
Visions of dollar signs helped him keep his patience. "Not yet." He drawled. "You guys were right, he's a tricky one. But he's not getting away from me." As he scanned the crowds, he finally caught sight of a man who ran against the current of people, slipping between shoulders at an absolute sprint as he somehow managed to be in the perfect spot at all times. The white cap was gone now, but David knew that no one else could do what he was seeing.
"We cannot afford for you to fail." The man on the other end spoke. "Assistance is on its way."
The line went dead before David could protest. "I don't need any help." He muttered to himself. Another snap of the fingers brought him to the roof of a building on the other side of the block, already caught back up with his prey.
It only took a moment of thinking before he decided his next course of action. He knew he couldn't just teleport in front of Kyle and snatch the bag... He would see it coming well in advance and easily deck him out with another blow. He would have to try something else. Something more subtle.
Making sure he could see the distance he needed to go, David teleported along with Kyle as he ran, appearing and reappearing in the windows of different stores, wearing his favorite shit-eating grin as he displayed the futility of trying to run from someone such as him. Each pass left Kyle's features more exasperated than the last, but he didn't stop. It took until the sixth pass before he realized why. He was headed directly towards a large and abandoned skyscraper that had once belonged to some credit company before the current overlords drove them out.
They soon reached the end of the street that breached a crowded intersection, but Kyle paid no mind to the rush of traffic. Only the tiniest adjustment to his pace had him weaving safely through the chaos, easily dodging the panicked swerving of vehicles that missed him by what looked like inches. He didn't look the least bit afraid as death brushed the soles of his shoes and flew by, just a fraction of a second too late to cause him harm.
Jesus. No wonder the others hadn't been able to catch him.
David watched as Kyle slammed the corner of the suitcase into the skyscraper's window, shattering it neatly before disappearing inside. Five seconds later, he closed his eyes and opened them again to find himself in front of the window himself, this time startling a woman who had just been gaping at Kyle in shock.
He ignored her, dashing inside after Kyle's fading footsteps that echoed within the building's empty walls. He knew that Kyle had to be betting on the enclosed spaces to limit his teleportation so that he could eventually lose him in the maze of lifeless halls. It wasn't a bad plan; all he needed was for David to lose sight of Kyle long enough for him to get back outside without his knowledge. By the time David realized he was gone, Kyle would be just another man in the crowd, simply impossible to track or follow.
Sadly, this was not a fair fight. It didn't matter how good Kyle's plan was. It didn't matter if he outsmarted him once or twice. There was simply no way David could be outrun, so there was no way he would lose his trail.
He was a vengeful spectre, blinking from one end of a hallway to the next, pausing only to get his bearings before disappearing once more. David simply blazed through the bottom two floors as he followed the sound of Kyle's footsteps. It took no more than 30 seconds before he was once again hot on his tail... and then the footsteps stopped, hidden behind a closed metal door.
David swung it open carefully and saw Kyle sitting on an old wooden desk, breathing hard but otherwise looking as comfortable as ever. "Uh, what are you doing?" He asked. He could still feel the throbbing pressure of Kyle's knuckles on his cheekbone.
"I'm taking... a break." He said between breaths. "Some of us have to get around physically you know." He was still smiling widely.
"Well now I--"
"What are you gonna do now that you've caught me, though?" The smile turned mischevious as David's jaws clacked shut once again. "And don't bother telling me you hate being interrupted. If you want me to care about your feelings, it's a bit late for that. Maybe giving up would get you back on my good side." In response to something yet unheard, he raised an eyebrow in interest.
"Five million dollars is a pretty powerful motivation. I'm not giving up any time soon." David said.
Kyle whistled. "That's a lot of money. They paid you the money up front, too? Sounds like you could just walk away if you wanted to. What are they gonna do, catch you?"
"I never told you that." David protested, feeling violated in the strangest sense of the word.
"Yes, you did." Kyle's enjoyment of his proverbial gnashing of teeth was apparent. "Seriously, what's stopping you from raising a fortune and buying houses all over the world to visit whenever you want? Actually, why haven't you done that already?" He physically suppressed a reaction, granting the courtesy of waiting until David finished speaking.
"It's because it's better to keep your head down in today's world." He said.
Kyle shrugged, accepting the truth of that statement.
"Listen, we're obviously at a stalemate. Why don't you give me the suitcase, and I'll give you a million bucks from what they paid me?"
Taking a look down at the mysterious treasure in his hands, Kyle promptly shook his head. "I wouldn't give this to you for a billion."
Perplexed, David opened his mouth speak but he stopped himself as Kyle suddenly snapped to alert. "Do you hear something?" He asked.
Seconds later he heard it too. It sounded like a helicopter approaching, but it was too far away to tell for sure. "That must be the guys who sent me. I'd bet anything on it." David shrugged. "Mind you, I didn't ask for the help. But still..." He quirked an eyebrow in Kyle's direction. "Still think you're going to turn down my offer?"
The other man's eyes looked deeply worried. Not at the prospect of losing this battle of wits between he and David... but for the life of him he just couldn't figure out what it was that was so damned important.
"These people who sent you... Do you really trust them?" Kyle asked. "I mean, you don't seriously think they're going to use what's in this stupid suitcase for the greater good, do you?"
"I don't know." David griped, torn. "I don't even know what's in that thing."
"Neither do I, honestly. But when I found this suitcase... Listen for a second. It took me by surprise."
The helicopter was coming closer. "So what? What's--"
"Remember how I mentioned asking your name and then doing something different once I had that information? My decision changed the future." Kyle hurried through his words, terse. He was running out of time and did not spare precious seconds to let David finish speaking. "That's how this all works. The future only changes when someone who knows the future acts on information that no one else has. So this suitcase, it shouldn't have surprised me. I would have seen myself notice it five seconds later. Get what I mean?" David began to nod. "Good. So the reason, the only reason I would be surprised by this suitcase here, is if someone else changed the future. He or she wanted me to find this."
"How does that make it worth more than a million--"
"Of course it's a big deal. This is huge! For someone to know I was going to be in that exact spot in that exact moment... They must be able to see at least hours into the future. Maybe even days! Can you imagine how much power someone with that kind of foresight would have?"
"I don't--" David had to shout over the sound of the propellor blades now. "If he can see so far into the future, maybe he wants the suitcase to pass from me to the corp that hired me! Did you think of that?"
For the tiniest moment, Kyle looked uncomfortable. The helicopter must have been right on top of them by now. "That's what it is, huh? Well, I'm pretty sure shadow corporations with attack helicopters aren't going to do anything good with this thing!" He decided.
"Wait, attack helicopters?"
Like a killer whale from hell, a machine of black plated armor flew down from the skies, filling up the entire view from the windows with its size. Pointed directly at them were the massive barrels of two side-mounted machineguns.
These guys weren't from the I.R.E, David realized.
"PUT YOUR ARMS ON THE GROUND!" A horrifically loud voice screamed over the helicopter's speakerphone. "BY ORDER OF PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, YOU ARE TO HAND OVER YOUR BELONGINGS!" Kyle was smirking again as he flew back to his feet and sprinted from the room. The horror on David's face must have been apparent.
Right on time, it was five seconds later when the machineguns warmed up and opened fire.
David disappeared like a ghost as deafening thunder obliterated the room the duo sat in just seconds earlier. Glass shattered and bullets hailed like a chain of angry serpents, destroying all in their path. But Kyle and David were both long gone.
"Where the fuck did he go?" The speakerphone was muffled now as David huddled from deeper within the abandoned building. "Send in the troops! They can't escape!"
In one moment of clarity, David realized two things. He did not want these people to get their hands on Kyle's suitcase. He also realized, as much as he hated to admit it, that Kyle would need his help or else that was going to happen. With no time to spare he disappeared once more in a series of bursts and blinks down the narrow corridors, homing in on Kyle's location. It was all too soon when his rapid footsteps became drowned out by the shattering of glass in all directions, followed shortly by the banging of dozens of heavy boots that rocked the floors beneath their feet. "KYLE!" He was shouting now, knowing that he had to be close enough to hear him. "Kyle, we need to work together on--"
In one blink to the next, he found himself standing behind three gigantic men dressed in urban camo and body armor who had trapped Kyle in the middle of a hall with nowhere to run. David choked down a shout of surprise and brought a hand over his mouth, thankful that they hadn't noticed him. Instead, their weapons were leveled at Kyle, whose arms were raised in mock defeat. His grin, as always, was there as he looked past them and to David himself. He nodded once.
David grinned back, tapping one of the men on their shoulder. "So..." He coughed. "Ten million bucks and I'll help you guys out?"
"What?" Almost lazily, a soldier looked over his shoulder and promptly screamed at the man who appeared behind them without a sound. "SHOOT HIM!"
"I guess that's a no." As three assault rifles turned from Kyle to David, he quickly blinked behind them once more and delivered a vicious kick that shattered the kneecap of the lead soldier, sending him down in a screaming heap. The next to turn was met with a haymaker to the face. Like clockwork, David blinked back around once again and repeated the same kick as before, smashing the side of the man's leg, repositioned, and flattened the soldier's nose with the heel of his shoe once the he hit the floor.
The third man never had to worry about David. With a shout, Kyle had sprinted back towards them from the other end of the hallway, tackling his opponent to the ground, straddling him, raining down a flurry of punches that always seemed to find their mark and worm past the poor guy's desperate defence. As fascinating as it was, David turned his attention back and gripped the weapons of the two gloved men who struggled to level their rifles through the pain and their broken legs.
Then he teleported five feet back. Because of their contact with his skin, the two rifles disappeared from the soldiers' grip and clattered to the ground as they fell from David's hands.
"These things are heavier than they look." He gasped, exhilarant with the rush of adrenaline. Looking up, he saw Kyle get back up to his feet, almost casually wiping the blood from his knuckles as he turned to the other two soldiers... and he frowned. David's gaze followed.
Eight more uniformed men stood on the opposite side of the hallway. All were armed, and at least for now they all still held their fire.
"Don't look behind you." Kyle hissed at once. You'll warp away and they'll shoot me."
"What?" David looked behind him anyways, letting out a gasp as he saw another dozen men storm into the corridor, blocking off their escape. Half of their hands were pressed to their ears, receiving orders from some invisible leadership who sat safely from somewhere else. For a few seconds that stretched for an eternity, everything was silentl.
Then came their new orders. "Take them alive!" The soldiers shouted as one. They flicked the safety off of their rifles. "And you! Put your hands behind your heads!"
Instinctively, David scanned his surroundings as he complied. They stood along the outer rim of the skyscraper, only three floors up. Rows and rows of windows and bisecting metal grids spanned across the hall, giving him a great view of the city. In the blink of an eye, he could disappear onto any of those rooftops like he'd never even been there. The only thing that stopped him now was the fact that Kyle had warned him not to. That, and the mounting sense of unease that the purpose of Kyle's suitcase was much, much larger than originally thought.
And then his headset crackled. I.R.E was back on the line.
"David. Do you have the suitcase? Are you out of the area?" The voice asked.
"No." David said after a moment of stressed deliberation. Kyle quirked an eyebrow his way. "And yes, I'm still in the area. The Government has showed up to try and take the suitcase themselves. What is in that thing anyways?"
"Oh. That's a shame. We could have used your services in the future." He ignored the question. "But now it seems we were right in our decision."
"Your decision? What are you talking about? I thought you were sending help?"
"We did." The voice's change of inflection was subtle. From that of a concerned, stern father, the tiniest shift filled the man's voice with malice. "We have deployed a neutron bomb towards your location. The city's inhabitants will not survive, but we have deemed the loss suitable for what we stand to gain. Later, we'll return and collect the suitcase as only life forms will be obliterated by the blast."
"You what? You goddamned lunatics!" Turning his head wildly, David could spot it. The silent trail of a cruise missile streaked the sky--its trail indicated that it had been there for a while now, but without paying attention David had passed it off as just a passenger plane. "You'd really kill an entire city, all of Chicago, for a suitcase?"
"Goodbye, David."
The line went dead.
He nearly tore his hair from the frustration--from the futility of it all. He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs, but even now as the city stood to lose the lives of every single one of its inhabitants, he could not move for fear of Kyle being killed himself.
"Don't worry about telling me. I already asked you everything." Kyle's voice was deathly quiet; ignoring the slowly-approaching wave of weapons and armor. His eyes were fixed on the streak in the sky as well. "You should have told me it was I.R.E you were working for, buddy." Slowly, he shuffled his feet. One of his shoes came loose, and he began working his sock free of his foot as fast as he could without alarming the soldiers. "Those guys, they're like the Gestapo of Illinois. They belong to the new Oligarchy and would kill a lot more people than just this city to get what I have in my hands here." He shrugged. "The five million dollars they paid you? Nothing more than a nickel in the pocket to them."
"You! Stop moving or I'll shoot!" A soldier bellowed. They were only about ten yards away, now.
"They won't shoot. Don't do anything drastic." Kyle whispered. "You know how you took away the guard's weapons?"
"Yeah?"
"You need do that with me. Teleport us out of here." He dropped his suitcase to the ground, catching it underneath his now-bare foot before it could even clatter.
"It doesn't work like that." David protested. "If I don't know where I'm going, I could easily misjudge and reappear halfway inside the ground, or through a wall! I need to see where I need to reappear or else I'll just as likely kill us both." The cruise missile had noticably curved towards the ground, now. Impact was imminent. The soldiers were coming closer.
"That's where I come in." Despite insurmountable odds, Kyle's grin was back. "I can see the future. I can make decisions in a fraction of a microsecond and see the results of what I chose to do. All I need you to do... is listen to me, and do exactly as I say. I will make sure we get out of this alive."
"Okay..." David couldn't tear his eyes from the missile. It whistled with a deadly throb of power as it sliced through the air: it was the last thing fifty million people would ever hear. The soldiers noticed it as well.
"When I speak, you must not think." Kyle's voice was dead serious. "What I'm about to say will affect your brain's decision making, and I want you to teleport to the first place that comes to mind after my words. Do you understand?"
He couldn't believe this was happening. He wanted to call Kyle insane. "Yes." He said instead.
Dangerously low in the sky, David saw as the neutron bomb split apart with an audible bang, dividing into a terrifying cluster of nuclear charges that began to envelop the entire city. Even in his terror he had to appreciate the ingenuity of the device: There would be no safe angles from the horrific radiation that was about to be unleashed itself upon the population.
One of the soldiers spoke up, no louder than a suppressed gasp. "That's a neutron bomb." The words were laced with mixtures of grief and defeat. Four words of inescapable death.
"Here it comes. Are you ready?" Kyle was struggling to concentrate as he calculated thousands of different outcomes in the scant few moments they had left to live. He shook his head no as David opened his mouth to reply. His bare foot was firm on the suitcase, and he reached with a shaking hand towards David, who took it.
From the far side of the city, the first of the bombs detonated. A wave of invisible death and conjoining shockwaves rushed towards them at a terrifying speed.
"Warp into the horizon." Kyle's words came out like gunshots.
"What?"
"Just fucking do it! DO IT NOW!"
David closed his eyes and snapped his fingers one last time as countless souls died around him.
**************************
The air smelled different here.
David had quickly learned how drastically the smell of the atmosphere changed as he mastered his power, travelling across the whole country. All of America had its own different kinds of pollution, its own nature and wildlife. Even the people smelled differently and that affected the air as well.
Here... it smelled like air freshener.
He opened his eyes, and found himself inside the dining room of a quiet home, full of mahogany wood and well-kept plants. A television played softly in another room, but the house itself appeared to be empty. Chicago was gone, the soldiers were gone, and the cacaphony of senseless killing had all faded away into peace. It was like none of that had ever happened.
The only reminder was Kyle, whose beads of sweat rolled down his face as he quickly bent down and reclaimed his treasure. His shoe was gone, probably forever. "We did it." He gasped. He fell back into one of the table's chairs, running his hands over his face. "We did it! YEAH!" He was exultant.
"We... yeah. We're still alive." The shock of survival was hitting him hard. His home was back in Chicago. Everyone he knew, few people as that may be, was now dead. And for some reason he still lived. What was it all for? What had been so important that the I.R.E was willing to sacrifice a city to get it?
"Yeah, yeah, I'm already on it." Kyle responded to something David hadn't yet thought to say. "Would you believe I've been on the run since I found this thing? This is the first chance I've had to try and get through this lock here. Just give me a moment."
For the first time, David noticed the five-digit combination under the suitcase handle. Rather than touching it, Kyle stared, thinking heavily. A flashback of his last moments in Chicago that had saved their lives.
Two minutes passed before he jolted into action. "What a dick!" Kyle laughed, startling David as he huddled next to a wall. He still couldn't imagine how the man found the strength to smile. "He's screwing with me! 99999. The very last combination." He laughed again, clapping his hands once. "I had to go through every single number to crack this thing." He worked his fingers expertly over the numbers without mistake, shaking his head. It boggled David's mind to imagine all the subtle ways you could perfect your next five seconds with that power. At a small amount, he could dodge bullets. He would be unbeatable in a fight. He could dictate a conversation to go exactly the way he wanted it to. There were probably countless other options that he couldn't even think of yet... And that was just five seconds!
"I've got it." The man grinned. The locks of the suitcase popped open. His fingers rested apprehensively on its edges. "Let's see what's inside that Chicago had to die for." Kyle popped open the capsule.
Inside was an old note, aged enough that it had to have been sitting there for years. The writing on it was done by hand and it was crystal clear in its neatness. It read:
Hello Kyle Martez. Hello David Zultok. I have been preparing for this day for a very, very long time.
I reside in North Dakota, right on the edge of the Canadian border where it's still safe. You'll find my address on the other side.
Very Big Things are about to happen. The neutron bomb dropped on Chicago today will have its consequences, and we are about to see events that will be remembered in history for centuries to come. People now know their lives have no value under their rulers, and they will fight to the death to wrest them from power before they themselves are killed at the whim of some faceless ruler.
We have a lot of talking to do. I look forward to seeing you greatly.
Yours truly,
Cain.
June 11th, 1952
Kyle whistled. "Wow. That's more than I was expecting. Imagine what you could do to change the world with that kind of foresight." David could not fathom how that man could process and recover from information this quickly. He was still struggling to wrap his head around the implications of this letter and what it all meant. The destruction of his home gave the rest of the world a muted sense of... melancholy. He found it hard to care all that much about anything at all. "Well, David buddy," Kyle held out a hand again. "Chicago is in the past now. It seems like the only thing we really have control of is our futures." He grinned at that. "What do you say we begin a new adventure? I bet you still have that five million dollars."
"Yeah. I guess I do." David murmured. He tried his best to leave the memories of his shoddy home behind. His half-hearted friends. His meagre belongings. But it was hard as hell to do and he didn't know if he would ever find it any easier. But still, he had to try. He had to keep on living. The man reached out and clapsed his palm around Kyle's once again. "I'll follow your lead. Let's go see who this Cain guy is." Despite himself, the ghost of a smile creased his lips for a joke.
"Who knows what the future could hold?"
He snapped his fingers.