Meteora
Title: Trust Me
Word Count: 1845
The rain had stopped by the time they burst out of Meteora and into the lower levels of Medius, but the air was thick with ozone and the promise of a storm. Kyara darted toward the elevators, but he grabbed her hand and yanked her back, pulling her into the shadows of the alcove near Meteora's massive doors.
"What are you doing?!" she yelped, trying to pull away from him. "They're right behind us, we have to -"
"Be quiet," he growled, clapping his hand over her mouth. Her eyes narrowed, her free hand darting to the knives at her waist, but suddenly seemed to think better of it and instead pulled her face away from his hand with an indignant glare.
The scent of the Deviants coated lower Medius like a blanket, and no matter where he tuned his hearing, the thud of their boots and magnetic hum of their weapons echoed back at him. Too many to count, which meant too many to outrun. The elevators were overrun, the streets crawling with soldiers, but...
"I see a way," he told her, and thrust the backpack of hard drives into her hands. "You're carrying these." Her eyes clouded suspiciously, but she remained silent as she slung the pack over her shoulders and fastened the three clips across her chest.
"Where?" she asked, the challenging air about her fading as she peered out into the street. He pointed to the pipes, scaffolds, and metal sheets that made up the patchwork wall barricading Medius from the wasteland.
"It moves clear up into the next three levels," he told her. "We'll have to climb it."
"You're serious?" she asked, though it was more a grim statement than a question. "Az, that shit's been falling apart for a good sixty years. It'll collapse under us."
"We'll be fine," he assured.
"But -"
"Ky, we're dead out of ammo and it's two hours until sunrise." He leaned forward to check the street, his ears flicking. The streets were still full of Meteora's citizens, but it was the last boom of activity before curfew - already people were filing back into Meteora's depths. "If we don't go now, we're dead." He searched her face, her gleaming emerald eyes, and then patted her cheek in an attempt at reassurance. "Just a little longer," he promised, "and I'll never drag you into this shit again."
"You promise?" she asked, cracking a faint smile. It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation in the last six years.
"Swear it. For real this time." He leaned into the street again, then reached back and grabbed her hand. "Let's go."
They exited the alcove at a quick jog, weaving through a large crowd of biomechs performing strongman feats for a growing crowd of amused onlookers. He'd expected Kyara to quickly pull her hand away, but she held on with surprising intensity, staying close to him the entire way across the massive commons. He had to fight the urge to look back at her, instead keeping his attention focused on the sharp edge of the opposite side of Meteora's entrance as it approached out of the darkness, the edges of the crowd thinning. Just as they pushed through the last group of hybrids, a familiar buzzing in his ear made Azazel break into a grin.
"You better still be alive, Mutt," Sketch's voice called over his earpiece, "or I'll have Jae rez you just so I can kill you again."
"We're alive, we're alive," Azazel replied, laughing despite himself. "I've got Ky and the drives."
"That's... entirely unexpected. Where are you?"
"Level Thirty-One. We're headed for -"
"We'll come to you, then," Sketch interrupted. "Stay put and -"
"No, no, negative, don't come down here." A patrol vehicle turned the corner at the end of the street and Azazel skidded to a stop before hauling Kyara into the shadows behind a dumpster. "It's crawling with Devs down here," he continued in a whisper, listening to the squad marching behind the truck. "We're going to climb the wall."
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Sketch demanded, also dropping his voice to a harsh whisper. "If they pen you in there -"
"Tell me something I don't know. Can you clear the top?" When Sketch was quiet for a long moment, Azazel added, "Two hundred feet, man, that's all I'm asking."
"We'll be there," Sketch finally replied. "You better make it."
They darted into the shadows of the wall without being spotted, and clambered into the center of the mismatched framework - a gap about four feet wide, laced through with all sorts of metal and piping like a demented jungle gym - to begin the climb. Kyara went first, her lithe body twisting and bending easily around the obstructions as she climbed, moving like a natural gymnast. Azazel followed, trying his best to keep up while also keeping tabs on their surroundings. It was pitch black in the space and his senses became even more hypersensitive than normal - every drip of water and creak of metal was amplified as his eyes tried to adjust to the lack of light.
The first fifty feet went by in a panicked blur, as did the next fifty, and he was just allowing himself a faint glimmer of hope when Kyara suddenly let out a shocked yelp as her feet slid out from under her on a wet section of polished pipe. She dropped several feet to collide with him, her heels landing square on his shoulder, causing him to momentarily lose his balance. He felt the pad of his foot come down on a thin, sharp section of wire that sliced cleanly into his skin before it snapped, and suddenly the darkness around them lit with blinding red lights, a klaxon piercing the relative silence.
"What the hell is that?" Kyara shrieked, slipping again as she tried to resume her climb. Growling, he got his hands around her ankles and gave her a firm shove upward before scrambling after her, wincing as the gash in his foot yawned painfully.
"A tripwire!" he yelled. "Get moving!"
Not five seconds later the first bullet ripped through the wall just a few feet beneath him, followed a rapid barrage of gunfire that shredded the beams he'd just been standing on. Mech bullets, he thought grimly as they passed the barrier between Level Thirty and Twenty-Nine. As if my day couldn't get worse. Above him, Kyara's arms were starting to shake and she was having trouble maintaining her balance - as hardy as she liked to pretend she was, elven bodies weren't designed for the kind of strain she'd been under the last twenty-four hours and the treacherous climb was putting her on the brink of collapse. In the flashing lights he could see blood beading on her skin, making it even harder for her to keep her grip as she pushed and shoved herself upward. The scent of her fear was absolutely dizzying.
"There you are!" called an excited voice above them. He looked up and spotted Taesa, dropping down through the wall with X on her heels, the two of them secured with climbing cables. "Come on slackers, let's get you -"
Gunfire exploded around them, and the beam that Kyara was standing on absolutely disintegrated beneath her - she slammed her head into a pipe before crashing into Azazel's arms. He folded himself over her to shield her from the rain of red-hot bits of shredded metal that tumbled down on them as the shots tore clean through the wall, leaving a gaping hole into the howling wind of the wasteland some hundred and fifty feet below them.
"Fire in the hole!" Taesa chirped, and she and X lobbed a handful of grenades through the wall in the direction the shots had come from - a chorus of horrified human voices rang out before an explosion rocked the level, sending a cloud of smoke billowing into the wall. X dropped through it to gather Kyara from Azazel's arms, and his last sight of her was her bloodied, unconscious face as X's cable was retracted and he pulled her to safety. "Hang in there, Mutt," Taesa said over his earpiece. "My cable got clipped but -"
More voices in the wall now - hundreds of them, from the levels below, and high-powered flashlights that pierced the darkness. The shots came from below this time, tearing through the lattice of metal. Pipes burst above Azazel's head as bullets pierced them, water exploding in fierce jets in all directions. He had to scramble back against the outer wall as the scaffold he stood on started to tilt and give way, slipping and sliding on a curved section of pipe, and as soon as he caught his balance and jumped onto a narrow ridge of metal a pipe exploded behind him and he felt a burst of pain in his lower back. Reaching down, he pulled a steaming shard of metal the length of his palm from his skin and stared at it, stunned.
Light exploded in his face from across the wall, the smoking crater where Taesa and X had emptied their grenades, and as he cringed against the brightness he saw not the standard grey uniforms of the Deviants but the crimson red of the Blood Ops - an entire squadron of them with their weapons trained on him.
"Hands where I can see them!" the captain yelled, his voice distorted through the heavy red mask he wore.
"Az, I'm coming!" Taesa yelled. "Hold on, I'm -"
"No," he said quietly.
"Hands where I can fucking see them, hybrid!" the captain repeated.
"What?" She sounded almost hysterical, and he could hear her scrabbling along the pipes above him. "No, no I can get there, don't let them take you, I got this, I got -"
"No, Taesa," he repeated, and raised his hands slowly, letting the bloody piece of metal tumble from his hand and through the mess of metal below him. "Get out of here."
"No! No, I'm not leaving you, I'm -"
Her voice was abruptly gone, her connection to the radios silenced. He smiled briefly, wondering if it was Sketch or X that had shut her up before she could get hysterical.
The captain was climbing into the wall, a pair of operatives on his shoulders.
"Hands out, mongrel," he snarled, and Azazel obediently extended his wrists as the men passed the shackles forward.
"You better make the most of this, guys," he said softly, his head spinning from blood loss.
His earpiece buzzed, just for a moment, so quiet he could barely hear it.
He looked up through the hazy smoke and smiled as he felt the first barbed cuff snap into place around his wrist. Behind him, the winds of the wasteland sent a chill across his skin.
Bracing his feet on the warped metal ridge, he crouched low and kicked himself through the gaping hole the Deviants had cut through the wall, into the howling, open darkness.
Word Count: 1845
The rain had stopped by the time they burst out of Meteora and into the lower levels of Medius, but the air was thick with ozone and the promise of a storm. Kyara darted toward the elevators, but he grabbed her hand and yanked her back, pulling her into the shadows of the alcove near Meteora's massive doors.
"What are you doing?!" she yelped, trying to pull away from him. "They're right behind us, we have to -"
"Be quiet," he growled, clapping his hand over her mouth. Her eyes narrowed, her free hand darting to the knives at her waist, but suddenly seemed to think better of it and instead pulled her face away from his hand with an indignant glare.
The scent of the Deviants coated lower Medius like a blanket, and no matter where he tuned his hearing, the thud of their boots and magnetic hum of their weapons echoed back at him. Too many to count, which meant too many to outrun. The elevators were overrun, the streets crawling with soldiers, but...
"I see a way," he told her, and thrust the backpack of hard drives into her hands. "You're carrying these." Her eyes clouded suspiciously, but she remained silent as she slung the pack over her shoulders and fastened the three clips across her chest.
"Where?" she asked, the challenging air about her fading as she peered out into the street. He pointed to the pipes, scaffolds, and metal sheets that made up the patchwork wall barricading Medius from the wasteland.
"It moves clear up into the next three levels," he told her. "We'll have to climb it."
"You're serious?" she asked, though it was more a grim statement than a question. "Az, that shit's been falling apart for a good sixty years. It'll collapse under us."
"We'll be fine," he assured.
"But -"
"Ky, we're dead out of ammo and it's two hours until sunrise." He leaned forward to check the street, his ears flicking. The streets were still full of Meteora's citizens, but it was the last boom of activity before curfew - already people were filing back into Meteora's depths. "If we don't go now, we're dead." He searched her face, her gleaming emerald eyes, and then patted her cheek in an attempt at reassurance. "Just a little longer," he promised, "and I'll never drag you into this shit again."
"You promise?" she asked, cracking a faint smile. It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation in the last six years.
"Swear it. For real this time." He leaned into the street again, then reached back and grabbed her hand. "Let's go."
They exited the alcove at a quick jog, weaving through a large crowd of biomechs performing strongman feats for a growing crowd of amused onlookers. He'd expected Kyara to quickly pull her hand away, but she held on with surprising intensity, staying close to him the entire way across the massive commons. He had to fight the urge to look back at her, instead keeping his attention focused on the sharp edge of the opposite side of Meteora's entrance as it approached out of the darkness, the edges of the crowd thinning. Just as they pushed through the last group of hybrids, a familiar buzzing in his ear made Azazel break into a grin.
"You better still be alive, Mutt," Sketch's voice called over his earpiece, "or I'll have Jae rez you just so I can kill you again."
"We're alive, we're alive," Azazel replied, laughing despite himself. "I've got Ky and the drives."
"That's... entirely unexpected. Where are you?"
"Level Thirty-One. We're headed for -"
"We'll come to you, then," Sketch interrupted. "Stay put and -"
"No, no, negative, don't come down here." A patrol vehicle turned the corner at the end of the street and Azazel skidded to a stop before hauling Kyara into the shadows behind a dumpster. "It's crawling with Devs down here," he continued in a whisper, listening to the squad marching behind the truck. "We're going to climb the wall."
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Sketch demanded, also dropping his voice to a harsh whisper. "If they pen you in there -"
"Tell me something I don't know. Can you clear the top?" When Sketch was quiet for a long moment, Azazel added, "Two hundred feet, man, that's all I'm asking."
"We'll be there," Sketch finally replied. "You better make it."
They darted into the shadows of the wall without being spotted, and clambered into the center of the mismatched framework - a gap about four feet wide, laced through with all sorts of metal and piping like a demented jungle gym - to begin the climb. Kyara went first, her lithe body twisting and bending easily around the obstructions as she climbed, moving like a natural gymnast. Azazel followed, trying his best to keep up while also keeping tabs on their surroundings. It was pitch black in the space and his senses became even more hypersensitive than normal - every drip of water and creak of metal was amplified as his eyes tried to adjust to the lack of light.
The first fifty feet went by in a panicked blur, as did the next fifty, and he was just allowing himself a faint glimmer of hope when Kyara suddenly let out a shocked yelp as her feet slid out from under her on a wet section of polished pipe. She dropped several feet to collide with him, her heels landing square on his shoulder, causing him to momentarily lose his balance. He felt the pad of his foot come down on a thin, sharp section of wire that sliced cleanly into his skin before it snapped, and suddenly the darkness around them lit with blinding red lights, a klaxon piercing the relative silence.
"What the hell is that?" Kyara shrieked, slipping again as she tried to resume her climb. Growling, he got his hands around her ankles and gave her a firm shove upward before scrambling after her, wincing as the gash in his foot yawned painfully.
"A tripwire!" he yelled. "Get moving!"
Not five seconds later the first bullet ripped through the wall just a few feet beneath him, followed a rapid barrage of gunfire that shredded the beams he'd just been standing on. Mech bullets, he thought grimly as they passed the barrier between Level Thirty and Twenty-Nine. As if my day couldn't get worse. Above him, Kyara's arms were starting to shake and she was having trouble maintaining her balance - as hardy as she liked to pretend she was, elven bodies weren't designed for the kind of strain she'd been under the last twenty-four hours and the treacherous climb was putting her on the brink of collapse. In the flashing lights he could see blood beading on her skin, making it even harder for her to keep her grip as she pushed and shoved herself upward. The scent of her fear was absolutely dizzying.
"There you are!" called an excited voice above them. He looked up and spotted Taesa, dropping down through the wall with X on her heels, the two of them secured with climbing cables. "Come on slackers, let's get you -"
Gunfire exploded around them, and the beam that Kyara was standing on absolutely disintegrated beneath her - she slammed her head into a pipe before crashing into Azazel's arms. He folded himself over her to shield her from the rain of red-hot bits of shredded metal that tumbled down on them as the shots tore clean through the wall, leaving a gaping hole into the howling wind of the wasteland some hundred and fifty feet below them.
"Fire in the hole!" Taesa chirped, and she and X lobbed a handful of grenades through the wall in the direction the shots had come from - a chorus of horrified human voices rang out before an explosion rocked the level, sending a cloud of smoke billowing into the wall. X dropped through it to gather Kyara from Azazel's arms, and his last sight of her was her bloodied, unconscious face as X's cable was retracted and he pulled her to safety. "Hang in there, Mutt," Taesa said over his earpiece. "My cable got clipped but -"
More voices in the wall now - hundreds of them, from the levels below, and high-powered flashlights that pierced the darkness. The shots came from below this time, tearing through the lattice of metal. Pipes burst above Azazel's head as bullets pierced them, water exploding in fierce jets in all directions. He had to scramble back against the outer wall as the scaffold he stood on started to tilt and give way, slipping and sliding on a curved section of pipe, and as soon as he caught his balance and jumped onto a narrow ridge of metal a pipe exploded behind him and he felt a burst of pain in his lower back. Reaching down, he pulled a steaming shard of metal the length of his palm from his skin and stared at it, stunned.
Light exploded in his face from across the wall, the smoking crater where Taesa and X had emptied their grenades, and as he cringed against the brightness he saw not the standard grey uniforms of the Deviants but the crimson red of the Blood Ops - an entire squadron of them with their weapons trained on him.
"Hands where I can see them!" the captain yelled, his voice distorted through the heavy red mask he wore.
"Az, I'm coming!" Taesa yelled. "Hold on, I'm -"
"No," he said quietly.
"Hands where I can fucking see them, hybrid!" the captain repeated.
"What?" She sounded almost hysterical, and he could hear her scrabbling along the pipes above him. "No, no I can get there, don't let them take you, I got this, I got -"
"No, Taesa," he repeated, and raised his hands slowly, letting the bloody piece of metal tumble from his hand and through the mess of metal below him. "Get out of here."
"No! No, I'm not leaving you, I'm -"
Her voice was abruptly gone, her connection to the radios silenced. He smiled briefly, wondering if it was Sketch or X that had shut her up before she could get hysterical.
The captain was climbing into the wall, a pair of operatives on his shoulders.
"Hands out, mongrel," he snarled, and Azazel obediently extended his wrists as the men passed the shackles forward.
"You better make the most of this, guys," he said softly, his head spinning from blood loss.
His earpiece buzzed, just for a moment, so quiet he could barely hear it.
He looked up through the hazy smoke and smiled as he felt the first barbed cuff snap into place around his wrist. Behind him, the winds of the wasteland sent a chill across his skin.
Bracing his feet on the warped metal ridge, he crouched low and kicked himself through the gaping hole the Deviants had cut through the wall, into the howling, open darkness.