Anthem's Fall (22 page)

“Well, it sounds like you made the right decision,” Kristen said. The afternoon was waning as they reached the bank of a pond. The colors of nearby trees reflected off the still water like an Impressionist painting. A faint breeze rippled over the water’s surface. People were scattered around the water’s edge, sitting on the soft grass or benches. The moving shadows of Ryan and Kristen fell elongated beside them in the late afternoon sunlight. For awhile they stood quietly admiring the harmony, Kristen with hand on hip and Ryan with arms crossed.

A man’s shout abruptly broke the near silence of the pond. Ryan and Kristen shot each other a confused look. The shout came again, ringing with a howling tone.

“What
is
that?” Kristen turned her head after several more shouts.

“I don’t know,” Ryan said with a bemused expression. He was unsure whether to laugh or be concerned at the strange shouting. After a moment, a gaunt man with a poster board slung across his chest rounded a turn in the path and stumbled into view. The derelict man, his face weathered and leathery, had the volatile look of a schizophrenic or one prone to unstable episodes. He wore a filthy flannel shirt, torn jeans, and tattered shoes, the soles hanging off and dragging on the pavement. Waving his arms, he brandished a bunch of handwritten pamphlets and a poster that bounced against his chest painted sloppily with the words
THE END IS NEER, THE WORLD WILL BERN
. The dark red paint of the lettering had dripped in spots before it had dried and—whether intended or not—resembled blood.

“The end! The end is coming! All of you will burn! Repent! Run!”

The man was shouting at the top of his lungs, his voice haggard and raspy. He came quite near to them, and Kristen took a nervous step closer to Ryan as the man looked directly at her, his eyes jaundiced and askew as he screamed through missing teeth, “You’ll burn!”

The man lurched forward, waving one of his pamphlets in the air as though it were aflame.

“Move along. We’re not interested.” Ryan’s voice was forceful, and his face serious. Yet the man seemed to take no notice of the command and continued stumbling on, screaming and mumbling irrationally. Ryan realized the sick man was entirely unaware of his surroundings, least of all their presence. His shouts faded as he turned a corner in the path and continued his warning elsewhere.

“
Ugh
! I can’t stand the creepy people who do that. It’s so unsettling. Now I remember why I avoid the park near sundown.” Kristen exhaled and folded her hands together nervously.

“Please—that was nothing. You should see some of the end-of-the-world spokespeople in Chicago.”

“Hah.” Kristen smiled uncomfortably. “But I don’t know if it’s comforting or disturbing to know those people are a global presence.”

Ryan laughed. “Either way, I think it’s safe to say their apocalyptic premonitions are a direct result of their mental disorders and not prophetic powers.”

“Yes, thankfully.”

They sat down on an oak bench overlooking the pond. The day was dwindling, and the divergent line of the setting sun’s coppery rays passed over the treetops and came to rest on the broad facades of nearby skyscrapers—a radiant amber above and nightfall below. There was a nip in the air, and they sat close.

“Do you have any plans for after you finish your doctorate?” Ryan asked in an attempt to change the mood from the eerie encounter.

Kristen shook her head. “I’m not sure. There’s talk of the Vatruvian cell moving into the private sector, so maybe I’ll stay on the roller coaster and see the project through to its end—whatever that may be. But I don’t know, it’s strange to think about. I’ve always simply graduated to the next level of education. It’s all I know. Now that I have reached the pinnacle, I can’t really envision what I’ll end up doing. How about you?”

“I have absolutely no idea, to be honest.” Ryan leaned back against the hard wood of the bench. “I wouldn’t mind going to graduate school myself, but it’s way too early to say. I guess my plan—if I could even say that I have one—is to wait for something to come along that really catches my interest.”

“I like that. No predetermined agenda,” Kristen said. “There’s no telling where you’ll end up, anyway, when you really think about it. If you asked me two years ago, I never would have imagined I’d be working on something like the Vatruvian cell.”

Ryan nodded. “Ambition and direction can only get you so far, anyway. The rest comes down to uncontrollable variables. Fate, I suppose.”

They stared across the lengthening shadows of the pond as the wrought iron lamps lining the park flickered to life, casting soft rings of yellow light across the pathway.

“So you believe in fate?” Kristen asked, her lips drawn in a sardonic smirk.

Ryan laughed. “Eh, I don’t know about fate, per se.” He looked out over the darkening water. “I like to think I’m in control, whatever the hell that means. But when I look back at the past, it doesn’t really feel like I’ve always been in the driver’s seat.”

“You mean you’ve had no say in the cut-and-dry path we’re all on? Going straight from high school to college and straight from college to graduate school . . . so on and so forth?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, do you feel in control of your life right now?”

“I can’t honestly say.”

Kristen thought over his words intently, her tone turning serious. “Yeah, me either.”

Her hands were in her lap and she was biting the side of her lower lip in contemplation. Ryan regarded her silently as she surveyed the lights of the skyline shining against the twilight. “How about you? Do you believe in
fate
, if we’re willing to devolve to such ideas?”

Kristen shrugged. “I believe we were each intended to do something with our lives, whatever that may be.”

“So it’s a matter of seeking that out?”

“Well, take your passion in the social sciences for instance.” Kristen brought her gaze down to meet his. “Although it may still be obscured to you, maybe one day—all philosophical relativisms and moralistic nonsense put aside—you will
truly
help people somewhere.”

“I like that.”

She smiled. “Me too.”

“And you?” Ryan asked. “Do you see the Vatruvian cell helping people somewhere down the road?”

Kristen’s smile faded, and she shook her head with slow uncertainty. “I thought so once.”

For a long while they sat in silence with only the breeze in the trees and the familiar city sounds breaking the stillness: distant police sirens, the high-pitched note of brakes and the faded honking of taxis. Ryan felt an uncharacteristic sense of contentment, being so close to Kristen. He felt frozen in time, removed from the world that existed beyond the two of them.

“What’s your family like?” Kristen asked after a bit. “What do your parents do for work; how old are your siblings? Give me the rundown.”

Ryan scratched his chin and hesitated to gather his thoughts. “Well, what can I tell you? I grew up in Chicago. My father worked as a research scientist and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. No siblings.”

“Your father was a scientist? What did he research?”

“It varied,” Ryan said. “His research was always changing from year to year. He never talked much about it, truth be told.”

“Hmm,” Kristen said. “And he worked in Chicago I take it?”

“Yep.” Ryan said, running a hand through his hair. “Do you think we should find somewhere to eat dinner?”

“Sure, I’d like that,” Kristen said with a mix of confusion and empathy. She had surely registered he was discussing his parents in the past tense. “What was your mother like?”

“She was smart, like my father.” Ryan said.

“I’m sure she was very bright to have raised you,” Kristen said with a warming smile as she placed her hand on Ryan’s, where she left it resting.

Ryan was stunned by the well of emotion that moved through him from her touch. He knew he had to say something. “They died when I was a teenager,” he forced out. “Car crash.”

“Ugh, I’m so sorry—” Kristen stopped, overtly unsure what to say. “My mother passed away when I was fifteen. Lymphoma. It’s awful losing a parent. I can’t imagine losing both. But I’m sure they would want us to live to our fullest and pursue what we want to. Right?”

“Definitely,” Ryan said.

“I guess we have a lot in common,” Kristen said, breaking their eye contact and looking up into the skinny arms of the shadowed trees.

“I’m sure we have plenty more in common than our sorrows, but it’s nice to know someone who understands how pain can feel,” Ryan said.

T
he hours monotonously and claustrophobically passed as the
Harbinger I
traveled onward through the vastness of space toward the distant Filgaia. As the initial shock of their plight waned, a fog of bleak misery descended upon the living quarters and narrow hallways of Master Tolland’s ship.

Darien was sitting in the command deck fruitlessly attempting to disengage the autopilot of the
Harbinger I
. The Royal Guard found the computer system of the craft to be remarkably complex, and far beyond his limited comprehension of programming. Pral Nerol himself had designed the
Harbinger I
, and Darien knew he had no hope of prevailing over the brilliant scientist’s mind. Any attempt to divert their course back toward Anthem seemed to be utterly futile. There would be no impressing Vengelis with his technical abilities. Darien gave up and slumped back into his chair, irritably pushing the control console away from him with a mammoth palm.

“Take it easy there. I wouldn’t risk breaking any of those controls if I were you,” Lord General Hoff said as he walked into the command deck. Hoff had to lower his huge stature through the doorframe, his head taking up half the width of the threshold.

Darien regarded Hoff quietly. “I was trying to turn off this damn autopilot.”

“Ah yes,” Hoff yawned, and winced from a broken rib he had received during their spar with Vengelis on the side of Mount Karlsbad. “Did Vengelis wake up yet?”

Darien nodded. “He woke late last night.”

“I take it he didn’t appreciate that we initiated the locked autopilot?”

“That would be an understatement,” Darien said. “I thought he was going to kill me when I told him it wouldn’t disengage until we reached Filgaia.”

“I expected as much. Don’t worry, once he cools down he’ll forgive us. Vengelis would have been angrier had we not followed Tolland’s orders.” Hoff sat down in one of the command seats, which yielded considerably under his bulk. The two warriors looked incongruously out of place as they sat in the command bridge. The
Harbinger I
had clearly been constructed for the transport of Royal sons, and the two giants looked like adults sitting in a child’s playhouse, their broad hips extending beyond the seats and their hands larger than the keypads themselves.

The abnormal height and robust musculature of many contemporary Imperial Army soldiers lacking Royal descent, especially those holding positions in the Imperial First Class, were the consequence of a merciless custom. Although a number of Royal and well-bred lineages—including house Epsilon, Bregarion, Tolland, Grahman, Nerol, Prill and many others—meticulously recorded and maintained their inherited Sejero purity, countless lesser families did not. The ancient Sejero, their sanctified ancestors who had risen amid the mushroom clouds of the Primus race’s darkest hour to stand against the brutal technological firepower of the Zergos, had been few in number. Separated by long wilting years of time, a vast majority of the modern Primus population only had trace amounts of the transcendent and unnatural Sejero traits remaining in their blood. Every year more sons and daughters were born weak, ineffectual—some even lacking the gift of flight and others susceptible to bleeding from simple wounds.

The resolution to their concerns surfaced in the form of eugenics. Only the largest and most powerful of the warrior classes were allowed children, and spousal selection fell under the strict jurisdiction of the Imperial War Council. Though the draconian efforts ultimately did little to preserve or revive dwindling Sejero purity, the venture did give rise to the unnatural size and muscle mass of many lesser bloodlines. Both Hoff and Darien, along with most of the Imperial First Class ranks were the children of equally gigantic parents, and their parents before them, going back generations.

Though in the end, the hulking size and strength of the colossally bred warriors proved to be inferior to the inherent vigor of Royal blood.

“Vengelis will be angry when he realizes we didn’t join the fight against the Felixes,” Darien said, failing to hide the unease in his voice. He recalled all too clearly the look of rage on Vengelis’s beaten face before he had stormed out of the command deck.

Hoff cast him a cautious look. “We didn’t join the battle because we were
ordered
not to by Master Tolland. I am the Lord General. Do you think I would rather be here in this ship instead of leading the Imperial Army?”

“No, of course not. But we
didn’t
come to the defense of Sejeroreich.”

Hoff dismissed the idea with a confident shake of his head. “We were following orders. It wasn’t our privilege to question Master Tolland.”

Darien was not accustomed to the intensity of Vengelis Epsilon. His whole life Darien had dreamed of being recruited into the Royal Guard—the highest attainable honor for a warrior of his birth. Yet it had taken nearly all of his willpower not to give up his post after his savage first training session with the young Epsilon prince. Darien had never experienced anything like it. Vengelis had nearly beaten him to death in cold blood during what was scheduled to be a half-speed spar—and to Vengelis Epsilon that is what it had been. That was the way of the Sejero of old, and that was the way of Vengelis. After the initial thrashing, Darien knew that he would have to adapt or die, and so he resigned himself to stoicism. In the process he had transformed himself into a warrior he never would have thought possible.

“We haven’t received a single transmission from Anthem.” Hoff groaned and leaned back, his seat creaking under him. “What did Vengelis say about Filgaia?”