Anthem's Fall (29 page)

The three fell silent as they soared southward across the broad sky, undetected bullets moving among the fair clouds. Vengelis was struck by the richness and clarity of the world around him. The vibrancy of the lands, trees, and skies seemed to be clearer than any he had known on Anthem. The recollection of his own world felt drab and colorless by comparison, the lands of Anthem less splendorous, and the skies uninspired and insipid. The world below him had never been disfigured by the thrashing mania of man standing alone against the ruin of his existence.

Yet it was Vengelis’s ancestors who had stood alone in that final hour, and their strength still lived in him.

They passed into an immense tower of white cloud that rose from the ground far below to the very roof of the atmosphere. Vengelis closed his eyes in a moment of repose as cool perspiration beaded and rolled off his face and shoulders. The moisture felt soft in his lungs and against his skin. Part of him wished he could die in this extraordinary white world, as if somehow the cold cloud vapor could heal his soul and shelter him from the role he was being forced to play. But as quickly as they had entered the great cloud, the three Sejero warriors pulled out the other end.

As the dry air greeted him, so too did trouble. The rounded rear of a massive jetliner soared before them as they shook water from their armor. They swiftly approached the roaring plane’s wake, flying easily above the profuse exhaust fumes spilling from the wings’ turbines.

The two giants looked from the jetliner to Vengelis, waiting for his command.

A long moment passed as they were forced to decelerate drastically and fly a short distance behind the hulking steel wings. Vengelis looked down; the land was barely visible, but he could make out a slender river and clusters of towns stretched across the landscape. They were far out of discernible sight from the lands below, and the plane was in their way. It was flying directly south—they would have to pass it in order to continue toward New York City. If they passed the plane, the passengers would see them fly past the windows. Even though it was likely that no one else would believe them after they landed, that kind of exposure could not be risked. Not yet at least.

The hour of mercilessness had struck.

“Do what you will,” Vengelis called with an empty voice.

“Finally!” Hoff shouted and smiled broadly. Darien nodded wordlessly. They simultaneously accelerated forward and came up alongside the plane. Vengelis rose over the elongated jet and peered to the far south in hopes of seeing the tall buildings of his destination, but still saw nothing but gently sloping lands.

The Lord General accelerated toward the front of the plane and moved directly past the cabin windows. A number of passengers were staring absentmindedly out into sky. As they looked at the distant cloud formations and blue heavens, they watched a giant man move easily alongside the plane. As Darien moved along the other side, the giants saw the people behind the small circular windows pointing, panicking. Their mouths opened in what were obviously screams and shouts.

The two Imperial First Class soldiers moved to each wing and effortlessly tore the roaring engines from the holdings. The massive metal turbines fell, screaming hunks of scrap metal plummeting into the hills tens of thousands of feet below.

“They can still send transmissions!” Vengelis yelled.

The now engineless jetliner began to drastically lose speed, and with it altitude. With each passing moment the plane began to descend faster and faster through the sky. Soon it was plummeting straight downward. Vengelis watched in stunned disbelief as the Lord General and Royal Guard made no move to perform a coupe d’état on the aircraft. With an irritated grunt, he shot downward in the wake of the falling plane. He reached the nose, wind pushing and pulling at his shoulders, and peered into the front of the cockpit. Through the large windshield he saw two men sitting side by side and strapped to their seats. They were staring straight at him in utter dismay. Vengelis watched as one of the pilots distinctly mouthed over and over into his mouthpiece, “Flying men! Flying men! Flying men!”

Vengelis shouted in exasperated fury and descended past the plane with a deafening boom, accelerating far below the plummeting jetliner. Farther and farther he descended toward the ground far below, easily gaining distance from the falling plane as the sound barrier tore at his shoulders. He pulled to a stop and turned his gaze into the sky. The gigantic form of the jetliner was rotating wildly, falling rapidly at the mercy of gravity. With a thundering rumble, Vengelis erupted upward toward the jet.

He collided with it like a missile.

Vengelis’s head and shoulders penetrated straight through the steel of the plane’s nose and tore through the entire length of the fuselage. There was a momentary sound of shrieking and sundering steel, and then his body shot out of the tail. As he tunneled through the length of the jet, his body tore the fuel cells open. They ignited at the same moment he pulled out, and the entire jet burst into an incendiary fireball in his immediate wake.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Vengelis flew straight from the exploding jetliner toward Darien and Hoff. They were both wide-eyed, their faces frozen in a mingling of awe and apprehension.

“That was . . . unbelievable!” Hoff shouted. He brought his hands together and began clapping.

Vengelis closed in on the Lord General and cracked him in the face with a ruthless backhand. Hoff launched backward into open air. Vengelis then turned and charged Darien, directing a brutal knee straight into his gut. Hoff clutched his nose as it started dripping a snotty blood, and Darien lurched over in woozy agony. They both floated unsteadily in the air.

“Do you have no sense of the gravity of our situation? You just gave those pilots all the time in the world to get a transmission off. What do you
think
was the content of their transmission? They were shouting back to their base about people
flying
outside their windows and tearing the plane apart with bare hands! What part did you not understand when I said I wanted our presence to go unnoticed?”

“I’m sorry,” Hoff’s voice was nasally, his hand held over his dripping nose.

Darien simply shook his head, doubled over in pain.

Vengelis looked past his feet and watched as the distant fiery wreckage fell through the open sky far below. A vision of Eve and his mother’s Royal Transport, smoldering and bursting in half against the backdrop of a burning Sejeroreich, flashed through his mind. He shook the image from his head and cursed before turning his attention to the two soldiers.

“It’s time we go our separate ways.” Vengelis reached into his armor and took out his remote control to the
Harbinger I
. All three of them had each taken one of the remotes before they left the ship concealed on the side of the mountain to the north. Each remote functioned as everything from a long-distance radio transmitter to a direct controller of the
Harbinger I
. “You two will wait until my command to make our presence known. My guess is they will panic and order the larger populations to evacuate their cities once they find out about our presence. Before that happens I want to have the scientists gathered.” Vengelis looked to the south. “I am going to head to the city to meet these scientists. While I’m doing that, find another city worthy of our spectacle. I will use your assault as leverage against their resistance to my demands.”

“Which way should we go?” Darien asked, turning around and looking from horizon to horizon uncertainly.

“I don’t care where you go, just seek out the most condensed population you can find. Let me know when you find such a place. And be ready to display our power. But before that, you do nothing—
nothing—
without my order.”

“Very well. We’ll go that way,” Hoff said, looking up from his own
Harbinger I
remote and pointing across the lands to the west.

“Keep your heads on your shoulders,” Vengelis said. With a last look downward at the diminishing fireball and growing tower of black smoke far below their feet, Vengelis accelerated southward and away from his two subordinates without another word.

T
he side of her face resting against a bunched up pillow, Kristen watched the bedside clock approach eight o’clock. She reached out and turned off the alarm just before the apartment filled with its noise. Kristen rolled onto her back and stared quietly at the ceiling. Ryan was snoring faintly beside her, and cool morning light peered through the window. Whether it had been trepidation about what lay ahead for her that day or the sharing of her bed with another, Kristen had tossed and turned all night.

Yet it was amid the throes of her restlessness that she came to her decision, and now in the pale light of morning she was all the more certain of her choice. The Vatruvian mice could not be kept a secret among a few people. She would tell the convention of the breakthrough, and willfully accept the fallout of her treason.

For a few minutes Kristen lay quietly and listened to Ryan’s rhythmic breath. She decided to let him sleep. With a protracted sigh she rolled out of bed and walked over to the window, the old hardwood floor cold underfoot. She placed her palm against the chilly window, and the glass around her fingers fogged from the touch. The street below was busy with people scrambling to the nearby subway station. Something about the morning rush comforted her as she watched. She walked to the bathroom and twisted the knob to the shower. The reflection that looked back at her was tired and overworked, her hair disheveled. It was not the face of someone prepared to present a lecture to a crowded convention. She allowed herself an extra long and relaxing shower, took her time running a brush through her hair, and pulled on some clothes from her dresser.

Hair still damp, Kristen sat down next to Ryan on the bed and placed a hand lightly on his chest. He placidly stirred awake. “Hey.” His voice was raspy with sleep. “What time is it?”

“Early. Before nine.” Kristen smiled down at him.

“Oh.” Ryan groggily rose to his elbows, the sheet pulling across his chest. “I guess I should probably get going.”

“No rush. I don’t have to be in Midtown for a couple hours. I was thinking about getting some breakfast if you wanted to join me.”

“Sure,” Ryan said. Kristen held his gaze for a time, and he inclined his head. “What is it?”

“I decided that I’m going to breach the nondisclosure contract,” Kristen said with a composed defiance. “I don’t want to be an accomplice to something I don’t agree with.”

“Good. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Mice.”

Ryan sat up and stared at her in bewilderment. “What?”

Kristen nodded grimly.

“I don’t understand, what does that mean?”

“Professor Vatruvia has created mice using the Vatruvian cell.” Kristen almost brought herself to laugh at the hopelessness of her circumstances. “He made artificial mammals using the technology I helped create.”

Ryan stared at her, unable to speak. Kristen ran her fingers through her hair and nodded significantly.

“Mice?”

“Yep. Little mottled mice that are currently scurrying around in cages at the labs,” Kristen said. “Each one of them one hundred percent synthetic. And if I were willing to place a bet on the idiocy of people, I would gamble that an equal percentage of the public will applaud it as amazing—as opposed to thinking it’s potentially the most dangerous thing ever created.”

Ryan reached to the floor and picked up his tee shirt. He pulled it over his head, his expression adrift. “Mice . . . how is that possible?”

“It was easy, in a way,” Kristen said regretfully. “Once the first Vatruvian cell functioned, I knew it was a possibility. Professor Vatruvia compounded the same replication techniques to a larger scale. So yes, I knew it was feasible. But I never thought anyone would do it so soon. And there’s more . . .”

“By all means,” Ryan said, beginning to look nervous himself. “I almost don’t want to believe it.”

“Believe it. But beyond the mice, one of my coworkers found a disturbing trait of Vatruvian cells. It’s a trait that I’m beginning to think Professor Vatruvia knew about since the beginning of our research. Evidently Vatruvian cells are stronger than the original cells they replicate.”

“So these mice we’re talking about,” Ryan said. “These mice are . . . 
stronger
 . . . than normal mice?”

Kristen shrugged her shoulders and lay beside him. “I don’t know. Professor Vatruvia got really guarded about the whole thing when he saw my reaction to the mice. I can’t imagine he’ll tell me anything more about them now that he’s seen my reservations. But there it is, I guess. I’ve officially broken my nondisclosure agreement, starting with you.”

“I’m glad you did,” Ryan said in disbelief. “You need to pass this on. The knowledge of something like this is way too big for one person. If I were you I’d tell every media outlet and regulatory agency that’s willing to listen. Professor Vatruvia has clearly lost touch.”

“That’s the plan. Will you come to the convention today?” Kristen asked. “I’m going to need support when this whole goddamn thing comes crashing down around me.”

“Of course,” Ryan said.

Kristen smiled with reassurance despite the weariness behind her eyes. He was the only ally she needed. “Come on. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

A stunning fall day greeted them as they stepped out of her apartment building. The air was crisp, with a hint of breeze, and only a few wandering clouds scattered the brilliant blue sky. Deciding against one of the campus cafeterias, they walked at a gentle pace up the avenue toward a bagel shop. Her spirits lifted by the finality of her decision, Kristen told him every last detail she could recall. She described the mice and their bluish eyes. She told him of Cara Williams and her stress tests of the cells—the Vatruvian cells surviving in temperatures that killed their biological counterparts.

The morning rush appeared to have already petered out as they walked into the bagel shop. There were only a spattering of customers in the booths and a small line at the register. Kristen bought coffee and bagels, and they took a seat at an empty table in the back.