Chapter 13: Doom
The silence that followed Luna’s statement was filled only by the low, sub-audible hum of the dead zone’s fringe. Ren stared at the impossible wall of floating stone and metal. A single, ornate bench rotated slowly in the twilight, mocking the laws of gravity and every plan he’d ever had.
“Complicates,” he echoed, the word tasting of iron and defeat. “We’re caged.”
“We’re not caged,” Luna corrected, her eyes scanning the cavernous foyer’s upper balconies. “We’re just not leaving this way. Think. The academy has sub-levels. Maintenance conduits. Old evacuation routes from the Last Contraction.”
“You want to go deeper in?”
“Do you see a better vector?”
A sound cut through the hum. Not the static of a Fragment. This was a rapid, slapping rhythm on marble. A human sound. Running.
Both of them turned, Luna’s pistol rising smoothly, Ren tensing, raising the dented durasteel leg once more.
From the shadowy mouth of the eastern corridor, a figure erupted. It was tall, gangly, and moving with a frantic, uncoordioned speed that was entirely familiar. His spiky hair was flattened on one side, his uniform jacket was torn at the elbow, and his face was a masterpiece of pure, unadulterated panic.
“Nope nope nope nope NOPE!”
Kai Tanaka skidded into the foyer, his eyes wild. Behind him, flowing from the corridor like spilled ink, came a Fragment. But this one was different—smaller, insectile, moving on too many fast, skittering legs, a blur of polished darkness and needle-point appendages.
“REN! HOLE UP, HOLE UP, IT’S ON ME!”
Kai made a beeline for them, a scream trapped in his throat. The skittering creature closed the distance with terrifying silence.
Luna’s arm was extended, a rock-steady line from her shoulder to the pistol’s sights. She tracked the creature, then shifted her aim minutely to lead its path. Her expression was one of detached calculation.
“Do you know him?” she asked, her voice calm.
“Unfortunately,” Ren gritted out, taking an involuntary step forward.
“Good.”
Crack.
The shot was clean. The insectile Fragment’s central mass vaporized mid-pounce, its momentum carrying the disintegrating limbs forward in a scatter of ash that pattered against the marble. Kai tripped over the dispersing haze and went down hard, sliding the last few meters on his belly to slam into Ren’s legs.
For a moment, there was only the sound of Kai’s ragged, wheezing breaths. He clung to Ren’s calves like a drowning man to a log.
“It… it was in the vending annex,” he moaned into Ren’s trousers. “I just wanted a protein-bar. It was just… there. Took old man Henso. Just… took him. Swallowed him whole in the dark.” His body shuddered with a dry heave.
Ren felt a familiar, grim resignation. He poked Kai’s shoulder with the metal rod. “You’re alive, Tanaka. Get up.”
Kai rolled over, staring up at the vaulted ceiling, then at Ren, then past him. His eyes landed on Luna, who was lowering her pistol, checking the chamber with a methodical click-clack.
The transformation was instantaneous.
The terror evaporated from his face, replaced by a wide-eyed, dawning horror of a different kind. Here was Luna Owari, the enigmatic transfer, the subject of a hundred whispered dorms stories, standing over him while he was sprawled on the floor, sniffing back snot.
He scrambled to his feet with a velocity that defied his exhaustion, patting down his ripped uniform, attempting to slick back his disheveled hair. He bowed, a deep, rapid, frantic series of dips at the waist.
“Miss Owari! Luna! I mean—Cadet Owari! Thank you! That was—your shot—precise! Incredible! I was, of course, leading it into a vulnerable position for a takedown, but your intervention was… efficient!”
Ren stared. He had seen Kai try to impress girls before. It usually involved bad jokes and worse posture. This was a new level of spectacle.
Luna regarded Kai for a long moment. Then, a slight, almost imperceptible curve touched her lips. It wasn’t quite a smile. It was the ghost of amusement, a faint crack in her impassive facade. “You lead with your back very effectively, Cadet…?”
“Tanaka! Kai Tanaka! Best friend to this lump,” he said, clapping a hand on Ren’s shoulder so hard he stumbled. “And future vanguard-class cleaner! At your service!”
“I see.” Luna’s gaze flicked to Ren, a silent question in her eyes. This is your best friend?
Ren gave a tiny, mortified nod.
The brief, surreal moment of normalcy shattered as the floating debris outside the glass wall shifted with a grinding groan. The darker shapes within were pressing closer, their forms becoming clearer: more Fragments, drawn to the activity.
“Great reunion,” Ren said, his voice cutting through Kai’s posturing. “We’re trapped. Front’s blocked by a dead zone fringe. Things are still inside with us. Ideas?”
Kai’s bravado faded, his eyes taking in the swirling chaos beyond the glass. “Oh. That’s… suboptimal.” He frowned, then snapped his fingers. “The Sub-terran! The old access tunnel from the geothermal retrofit! It’s a maint shaft that runs under the north yard. Comes up near the perimeter wall.”
Luna tilted her head. “You are sure?”
“Spent a week down there on janitorial supplemental. My family believes in ‘character-building’ labor.” He made air quotes, dripping with resentment. “It’s a crawl, and it smells like fungal rot and regret, but it’s a vector. If the fringe is hovering above ground… the underground might be clear.”
Ren felt a spark, fragile but real. A path. It was dank, terrifying, and probably filled with worse things than bad smells, but it was a direction. He looked at Luna.
She was already moving toward the eastern corridor Kai had burst from, her boots whispering on the marble. “Then we stop talking. Lead, Tanaka. Quickly and quietly. Your life depends on not being wrong.”
Kai blinked, then a grin spread across his face, the fear replaced by a manic sense of purpose. He shot Ren a look that screamed, Did you see that? She’s talking to me!
“Right! Yes! Follow me!” He turned, then paused, his bravado flickering. “Uh. There might be… more of those skittery ones in the annex halls. Just a heads-up.”
Ren fell into step beside Luna as they followed Kai’s lanky frame back into the gloom of the academy’s interior. The hope was a cold, thin wire in his chest, stretched taut. But it was there. Ahead, Kai muttered a steady stream of nervous, reassuring nonsense to himself.
“Just a crawl space. Like the vents back home. Nothing in there but rats and bad air. Probably. Hopefully.”
Luna walked silently, a presence of focused calm beside Ren’s frayed nerves. As they passed a shattered display of antique cleaning gear, her shoulder brushed his. The brief contact was electric.
“Your friend is loud,” she murmured, so only he could hear. “But he observes.”
Ren looked at the back of Kai’s head, at the familiar, ridiculous hair. He had run toward them, leading a monster away. He knew the paths nobody else did.
“Yeah,” Ren said, a strange pride mixing with the lingering fear. “He does.” And for the first time, they moved toward something, not just away.