Chapter 18: Chance
The world narrowed to the gaping maw of the parking garage exit and the storm of light and death beyond. Ren’s blood sang with a frantic, metallic rhythm. That red and white Exosuit was a beacon, a totem of everything he was supposed to be. Reaching it was the only logic left.
“Stay low, follow the wrecks!” he barked, his voice cutting through the din. He didn’t wait for agreement. He was moving, darting from the shadow of a shattered delivery van toward the smoldering husk of a security sled.
Luna and Kai were shadows at his heels. The Cleaner squad was perhaps two hundred yards ahead, a nexus of disciplined violence carving a path through the chaos. The distance felt astronomical. The ground between was a no-man’s land of grasping shadows and sudden, skittering movement.
They moved in terrified bursts. Sprint, crouch, breathe. The air was a soup of ozone, burnt plastics, and a sickly-sweet organic decay that coated the tongue. The sounds were layered—the distant, heavy thump-thump-thump of the suit cannon, the higher-pitched shrieks of Cleaner rifles, and underneath it all, the chittering, wet gibbering of the anomalies.
Kai stumbled over a piece of torn conduit, cursing. “This is worse than my dad’s cooking!”
Ren didn’t laugh. His eyes were fixed on a collapsed walkway ahead—a path of broken plasteel that offered some cover. “There! Go!”
They scrambled onto the uneven surface. The walkway groaned ominously under their combined weight. Below, in the fissure it had once bridged, something with too many joints and eyes the color of stagnant water unfolded itself.
“Don’t look down,” Luna hissed, her voice taut. She was ahead, moving with a gymnast’s balance.
Then the exosuit fired its cannon again, a sustained burst aimed at a pulsating mass clinging to the Administration spire. The concussion wave hit them like a physical blow.
The walkway sheared.
It wasn't a clean break. It was a slow, grinding collapse, the rusted bolts screaming as they gave way. Luna, light and forward, lunged for a sturdy-looking light pole anchored at the far end. Her fingers grasped the cool metal, her body swinging out over the abyss before she wrapped her legs around it, shimmying down.
Kai, half a second behind, let out a yelp and followed her example, his taller frame slamming into the pole beside hers with a grunt.
Ren was at the failing edge. He jumped, but the platform tilted violently beneath his launch. His trajectory was wrong. His outstretched hands missed the pole by inches.
His world became a blur of vertigo and rising panic. He flailed, grabbing at nothing, and landed hard on the roof of an overturned ground-car that was balanced precariously on the crumbling ledge. The metal shrieked in protest.
“Ren!” Kai’s shout was frayed.
The car shifted. Began to slide. Below, the multi-jointed thing raised a cluster of claw-tipped appendages, clicking in anticipation.
Ren scrambled, fingers scraping on smooth automotive plating, finding no purchase. The slide accelerated. He was going over.
A shadow blotted out the sickly bubble-light.
It was not a shadow.
It closed around Ren’s torso with unbelievable gentleness, plucking him from the falling car an instant before it vanished into the fissure with a crash of rending metal. The world swung violently. He was airborne, cradled in a fist of warm, vibrating steel.
The sensory overload was absolute. The hum of the suit’s core reactor thrummed through his bones. The smell was hot oil, ionized air, and something vaguely medicinal. Through the segmented fingers, he saw the ground recede, the anomaly below scuttle back as a giant foot slammed down, crushing it into a pulp of ichor.
He was set down, with careful precision, on a stable piece of roadway. The giant hand withdrew.
Ren stumbled, gasping, his knees weak. He looked up, and up, at the towering form of the exosuit. Battle damage was visible now—deep scoring along its left pectoral plate, a weeping, acidic burn on one thigh. Its optical sensor, a single illuminated strip running down the center of its helm, glowed with a soft blue light. It was tilted, looking down at hi
The battle still raged around them, but in this immediate bubble, there was a strange, vibrating silence. The Exosuit did not move. It simply… stared.
Then, with a series of pneumatic sighs and subtle clicks, the chest plating began to articulate. A cockpit hatch, barely visible along the sculpted torso, recessed and slid sideways. Vapor, cold and smelling of cryo-fluid, billowed out.
Inside the dim harness was a pilot, helmeted, face obscured by a reflective visor. They moved with a slow, almost weary economy, disengaging a umbical line. The helmet turned toward Ren.
A hand came up. Found the seal release. There was a hiss of equalizing pressure.
The helmet was lifted away.
The face beneath was lean, worn, etched with the permanent fatigue of a man who has seen too many dead zones. Salt-and-pepper stubble framed a firm mouth. The eyes were dark, deeply set, and held a universe of quiet anguish. They were eyes Ren had seen only in hazy childhood memories and in the single, treasured hologram on his aunt’s mantelpiece.
The pilot’s mouth opened, then closed. His gaze, hardened by decades of war, flickered over Ren’s face—the androgynous features inherited from his mother, the shape of the eyes, the line of the jaw. A profound shock, deeply personal and utterly alien on this battlefield, drained the tactical chill from his expression.
The distant sounds of war faded to a dull roar. Ren’s breath hitched in his throat, a cold realization dawning, sharp and impossible.
The pilot’s hesitant, raw voice, amplified slightly by the suit’s external speakers but stripped of all its professional command, found a single, familiar syllable.
“Ren…?”
(author note: Kai and Luna are still gripping for their life onto the light pole, this is one of the reasons next chapter will happen. Note ren WILL unknowningly misinterpret his father wishes in the next chapter.)