Let yourself pass out. Have sweet dreams, and pray for Holiday to be as quick on the stick as Clown is in the bedroom.”
They laugh and cluster tight, letting Victra wind her rappelling line through our munitions belts so we’re together like grapes on a vine. Sevro’s finishing laying explosives at the door, Sleepy and Screwface join us, waving at him to hurry.
“Attention,” a voice booms from hidden speakers in the walls as Victra leans close to me to link me with Ragnar. “This is Alec ti Yamato. Head of Security for Sun Industries. You are surrounded.
Discard your weapons. Release your hostages. Or we will be forced to fire on you. You have five seconds to comply.”
There’s no one in the room but us. The main doors are closed. Sevro runs back to us from laying
the charges. “Sevro, fastlike!” I shout. He’s not halfway to us when he crumples to the ground like an empty can crushed by a boot. I’m slammed down to the floor by the same force. Knees buckling.
Bones, lungs, throat all stomped down by massive gravity. My vision swims. Blood moving sluggishly to my head. I try to lift my arm. It weighs more than three hundred pounds. Security has increased the artificial gravity in the room, and only Ragnar ’s not on his belly. He’s fallen to a knee, shoulders hunched and straining, like Atlas holding up the world.
“The hell is that…” Victra manages, on the floor looking past me to the door. It’s opened, and through it comes not a Gray or an Obsidian or Gold. But a giant black egg the size of a small man, rolling sideways. It’s smooth and glossy, and small white numbers mark its side. A robot. As illegal as EMPs. Augustus’s great fear. Like reaching out of an oil spill, the metal morphs at the point of the egg to reveal a small canon, which aims at Sevro. I try to rise. Try to aim my pulseFist. But the gravity is too much. I can’t even lift my arm to point the weapon. For all her strength, Victra can’t either.
Sevro’s grunting on the floor, crawling away from the machine.
“The viewport!” I manage. “Ragnar. Fire at the viewport.”
His pulseFist is at his side. Straining, he begins to lift it against the massive gravity. Arm shaking.
Throat gargling that eerie war chant that sounds like a distant avalanche. The sound rises, an otherworldy bellow till his whole body convulses with effort and his arm draws level and the smallest of stars is born in his palm as the pulseFist gathers its trembling molten charge.
The entirety of my friend shudders and his fingers release the trigger. His arm wrenches back. The pulsefire leaps forward to scream into the center of the glass pane. The many stars ripple as the pane bends outward and cracks shoot down the window.
“Kadir njar laga…” Ragnar bellows.
And the glass shatters. Space drinks the air of the room. Everything slides. A Copper flips past us, screaming. She goes silent when she hits vacuum. Others who cowered during our brawl cling to the
broken table in the center of the room. They wrap themselves around pillars. Fingers bleeding, nails cracking. Legs flailing. Grips giving out. Corpses flip end over end out into space as the abyss hungers for everything the building has. Sevro’s ripped into the air away from the robot, lighter than our combined group. I reach for him and grab his short Mohawk till Victra wraps her legs around him and pulls him to her body.
I’m terrified as we slide toward the broken viewport. Hands shaking. Doubting my decision as I now stare it in the face. Sevro was right. We should have pushed into the building. Killed Kavax or used him as a shield. Anything but the cold. Anything but the Jackal’s darkness from which I only just escaped.
It’s just fear, I tell myself. It’s just fear making me panic. And it’s spread through my friends. I see the horror on their faces. How they look back at me and see that fear reflected in my own. I cannot be afraid. I’ve spent too long being afraid. Too long being diminished by loss. Too long being everything except what I need to be. And whether I am the Reaper, or whether it’s just another mask, it’s one I must wear, not just for them, but for myself.
“Omnis vir lupus!” I shout, kicking my head back to howl, exhaling all the air in my lungs. Beside me, Ragnar ’s eyes widen in wild ecstasy. He opens his massive mouth and bellows out a howl to make his ancestors hear him from their icy crypts. Then Pebble joins, and Clown, and even regal Victra. It’s rage and fear leaving our bodies. Though space drags us across the floor to its embrace. Though death might come for us. I am home in this weird screaming mass of humanity. And as we pretend to
be brave, we become so.
All except Sevro, who remains silent as we fly into space.