After Days - Chapter 13

The storm began to calm, though in reality, it was still a wild, howling beast. An engineer thought he had caught sight of an aircraft going down, but after his twenty eight hour shift, even simple instructions seemed to boggle his mind.

Instructions had been passed for him to go to the roof, one of the aerials had bend slightly out of place, probably due to the weather, he figured. Little did he know that his suspicions about the craft had been correct, and that the pole he was heading to fix was damaged by Tessa’s grapple.

“Trust me to get the shitty jobs.” He complained as he climbed towards the service hatch. It took more strength to open it than normal. He was shattered, so much so that he was starting to prefer the thought of being blown off station as opposed to doing another damn repair job.

Nevertheless, the tightened the harness on his belt and made his way through the opening, the wind immediately chilling his rheumy eyes. ‘Dammit, knew I should have picked up my goggles.’

He lifted an arm to protect his face, practically dragging his toolkit with the other. With heavy strides he approached the kinked post, though the light was still blinking at its tip which ruled out one possible issue for the malfunction.

He shuffled around the denim pouch on his belt for another buckle to strap himself to the pillar’s wiry structure. The engineer could barely feel a thing through his thick gloves, and the night didn’t offer the slightest hint of light to assist in his search. Frustrated, he tossed his tools down against the curved panels of the roof, stretching out his large pocket and looking deeper.

“Come on. Where are you?” His hands scrambled in the pouch, digging through bolts, spare fuses, clippers and his ID badge. Then, by some miracle, he saw the think steel cable with a buckle at each end. A dim green glow had grown from above, filling his pocket with light.

For a moment he was so relieved to have found the harness that he almost forgot to look up, but it couldn’t be ignored as the green light seemed to expand over the roof of the station. Now needing his hand again to shield his eyes from the light, he squinted toward the sky. A raging inferno, dropping from above, had helped him to find his cable, but as it grew closer and hotter, the engineer knew it wasn’t friendly. As the blaze crashed through the ceiling, he was sure he had heard the sounds of a man yelling.

A flickering, scorched hole had been torn through the first few floors of the rig, though it seemed to hold steady. The engineer dragged himself onto his front and slithered towards the crevasse, curious and terrified. As his eyes peered over the simmering edge, down into the rig, the metal around him suddenly buckled and warped wildly. Snapping at his skin and crushing his ankle as he fell into the growing hole.

* * *

The station shuddered. “What was that?!” The tall man in a white uniform asked Tessa as he clutched Leon tighter across his large shoulder.

“The machine maybe? Whatever it was, we need to get the hell out of here! Clarke!” She called into her headset, cupping her hand over an ear. “Where are we with that bird?”

“Fight Deck Three, but hurry, these guys are starting to mobilise.” He crackled over the frequency.

Tessa lowered her hand and squeezed her blooded arm, rushing down a flashing red corridor with her four remaining men, Leon fighting to keep a hold on his foggy consciousness.

* * *

“Did that come from the roof? And did we really just get out asses handed to us by some skinny-mini in a glider suit?” Dexter winced, dabbing one of the General’s cleansing wipes against the cut on his lip.

Halsey paced angrily round the room, searching the white corpses for anyway to arm himself. He had wasted his ammunition on the scientists, he should have been more careful. A compact pistol bounces from one of the bodies as he kicked it onto its back. It wasn’t much, but it was loaded and it would do. “Dumb bitch.” He hissed, stuffing his firearm into the back of his belt, his holsters too small to hold it. “Private, Hudson, status.”

“Broken arm, maybe a few ribs, nothing huge, sir.” Hudson answered quickly but firmly, dealing with his injuries the way a Corporal should.

“Private?” Prompted the General again.

“Yeah-fine, sir. Just a few scratches.” He faltered, distracted.

‘Of course.’ Halsey cursed silently. Franklin had spent most of the time hiding behind one of the console pillars. Absolutely useless. “What are you doing?”

Private typed on the screen furiously, dragging windows, expanding contents. Clearly his skillset lay in technology and not combat. “I think I may have figured out what that quake was, sir.”

Halsey was only half interested, but he didn’t like mysteries. “Show me.” He ordered, wandering to the side of the screen.

“Well, sir, the urm…” Franklin took a breath, steadying his thoughts after the firefight. His first. “Icarus has been shut down, but its scanners and sensors are still activate. From what I can make out, the shake was a blast from about twelve levels up. It took out the roof and the first five floors with it.”

“A missile strike?” Dexter guessed, folding the blooded wipe in half for fresh piece to dab with.

“That’s what I thought but if Icarus is calibrated properly, which I assume it is since, well, it’s Icarus, then whatever caused that explosion is still here. It’s organic.”

The General’s eyes lit up. “Carbon.” His hands clenched into tight, cracking fists.

“Oh no, no. This is not the place for it, General sir.” Dexter intervened. “If he’s planning to take down this station, we have to get out, now.”

“If he wanted to kill me he would have done it by now.” Halsey barked, his mind decided.

“You’re talking about the Tin-Man?” The superiors looked at Franklin blankly, waiting for him to make his point. “Well, I don’t think the Tin-Man would come to help that Leon guy out.”

“Of course he would! He’s the grand supposed saviour of mankind. There is no way he would miss the opportunity to gain a new recruit!” Halsey grew more agitated by the second. His primary target was inside the building, and he was standing still.

“Before you ran into me, I was interrogating Leon’s younger sister.” A chill ran through him as he remembered how insufferable she had been. “She didn’t really say much, but apparently, a man with red hair killed their mother the other night. Why would he kill their mother and then come to save them, it doesn’t add up.”

Silence took the General for a moment as his agreed with Franklin’s evaluation. As he opened his mouth to speak, the station rumbled again. “If he isn’t here, and Leon’s basically a corpse, what the hell is that?”

“The older brother. The girl said that the red haired man took her mother, and then her big brother flew after him.” Private shared his terrified expression with the rest of the men as they considered the possibility of another powerful being. “They have no transport, and he flew.”

The group’s shared tension was sliced in half as the ceiling burst open, a great fireball of green falling through. The embers spread out and it stomped to the floor, and at their centre, a tall, strong man standing from his knee, a blood stained rag fastened tightly at his waist and flowed around his knees.

That was when the General realised that he had made a grave mistake. It wasn’t his Tin-Man, it was the brother, and with more of these beings roaming the planet, perhaps he would regret not having the Order’s children as his allies. He may have just killed his only hope for victory.

“Run.” Dexter shoved, trying to break Halsey’s gaze at the giant. “Run!” The men threw themselves into their sprint and made their best attempt to head for the exit.

Laza took a heavy breath before slamming his will into the ground, his eye focused on the men he must destroy. Panels crunched as flames roared towards the fleeing few. Corpses of scientist and white soldiers alike were devoured by the fires, their blood disintegrating as their bodies were cremated. The stench of burnt hair and flesh polluted the air, but Laza was too enraged to notice.

The blaze snagged at Hudson’s ankle and raced up his back, turning his Howler into a scolding pool. In the blink of an eye, he was engulfed. Dexter looked back, only for Hudson to surrender to death within seconds. But that look, the pure hatred across this ‘brother’s’ face was enough to make Dexter feel weak as he ran for his life.

The once mighty Icarus creaked and bubbled in the surrounding flames, crushing through the lower station as its struts subdued to the raging fury.