Anthem's Fall (36 page)

“I mean you no harm, stop squirming,” Vengelis said, his attention on the remote.

“Then let me
go
.” Madison pressed her cigarette down against his arm and it fizzled out against his impervious skin. She brought her free arm down against his grasp and beat against his forearm several times. “Let me go!”

“No.”

“Let me go!” With mounting anger Madison tried to free herself, but his grip was inconceivably strong. She reached around to dig her fingernails into the taut cords of muscle in his forearm and her mouth fell immediately agape. The ends of two of her nails cracked. “Your skin . . . it feels like rock.”

“I’m still in the process of helping you,” Vengelis said. “You’re not aware of the danger you are in.”

Another beep sounded from the remote, and Vengelis raised the remote and answered.

“Cinga avar zitutha,”
were the words Madison heard from the remote. Vengelis recognized the voice as belonging to his Lord General Hoff.

Vengelis looked into Madison’s eyes, his face distant.
“Marza e’kuff vashkara nompanta.”

Madison’s expression twisted in bewilderment as she stared at him; the incoherent words belonged to no language she had ever heard. Her lips moved inarticulately and she stopped squirming. A cautious trepidation claimed her as she listened to the sharp transformation of Vengelis’s tone and intonation.

“Lorvesh ritak levkaraska e’ta Shikago,”
the voice spoke again.

Several more exchanges were passed in the language that Madison surely only recognized as a strange and foreign tongue. Vengelis then paused and considered something, before switching back to English. “Are you familiar with a city known as Chicago?”

Madison futilely tried to yank herself away from his grip. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Are you, or are you not, familiar with the city of Chicago?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“
Keez arakla
.” Vengelis looked at her with complete stoicism and repeated the command in English for her benefit, perhaps to enlighten her of her plight. “Show them our power.”

Vengelis slipped the
Harbinger I
remote back into his armor and released the grip on her shoulder. He calmly wiped off the ash her cigarette had left on his forearm. Madison saw the unharmed skin underneath and recoiled away from him suspiciously.

“Now you realize the nature of danger you’re in by staying in this city against my guidance,” Vengelis said.

Madison rotated her arm and massaged her shoulder where he had held her. His fingers had left marks on her skin. “You . . . are some sort of terrorist?”

“No. Well . . . ” Vengelis considered the question. “At least not a terrorist in the sense you’re probably envisioning. Though I have no doubt my presence here will inspire terror.”

“Who are you?” Madison said as the fear in her eyes began to turn to dread. She was surely now remembering all too vividly the inhumanness of his attack on the men in the club. What had happened in there was not normal—not natural. She sighed, stepped closer to him so no passersby could overhear, and begrudgingly rephrased her question. “
What
are you?”

“My name is Vengelis Epsilon.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“A foreign one.”

“And you are from where exactly? I can recognize a lot of languages and I’ve never heard anything remotely like what you were just speaking. I don’t—”

“I’m from Anthem.”

Madison blinked. “And that is . . . some city in the Middle East or a town in Eastern Europe or something?”

Vengelis shook his head and she took a shrinking step away from him. Madison turned to leave him for good, but again he reached out and took her arm.

“Let me go!” she said quietly, leaning into him, her eyes furious. A number of passersby turned their heads, but no attempt was made to intervene. Instead they drew their attention to the restaurant fronts across the street or the dried gum on the pavement; all walked by without a word, making the choice not to involve themselves.

“Please let me speak. After I have said my part, if you still wish to disregard my warning, I’ll let you go without argument. I already told you that I mean you no harm.” Vengelis slowly released his grip on her arm, and when she did not run, he took a step back.

Madison massaged her knuckles over her shoulder. “Okay. Tell me.”

“My name is Vengelis Epsilon, and I am here for a very specific purpose. That purpose will include the maiming of the city my men have now reached. I do not relish in its torment, it is a necessary means toward the end I require.”

Madison stared at him.

“Hopefully it ends there,” Vengelis said, and decided some exaggeration might help his cause. “If after witnessing our power in Chicago, your people are still not convinced of our superiority, if they still refuse to aid me in my purpose, it is likely I will be forced to hurt New York as well, along with as many other cities as will be necessary in order to gain submission.”

Madison continued to stare blankly for a long moment before her mouth turned upward and she laughed aloud. “Why would you want to do that?”

“That is . . . rather complex. But where my personal errand affects you is in the potential harming of New York.” Vengelis looked up past the hanging traffic lights to the tall glass windows that loomed far overhead.

“This is either a very bizarre prank or you’re a complete lunatic,” Madison said with a nervous laugh.

“Far from it, I assure you I am quite lucid. You need only ask me to prove my words.”

“Prove what? That you aren’t insane?”

“No,” Vengelis said. “That I’m not human.”

Madison’s laughter died. “Okay, man,” she said, her tone sober. “You did help me back there, and I appreciate it. And you are intriguing in a weird sort of way. But I don’t have the time to deal with someone who is mentally unstable. If you are sane, and this is some weird joke, then you really need to find something better to do with your time. Please just walk away and leave me alone.”

Vengelis sighed regretfully.

“Sorry,
Vengelis
, although I’m sure it’s really Eric or Dan or something. I’m leaving.”

“You’ll regret this choice. That is a promise. Within the hour, your civilization will never be the same. This society will collapse around you. You will be stuck here, unable to get out, with the remembrance that you were warned and did not listen.”

“For god’s sake!” Madison shrugged in exasperation. Once more she looked down and embraced his armor. He guessed that his appearance added some credibility to his strange story. A simple action would add quite a bit more, but he awaited her.

“Fine,” she said at last. “I’ll play along a little while longer. Do it. Whatever you can prove, prove it right now.”

“Okay, but I’m unfamiliar with the limitations of the human form. Ask me to do something a human couldn’t do.”

Madison cast him a skeptical and anxious smirk, then turned to look around the intersection. Cars and taxis beeped and brakes squealed through the busy street. Congested groups of people moved past them along the pavement, entering and exiting the nearby restaurants and stores.

“Okay,
Vengelis Epsilon
,” Madison said. “Go and stop one of those cars with your bare hands. Weirdo.”

Vengelis wondered how fast the authorities or governmental powers would react to the assault of this city of Chicago. He did not want to provide any window of time by which the scientists could evacuate his vicinity. “I’ll need a promise from you first. Well, two promises actually.”

“Oh yeah?” Madison said. “Name them.”

“First, you must promise you won’t panic when I do what you’ve asked of me,” Vengelis said.

Madison let out a melodious laugh. The humor of the situation was evidently coming back to her. She looked past him, perhaps looking for a hidden camera crew. Vengelis gave her a grim look. He knew there would be no way she could be capable of holding back her forthcoming panic.

“Deal,” Madison said.

“Good. Second promise. After I have proven myself to you, you will lead me immediately
,
without a moment’s delay
,
to the Marriot Marquis. Do you know where that is?”

Madison narrowed her brow at the specificity of the request. “Yes, I know where it is. If you can stop a car without any stupid tricks or games or whatever, I will bring you straight to the Marriot Marquis. You have my word.”

“Believe me, there will be no tricks,” Vengelis said. He looked at her with a stern severity. “Are you absolutely certain you know where the Marriot Marquis is?”

“Obviously. It’s right in Times Square,” Madison said and nodded toward the street. “I’m waiting here.”

Vengelis brought his attention to the intersection. The deal would be off and he would leave her if she did not follow through with her promise. He was running out of time and needed to get to the convention soon. If Hoff and Darien had started their assault, New York City would likely be in chaos within minutes.

“Very well. How about that vehicle coming down the street? Will that suffice?” Vengelis asked her. An enormous eighteen-wheeler was hauling toward the intersection, flagged onward by a green light. The broad wheels and bulky steel frame hogged nearly two lanes. The driver must have been in a rush, as the truck was travelling well over the speed limit.

“Yeah.” Madison rolled her eyes. “That will work.”

“Okay. Remember your promises.”

Madison nodded doubtfully.

Without another word, Vengelis turned and stepped off the sidewalk into the roaring traffic. A red Don’t Walk sign blinked from across the intersection. The cars waiting behind the red lights adjacent to him beeped and windows rolled down. People shouted at him to get out of the road, most thinking this young man was going commit suicide right in front of their eyes.

The oncoming truck powered with enormous momentum toward the intersection. The thick steel grate and grinning fender rattled and bore down upon the Lord of Anthem. Behind the windshield, the driver was busy adjusting the radio, his eyes off the road. The look on Madison’s face suddenly filled with horror as she realized Vengelis was actually going to go through with the challenge. The young man before her was psychotic; she had inadvertently sent some mental patient to his death. She took a step off the sidewalk and reached out to him in panic.

“Holy shit! I was kidding, come
back
!” Madison screamed out to him.

Vengelis looked back to her as if to convey a reminder of the promise she had made. He then turned and broke into a dead sprint up the avenue toward the incoming truck. Jaws dropped in disbelief as the young man launched himself directly at the massive semi. The driver lifted his head only to catch a fleeting glimpse of someone in his path; he did not even get to slam his boot into the brake pedal. Vengelis pumped his legs forward and lowered his head, driving his shoulder and upper body straight into the hulking bare steel grill of the truck.

An ear-splitting and hideous crunching sound resounded across the block as the front of the semi crumpled from the overwhelming impact. In an instant the truck was barely recognizable as a vehicle at all, and became a pile of indiscernible steel carnage. The concussion of the impact caused all of the bystanders, Madison included, to launch backward onto the pavement. The thick panes of glass restaurant fronts and car windows shattered from the shockwave of the impact, sending shards to the pavement. The truck’s gigantic rubber wheels along with various pieces of the vehicle launched in every direction.

In the very center of the stopped intersection, in the heap of scrap parts, Vengelis pushed aside pieces of the surrounding white-hot wreckage. He stepped out from the twisted steel nest, which had been the fender of the truck, completely unscathed, casually brushing off debris as he crossed the street and approached Madison. Behind him, the truck driver—miraculously still alive—stumbled out of the driver’s side door and crawled across the pavement to get away from Vengelis. The bystanders were divided between those who had seen the event unfold, and those who had been surprised by the sudden calamity. Those who witnessed his eerie rush into the truck fell back in revulsion as he approached the sidewalk.

Madison had crashed painfully onto her back on the concrete. In a stunned state she numbly ran her fingers over her body to check for any injury. Her eyes were wide with disbelief and her body was shaking with shock. The fall to the ground must have been painful. Sirens sounded from nearby as Vengelis stood over Madison. She was turning and writhing on the glass-strewn pavement. Madison looked at him and sputtered for words, the terror rampant in her eyes.

“Now,” Vengelis said to her. “Take me to the Marriot Marquis.”

T
he wind whipped and roared in Darien’s ears as he barreled in Lord General Hoff’s wake through the heavy clouds lingering high in the atmosphere over Chicago. Needles of rain pelted against his face, and he strained to keep Hoff in sight as he nearly disappeared in the mists below. It required all of Darien’s focus to keep the eagerly accelerating Lord General from pulling ahead.

As he descended through the lashing precipitation, the grand city seemed to increase in magnitude as the height and breadth of the skyscrapers appeared. The tall dark spires, beautiful and solemn against the rainstorm, pierced the very heavens. Their sharp lines and dark forms jutted through the pallid fog that hung among the concealed streets below.

A city doomed to fall, like so many before. This city’s grandeur would descend to tragedy against the might of Sejero power. He,
he
, was going to destroy this place. It was brutal, but it was an order. Orders were followed. Darien would destroy this city for the cause of the Felix and the salvation of the Primus race—his race. Darien was the last surviving Royal Guard of the Epsilon, a quintessential vision of Sejero prowess and loyalty. If he did not have the stomach to do what must be done, who did? He shook away the slight compassion rising in his heart as he descended from the sky. Now was not the time for half measures, now was the time to prove his tremendous worth. Focusing all his power into his speed, he accelerated his meteoric plummet and pulled alongside the fellow giant. The Lord General Hoff turned and gave an impressed nod as they simultaneously erupted downward.