Anthem's Fall (51 page)

But where were they hoping to escape?

Together, Kristen and Madison hopped off the stage. Hands buried in the pockets of her sweatshirt, Kristen cautiously stepped across the shattered glass and approached the broad windows overlooking Times Square. She leaned against the window frame and looked out on the city as cool air touched her face. With the breeze came a shiver and a vision that shriveled her soul. Neither she nor Madison could come up with words as they looked out upon the avenue.

New York City was unrecognizable.

If Kristen had thought the dreamlike roar of the riot rising from the streets below was unsettling, the sight of the vast sea of people under her second-floor vantage point was outright nauseating. Midtown looked more like a despairing third-world refugee camp than a metropolitan hub. People were crowding shoulder to shoulder across the entire width of the streets as far as the eye could see, their bodies pushing and leaning in an attempt to move toward the north. The very cars lining Broadway and Seventh Avenue were buried under the cover of humanity, and provided the appearance of rising swells and undulations in the crowd. With nowhere else to occupy their bodies, people were standing on the depressed hoods and caved in roofs of abandoned cars and taxis. Some had even climbed atop street lamps, where they perched with hands held to their foreheads peering northward into the endless bottlenecked multitudes. The first floor storefronts looked looted and mangled. Restaurant and retailer signs hung dangling by wires, and broad awnings were tattered to shreds.

Individual police officers, firemen, and SWAT members were scattered here and there throughout the crowd, their gear lost and their uniforms serving no better purpose than costumes against the incalculable horde of the Manhattan populace. Kristen watched a young man about her age wildly swinging a thick riot shield with the words
NYC SWAT
over his head, the shield now a mere relic of what it once symbolized.

The sheer mayhem was a sight Kristen never could have conjured up in her most vivid dream, for no imagination could fully capture the breadth of this terror. Her legs went weak, her stomach raw. In this hysterical screeching sea of humankind before her, there was no foothold, no niche upon which the enforcement of civil obedience could cling. Words such as order, law, restraint, and authority were all merely indulgences that perhaps had held a place in the city earlier that morning. But such reassurances held no sway over a million-strong mob.

“Dear god,” Madison muttered from behind her.

Kristen turned back into the ballroom to see that people from the audience were gathering the courage to move from the rear of the room and look out the windows. They, too, were staring with awe at the collapse of civilization occurring below. At the other end of the windows, shouts began to rise from their ranks as people were demanded to part with their blazer or fall coat so as to add another link to the makeshift rope. Kristen turned shamefully away from a scuffle between two PhDs over a heavy twill sports coat, and saw Madison was looking across the Lutvak ballroom to a navy banner that had been draped across the far wall.

The banner read:
ICST The Future of Man
.

“These people are the future of man?” Madison asked scornfully, indicating the two grown men who were now wrestling across the carpet. “Give me a break. Why do they even want to make a rope? Look outside, there’s nowhere to go! We’re trapped.”

“Yeah.” Kristen unwillingly brought her attention back to the miserable sight of Professor Vatruvia up on the stage floor.

“You . . . knew him?” Madison asked.

Kristen nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry.”

“He was my boss.” Kristen cleared her throat in a detached manner. “Somewhat ironic that Vengelis killed him before they had a chance to speak. He murdered the very man he was aiming to exploit.”

“Yeah.”

Kristen turned to Madison. “Why were you with Vengelis?”

Madison let out a long fatigued exhale and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t even know. These men attacked me at my work. One had a knife. And then Vengelis came out of nowhere to help . . . he must have been in the crowd. For the life of me I can’t imagine what he was doing there.”

“Strange,” Kristen said.

“He told me New York wasn’t safe, and he said all the insane things he later proved without explanation to everyone in here. I thought it was a joke at first, some weird reality TV prank or something. Then he hit the truck. He wanted me to show him where the Marriott Marquis was, so I brought—”

Krrrrghhh!

An immense clapping noise suddenly emanated from outside their building in the far distance. Everything—even the ruckus of the avenue outside—immediately fell quiet. The boom had been loud enough to silence the entire city. Kristen was unconsciously locked in stunned eye contact with Madison, both of their mouths agape. They stared straight through each other’s gaze, both straining to listen to the dead silence that now pressed down upon them.

Krrrrrrrgggghhhhhh!

K-K-K-K-Krrrrrrrghhhhh!

The sounds were eerily reminiscent of a violently intense thunderstorm, though somehow different and unearthly. The cracks were sharper, louder, and more pronounced than a roll of thunder, with a less drawn-out rumble. They were unmistakably the sounds of tremendous impacts, though not of pushing clouds in the lofty ceiling of the atmosphere. The crashes were so loud that it sounded as if the very tectonic plates of the planet were splintering apart, except the noise came from the sky to the south.

Then, as quickly as the strange overhead crashes had begun, they ceased. A long hush ensued, filled only with nervous glances and apprehensive breaths. Then the masses awakened. The crashes, or explosions, or whatever they had been, were the last traumatic nudge necessary for the multitude filling Times Square to reach its final tipping point. An earthquake began to shake the very floor of the ballroom as the avenue outside erupted into a unified and earsplitting wail of stampeding dread. If the masses had been a downtrodden sea of humanity minutes previous, now it was a violent maelstrom of thrashing limbs and screaming faces. The roar of men and women coming in through the open windows was equally as alien to Kristen’s ears as the crashes in the sky; the communal roar was a calamitous requiem for the fallen order of their world.

KRRRRGGGHHHH!

The loudest bang yet reverberated from a point directly over their heads. It was as though the center of the storm had shifted to sit above them. A descending torrent of fire and brimstone would have been an appropriate counterpart to the thunderous crashing, yet only clear afternoon sunlight spilled onto the floors through the tall windows. Kristen, along with everyone in the ballroom, visibly flinched and stooped in shock with her arms raised above her head. For a moment she thought she was dead—that the hotel had collapsed down on them. This louder series of cracks sounded from just above them and shook the walls of the ballroom. The chandeliers rattled and swayed against their brackets.

“What is happening?” Madison shouted.

Kristen shook her head, her hands raised to cover her ears. “Don’t know!”

“Do you think it’s Vengelis?”

Kristen’s eyes lingered uncertainly on the ceiling tiles as the booms rattled over and over again from somewhere far above the Lutvak ballroom. She could not bring herself to envision what could possibly be generating the decibels shaking the world around her, though she knew it had to be related to Vengelis.

Madison winced. “It must be him!”

Kristen felt paralyzed. She had seen it on Vengelis’s face—something had concerned him. Whatever it was had forced him to leave, and Kristen did not like the idea of what that might entail. Something that concerned Vengelis Epsilon would surely prove to be a concern to her as well.

An upsurge of fierce bangs sounded from the clear skies outside the windows. Instantly the clamor became deafening, and the floor shook violently beneath their feet. Kristen was forced to her knees, and Madison grabbed hold of the windowsill, barely able to stay standing. Her chin tucked to her chest and her hands pressing against her ears, Kristen’s painful scream went unheard even to herself.

I
t was the mingled sounds of fever pitched shouts rising from the barge below him that snapped Gravitas out of his incapacitated condition. His mind came to attention, and his body steadied itself from freefall just before he crashed straight through the barge’s rusty deck. The entire bay spun round and round in his vision. The dreary water and the bright blue sky were barely distinguishable from one another. His eyes seemed unable to focus on anything. At once, the spires of Manhattan, the wharfs of Brooklyn, and the shores of New Jersey swirled and revolved.

In his daze he squinted at three blurry Statues of Liberty standing side by side across the bay, all three raising a green copper torch into the Atlantic sky.

Gravitas could feel warm blood running down his head from above his right temple. He moved his jaw back and forth and blinked the stars out of his vision as he cursed his recklessness. The fight had just begun, and he was already concussed. He trained his gaze on the unsteady horizon and tried to focus on ridding the growing daze in his consciousness. Wind touched a clammy sweat on his cheeks and brow, and he forcefully quelled the rising queasiness in his gut and turned to search for Vengelis Epsilon. As he raised his head, Gravitas could feel the stream of blood change its course and run behind his ear and into his armor.

The dark form of Vengelis was thankfully easy to identify contrasting against the clear sky overhead. He was visibly moving back and forth unsteadily. Gravitas latched onto one hope: that even if Vengelis was stronger than he—which had yet to be determined—Gravitas would prove tougher than the Epsilon. Without a second thought, Gravitas erupted upward at Vengelis with a swerving wobbly charge.

As Gravitas accelerated toward Vengelis, he could hear the Emperor of Anthem scream in unintelligible infuriation. Instead of repeating the same careless stroke once more, this time Vengelis Epsilon held his skyward position and readied himself for impact. Gravitas flexed his midsection and forced his dizzied body into a ferocious swinging kick at Vengelis’s side.

But Vengelis was too quick.

The Epsilon turned his body to the side, flexing each of his arms together. Gravitas’s uncoiled shin connected powerfully, not with tender ribcage, but with Vengelis’s iron biceps. Just as the deafening ring of the impact boomed across the immensely populated shores of the bay, Vengelis pulled up his forearms and grasped Gravitas’s leg like a vice.

“Got you!” Vengelis said, his face furious, and launched himself forward while holding Gravitas’s leg in his arms. Gravitas flung his free limbs outward and teetered to maintain his balance as he was pushed backward, reeling across the sky in Vengelis’s grasp. Salty moisture from the bay touched his face as he frantically considered his next move. Gravitas steadied his upper body as best he could to deliver a swift punch to Vengelis’s exposed face. But the moment he did so, he was shocked to feel Vengelis skillfully figure four his legs around his own trapped hamstring and attempt to put Gravitas in a heel hook that would tear every tendon in his knee within seconds.

Gravitas recognized the subtle beginning steps of the submission move as though it were a sixth sense. He had defended the specific maneuver Vengelis was attempting every day for half of his childhood, though the fact that this Epsilon knew how to execute such an intricate submission was deeply unsettling. It was not the kind of move taught by the Imperial First Class.

The figure four had been one of Master Tolland’s favorite moves.

Knowing the only functioning counter quite well, Gravitas twisted his body in a tactical position, keeping his knee at a protected angle as he stretched and grabbed Vengelis’s exposed ankle. Gravitas rolled his own upper body around, swinging Vengelis by his now vulnerable foot.

Yet Vengelis, too, seemed to know counters, and Gravitas was even more surprised as the Epsilon expertly rolled his entire body in a sleek motion and freed his foot from the grasp.

The limbs of the two Sejero sons untangled, and Gravitas and Vengelis spun free in the gusty air. They faced each other in astonishment, each regarding the other in equal bewilderment and breathlessness.

“A heel hook counter,” Vengelis called. “Impressive.”

Gravitas stretched his knee out gingerly and shook his head in disapproval of his own carelessness. The fight had been a moment from ending, and his leg snapping in two. This would be no uncouth Imperial First Class fistfight. Vengelis Epsilon knew how to handle himself.

“I’m impressed, too. You almost got me with that leg lock. Almost. Ready to give up and leave yet?”

Vengelis smirked.

“Just leave,” Gravitas yelled, exasperated. “No one will know you retreated.”

Vengelis shook his head. “Can’t.”

This time it was Vengelis’s turn to charge. He accelerated and launched his fist into a punch, which crashed into Gravitas’s quickly raised arms. Without hesitation, Vengelis wound up and swung out again in an attempt to breach through Gravitas’s defenses. At once, the individual blows transitioned into an indiscernible flurry of stinging strikes against Gravitas’s raised arms and midsection; Vengelis cycled between face and stomach hits, forcing Gravitas to flex his abdomen as hard as he could and fall back into total defense. Each sustained impact of fist on forearm or elbow against gut sent a disproportionate boom echoing and rumbling across the chaotic waters of the bay and through the city to the north. It was as if the very world around them was in total submission to their power, incapable of shielding itself even against the mere sound of their struggle.

After barely sustaining Vengelis’s initial explosion of strikes, Gravitas lowered his guard and began returning blows. And so the two Royal sons engaged in a turbulent back and forth exchange while involuntarily moving northward back toward Manhattan. They pushed and pulled at each other violently, each trying to get the upper hand of momentum as they moved miles across the open water. With a roar and a sudden surge of strength, Vengelis pulled a few feet away from Gravitas and savagely swung out at him, catching him directly in the face.