Silence (34 page)

Blacksteel limbs jutted out of Ghost’s
tattered skin. The android’s clothes were ragged and torn all over
his frame.

Sheikoh gritted his teeth. Blacksteel
was much tougher than normal bones, but even it had a limit. As
Sheikoh well knew. Whatever his problems with the dude, he wasn’t
going to let Ghost go out like this. He had to distract Khryzt.
Before the demon killed someone.

He leapt at Khryzt and slashed at
Emili’s freckled face. Khryzt twisted out of harm’s way. A wave of
Emili’s blonde hair glanced over Sheikoh’s arm, leaving behind a
thin film of longing.

Khryzt leapt backwards, and Sheikoh
followed.

He came down on Khryzt. Flung a
blindingly fast back-kick at the demon’s face. There was a
satisfying crunch. Emili’s neck bent backwards. Blonde hair and
droplets of blood trailed behind the demon as it staggered a few
steps backwards. Sheikoh landed where it had been. In the same
movement, he hurled a right uppercut at Emili’s chin.

Khryzt dodged the blow.

The demon’s fiery eyes sparked red,
and it tried to slam a fist into Sheikoh’s midriff. He dodged and
immediately retaliated. They traded whistling blows, dodging one
another’s staggering assaults. Khryzt managed to smash Sheikoh’s
shoulder, knocking him reeling back. Luckily, it had been his right
shoulder. His left would have shattered under the force.

They circled each other warily. Khryzt
twitched Emili’s hands into sharp claws and charged Sheikoh at the
speed of a hummingbird’s wings. Sheikoh dodged the creature’s raw
kick, then the whip-like forearm slash, screaming with speed. He
landed a quick jab on the Emili’s knee and the demon responded with
a wild flurry of lightning punches. The blows flickered around him
and ended with a clumsy back kick that he caught and jabbed with a
knee.

The Sycrarian was stronger, but
Sheikoh was more skilled.

They disengaged, panting.
Khryzt’s eyes flared with a burst of red and orange sparks. The
Sycrarian rushed Sheikoh, attacking furiously. Sheikoh barely
managed to dodge the fists that flooded all sides, disappearing
into their own realm of speed. Sheikoh retreated, dodging
desperately. Khryzt’s blows easily had the force to power straight
through his guard, so he didn’t even pretend to have it up. His
face was tight with concentration as he fought for his life.
Sheikoh had never fought this desperately. The
relentless attack was quickly wearing him down. Sheikoh knew that
his only chance was to buy enough time for Ghost or Indigo to
figure out a way to give him an opening. Then Sheikoh could snap
into overdrive and force the amulet over Emili’s head.

Sheikoh was able to land a glancing
blow on Emili’s elbow and another slightly telling one on her knee,
but only because the demon was fighting like a berserker, clawing
and swinging Emili’s arms at the dancing teenager in a relentless
pure offense. The furious strikes didn’t let up for an instant.
Sheikoh retreated ever backwards, forcing his eyes unblinking, so
he wouldn’t miss any of Khryzt’s hissing strikes.

Then Khryzt managed to wrest the upper
hand.

The demon whipped a right hook his
way. Sheikoh managed to dodge just out of its range. Until the
demon opened Emili’s fingers into a claw. Sharp fingernails slashed
straight through Sheikoh’s eyebrow. A splash of ruby blood blinded
him for a moment.

Khryzt took advantage of
it, slamming a knee into Sheikoh’s stomach,
hard
. Sheikoh was knocked backwards,
gasping for breath. Khryzt rushed the stumbling teenager with
Emili’s sharp nails thrust forward like a spear. Behind Khryzt,
Sheikoh noticed a shadowy figure with an assault rifle trained on
the Sycrarian. His eyes widened. He hoped he understood.

Sheikoh threw himself forwards, just
managing to evade Emili’s outstretched nails. His side slammed into
Khryzt though, and the demon wrapped Emili’s unnaturally strong
arms around him. He had sacrificed balance for a final, desperate
dodge. He was trapped in the demon’s iron grip. He could only hope
that his ribs held out beneath the demon’s massive
strength.

If this didn’t work, he was
dead.

The keening hiss of plasma
sounded in the cavern. Khryzt’s grip around him suddenly loosened.
Sheikoh expertly flipped Emili’s body over his shoulder with all
his strength and twisted his knee onto her chest. Khryzt’s burning
eyes glared sparks at Sheikoh, who suddenly noticed a burned bone
stuck out of the smoldering plasma wound on Emili’s shoulder. He
forced pity from his chest angrily; now was
not
the time for a soft heart.
 

“
Looks like you forgot
something. You lose your little shield when you get too close to
this,” Sheikoh murmured over Khryzt, tapping the amulet with a
thumb.

The Sycrarian’s eyes flared, spitting
up a cloud of bright sparks. They surrounded Sheikoh’s face
painlessly. Emili’s expression twisted with white-hot fury. A drop
of blood dripped from Sheikoh’s forehead and landed on her cheek.
Indigo jogged over, wearing a cocky grin. His rifle was slung over
his giant shoulder.

“
That amulet will not save any of you from a slow, painful
death,”
Khryzt hissed in
double-tone.

“
Shut up, freak,” Indigo
responded.

Behind Indigo, Sheikoh watched Ghost
lift himself to his feet. The android’s clothes and Synthskin were
burned and tattered. They hung open around the now clearly visible
blacksteel. His metal body was part insectoid and part skeletal.
Foreboding green wires wound around the exposed bits of metal and
machinery, like a perverse imitation of veins. As the leader of
Legacy limped over, Sheikoh found that he couldn’t tear his eyes
from Ghost’s horrifying face.

About half of Ghost’s face looked
passably normal, even with the bits of blacksteel that gleamed
dully like blackened blood through the torn holes across one side
of his face. The Synthskin stretched almost all the way across the
man’s brow before giving way to a line of what looked like burned
and shredded flesh. The wound split through Ghost’s face, exposing
the android’s true self. Everything from Ghost’s blacksteel snout
to the silver-toothed grimace was visible through the curtain of
burned skin. Ghost’s black skull resembled the grinning face of
death. His eyes glowed toxic-green in the dark.  

Sheikoh was suddenly ripped forward in
a haze of motion. The world blurred with streaks of speed as the
cave around him echoed with cries and thumps. Khryzt had taken
advantage of Sheikoh’s momentary lapse in attention, twisting
Emili’s body out of Sheikoh’s hold like a snake. The next thing
that Sheikoh knew, his and Khryzt’s positions had been reversed.
The demon grinned down at him evilly.

The Sycrarian suddenly bounded into
the air. Khryzt hung above them, floating, with Emili’s arms
outstretched as though the demon expected an embrace from them. A
battered Sheikoh rolled backwards onto his feet, his wary crouch
mirroring Indigo’s and Ghost’s. Indigo fired an experimental bolt
at the demon. It glanced off of the Sycrarian’s invisible shield
and blasted a black stain into the ground. Khryzt’s white fires
illuminated the cave with cold, blue light.

The demon held out its arms, and two
shadow-drenched objects hurtled into Emili’s hands. By the
flickering light of the Sycrarian’s flaming eyes, Sheikoh could see
that they were the Transcendent Codex and the unconscious
Centaurai. The Sycrarian cradled the codex in the crook of Emili’s
arm, and held the limp body of Cylium Vest by his hair.

He noticed that the Centaurai’s
crimson, coat-tailed jacket had been ripped and stained a murky
brown. Stubble shadowed the man’s jaw, and his gelled hair hung
greasily around his haggard face. The arrogant socialite that had
threatened him so long ago had been transformed into the ragged,
unkempt man, slowly revolving beneath the flying demon. Sheikoh
almost felt sorry for the guy.

“
Let’s
see whether the Transcendent Amulet can protect you
from
this
,”
Khryzt’s demonic double-voice
echoed menacing throughout the cave.

Khryzt closed Emili’s eyes and the
cavern was suddenly plunged into darkness, tempered only by the two
tendrils of white flame that escaped under Emili’s lids. Sheikoh
glanced at Indigo, wearing a hard expression. He knew what Khryzt
was about to do. The cave shook, slowly at first and then
violently. The roof cracked, pouring gravel onto the cave floor. A
glinting backdrop of sunrise streamed through the
ceiling.

They didn’t have time!

“
GHOST! OVERDRIVE!” Sheikoh
screamed.

Chapter 17

Stone Rain

Sheikoh forced his cyborg parts into overdrive, flung Indigo
over his shoulder and bounded into the still air, streaking along
the rock wall as the ceiling crumbled. Adrenaline kicked in. His
heartbeat pounded against his eardrums. Sheikoh bounded along
falling boulders like they were stepping stones.  His
blacksteel legs blasted off of the rocks, shattering them into
sand.
Sheikoh lolled to the left under
Indigo’s weight. He tried planning his path through the avalanche,
but he had to take what came his way.

For the merest instant, the rocks
flickered to the wood and rubble of Randel Sanatous’s collapsing
roof. He wrenched his eyes back to the moment. Leaping from boulder
to falling boulder. Forever upwards. He was like a cricket on
speed. Every inch was a miracle. It was like he was trying to run
up a down escalator. Only infinitely harder.

There was a massive sonic boom. A
blacksteel cannonball blasted straight through thirty feet falling
rock, with a million clanking impacts and landed neatly on a ledge.
In a single jump, Ghost had cleared more than halfway towards
sunlight. Sheikoh was impressed. His hardware couldn’t have managed
that leap. Even without Indigo over his shoulder.

Sheikoh was suddenly bounding off a
rolling boulder and onto the ledge by Ghost’s. He landed lightly,
sliding on the thick layer of dust. At the same time, Ghost
crouched and then leapt. The android blew through the last fifteen
feet of falling rocks like it wasn’t there. The shockwave of his
liftoff sent an ominous rippling through the ledge Sheikoh was on.
He followed Ghost’s lead and flung all of his and Indigo’s weight
towards the sunlight. His ledge shattered into pieces under the
force of his leap.

Sheikoh coasted through Ghost’s aerial
pathway, relatively unscathed. A few pebbles smacked him in the
face. Other than those, Ghost cleared a sizable pathway. The
android had powered his way through the rubble, and forced the
rubble to shudder back in on itself. The clanging was deafening.
Rocks hammered Ghost’s metal framework and blasted
aside.

As the lip of their only way out drew
ever closer, Sheikoh’s trajectory started to slow. He became sure
he’d misjudged the jump. Sure he and Indigo were about to die.
Momentum and gravity battling over him and Indigo. Slowly, gravity
began to take charge. Then it won. But they’d already rocketed into
the glorious sunlight of their survival.

Ghost kept flying, higher and higher
until he was the size of a toy. Sheikoh and Indigo had much less
momentum. Sheikoh tossed Indigo onto the emerald grass around the
caved-in hole. Then he unceremoniously smashed into the trunk of a
tree. He rolled onto his back and gasped to himself.

Sheikoh flicked to his feet dizzily,
still overdriving. He rubbed his aching head, as Indigo pushed
himself up.

“
Thanks… Silence…” Indigo
muttered quietly.

“
Don’t mention-

Something was happening up in the air.
It was Khryzt. The demon was flying, bolting towards the falling
Ghost. Sheikoh clenched his fists, as it caught one of Ghost’s
ankles midair. The android kicked at the Sycrarian with his free
leg, but Khryzt caught that one too.

Khryzt laughed maniacally as Ghost
struggled, desperate to break free.

Sheikoh knew the demon was baiting
him, knew this was a mistake, but it didn’t matter. He bunched his
legs, preparing to throw himself at the Sycrarian.

He jumped into the
air!

Only he didn’t.

His legs made no movement. They
started shaking and then gave out beneath him. Sheikoh fell limply
into the grass in shocked horror. He was out of action.

His overdrive had run its
course.

They were dead.

Indigo glanced down at him. Then he
aimed his assault rifle up at the Sycrarian and fired four jets of
plasma. They bounced off of the invisible wall around the creature,
and scattered. Sheikoh searched his jacket for his ML5. Almost
immediately, he realized he’d left it in the cave.

An agonized scream rent the
air.

Khryzt blasted currents of power
through Ghost. Glittering sparks danced along blacksteel limbs,
shrouding the dull grey metal with brilliance. The android’s skull
ticked, and his jaw was opened nearly 180 degrees at the torture.
Smoke began to curl off of his limbs. Indigo fired a few more
useless streaks of plasma at the demon, and Sheikoh cursed. There
was nothing they could do.