Part I: Colossus

Chapter One: Z

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That city was ruined already. Bombs left those skyscrapers half-eaten and crumbling long before our people took refuge in the remains. The streets were as weary as I was, weathered by the deadlands and looking like they just survived another battle. I played with the wrappings around my hands, my knuckles bleeding through the bandages, and trudged through sidewalks choking on waste.

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I knew Eli was in one of those sorry towers. Colossus was more worn than I remembered and realizing I was hundreds of miles away from my kingdom made me homesick. I missed the spoils of my beloved Aurelian where the markets were fat with wares rather than the torn and empty tents I passed by, their merchants wandering somewhere in the surrounding desert. I missed the sounds of my people laughing above their music and games, the rhythmic footsteps of my soldiers marching through the streets and setting out on patrols, and the clatter of weapons from the training yards as recruits fought to prove themselves as warriors. Colossus greeted me with silence, its people devoured by the deadlands. The Children of Cyrus either died on the battlefield as legends or lurched into the wastelands bloated with disease.

 

I plodded through the wreckage clutching the gash in my arm, the old shirt I tied around it slick with blood and smelling foul. I needed a medical unit, antibiotics, and something for my pain, but my chances of finding supplies were slim. The city streets remained empty. Instead of civilians bowing to me as they should have, I received only the respect of insects scuttling across the asphalt and rats fleeing to the storm drains, and it wasn't until I reached the city square that the residents presented themselves without the reverence I deserved.

 

I paused at the stack of their corpses. Smoke still rose from their skins. A flag bearing the emblem of our empire drooped from a pole above them. The sun symbol spread its halcyon rays across a backdrop frayed by bullets. I don't think I've ever seen our banner intact in all my travels, come to think of it.

 

Some of the bodies had reddish-black sores on what little flesh refused to burn. I scratched a similar mark on my neck. The bodies were a bitter reminder of what was coming for me, although I would've preferred to have the illness burned out of me rather than carry it into the deserts, mindless and hungry until my bones rotted to nothing and I collapsed into dust.

 

My radio hissed in my pocket. The angry voice of my commander struggled to cut through the static, her languid and plucky Aurelian accent making her spiteful transmission difficult to take seriously. "King, do you copy? Over," she said, then she gave up the formalities and screamed into the transmitter, "King, if you can hear me, then you need to answer me now!"

 

I pushed the switch and put the radio to my mouth. "I copy," I said. Dehydrated and sweating with a fever, I barely managed a whisper.

 

"Where are you?" she asked

 

 "Colossus."

 

"Are you hurt?"

 

"Not badly."

 

"You've been missing for days. What happened?"

 

"I got a message from a resident here. Said his name was Z."

 

"So what?"

 

I noticed a hatch in the middle of the sidewalk then. It was about three yards from where I stood and painted a bright red color. 

 

"King, did you hear me?" Thief asked, and the radio scolded me with static.

I threw the volume dial as close to silent as possible without losing her transmission.

 

"Yes, I heard you. The contact said he heard our radio broadcast and saw our posters."

 

"He has information on Eli?"

 

I hobbled to the red sewer access. The wound in my arm stung when I eased myself to a crouch beside it, and Thief heard me gasp.
 

"Are you okay?” she asked.
 

"I'm fine. The contact said he saw Eli. I came here as soon as I saw the message."
 

"Why did you go alone?"
 

"I wasn't alone. We were attacked."
 

"By what?"
 

"Raiders. They were taking travelers. Selling them to Titan."
 

"Did you kill them?"
 

A few. I couldn’t admit out loud how badly we lost. "I was the only one who made it to Colossus. They captured Atlas. Nova and Rook are dead."
 

She was quiet for a time. Her footsteps came through the speaker. She was at the Aurelian pacing through her shop of mechanical wonders, smoking a cigarette, and loading rounds into a shotgun. The snap of the weapon cut through the transmission when she mounted it. "Did the Z guy say he knew who the kidnapper was?" she asked.
 

"No."
 

"Have you found him yet?"
 

"I'm looking now, but I doubt I'll find him."
 

"Why?"
 

I bent my ear to the hatch. My hair was longer than I preferred and it fell in front of my eyes, the curls matted with dirt and blood and begging for a good wash. The gore twisting through the ringlets was from a blow that should've killed me. My vision dimmed and blurred, but my hearing was unaffected by the lump my curls were hiding. Snarls, howls, and the scraping of boots across a metal floor resonated below the hatch.

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Sometimes a rat squealed. The tunnels under the city once offered refuge from whatever horrors wandered from the surrounding wastelands. Now, it was a tomb.
 

I picked up the radio. "This city is corrupted. I'm guessing the residents went underground without realizing they were taking the disease with them. If anyone's alive down there, they'll either corrupt or be eaten. I'm going to guess our contact is down there too."
 

"You don't think Eli's down there with him?" she asked.
 

"No."
 

"What makes you so sure?"
 

I froze. The pebbles on the asphalt were shifting, then they jumped, and the city growled as if it had a beast trapped within it, something more terrible than all the undead below. I silenced the radio and took cover behind a wall that was once a skyscraper. The wash of adrenaline through my body made me want to hurl. I clapped my hand over my mouth and set my gaze on the sky while the ground rumbled under my boots.
 

An airship dragged its belly over the city's spires, its body painted coal black, its cannons bloated with missiles, its rounded hull fat with explosives. A bomber from Pallas sent from that wretch of a general to purge the wastelands of the undead. I was infected.

 

Titan wouldn't spare me.
 

I watched it until it disappeared over the skyline where its soldiers continued to carry out their genocide under the guise of heroism. I stifled the temptation to track it down and discover Titan's location along with the rest of the insolent bastards she kept in her company. I'd have to seek my vengeance another day.
 

There was an apartment across the street that was more intact than the other buildings, an open sign leaning against the window of a bar, its neon lights forgotten and gray. Sewage leaked from the building's foundation and added an acrid smell to the city's stench of rot. A shadow passed behind a window on its second floor. The shade could've been an infected brute wandering the same room it died in, but I believed it was Eli pacing while he waited for his kidnapper to return.
 

The airship left no trace beside a trail of white smoke. I turned up the radio. "Are you still there, Thief?"
 

"Yes. What's going on? What was that?"
 

"An airship from Pallas flew overhead. It went West."
 

"What?"
 

"It disappeared."
 

"That ship will be back. I'll bet Titan knows Colossus is corrupted. She's going to destroy it. You have to get out of there!"
 

"Not until I find Eli."
 

"He might not be there. That message you received could be a trick. I don't like this–"
 

"I'll be alright. Take care, Thief."
 

"No, no don't hang up, don't you dare hang up–"
 

I shut off the radio, checked the skies, and returned to the tunnel access. The cover resembled a maintenance plate. I pried it open with the flattened end of a pipe that I found on the sidewalk. The stench of the Parisian ossuaries couldn’t have challenged the smell that wafted from the opening, not even when they were fresh. Dead wading through sewage. I didn’t fancy it.
 

I couldn’t see the bottom; just a shaft going endlessly down into the putrid dark. Slime ran in streams between rust and mushrooms. I was hungry enough to consider taking a few.
 

“Should give me enough time,” I muttered. I replaced the cover, but left a small crack between it and the asphalt, then dusted my hands and tried to walk to the apartments without a limp.
 

The door was so battered that I broke the latch when I pushed inside. A curtain of spider webs adorned a hall less than fit for a monarch. A carpet of dead insects led me to a bar made from the salvaged wing of an airship. Flies crawled across the eyelids of the corpse lounging on its surface. The body wasn't old, it hadn't even begun to stink, and its flesh was free of worms. He was about fifty judging by the silver in his hair, his skin the color of the sand that blew across the table from a shattered window behind the bar. A light bullet blemished the space between his eyes. He clutched a hologram disk in his right hand, his fingers swallowed by red-black sores, its joints malformed with the beginnings of the disease's disfiguring effects on the body. Whatever killed him managed to get the job done before he discovered the extent corruption would warp his flesh.
 

I'd pillaged plenty of corpses in my travels but plucking something from one that was still warm never ceased to turn my stomach. I worked the disk out of his clammy fingers, gritting my teeth and suppressing a shudder, then, fearing his hand might twitch, pointed my gun at his head. He stared unmoving at the ceiling while ants weaved through his lashes. His irises were the same color as mine: grayish-green with red lines worming through the tissue, a trademark of infection.
 

I touched the hologram disc to summon its lights. I kept my weapon trained on the corpse while the device threw a thousand blue points into the air. The dust shone around them. Eli's profile flickered within the hologram screen, his wide nose lifted with the pride I instilled in him, his downturned eyes a reflection of his quiet temperament. Even through the hologram, they portrayed his intelligence. His gaze was as bright and focused as it was when he lost himself in his books.
 

A robotic voice chanted from the disc. Eli. Missing. Age: ten. Height: fifty inches. Weight: seventy pounds. Last seen wearing black pants and a tan shirt. Last seen May fifth at the Aurelian City.
 

If I stared at it any longer, I would've choked on tears. I'd searched for three weeks to no avail and wasn't sure how much longer I could take before giving in to hysteria and madness. That had to be the day I brought him home.
 

I slid the disc into my pocket and searched the corpse for ammo, patting its vest and running my fingers along its belt. "I'm guessing you were Z," I said, collecting a handful of coins and light bullets. There wasn't much else besides empty shotgun shells and more sand. His killer didn't hesitate to despoil the body, then judging by the decimated shelves behind him, ransacked the bar as well.
 

Something fell upstairs–a chair, a picture frame perhaps, it wasn't very loud but it was heavy enough to loosen a packet of insulation from the ceiling. I hurried to the stairwell and prepared a light charge, my gun humming as a sunburst warmed its stomach, but the sudden tremors through the building overwhelmed it's whine. The pillars rocked in their moldings, the cracks in the drywall deepened, and pink insulation dropped like dirty neon rain. The crashing noise of another airship tore across the sky. I took hold of the banister to regain my footing, but the boards underneath me swayed. I pitched to the side and smashed my shoulder into the wall, then stumbled up the urine-scented steps cursing. It was a very grand and graceful entrance, mind you.
 

A deadbolt secured the door to the second landing. I aimed at the latch, fired, and a bullet of light exploded from the barrel with a quick snapping sound. I stopped for a moment because my gun was hot, its body popping from torrid insides, its case searing marks into the wrappings of my palms, and I remember thinking, "This is what I get from using salvaged ammo." There was supposed to be liquid in the cartridge that cooled the bore but that wasn't happening. I couldn't risk a bullet exploding in the chamber. I kept the weapon raised even though I had little to defend myself with now, and rushed into the room.
 

Eli looked at me from the windowsill where he sat to watch the airships. He jumped down, staggered, and ran into my arms, and I held him tight and told him a million times how sorry I was, that I'd try to be a better mother to him, and that I loved him dearly and that he needed a haircut, and all the other things you tell your child when you've missed them for so long.

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