Revelation

As the seven of us flew south through the early morning sky, I surveyed the badlands with annoyance. I really didn’t miss this region.

“Okay, guys, the House of Steel is just over yonder. Ready to storm the keep?” I pointed at a low ridge.

“Strike fast, strike second,” Blake said. “We still dropping Joseph?”

“We have to find him first,” I muttered. “I wonder if he’s even still there…”

“Hey. You should know the place has a tunnel underneath it that no one uses,” Penny told us.

“Really? No, seriously?” I glared at her. “You’re not joshing us, are you? How’d you learn about it?”

“I’m me. I find stuff,” she explained.

I gave her a dubious Look.

“I can vouch,” Roy said. “It’s kind of a quirk she has.”

“Hmm.” I guess I didn’t really have a right to object.

“Here it is,” she called. “It leads straight to central special storage, which is completely inaccessible via normal doors. Cool, right?”

We silently watched as Penny lifted up a flat-looking rock. Sure enough, there was a subterranean rampway underneath it.

“This is nuts,” Travis muttered. “A-Tech’s been hiding so much, right under our noses.”

We dropped into the tunnel and ran down it as fast as we could. None of us had a plan beyond ‘raid the place and kill anyone who tries to kill us’, but it’s worked so far, so I felt we would probably be fine. Unless they ran us down with I-bots.

As we neared our destination, it became clear that the surface portion we had raided earlier was just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was A-Tech we were dealing with, after all. They made aeronauts! Who knew what else they were capable of?

And then there was Gen 1. Just how much did these guys know, anyway? I guess there was a reason they’d managed to stay hidden for as long as they did…

We silently emerged from a floor panel in the center of the area. A handful of guards were standing around, lightly armored and only carrying basic weaponry. They had their backs to us, staring at four huge, vaguely translucent orbs.

Larry pointed to the left. I followed his direction and saw a large pile of boxes labeled HIGH-PRESSURE FORCE INCENDIARIES. DO NOT DROP (UNLESS YOU’RE A DRONE).

I nodded, then signaled the forward team.

Wham-bam- just like that, the guards were unconscious.

“Okay, we’ll use these to crack the place open like an egg, then pick Joseph out of the chaos and get the truth out of him,” I decided. Let’s put ‘em around the stress points.”

“How big do you think the blast will be?” Blake wondered.

“What’s in those big orbs?” Bernicia asked.

“Meh, who cares,” I replied. “Hey Roy, you have any ball things that can be detonated remotely?”

“Well, yeah, but… you really think this is a good idea? Like, you won’t regret it later?”

“Duh! That’s why we’re doing it,” I told him, throwing him a look. “You guys are so cautious. Honestly, it worries me.”

“The boxes are in position,” Blake called.

“Good. Let’s move,” I said, and we all jumped back into the hole just as alarms started blaring.

“Shoot! detonate now,” I called. By now I figured we were all far enough away to—

BABOOM! The tunnel violently shook, nearly knocking us down.

“Gah – shoot! Let’s move, guys!” I shielded myself with my wings and dashed back through the corridor as bits of debris began to fall.

Then I noticed that Penny wasn’t with us. Did she fall behind on accident?

We flew out of the tunnel, where the ground was stable. I looked back towards the House just as more things started exploding in it.

“Cool, a chain reaction,” Blake nodded. “Well placed.”

“Any of you guys seen Penny?” I asked.

“She went the other way for… some reason. Probably saw something shiny,” Roy replied.

“Huh? Why would she not stick to the plan?”

“Because it was terrible!” He angrily gestured at me. “Here's the truth: we only went through with this because Penny has a contingency, and even then, it nearly got botched! You guys have no sense of anything beyond brute force, don’t you?”

“Oh, like you’re any better?” I crossed my arms. “Mister ‘wait until it’s safe’. I should’ve figured as much when we beat you and Larry up at A-Tech. Did you guys ever trust us?”

“Look – we’re spies; you guys are fighters,” Larry told us. “It’s only natural that our tactics would differ.”

“Their ‘hit it until it dies’ mentality can hardly be called a tactic,” Roy muttered.

“H-hey,” Bernicia weakly objected. “Ahh, who am I kidding… he’s right.”

“Forget it! We don’t need you to do what we’re doing. We never did,” I shouted.

“Yeah? The idea that maybe we could find important clues didn’t even cross your mind,” Roy retorted.

Another explosion went off as more of the building collapsed.

“Brute force, huh,” Blake murmured.

“For the record, I still believe we can work together,” Larry stated, “but this wreckage has probably alerted every squad in the area to our whereabouts; so we’d best be moving on out of here.”

“And don’t follow us! I’d rather you didn’t get us all captured,” Roy said.

Then they flew off.

“Aw, man,” Bernicia sighed. “I kinda liked Roy.”

“Hrrgh… forget those guys,” I pouted. “I don’t care. We… we can do this ourselves.”

A noise sounded from the rubble. Then a pile of steel moved, revealing a metal-clad arm and a tuft of wavy black hair.

The Guy! He was still alive, the tenacious prick.

“Hey fellas,” he called (he even had the nerve to sound friendly). “Uhh, glad you could join us. Really came in with a bang, eh?”

“Shut up,” I shouted back at him. “Where’s Joseph?”

“He’s fine. What do you guys want?”

“Answers!”

“Huh, is that so? What kind of answers?”

I narrowed my eyes, and Blake flew with me towards the Guy. In a flash, we had him sky-high, our grips the only thing between him and the ground six hundred meters below.

“I’d say this is high enough for you to make a nice pattern on the ground,” I speculated.

“Wha- hey! Let go of–” The Guy quickly revised his statement. “Uhm, I mean, please put me on the ground.”

“Fair warning; I’m not in the best mood right now. Give me answers to everything,” I demanded. “Who are you? What’s your connection to Joseph? What is your boss’s plan for us?”

“I’m not an encyclopedia,” the Guy complained, and I loosened my grip for a second. “Aaah, wait, wait! On second thought, I can maybe answer a few questions.”

“Maybe?” I glared at him.

“Yes, maybe.” He sounded irritated at that. “It’s not like I run the place.”

“Sooo, you can start by telling us what you know first,” Blake supplied, “then you can tell us what you don’t.”

“And I’m not taking no for an answer,” I said.

“Okay, fine! Apparently, some business partners just got approval to field some new droids, and they’ll make the I-bots look like toys, to put it mildly. And they want you guys captured, but for some reason they don’t care about Gen 1 anymore? Maybe it’s to keep the auction prices high. And there are more of you! The Gen 4 aeronauts were in the House of Steel when you blew it up. Their stasis pods are buried in this place’s remains somewhere, so if you could just let me down, I can find them!”

I mulled over the information and noticed a few holes, like what the Gen 1 aeronauts were up to, and how the Guy himself fit into all of this.

He picked up on my thoughts: “I don’t know about Gen 1 at all. We were just told to make sure they didn’t prevent your detainment,” he continued. “I designed the I-bots and oversaw their manufacture, because Atticus insisted it would be more efficient than hiring men. I’m not sure why he thinks so, but we can’t really complain since he’s funding everything. And Joseph is my dad, so we meet up a lot.”

“Joseph… your dad,” I growled. “I should have known. I mean, he told us as much, didn’t he? Blake, you think he’s lying?”

“To be honest, I lost him around ‘auction prices’,” Blake yawned. “So are we dropping him or what?”

I rubbed my forehead with my free hand. “Yeah,” I decided. “We’ll grill Joseph for the rest of the info.”

“You’ve made a big mistake,” the Guy shouted as he fell.

“I doubt it,” I called back, then turned to Blake. “Hmph. What a loser, thinking he can sway me with such… ridiculous claims. There’s no way, right? He and Joseph can’t be related. Joseph was cool! Uhm, I mean, until he wasn’t…”

“Say, Kit,” Blake said after a moment. He was still looking down. “Shouldn’t the Guy have hit terminal velocity by now?”

“Hmm?” I followed his gaze, and was mildly intrigued to find that the Guy was getting closer to us instead of the ground.

A moment later, Blake quickly dodged an uppercut from the Guy’s armored fist. He countered with a powerful kick, but it dinged against the Guy’s armor without cracking a single rib. Then the Guy grabbed his foot, and I saw it – a weak point!

I fell on him from behind, clamping my arms around his exposed head. It was then that I noticed his method of flight: small rockets supported him from his feet and shoulders. It’ll be easy to throw him off balance, I thought.

“I don’t think so,” he grunted, breaking my grip. I quickly recovered while Blake tried to go on the offensive with his spear. Blake’s attacks were all but useless against that armor, though, and as I tried to get a stranglehold on the Guy from the front, his face suddenly covered itself with a protective mask.

This caused me to falter, and I was rewarded with a headbutt to the gut that knocked the wind out of me.

That armor, I thought as I fell, is getting to be a real problem. I want some.

I ended up falling twenty meters before recovering. As I swooped back up with intense feelings of rage, Blake stopped me mid-flight. “Kit! Fall back! He has too much of an advantage right now.”

I noticed the broken stick in his hand. “He wrecked your spear?”

“I looked it up in a bookstore the other day. It’s actually a naginata,” he explained, tossing it aside. “I mean, it was a naginata. I’ll get him for that.”

“Where’d he go?” I noticed that he was no longer in the sky with us.

“He jetted to the wreckage. Probably looking for weapons, or maybe those pods he mentioned. Either way, he’s out of our hair for now.”

“Then let’s regroup with the others and bust this joint,” I decided.

“It’s already been busted,” Blake snickered.

“You know what I mean! Do you see Bernicia and Travis anywhere?”

“Let’s see… oh, there they are.” Blake pointed at a spot near the edge of the wreckage, where I could make out three people. “Is that Gen 1?”

We flew in for a closer look. “Oh. Joseph,” I realized. Bernicia and Travis were standing over him.

“What’s up with him?” Blake asked as we landed.

“He’s gone cuckoo,” Bernicia stated.

Joseph glared at me. His glasses were gone, and his hair lay disheveled over his sallow face (which looked more haggard than usual). “Ah… all my children are here,” he murmured. “Only children. Distorted into these… abominations… what was I thinking? What were any of us thinking?”

“Huh. First set of actual words he’s said since we found him,” Travis noted. “Maybe he’s getting better.”

“No!” Joseph struggled to stand up, but failed. “Better is worse! I wanted to take him on, but I’m only a human. It takes more than that to fight this evil… it will require your power.”

“Oh, so we’re your saviors now?” Bernicia sounded annoyed. “Don’t give us that ‘chosen heroes’ nonsense. We were just a project to you!”

“Just another spoke in this web of lies,” Joseph mumbled. “The truth is in Holding Room 4 of Metacorps. Yes, you’ll find the biotools there. But you’ll have to hurry before they move them…”

“Biotools?! Like the ones Larry mentioned? He called them ‘weird patchwork creatures’, I think,” I said. “What do you know about them? Tell us!”

Joseph looked at me again. “Ah… you have Zina’s hair. And Noren’s eyes, too. If your parents were alive, they would have loved to see you again.”

“Wha-?!” I took a step back.

“Your names are not an accident, you know.” Joseph looked around at all of us. “I knew all of your parents personally. They were influencers, moneymongers, and risk takers, but they were not evil. All of them agreed to donate you to the project if they could at least give you a name.”

“Wh… where are they now?” I asked hesitantly.

“Ah, where indeed,” Joseph sighed. “Imran, Lance, Nikos… bombed to the ground. The assassin found Borohon as well, but his wife, she escaped. Winters and Lee, they went into deep hiding. Maybe they’re dead, maybe not. But the rest of them are gone. My dear wife, bless her, she may be next. As for me… well, the flare sigil makes no exceptions. I suspect I have only moments before it activates.”

I blinked. “Wait. Are you going to die? You’d better not! You’re gonna explain everything to us, and then I might reconsider!”

Joseph intently looked at me. “Atticus is an anomaly, Shurikit. He harnesses the powers of science and sorcery. You–” His voice cut off, and a funky red symbol appeared on his chest.

“Uh… Joseph?”

Then, right before our eyes, he burst into brilliant yellow flames.