Chapter 116: Cleaning House

Even going all out it took James three hours to clean all of Manhattan. From Battery Park at the very southern tip all the way up north of Central Park where it bled into Harlem and the Bronx, sweeping through the Upper East side and then down the West, burning his way through Midtown and dropping bombs through NoLiTa, Tribeca, the Meatpacking District, all of it.

People shoving, screaming, fleeing, falling, dying.

Nemeses of every stripe going to town. They weren’t in a rush, clearly enjoying bringing torment to their victims whose numbers were dwindling. Here and there exhausted Blue Light operators fought on, while choppers and Warthogs fought aerial battles against Nem7’s and Nem8’s.

The rain washed the gore into the storm drains. Countless corpses stared up at the clouds, water puddling in their ocular cavities, filling their open mouths, washing their wounds clean.

Fury mounted within James, inchoate, virulent, and directed at every single demon that had spawned here to revel in humanity’s end.

He needed a different approach.

His Spiritual Exaltation was ranked at 75. He still didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but it felt like a means to exert greater control with more finesse over his divine pool. He activated Seraphic Web and dropped the labyrinthine maze of glowing Diamond Aura over the block below - then willed the Web to extended out, a block on either side, then two, then three.

Seven blocks wide.

He filled every street, every alley, every room, every hallway with slender filaments of Diamond.

By reducing the potency of each strand, by making them as thin as a hair, he was able to reduce the drain on his divine pool.

Mental Dominion allowed him to remain utterly focused as he turned north and began flying toward the Bronx.

And every block he flew he dropped more Seraphic Webs while maintaining the mass he’d already lain behind.

Seven blocks became fourteen, became twenty-one. His Ruby regeneration strained to match the drain, but when he raised the number of blocks suffused with Diamond to twenty-eight the pool began to diminish.

But not so quickly that he couldn’t keep it up.

North he flew, over endless blocks, filling them with webbing, and behind him he could sense demons slice themselves apart on the inimical aura.

Forty-nine blocks. His mind was thrumming like a guitar string, his whole body tensed as he kept entirety of the webbing in place.

He was able to maintain the entirety of the Seraphic Web right up till he hit seventy blocks, and then with a cry he collapsed down onto the Wing, the glittering webs evaporating.

Don’t hold them all in place; allow the rearmost blocks to evanesce even as you fill the newer ones beneath you.

James blinked, absorbed Jelly’s advice, and tried again. Seven blocks below, then fourteen, twenty-one. When he hit twenty-eight he allowed the first seven to dissipate, the webbing having filled them for thirty seconds, enough to guillotine whatever moved through them, and activated the latest seven.

Flying quickly but steadily, he dragged a vast mass of burning webbing behind him like a cloak. Thirty or so blocks of Seraphic Web that shredded and slashed everything they passed over.

The Wing was more a concept than an actuality by the time he was done, a schematic of Divine Diamond and parts, held by his will and divine pool, suffering and shaking apart as he leaned out wide, one hand gripping a handlebar, the other lashing demons with an Aura Whip fifty yards long.

Occasionally he’d rise, fight for altitude, clear the rooftops, the skyscrapers, and cast a weather eye upon the city. Nem8’s couldn’t help but mass into singular exemplars, vast and ponderous, wings beating as they rose again and again to challenge him, unable to believe that he was categorically on a different level then they were.

Each time a Nem8 rose to fight, massive and fell, James turned and hurled himself at it like a knight in tourney, the combats lasting moments, casting more ash over the city and resulting in another dozen, another score, another couple of hundred Nem8’s being destroyed.

The cloud cover lowered over the city, pressed down, oppressive, and toward the early afternoon the heavens opened up to lash the city with rain. James flew on, slaughtering, saving people, healing those he could find, until at long last he came to a stop in Times Square, the huge displays dark, the great space beneath him littered with bodies and piles of ash.

We’re done? Jelly sounded dazed. I think we’re done?

Manhattan is, at any rate. James blinked. He felt stoned, numb, the sheer amount of divine power he’d channeled through the last few hours having scoured him like steel wool. Yet his Stamina, his Corporal Perfection rating of 125, and his Indomitable Resilience meant he was as hale and rested as if he’d just returned from a week in Bali. But we’re just getting started.

He grabbed his satphone. “Everybody, check-in. How we looking?”

“Fucking righteous,” said Denzel. “We’re in Staten now. You should see Serenity go.”

“Queens is big,” said Olaf. “We work hard but always more to kill.”

“Yo dude, I done died and gone to heaven,” said Yadriel, exultant. “Bronx is near about done.”

“James, I been thinking.” Serenity. “We’ve done good work here in New York. But what about the rest of the country?”

“The rest?” A pang of panic caused James’s heart to stutter. “You think…?”

“Yes.” Her voice was firm. “But we do it different. Been talking with Denzel. We go to Philly next and each of us leads a new nine-man team. They just follow behind us and reap the experience. Once we got ‘em leveled up high enough, we leave them and jump to DC. Rinse and repeat. We don’t need to kill each demon ourselves, just level operators and soldiers to the point where they can take over.”

“That’s fucking brilliant.” James wiped rain from his face. His fury and horror had been so pure that he'd failed to think beyond immediate retribution. “Let’s meet back over Central Park. I’ll teleport us.”

“Sounds good. I’ll tell the others. You get Star Boy to start setting up our connects.”

“On it. Good thinking Serenity.”

James felt the urge to castigate himself for the wasted hours. But Arete 800 allowed the frustration to slide away. He’d been doing his best. He couldn’t come up with every plan. That’s why he had a team.

“Star Boy.”

“Dude.” Star Boy’s voice was a crackle over the falling rain. “We’ve been watching what you guys are doing. It’s… unreal.”

“But still not enough. We’ve got a limited number of hours till the Pits open beneath each symbol. Serenity’s come up with a new plan. We’re teleporting to Philly. We want you to arrange for fifty-four operators to be ready to form new nine-man teams with us. We’re going to level them up and then move on.”

“Oh right! Fucking A, that’s brilliant. If anybody's left. I'll find someone. Blue Light is holding up there I think. OK. And - uh - teleport? That’s a thing now? Nevermind. You know where to go?”

“I’m going to teleport to the same place the Chinook landed the last time. Get the operators there with Wings or choppers so they can keep up. They’ve got ten minutes.”

“Ten? Fuck. On it. Star Boy out!”

James turned the Wing back to the east. It was eerie to fly over so much dead cityscape. Here and there a light glowed in a window or a car drove with its headlights slashing the early dusk, but for the most part Jersey looked like a graveyard.

They flew fast, James dragging a small Seraphic Web behind him as he went, allowing his divine pool to restore from nearly empty. He veered north toward Central Park. Thumbed on his satphone again and told everyone to meet him at the south-east corner.

The other members of Crimson Hydra slowly gathered. The four that had headed up Long Island took the longest to return, but when they did the seven of them formed a tight group thirty yards up.

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Everyone was soaked, but nobody looked deterred.

“Anything I need to know?” called James over the storm.

“Just that it feels good to be a god,” shouted Yadriel.

“Demigod at best, fool,” laughed Denzel, but his merriment was bitter and dark.

“Feel very strange not having Kimmie and Kerim,” said Olaf. “I miss them.”

Nods all round.

“So we’re clear on the plan?” James looked around. “We form new crews in Philly and level up our teams till they can handle the situation themselves. We’ll have to keep tabs on how quickly they power up, because I want to hit all the cities I visited with Bjørn before the Pits open. Jacksonville, Cleveland, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Denver, and San Diego.”

“Why those six?” asked Jason.

“I can only teleport to places I’ve been. Those are the ones I hit up in the past. I met with Blue Light operators there, remember names. We’ll get them up and running first and see where we’re at when we’re done.”

More nods.

“You think we can do this?” asked Denzel. “All of this? The Pits are opening worldwide.”

“One thing at a time,” said James. “We’ve got real power now. When the Pits open we’ll see what we’re dealing with and go from there.”

“Let’s get it done,” said Serenity firmly.

“Then let’s get going.” James burned a point of Aeviternum and summoned his Teleportation Circle. White fire blazed out, encircled them, symbols of mystic import streamed toward the sky, and then everything flashed and they were transported 100 miles south-west to the heart of Philly.

They appeared, Wings and all, in the center of the football field in which the Chinook had landed. The lights were on, flooding the field, and hummers and choppers were everywhere. Soldiers had clearly set up a desperate base here, turning the small stadium into a center of operations, with tents and cargo containers turning the field into a hive of activity.

Their arrival was presaged by white flames, and when they appeared, 30 yards up, all heads turned in their direction. For a second James was worried the locals would open fire, but instead a contingent stepped forward, their leader waving his arms to signal them down.

James and the others lowered their Wings, landed, and James got off his craft. It felt weird to not be at war, to not be detonating demons every second, but he put that sensation aside and approached the colonel who hurried up to him.

“Sergeant Major,” said the officer. “We heard your request from Colonel Hackworth. We’re gathering the men and women now. They’ve been in the field for almost twenty-hours straight. It’s hard to bring them back. It's... it's hell out there. I don't even know exactly how many soldiers we got left.”

“We don’t have time,” said James, not bothering with the salute. “We’ll go to them. Where they at?”

The colonel frowned, nodded, gestured, and an aide ran up with a tablet. “We’re targeting the active hives. We’ve got teams here, here, and here. Those are the three we’re trying to burn out. We bombed them this morning, and while that proved effective, it didn’t last long. New demons flooded in and revived the hive. We’ve been trying to establish a cordon so that once bombed the hive stays dead, but…”

“All right.” James memorized the three hives in question. Finding them would be easy - symbols would be floating in the air five hundred feet up. “Olaf, Miriam, Yadriel, you go to this one and start your teams. Jason, Denzel, you go to this one here. Serenity, you and I will take the last one. Colonel, your people got Wings?”

“Some. The demons have been targeting them for destruction and we never got our production lines up to snuff like you all did in New York.”

“Then we’ll need choppers to bring the men behind us so they can level. You got birds big enough for teams of eight plus crew?”

“That we do. I’ll work on getting them to those three sites so they can load up.”

“Great.” James clapped the colonel on the shoulder, eliciting an outraged stare from the aide. “Then we’re heading out.”

The burning symbols made it easy to find the hives. James and Serenity flew straight through the night, doing their level best to ignore the carnage beneath them, and saw two helicopters closing in on the site at the same time. One was an Apache, the other a smaller black machine James didn’t recognize.

The hive was aflame but the buildings around it looked like something out of a WWII documentary, facades crumbled and collapsed. Soldiers had erected cordons and emplacements around the hive, but were beleaguered on all sides by demons who were trying to get to the hive. The streets were alive with Smite-enhanced fire, Heavenly Assaults, and regular machine gun chatter.

James pointed right and veered away to the left. Serenity pulled away, and together they dipped down and encircled the hive. James dropped Heavenly Assaults as he went, his sixty or seventy yards wide compared to the slender attacks from the operators below. He wiped out the demons in a three-block radius around the hive, and then took a deep breath and dropped ten Heavenly Assaults, each overlaid atop the other, right into the center of the burning dome.

A Nem8 that was only some ten yards tall arose from the center, but James was ready. He flew right at it and extended a beam of Diamond Aura which he slashed across its neck, decapitating it while dropping another mass of Heavenly Assaults.

The hive guttered, the dome swayed, then imploded.

James allowed the Wing to drift into a slide, then rounded and came back to the main soldier outpost.

Everyone was just gaping as he lowered to the ground. Men and women had lowered their weapons and stood up from behind their bunkers and cover. Incredulous, they stared, but when James swung his leg over the Wing and stood, they broke out into cheers.

It was a sound James had never heard before.

The sound of hope coming roaring back into a dark and guttered out place where men and women had accepted defeat and death.

Tears streamed down filthy cheeks, people whistled, roared, and then everyone pressed forward, reaching out, trying to touch him. Serenity lowered down beside him, having done a wider sweep.

James resisted the urge to get right back to work. The hope and euphoria in the faces around him was not only touching but spoke to strength returning to these fighters. So he shook hands, clapped shoulders, and after a minute pushed his way to a truck and leaped the fifteen feet to its top. Turned and raised his hands.

The crowd of Blue Light operators and soldiers quietened down.

“I’m going to keep this short.” Serenity had pulled out her phone and was recording him, as were a dozen others. “We’re here to level up a bunch of you so you can kill whatever you find. The officers here should have received orders to assign eight fighters to both Serenity and I. We’re going to do a sweep over the city, get you guys up to level 100 or so, then move on to the next town. If you’re to be part of our team, make your way to the choppers over there. And if you’re not?”

James scanned the upturned faces. “Then hang in there. Humanity’s got a lot more fight left in us. The demons vastly underestimated what we’re capable of, and now we’re going to make them pay.”

James crouched and leaped. He soared some fifty feet up, right over the crowd, and landed beside the Apache.

An officer a colonel or lieutenant colonel - gaped at him.

“You got your men ready?” asked James.

The man blinked, rubbed at his face, then nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Good.” James grinned. “Then let’s get to work.”

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