Chapter 24: Bonus Chapter – Ryker – Part One

Ryker - Part One

A long time ago, a world or twelve away...

Obviously, the world decided to end on Ryker’s only day off.

It started strangely. Ryker was walking from the groceries, a paper bag tucked against his chest, one hand underneath so that the contents wouldn’t rip out of the bottom. He had one day off a week, which meant he had to cram as many chores as he could in as few hours as possible. Then he could get back home and stare at a screen while pretending that he didn’t have another six days of work coming up.

It was, in his professional opinion, a terribly unhealthy way of living. He had bills to pay, though.

He cut through one of the green zones that dotted the city. They were a decent idea, on paper. He had read the articles that encouraged their creation, even. The idea was to have spaces with trees and bushes and grass, where people could enjoy a touch of nature and greenery. They also served to cut apart the stark grey-on-grey of the rest of the city, especially the defensive wall which cast its long shadow across the housing districts.

In reality, the green zones added to everyone’s commute. Without roads crossing through the areas, buses had to go the long way around, and they spaced out the subway exits more than usual.

With a sigh, Ryker hitched his bag up and continued on his way towards his housing block.

He paused when someone screamed up ahead of him.

An old man stumbled to the ground next to a pond. There was an elderly woman next to him who fell to her knees and moved her hands over the man, clearly uncertain of what to do and panicking. Ryker automatically assumed a few things. It was, he knew, human nature to automatically fit any scenario into a few dozen boxes.

First, the man was in distress. Heart issues? A seizure? He was screaming so he wasn’t choking.

Second, the woman was obviously a wife or significant other. She didn’t freeze the way other onlookers did. Everyone else—though there weren’t too many people in the park at the moment—was caught staring.

Third, as a medical expert of some sort, it was his job to call for help right away. But he had a bagful of groceries and no place to put it down.

Ryker snapped back to attention and knelt, placing his bags down even as he tapped his watch’s screen and started to call an emergency line.

Then the old man’s scream went weird.

It turned from something pain-filled to anand almost synthetic wail. It sounded fake. There was a warble and tinge to the sound that no human could make, not without electronic assistance.

“No!” the old woman shouted.

Her husband exploded.

His arms swung around in a wide circle, batting the woman aside even as his jacket was ripped apart from within by muscles that had torn themselves off of their ligaments. The man’s back arched and he wailed to the heavens even as spines ripped through the fabric of his coat and his leg bones cracked.

He—it—was still halfway through its transformation when it turned its head towards the woman and shrieked.

The air warped. Ryker had seen it before, once. He’d gone to a big music festival and someone had started playing dubstep at an obscene volume right after it started to drizzle. The thumps of the bass could be seen in the air.

The same thing happened right ahead of him. The air burst.

The old lady’s screams were cut short as her dress, her coat, and her skin were peeled off. A large V of grass was blasted away.

She fell back, flayed arms writhing.

Ryker stumbled back. He had frozen, he realized. Others were running already. One man was running towards the thing that had been a person a moment ago.

It wasn’t human anymore.

Strangely enough, the information just filed itself into his mind, as if he was reading an article off of a wiki. Drekavac. Named after a slavic myth. It could manipulate sound into a powerful blast that could disorientate and sicken. At close ranges it could be lethal.

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Essentially, it was a Kaiju.

That could only mean one thing.

The siren started to roar across the city and the ground rumbled. The world, or at least this one corner of it, was going to end.

The Kaiju wasn’t the only thing to scream. Soon the entire city accompanied it. The sirens blared overtop each other. People scrambled away in all directions. Car and store alarms went off. Soon, the noise was so loud that windows shook in their panes and Ryker was certain that his hearing would be irreparably damaged from the event.

He’d heard that kind of story before, actually. Though in the after-action relief, there would be people with healing powers around.

He just needed to survive until then.

Ryker took one last look at the Drekavac Kaiju and ran. Somehow, twenty metres into his sprint in the general direction of home he realized that he had picked his grocery bags back up. He didn’t even know why.

He ran to the edge of the green zone, then stopped, running shoes scraping on the edge of the sidewalk. Two cars had crashed on the street ahead of him. Obviously the drivers had taken manual control of the cars and immediately ploughed into each other.

People were running, and chasing them were Kaiju, four-legged beasts with too many mouths who duplicated themselves with every-other-step until there was a stampede of ungainly creatures rushing down a main road. An explosion sent dozens of those flying back, and Ryker caught a glimpse of someone in a costume blasting Kaiju away until one of them caught the person from behind and they were buried in scrambling claws.

Another Kaiju stood on the end of the street, likely right where the person who’d turned into it had been. It glowed from within, then in a blink it was forty metres away and the ground it had crossed steamed. The few people in its path were blown apart.

Ryker spun around and ran back.

Safety, his mind screamed. He needed to get to safety. There were shelters.

He was supposed to take a Frak-stop too. He had some. At home. That wasn’t convenient at the moment, but they’d have some at the shelter. In fact, they’d force him to take one whatever the case.

His breathing was coming in sharp, and he winced as he felt a stitch forming in his side. Where was the nearest shelter?

There was one on the same block as his home. Was there one closer? Would he make it there before the buildings armoured up? No, that didn’t matter, they wouldn’t just close access to the shelters. There would be a hero defending them, likely a Rank B, or Rank C at worst for each one.

Ryker’s breath hitched as he heard gunshots deeper in the city, then the loud zap-hiss of someone using a laser-power.

Things were getting intense.

And then, some twenty feet ahead of Ryker, the world ripped.

He didn’t know how else to describe it. Space just tore open. A perfect ninety-degree angle, each side pushing upwards. Each edge was taller than the housing block where he lived.

From the rip came a long crystalline structure. He could almost see through it, but not quite. Somehow, the sky was still blue above, still sunny and bright despite everything, and because of that brilliance he could see the millions of complex inscriptions, each one geometrically perfect, within the crystal that ploughed through reality like a bullet through toast.

One of his first clients, back when he’d been new, was a man from Miami. He had been close when Israfil had ripped its way into the world then laid waste to the city and most of its suburbs. The client had been the only member of his family to survive. The man had post-traumatic stress disorder from seeing anything round and bulbous, and he had panic attacks when he heard certain sounds.

Ryker realized that he had never truly sympathised with the man until this very moment, as he craned his neck way, way back and stared at the form of an angel of destruction ripping its way into his home.

His heart stopped as a block of crystal the size of a bus brushed past him, so close he could reach out and touch it. He even saw his own face reflected in it before the crystal stopped pouring out of a silent portal rent into reality.

Tamiel the Perfect, the Crystal Sword, the City-ender, was here. Undeniable proof that if there was a higher power, it hated humanity.

***

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