Out of the Black - Lee Doty [73]
Dek doesn't stop to call Issak, who has stepped out of the room for a few moments. He doesn't stop to get a car, doesn't think to button up his shirt or grab his coat. He hops off the examination table, grabs his sword and goes straight out the seventh floor window. He lands in a shower of broken glass on the elevated train track that straddles the street below. Fifteen seconds.
He drops to the ground and sprints from street to street, sometimes from car to car, leaving a wake of agitated late night partygoers, irate cabbies, and damaged property. At five minutes and about eight kilometers, the sword comes out, it's ringing lost in the rush of the air he speeds through. Despair fills his eyes long before he arrives at the bridge, long before his tears are proved necessary.
Like always, he feels the Savant's work before he sees him. His heart fills with hope as he approaches the destruction. Of course they survived.
No. Not Ivo. He sees the Savant near the bridge, perhaps one third of the way into a cleanup operation. Though he's still two hundred meters out, Dek can tell by the stiffening of her stance that she has sensed his approach. There is work to be done, so his despair moves into the shadows as his work smile comes out to play.
He feels the Savant's Cast. It seems to coalesce around him, swooping in to inflict whatever havoc she's cooked up. His sword flashes through two arcs too quickly for even the Savant to see. The Cast explodes into background energy as Dek explodes through its remnants and into sword range. He needs answers, but he knows what's happened here on a visceral level. It is still efficiency that drives his movements, but it is rage that burns through him, threatening to leave him ashes. The Savant falls quickly and in several places; seconds later, the three grunts guarding the Savant share her fate.
Then, for a moment he is absolutely still, not breathing except to sample the air. He listens to the thousand small sounds of the night. He had felt this Savant like the tingle-chill of static electricity, but now he feels nothing and he knows. He knows now he is alone in every sense of the word.
Ivo's car is stopped against the wall beneath a highway. Its roof is missing, it is surrounded by destruction like only Savants can cause. Ivo lived through the initial assault. Perhaps they got away. But Dek knows. He doesn't know how or why... maybe the world just seems smaller now.
He scans the area, but sees no movement. He moves toward the car.
Dek creeps forward, needing but not wanting to see. As he nears the car, Roy's shoulder appears first. Even the irrational hope fades. Nothing comes to replace it- not grief, not rage... only emptiness.
"Like tears in rain." He hears himself say, placing his hand on his brother's. The hand is still knotted around the steering wheel. Dek slides his hand back along his brother's arm, coming to rest on his elbow, squeezing gently. He tries to say something, maybe 'goodbye', but only the first half of a whimper escapes his lips.
Emotion is still inaccessible for him, but a scream is tearing through his mind, so loud he can't hear it. Deaf, dumb, and feeling nothing, he moves to the back seat. He can't accept what he findt D. He stumbles around the car to the passenger side, feeling weak, dreaming. In his deafened mind, there is only the hollow sound of despair- wind through an empty mountain, reverberant with feeling.
Into his numbness, a single, small sound intrudes- the rush of the air around a falling object directly above him. In his grief, he waits perhaps fifteen milliseconds longer than he would normally, but he's got plenty of time.
Without looking up, his sword clashes three times with the blade of the man dropping from the bridge above. From the speed, accuracy, and the way the attacking blade was redirected multiple times during each strike, Dek knows he faces another Torpedo.
Behind him, the Torpedo