Footsteps of heavy steel prelude the coming war; they echo unevenly across the pitch-black alleyways, accompanied only by ragged breaths of their exhausted victim.
And with that, Ivanyl’s war begins again.
“Desperation. Control. Work once for god’s fucking sake!!” came her adolescent voice as it cracked under the weight of her encroaching death. Even now, her little shoulders trembled at every touch of the stray wind as she desperately straddled the malfunctioning radio in her hands.
“Desperation. Fuck!” She didn’t have time for equipment failures - damned whatever reassurances uttered by the logistics corps. She didn’t have the capacity to deal with their incompetence. Not now. Not when it was about to lose them her own precious life. Limping along the cold wet pavement of the alleyways, she was both keenly aware and fearful that every wasted second could spell a death sentence at the hands of her pursuer.
Above the alleyway was a series of rusty pontoons bridging the gap between the rooftops. From the gaps through these makeshift bridges, light weaved in and out of the alleyway like a messy thread, constantly blinding Ivanyl before throwing her back into impermeable darkness. It was disorienting. She wanted nothing more than to collapse and let sleep take her wounds away.
If only she could.
Not too far behind was a raging sea of thermonuclear flames. Its incandescent shockwaves were obliterating everything in a hundred-meter radius - she had seen it with her own unfortunate eyes. An irrational part of her wished she hadn’t, but then again she’d be too dead to strangle her own throat at that point.
“Control! Control! Do you hear me?”
A throat parched from all of her incessant wails and pleas, driven by an irradiated mixture of utter fear and sheer bitterness. Her life could be seconds away from death, yet also seconds away from salvation. If only she could radio for help.
“If not for this….this fucking piece of garbage.”
Ivanyl’s comprehension failed her as much as her equipment. She was one equipment failure away from salvation. Control was one radio away from receiving her pleas; one radio away deploying an entire squadron of Peacemakers to back her up. But as long as malfunction stood bluntly in her way, she knew the only speck of salvation she had was to somehow outrun that thing. The rational part of her dismissed it as insanity. The prospects of a limping, sixteen-year old child on the doorstep to death outrunning what was essentially a living star was not just slim - it was absolute zero. But still, she had to run, run away. Even if it meant dragging her lifeless left leg another mile across the cold concrete.
If only she could.
Slowly but surely, she could feel the ground beneath her feet beginning to tremble. Her eyes widened in horror as the damning realisation dawned on her: Time had run out. That ‘living star’ - Wormwood - had finally found her. All around her was chaos in his approaching presence; the blast of buildings collapsing into one another and the solid concrete quivering in fear. It was as if the whole world was shivering under his wrath - how could one man command such a presence?
And how could she have ever hoped to kill him?
Another wail, “Repeat! I repeat, please! Do y–” promptly cut short by a sudden impact to her back. The center of her spine ruptured in an instant and her whole body was thrown forwards with the force of a speeding bullet. Careening into the air with her was every single piece of concrete, steel, bricks and wiring in a hundred-meter radius.
Ivanyl’s world went dark.
<hr>
‘ - and I heard - as if it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, “Come and see.” And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.’
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Revelation 6:1 - 6:2</li>
</ul>
<hr>
Limp on a pile of concrete rubble, Ivanyl awoke blindly to pouring rain. There was a terrible ringing in her left ear whilst she felt nothing on her right. Without thinking, she reached out with her right hand to touch it, only to realise she felt nothing on her right shoulder either. She tried to move something - anything - but couldn’t. Her entire body felt cold - or rather, numb. After several hairsplitting seconds, she finally tried opening her eyes. Only one of her eyelids obeyed the order, gently prying itself open for whatever faint light to seep in. A stray raindrop stole that chance, landing a perfect hit on her one remaining eye.
“ — ” came the words of exclamation from her mouth, or at least she thought; she couldn’t catch them over the terrible ringing. In fact, she couldn’t tell whether she had even spoken. Whether her throat had actually vibrated to produce her voice; whether her tongue had actually moved to pronounce the correct syllables; whether her lips had actually opened to let the words out.
To Ivanyl, a simple act of speech had suddenly seemed so daunting. She had never felt so helpless - so trapped in the prison that her own body had become, so isolated from the rest of the world.
The thought was downright terrifying. All of a sudden, the fear of being pursued seemed so insignificant compared to the primal fear she was currently experiencing. It should have completely destroyed her; shredded her remaining sanity to pieces and drove her into the clutches of unreturnable madness.
Yet it didn’t. Over the sounds of ringing and rainpour, Ivanyl’s faithful ear picked up something else. Footsteps. Her thoughts stirred at the sudden presence, and the fear that once gripped her very being was now being drowned out. Taking its place was an eclectic mix of hope and despair - mania and sobriety. Had Control heard her at the last second? Had her fellow Peacemakers arrived at the last second to save her? Or had her–
“It’s a child.”
Her remaining ear did not fail her. Over the sound of incessant ringing and pouring rain - she could just barely make out the faintest of words.Stolen story; please report.
“ What — gouged out — all gone.”
“She’s – alive.”
“ – ? She must be a Non-Believer. One of us.”
Some words she caught. Others escaped her grasp - like sand pouring through her fingers; she just didn’t have the strength to keep them closed any longer.
“That blue armband. She’s with the Peacemakers? – ”
“ – the UN sending more of them – a child no less.”
“ – so desperate to overthrow Wormwood?”
The voices slowly grew fainter and fainter, and more and more words started slipping past her.
“What’s — rumbling — ”
“Fuck – Wormwood – “
“Watch – the ground''s collapsing!”
And with that, Ivanyl’s remaining ear finally went silent; the last cord tethering her to the outside world had been severed. Now she really was all alone. Stuck in perpetual silence, trapped in cold darkness.
Left alone in her own hazy world, she didn’t know how much time had passed. Hours? Days? Maybe even whole weeks. Whatever the duration, it was long enough for her conscious to dream. It dreamt about that fateful day five years ago; the day she became a Non-Believer.
Standing in the middle of Times Square New York, she closed her eyes and greeted that harrowing echo inside her own head:
‘Come and see’
And when she outstretched her hands, she was now staring wide-eyed into the starlit sky - relishing in that sight for the first time over and over again. A thousand kilometers above her eyes - at altitudes she couldn’t even begin to comprehend - the atmosphere began to crack like glass. Tectonic fissures rapidly spread above the clouds like an alchemical spiderweb, illuminating her and the earth below in its unholy rapture.
''Then came the First Horseman''
Day Zero - the day that ended the western calendar. Since then, the world around her gradually collapsed in the flames of war, and from the ashes of its ruined corpse, rose Ivanyl’s world - one that was inhabited not by ''humans'' but by ''Believers'' and ''Non-Believers''.
<hr>
A parched gasp declared her re-awakening. It was a dizzying experience - she felt every lost sense flooding back to her at once; a sharp headache came from the tidal wave of sensory stimuli.
To both Ivanyl’s relief and chagrin, she was still alive. Discomfort and disconcertion mired her current condition. Her whole body - now fully whole - was connected to a myriad of glowing wires and pulsing tubes. Biomechanical flesh loosely infused into her skin formed an impromptu bed on which laid her brittle body. Surrounding her on every side was metal - her vision extended a mere fifty centimeters in all directions before running headfirst into the metal casing surrounding her. The walls around her were so close that she could feel her own breaths landing on her skin each time she exhaled. Only the beeping lights and a heart rate monitor illuminated the surroundings for her to see.
Had this been a normal situation, she should have been seized by claustrophobia. Fortunately for Ivanyl, she was not only a war veteran - but one who had spent the past twelve hours experiencing the pinnacle of human terror. It didn’t take long for her to regain her bearings and begin assessing her situation calmly.
From the flesh sticking to her skin, to the casing around her, she could tell she had been placed in some rudimentary healing pod. She was being healed. She was being treated.
And finally, she let the remaining adrenaline in her dissipate. The Peacemakers really had come for her. Had Control finally heard her pleas at the very last second? If so, was she already back in the safety of Arcadia?
She couldn’t know for sure, but all she could think of at that moment was that the nightmare was finally over. Tears spilled onto her cheeks as the memories of being hunted manifested; the cold alleyway - the scent of certain death. But that was all in the past. She was back, she was safe, she was alive.
She let her relief run amok whilst remaining still. For several moments, she did nothing but enjoy breathing. It was surreal - feeling the air enter her windpipe, her lungs expanding and contracting with each breath. She triumphed hearing that small wheeze every time she exhaled; rejoiced every time she felt her breath land back on her cheeks.
She truly was alive, and she was eternally grateful. In a fit of jubilance, she reasoned that the first thing she''d do once she got out of here would be to make backup radios a standard issue among the Peacemakers.
Also fire whoever was in charge of the logistics corps, should Control give her the go-ahead.
After several more seconds of pure bliss, she finally tried to speak. As she willed it, she felt her throat vibrate; her tongue move; her lips open. She could hear her own voice clear and crisp as she finally spoke aloud,
“Relief. Control? Control, are you there?”
Her words were filled with unspoken cheer. A far cry from the desperate wails in the alleyway or the unbearable gag in the rain.
Several seconds passed her by. Yet only silence permeated. There was no callback. No audio to confirm her message had been received by the medics.
“...Control? This is Ivanyl, reporting.”
She realised something was off. As her hands wiggled and her eyes darted, she began noticing the tell-tale features in the pod’s structure - or rather, the features that weren’t there. Where was the hatch lever for emergency escape? Where was the built-in radio to communicate with the medics? Where was the integrated A.I to monitor her condition or give her a rundown? It was shabby, rudimentary, and most certainly outdated.
But that didn’t make any sense. There was no way the UN would place the Peacemakers’ ace-of-aces in anything but the most advanced healing pod for her recovery.
Where were her fellow aces? The Non-Believers among the Peacemakers should all be aware of her condition. The Believers like Mr. Hanson aside, she expected at least Yan or Mr. Buhari to be checking up on her. Why hadn''t anybody opened the pod yet?
Her eyes grew frantic as they scoured every inch of the pod’s interior. She couldn’t spot the logo of the UN anywhere on the metal. Panic began to seep in alongside the creeping epiphany: The Peacemakers hadn’t come for her; Control hadn’t heard her pleas, and she most certainly wasn''t back in the safety of Arcadia.
Dread.
Every quantifiable inch of bliss she had felt in the past five minutes warped three-fold into pure, unadulterated dread. She couldn’t take it. She just couldn’t.
Losing all semblance of reason, she began to thrash violently. The wires and tubes constricting her arms frayed at their seams, giving her just enough room to yank her arms free and tear off the arterial cord injected directly into her brainstem. The severed region began leaking anesthetic and sedatives, but Ivanyl paid them no heed as she tossed them away. Biomechanical flesh and organic gears connecting her to the pod splintered apart as every cell in her body struggled against the living machine.
One by one, her limbs began to come loose. Once her right arm was free, she began to tear wildly at the metal casing sealing her. Her fingernails chipped and shredded against the cold hard surface, but she’d be damned if she stopped now. Once her left arm was free, she sent it straight to work behind the right. Slowly but surely, the thin layer of metal began to chip away against her inhuman strength.
She didn’t know how long it took. All she knew was that at some point, she began to see something. A faint glimmer of light, pruning through the cracks. It shone bright and brilliantly like the small ray of hope in her heart and drove her hands to claw away faster and faster and faster, until finally–
Gasp
Until finally, she was free.