Memento Mori

2.8 - RIGHTED WRONGS

KREY'S HEAD NEVER TURNS from the shattered window. His Malice rifle lies balanced in his arms; elbow jutting forward under the barrel like a brace. Textbook hunting stance. The six-foot maneater gleams a hungry gunmetal grey beneath thick wrappings of dark urban camouflage. Firelight and twisted shadows squirm across his soot-covered jacket, staining him in the colors of the burning city below. I slip off my shades as I approach. He doesn't even acknowledge my footsteps.

"They got him," is the only thing he mutters.

I know. I knew already, but hearing it from Krey steals all the momentum I brought with me. I see his pain in a glance. The hollow way he sits, the way his teeth clench, the thin clear trails down the grime covering his face; a reflection of myself. Two children of the undercity, best friends, pack animals, shattered the same way by the same people on the same night.

"They got him." Krey quietly shakes his head, disbelieving his own words even as he repeats them. "They got him, Emmy."

My voice is low, roughened by kinned grief. "How?"

"Dynasty hit us in the middle of the day. We never saw them coming." I can almost hear the gunshots; just pops of plastic burning far away. "They killed him first. Dax, they... they just cut him down. Like butchers. No waiting, no warning. They murdered him."

"Did any of the others...?"

His dreadhawk shifts as he shakes his head. Slowly, the Malice's stock rises to his cheek, eye lining with the telescopic sight. "Their enforcers caught most of us. I shot my way out. Got the survivors together, sent them to get the civilians away from the fires. Then I stayed to punch back." In the window's shattered reflection, I watch his dark eyes harden as they narrow. The color like molten wood mixed with flecks of tar and amber. Blood soaked into his fingerless gloves, staining dark skin to the elbow pads. Eleven fresh chalk marks score the Malice's long barrel. "It wasn't enough."

I don't even know what to say. My fingers curl and uncurl around my gun as I rock back and forth on my heels, watching my oldest friend nurse his grief the only way a child of the Vents knows how: by burying it as far down as possible. You can't let your weaknesses show. So you might as well not let it exist at all. Because if you nurse it in secret, if you keep remembering the past when no one else is looking, some day, it'll all come out.

You have to be hard. But whenever I think of forcing Sarah out of my mind, I can't help how wrong it feels.

"Krey, we have to get out of here," I say, shaking my head. "The air shaft is still good to use. I cut a deal with Nero, got us a safehouse for a few nights. We can lie low there until the Eight-"

"-I stayed for a reason, Emmy."

"You've done what you can," I say. "It's time to go."

"I'm not leaving till I give every last one of those bastards what they deserve."

The Malice's barrel drifts fractionally to the left. Outside the window, six stories down, my eyes finally register a fire different from the one consuming the buildings. Pure white, a rippling aura of life energy- ki, the mystical aura of the soul- wreathes a silhouetted man as he skips over the lower rooftops, channeling the ki to fly in short spurts. He slides into cover behind a rusty climate control unit, disappearing from sight. Krey reaches up, barely twists a small knob on the side of the scope.

I look away the frame before his finger twitches. It's over in an instant. The air itself bends from the recoil force of his shot. Deafening blast of light and sound, ears ringing, report echoing. Smoke drifting out the Malice's meteor-hot barrel. Far below, the climate control unit wiped out of existence, a gaping hole crumbling in the rooftop behind it. Slick crimson splash zone six feet wide.