Moonflower- A Lunar Chronicles Fanfiction

Chapter 36

    It was chaos in the market square of New Beijing. People were screaming and crying. They ran in with cloths over their faces and loved ones clutched to their chests, and ran back out with a prayer on their lips. The sick were on the ground, already covered in spots. Though the Rampion crew had arrived not even an hour after the first reports of the disease, it seemed a majority of those with the plague had progressed many more times rapidly than before.
    "Most of the people out here are at stage three," Jacin noted as he lifted a vial of antidote to the lips of a patient in front of him. "It appears that the antidote works. Color has already returned to those I've given the antidote to, and some even seem to be conscious now."
    "That's good!" Chirped Cress from the woman she was helping just across the way from Jacin.
    "But there's so many people here," Kai lamented. His eyes traced the street. It was barely visible beneath the people lying on top of it. He wished there was time to make them all comfortable instead of lying in the street, but this new strain of letumosis seemed to spread like wildfire. They hadn't even had time to make quarantine buildings in an outer warehouse district. Instead of taking everyone outside the city, they were taking patients in the center most accessible point of the city.
    The Rampion crew moved quickly. Kai was supposed to be keeping press at bay, but it seemed not even the journalists had dared to venture into the disease-ridden market square. Instead he was walking boxes of antidote from the Rampion where Thorne was unloading to the square where Rikan, Cress, and Jacin were distributing it. Every time he returned from the Rampion a couple blocks away he had fewer and fewer places to set his feet. This was not enough. They needed more help. And he couldn't even think about those Jacin had had moved to the far end of the street. Those that were beyond saving. Kai's people he had failed.
    Every so often the emperor would get a comm from another world leader. The Governor-General of Australia was happy to share that it seemed their only cases had been in Sydney and had been treated. They were now sending all their antidotes across the globe, but it would take a while. And people were dying within hours of contracting the plague.
    The President of the American Republic reported that seven of her major cities had contracted the plague, but containment was going well. She promised the Republic's large army was distributing antidotes as quickly as they could. The other leaders were reporting similar mild success. At least they had been prepared for it.
    Kai hoped they were telling the truth. He hoped no other city was experiencing the tragic sight before his eyes. With trembling hands he set another box down in front of Jacin. No. No more negative thoughts. He would be positive. They would have enough. They would save these people.
    It had to be enough.
——-
    "Eat this hairball!" Iko called. Thwap. A tranquilizer dart shot out of her gun and straight into the neck of the nearest wolf soldier. Then she spotted a flicker of a red cloak and grinned.
    Creeping through the trees around sleeping soldiers, Iko kept her eyes fixed on the flicker. Soon the entire figure came into her vision. An angry thaumaturge was waving his arms wildly, directing his pack as best he could, but he was losing soldiers quickly. Iko, Kinney, Scarlet, and Wolf were experienced wolf soldier battlers, and despite being massively outnumbered they were gaining ground.
    Not that there was much to be gained. After all, what they were really doing was keeping up the distraction so Cinder and Cynthia could destroy the Lunar gift. Still, it didn't hurt that a couple dozen rogue soldiers were now taking a nice long nap on the ground.
    Keeping her arm steady, Iko took her dart gun in both hands. Though she didn't need it, she took a breath in, then out. Then she pulled the trigger
Thwap. The dart found its mark again, and the thaumaturges's billowing sleeves bunched together as he fell to the ground. Around him several wolf soldiers looked around, confused.
    "Go home." Scarlet commanded the soldiers now without a master. Her voice rang out strong, and the wolf hybrids lowered their heads in defeat and went on their way.
    Iko grinned. This wasn't as bad as she thought. They could do this.
    "Iko on your left!" Yelled Kinnney, but she didn't have time to turn. A sharp claw tore through her left side sinking through where her spinal cord would be if she'd had one. Instead it sliced through the wiring of her left side, rendering it useless. The android collapsed, her blue braids falling over her eyes and blinding her. The growls of the wolf still above her told her that it didn't matter if she could hear. It would slice her other side too.
    "Wait Briggs," called a horrible voice. A voice of pure evil. A voice of a thaumaturge that Iko wished so terribly she could get up and shoot in the head this very moment. "I have something to say to the pathetic android who pretends to live."
    "Don't touch her," came Kinney's voice. It was even but stern. Iko imagined him holding a gun pointed at her head.
    "You're lucky you're wearing a Linh device today Officer Kinney, otherwise I'd have made this a whole lot more interesting..." Iko could practically see the maniacal smile on Nyx's face. How her eyes would glow. She tested her right arm lightly. It would be enough to roll herself over if she needed it.
    "Now as for you, pathetic piece of metal, I hope you know just how much trouble you've caused me. You've taken out too many of my thaumaturges. I've come to return the favor."
    A single braid shifted in her hair and a slit of Iko's vision was returned. She could see nothing but dirt out of it. Dirt, and something shining just out of her arm's reach.
Ah ha.
    "If you so much as have anyone lay a hand on her, I'll shoot," Kinney said. This time though, his voice wavered.
    Nyx caught on. She laughed a crippling, hysterical, ugly cackle. "Oh dear..." she huffed between laughs. "Do we... have a man... in love... with an android..."
Come on Kinney, Iko thought. Keep her distracted for just a couple more seconds...
    "That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard! This is going to be so fun! I'll tell this story to all my thaumaturges. What a laugh we'll all have over your sad, strange attraction to a computer code."
    In one swift movement Iko pushed herself forward with her operational knee, reached out and snatched the gun from the ground beside the unconscious wolf soldier, twisted onto her back and fired.
Bang
    "Too bad you'll never get the chance. I was looking forward to being a legend among the thaumaturges." Though her limbs were in a messy tangle, she had plenty of strength to see the thaumaturge as she fell to the ground, clutching her chest where a blossom of red was forming.
    Kinney lowered his gun. She looked at him. His eyes softened.