Orion's vintage repulsor-drive cruiser was a masterpiece of old-world tech. Its sleek, obsidian chassis hummed with an almost silent, terrifying power. It was a vehicle built for kings, which only made its two occupants look even more profoundly out of place.
Darian kept his hands rigidly locked on the steering yoke, navigating the spiraling transit arteries of New Aether. Beside him, Lyra sat curled in the passenger seat, staring out the window with vacant eyes.
Outside, the city was a suffocating canyon of black glass and aggressive neon. The perpetual night pressed down on them, illuminated only by towering holographic advertisements. A woman with flawless chrome arms smiled down at the congested traffic lanes, promising Perfection Through Progress.
"You know," Lyra murmured, magenta neon flashing across her pale face. "You'd think if my great-grandfather went through the trouble of engineering a planetary gravity well, he would have remembered to forge an artificial sun."
Darian kept his eyes on the taillights ahead. His chest felt incredibly tight, but he forced a faint smirk. "Why build a sun when you can just charge people for neon? Your great-grandfather was a businessman, not a romantic."
"Right. Better to leave everyone in the dark. Cheaper on the electric bill."
Traffic ground to a sudden halt at the mid-strata checkpoint. Sirens wailed, red and blue strobes reflecting off the wet asphalt.
Darian's pulse spiked. He banked the cruiser left, trying to find a gap, but the lanes were totally gridlocked.
Up ahead, the polished corporate veneer was fracturing. The street was clogged with bodies, the air thick with burning synthetic rubber. A riot line of heavily armored Ares security forces stood shoulder-to-shoulder against a surging crowd.
Holographic placards hovered above the furious crowd: ARES STEALS THE BODY, SPERO BLINDS THE MIND.
"KEEP YOUR SOUL! KEEP YOUR SKIN!"
The chant rattled the reinforced windows.
In the shadows of an adjacent alley, Darian spotted a gaunt, shivering figure slumped against a wall. The man was convulsing, eyes rolled back white as he chased a high from a neural-stim plugged into a frayed, weeping cranial jack.
Lyra followed his gaze, clamping a hand over her mouth and turning away violently.
Darian slammed the accelerator, violently banking the vintage cruiser over a concrete divider and rocketing up an unlit maintenance ramp to escape the gridlock.
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere the cameras don't look."
The cruiser ascended until the aggressive neon faded below them, replaced by the howling wind and low-hanging clouds of an abandoned summit sector. Darian navigated a maze of collapsed aerial scaffolding before killing the engine.
The cruiser settled onto a cracked ferro-glass plaza with a heavy groan.
Darian popped the door, the freezing high-altitude air biting his face. He met Lyra as she stepped out, her boots crunching on shattered glass.
Before them lay a sprawling, skeletal ruin swallowed by the drifting mist of the upper atmosphere.
It was an old rooftop amusement park. The rusted wheel of a Ferris ride loomed in the dark like a mechanical ribcage against the skyline. In the center of the plaza, a massive carousel sat frozen, its fiberglass horses cracked and peeling.
Lyra walked past Darian, stepping up to the wooden platform of the carousel. She stared blankly into the dead eyes of a pale fiberglass horse.
Darian watched her, his chest aching. He walked over to a rusted power junction box. He popped the panel, bypassed the corroded switches, and sparked a pair of heavy cables together.
With a deep groan, a localized backup generator kicked in.
A string of incandescent bulbs flickered to life, casting a warm amber glow over the peeling horses.
Lyra stared at the illuminated horse. Its chipped, painted smile looked deranged in the yellow light.
A sound slipped out of her. A short puff of air.
Then she giggled.
It was jagged and unhinged. She covered her mouth, but the giggles forced their way out, bouncing off the rusted ruins.
"Look at it," Lyra wheezed, pointing at the horse. "Look at its face. My home is ash, my father is dead, and I'm seeking asylum in a clown graveyard."
Darian froze, cables slipping from his hands. "Lyra—"
"It's so stupid!" She leaned against the pole of the horse, knuckles white. "It's all overwhelmingly stupid!"
The laughter suddenly hitched, snapping into a ragged sob. Lyra's knees buckled. She collapsed onto the dusty platform, burying her face in her hands as she wept with the total abandonment of a child who had lost everything.
Darian stood paralyzed. The hero persona was gone. He had no cameras, and no idea what to do.
A crushing wave of uselessness crashed over him.
"Dammit," Darian breathed. He turned, saw a rusted token machine, and kicked it.
The glass shattered. He kicked it again. He swung his fist, punching the heavy metal, hitting it until his breathing was as jagged as Lyra's.
He leaned against the dented machine. "I don't know how to fix this," he whispered. "I don't know what to do."
A sharp scrape of metal echoed from the shadows.
Darian snapped his head up.
Three figures melted out of the mist. High-strata scavengers wrapped in wind-battered coats, faces obscured by thermal masks. One held a rusted pipe wrench; another spun a serrated combat knife.
"Well, well," the lead scaver rasped. He nodded toward the cruiser. "Nice ride. Shame you parked it in our yard. Keys and credits. Now."
Lyra's sobbing hitched. She looked up, pale and tear-streaked.
Darian stepped between Lyra and the scavengers. His heart hammered in a wild, cornered panic. He reached for his hip. Empty. He was just a boy in a stolen coat.
"Just back off. We don't have anything."
The scaver with the knife laughed. "Rich kid thinks he gets a vote."
The leader lunged, swinging the pipe wrench in a brutal arc at Darian's skull.
Darian ducked, but slipped on the wet glass. The wrench caught his ribs with a sickening crack. He collapsed, and the scaver with the knife was instantly on top of him.
The man drove the combat knife deep into the space between Darian's collarbone and shoulder.
Agony exploded in Darian's chest, triggering only a terrifying, hollow apathy.
You sold them out. You're a coward. You deserve this.
Darian didn't scream. He reached up with a blood-soaked hand and grabbed the scavenger by the throat.
The scavenger jerked the hilt of the knife, but the blade wouldn't move.
A blinding emerald light flared inside the wound. The severed muscle violently snapped together, fusing tightly around the serrated steel and trapping the weapon inside his glowing flesh.
The scavenger let go of the knife to pry Darian's fingers off his throat.
Darian let out a feral roar. He violently reversed their positions, throwing the scavenger onto the cracked plaza stone and mounting him.
Darian brought his free fist down on the man's mask.
The heavy plastic cracked, but beneath it, Darian felt his own knuckles shatter. Green Essence surged, snapping the bones back into place with a sickening pop.
He didn't care. He wanted it to hurt.
Darian brought his fist down again. The mask shattered. His knuckles broke. The light healed them.
"You want something?!" Darian screamed hysterically. He hit him again, hand pulverizing and instantly knitting back together, blood splattering his glowing skin. "Take it! Take it all!"
The scaver was unconscious, but Darian couldn't stop. He kept swinging, systematically shattering his own hands against the man's ruined face, using the bone-breaking agony to drown out the phantom weight of his betrayal.
The other two scavengers didn't see a hero. They saw a blood-soaked, feral kid with a knife buried in his shoulder, repeatedly mutilating his own hands in an unhinged frenzy. Horrified, they sprinted blindly into the mist.
"Darian!"
Hands grabbed his shoulders, pulling him backward.
Darian thrashed, gasping for air.
"Darian, stop! Look at me!"
Lyra was kneeling beside him, forcing him to look away from the bloody mess.
Darian blinked, the violent green Essence dying out. The adrenaline crashed, and a sickening, deep-bone fire flared in his hands where the magic had forcefully fused his knuckles back together. He gasped, looking at his shaking hands, soaked in dark blood, and then at the hilt still protruding from his shoulder. A panic attack seized his throat.
"I..." Darian scrambled backward against the carousel, pulling his knees to his chest and cradling his throbbing hands. "I couldn't stop. Lyra, I couldn't stop."
Lyra didn't see a hero, and she didn't see a monster. She saw a boy as profoundly broken as she was.
She crawled over the glass and sat right next to him. Without hesitation, she gripped the hilt of the combat knife protruding from his shoulder and yanked it free. Darian choked on a ragged gasp as she chucked the bloody blade into the mist.
Then she reached out, her trembling hands wrapping gently around his bloody, shaking knuckles.
Darian flinched, a ragged hiss escaping his teeth.
"It's okay," Lyra whispered fiercely. "It's okay, Darian. I'm right here."
She didn't let go. She knew the brutal toll the forced healing took on his nervous system. "I know it hurts like hell," she murmured, her thumb soothing over his feverish skin. "Just let it pass."
Darian squeezed his eyes shut, resting his head against the wood as a violent shudder wracked his body. The amber bulbs hummed a quiet, uneven rhythm.
"What do we do now?" Darian asked, his voice trembling.
Lyra looked out at the drifting clouds, her thumb gently tracing his bruised hand. There was no script. Just the two of them at the absolute edge of the world.
"We breathe," Lyra said softly, a faint, exhausted smirk touching her voice. "And then... um. Then we, we go explore the rest of this… wonderland."