Текст книги "Hastrom City Rising (The Adventures of Letho Ferron Book 2)"

Автор книги: Doug Rickaway

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“I’m sorry, Thresha. I lost my temper.”

“Yeah, no kidding!” Thresha shouted. She gathered herself and stood up, dusting herself off, then took a step back from Letho. She looked as though she were about to run, but upon surveying her surroundings, the wrecked ship, and the creatures they had encountered, she seemed to think better of it.

****

They followed the cracked hardtop out of the ruined suburb and onto a larger road. This road was a shattered mess too, choked with a large number of rusted vehicle husks. Probably stalled and abandoned in the traffic created by some mass exodus that had happened ages ago. Perhaps if they followed the road far enough it would lead them to Hastrom City itself.

They eventually happened upon the ruins of a large building not far from the wreck site. Much of it had fallen to the withering assault of wind and time, but the bulk of the structure was intact. As they drew closer to it, Letho could see that the red brick facade had been worn to an almost smooth surface by the sand that piled up along the outer wall. Two large columns supported a triangular roof with ornate finishings, below which was a large clock that had stopped functioning at exactly 2:43 p.m., presumably centuries before. There were letters across the bottom, but most of them were missing. The last word, however was intact:

SCHOOL.

The front entrance sported a wall of glass doors and windows that were remarkably intact. The windows had long ago been papered over though, and one broken panel had been blocked by boards and ramshackle furniture. Letho staggered to the doorway and paused, listening. He heard only the dusty howl of the wind and the occasional groan of rusted metal grinding against itself.

“Bayorn, Maka, do you hear anything?” Letho asked.

“No. Just the wind.”

“Okay. Let’s check it out,” Letho said.

It wasn’t as if they had many choices. Not far away, across a ruined street, Letho could see a stretch of squat, boxy homes, but the roofs were gone, and many of them had collapsed entirely. This was likely the only habitable structure in the vicinity.

Bayorn gestured toward the doors and said open in Tarsi. The few surviving Tarsi lumbered forward and went about the business of unbarring the doors and clearing the makeshift barricade just inside. Letho cringed at the sound of metal grinding against the grit and concrete as the Tarsi forcibly entered the school. His mind flashed to the creature and its pathetic plea.

No. That wasn’t an ID bracelet. Why would one of those things have an ID bracelet?

Within moments the Tarsi emerged and gestured an all-clear. Letho went in first, followed by Maka and Bayorn, who carried an unconscious Deacon.

The interior of the school was dark and dry. A thick layer of dust covered everything in sight, forming miniature sand dunes around long-abandoned desks and gaping doorways. Letho scratched at the floor with a booted foot and unearthed a glimpse of white tile beneath the inches of dust that had blown in from outside.

“Having fun, Letho?” Thresha asked.

Letho offered her a blank stare and chose not to respond.

“A curious fellow, huh? Why don’t you use that curiosity to help secure this area?” she said.

“Shut up,” Letho replied, his eyes flashing with slow anger. “Look around. Do you see any footprints? Do you see any evidence in this godforsaken place indicating that anyone has set foot in it in the last one hundred years?”

“That’s what they want you to think!” Deacon gasped, his fist jabbing the air like that of a dictator in the middle of an oratory. He began to babble and clutch his shoulders, his entire body trembling noticeably even from across the room.

“He’s not doing so well, you know. And you aren’t either,” Thresha said, reaching out to place a hand on Letho’s shoulder.

She’s telling you to man up, son. Not in so many words, of course…

Ah, my old sarcastic friend. Glad you could make it.

As much as Letho hated to admit it, Thresha was right, and he was impressed by her change in tactics. She had switched from scolding him like a child to approaching him with what appeared to be genuine concern for his well-being. And he did not fail to notice that Maka and Bayorn were watching the exchange with barely concealed sneers. It wasn’t an altogether pleasant expression for a Tarsi face to wear.

“All right, folks, this is the plan. Maka and I are going to scope out the building and make sure it’s safe. The rest of you are going to stay with Deacon and keep an eye on him. Just…” Letho paused. “Just try to make him comfortable if you can.”

“Letho, we must recover our dead. The creatures out there, they might desecrate the bodies of the fallen Tarsi,” Bayorn said.

Letho nodded. “You’re right. Take who you need to get it done, and leave the rest with Deacon.”

Bayorn bowed his head slightly, then went about gathering a few of the remaining Tarsi to complete their sorrowful mission.

“Maka, let’s go,” Letho said, gesturing in front of him.

But before he could move forward, a weakness overcame him, and a black void began to form at the edges of his vision. He could hear Thresha shouting, but it sounded like her words were coming to him from miles away. The blackness continued to grow, choking out his sight until nothing remained but darkness.

****

Letho snapped back to consciousness at the sound of Deacon’s feverish wailing. Searing pangs in his stomach reminded him of how long it had been since any of them had eaten. He was lying on a couch, a crinkly metallic blanket laid over him. Deacon was lying on a similar couch not far away, also under a metallic anti-exposure blanket, and a few Tarsi sat on the floor here and there, some sleeping, some conversing quietly. There was no light save for the blue glow of a few light-sticks that someone had spread around the floor of the semi-large room that Letho now found himself in.

“We’re coming in too fast—I’ve got to slow us down,” Deacon groaned, rolling from side to side.

“What the hell happened?” Letho asked.

Thresha answered. “You passed out. You’ve been out for a couple of hours. We were able to get back to the ship and get the first aid kits and a little bit of food. Here, drink this.”

Letho’s nose wrinkled as the stale scent of food paste hit his nostrils. He turned his head away like a petulant child, but Thresha guided his head back around with her inhuman strength.

“No. We can’t have you dropping on us again. Drink it.”

This time, Letho complied. The paste slid down his throat. It was warm and thick, and not as revolting as he remembered it. His stomach rumbled like an old engine coming back to life in anticipation of the meal. To his exhausted body, the protein paste was as sweet as anything Letho had ever tasted, and he felt immediate relief and strength spreading through his limbs.

“Thanks,” Letho said. “Make sure that everyone gets something to eat.”

As he said the words, his thoughts turned to Thresha and his mind drifted back to the horrifying image of her consuming the fluids of a hapless cat on the Fulcrum station. He studied her face, noted the drawn look of her cheeks, the overt paleness of her skin, even paler than usual. Her eyes appeared cloudy, and flesh around them was a bruised greenish-purple.

“What about you? You okay?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

She left his side, retiring to a dark corner of the room where she seemed to disappear before his very eyes.

“Right,” Letho answered.

He tried to sit up, but it made him feel lightheaded, so he fell back on an elbow and surveyed his surroundings. His innate sense of direction told him that they hadn’t gone very far into the building, though he had no way of knowing for sure. The doors were still on their hinges, and someone had pulled them shut, displacing the dust that had gathered there. Overturned tables were everywhere, and there were some plates and eating utensils strewn about. An ancient microwave yawned open from a counter to Letho’s left. Below the counter were the remains of what appeared to be a dishwasher, but someone had torn it to pieces, most likely in search of scrap.

The ceiling was a mess of deteriorated tiles. Some were altogether gone, while others were stained and broken open by some weather event that appeared to have happened ages ago. Rusted girders and metal support beams leered through gashes like crooked teeth. To one side was a single hole large enough for a person to crawl through, and it afforded Letho a view of the night sky. The stars glinted on a cloudless, black-velvet backdrop. The moon floated ever stalwart in the black, and he could see the Fulcrum stations laid out in a circular array that spanned outward from that ever-vigilant eye. They formed a new constellation in the heavens, a great oval, an eye that stared down in judgement, yet regarded the dead world below with indifference. It was still beautiful to Letho, to gaze upon the stars from beneath them as opposed to being among them. What he had seen of his home planet thus far had instilled little hope, but despite the tragedies that had occurred since they had landed, it was good to finally set foot on the ground that had spawned his forefathers.

Letho’s thoughts began to wander, and he found himself tracing a path along a splintered overgrown highway in his mind, one of many arteries that had once pumped automobiles like blood cells into the giant organism known as Hastrom City. Perhaps Alastor was there, now aware of Letho’s presence, and mobilizing forces to capture or kill him. It wasn’t a stretch to think that Alastor was able to monitor the Fulcrum stations even as they hung lifeless in the space above Eursus. And their spectacular descent had to have been visible for miles around. How far were they from Hastrom City, anyway? He would have to ask Saladin later, but frankly he didn’t feel like interacting with the A.I. at the moment.

Now that the sun was gone, the temperature had dropped significantly, transforming Letho’s breaths into smoke-like wisps. He marveled at the huge clouds erupting from the nearest Tarsi’s nostrils, and was immediately reminded of his time with Maka in the underneath, watching in awe as the stalwart Tarsi scrubbed away the grime in the frigid air treatment ducts with what seemed to be an endless wellspring of energy.

As if summoned by Letho’s very thoughts, Maka appeared from the shadows and settled his bulk upon the couch, a little too close for Letho’s comfort. Maka’s fur shoved itself up Letho’s nose. Maka’s reek was pungent, even to Letho’s numbed senses.

“Hey, big fella. You mind?” Letho asked.

Maka looked at Letho, then at Deacon, and shrugged. He rose from the couch, grumbling, his soft complaints barely heard over the couch’s creaking protest. As he disappeared back into the shadows, he passed Bayorn, who regarded Maka with a grin and patted him firmly on the shoulder.

Bayorn walked over and kneeled beside Letho. “We have given him a sedative from the medicine bags we found on the ship,” he said, gesturing toward Deacon.

Letho was not surprised that Deacon’s condition had not yet improved; his previous experience with the withdrawal symptoms Deacon was suffering told him that Deacon would not be coming out of that place of darkness for at least a few days. Letho looked over at Deacon and was surprised to discover that Thresha had taken a crouched position at his side, one hand on Deacon’s forehead, the other laid gently upon his chest. Whenever Deacon would convulse or buck, Thresha would apply a bit more pressure, shushing him and humming in a low, sweet murmur. Deacon’s eyes were rolling back in his head, and his teeth were chattering. He spoke like a mad prophet, sputtering nonsense sprinkled with the occasional intelligible sentence. Letho felt a rather unpleasant sensation filling him as he watched the two together, and he used it to propel himself to a sitting position.

“And I’m fine too, by the way. You know, in case anyone was wondering.”

Thresha looked at him with a smirk playing across her lips. Those damned lips. How Letho longed for them to be at his ear, singing him a sweet song.

Ah, the girl chose him over you, Letho. What a big surprise. Stings a bit, doesn’t it? Then again, you’re probably pretty used to that feeling by now, aren’t you?

“Shut up,” Letho said.

****

Letho wrapped his metallic anti-shock blanket around his shoulders and crouched near Deacon.

“Hey, how you holding up?” Letho said, placing a hand on his friend’s forehead. It was cold to the touch, beaded with sweat, but his eyes were lucid, at least for the moment.

“I’m okay. How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” Letho answered.

“Yeah. I heard you took on a bunch of mutated things and killed them all. That’s crazy, bruin. Next you’ll probably be shooting lightning bolts from your fingertips and breathing fire,” Deacon said, following up with a jumble of weak laughter that dissolved into a coughing fit.

“Maybe you’re right. I’ll make sure to point it your way if either of those highly unlikely events occur. So how’s your head?”

“It feels like there’s an electric eel swimming around in my skull, and it has a penchant for shocking me every three or four seconds.”

“Oh yeah, the head shocks. I remember those,” Letho said, rubbing his own temple. “Just try not to think about them too much. Try to keep your mind blank. It helps.”

“Hey, Letho?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we all right here? I mean, are we going to make it?”

Letho inhaled, filling his lungs, then held the breath. The muscles in his back and chest protested at the sudden expansion. After a moment he let the air go, causing some of dust on the floor to swirl away from him like a tiny djinn. His mind felt clearer, and he was glad that he had taken the breath, because his first instinct had been to lash out at Deacon for the doubt his question implied. Deacon was just scared, Letho decided. Like everybody else.

“Well, we’re going to make it somewhere, that’s for sure. We didn’t come halfway across the galaxy to die in a busted-up old school.”

“Okay,” Deacon said. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, no doubt suffering from another head shock as the cocktail of chemicals that he had been fed his entire life continued to break down inside his body. “Hey, man. I didn’t mean to imply that—”

Letho interrupted Deacon with a wave of his hand. “Forget it. We’re all just tired and freaked out from our unhappy landing.”

“Right.”

Letho might as well have slapped his poor friend in the face.

“And now it’s my turn to apologize,” Letho added. “You did a damn good job getting us here in one piece, all things considered.”

Deacon nodded. “Thanks.”

Letho looked over and saw Bayorn watching the exchange between him and Deacon. Bayorn gestured for Letho to come over to him.

“Look likes old grumpy wants to talk to me,” Letho said. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

Deacon said something unintelligible and rolled over on the couch, nestling into it and pulling the anti-shock blanket tight around him.

****

Letho and Bayorn walked together to a cavernous room on the backside of the building. The exterior wall was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows that were shot through with cracks and bullet holes. The moonlight struggled to shine through centuries’ worth of grime. Letho scanned the room for any signs of life, and saw an animal that he recognized as a rat from his studies in the formal-ed sequence. But really it was little more than an emaciated sack of skin flitting past them on skittering claws.

“Well, at least we have one thing going for us. Not all of the life forms on this planet are trying to kill us,” Letho said as they watched the creature disappear into a pile of waste in the corner of the large room.

“There’s no food in this building,” Bayorn mused. “We scoured the place while you were unconscious and found nothing. I wonder what it’s eating.” His arms were crossed over his chest, and he stood perfectly upright, scanning the windowed wall with sentinel eyes. Sounds of rustling emerged from behind a row of metal countertops that fronted what looked like a kitchen area along the far wall. Above the countertops loomed faded signs proclaiming a variety of foodstuffs that made Letho’s stomachgrowl with desire.

This is a cafeteria. A lot like the ones on the Fulcrum station.

“Hey, we could eat those rats, if we could catch them,” Letho said, smiling.

“Maybe. Or maybe their flesh is plagued, like the beasts we encountered earlier,” Bayorn replied.

The two stood silently for a time, and Letho’s mind followed a line of thought that ended with him weighing the prospect of starvation against the risk of consuming contaminated or diseased animal flesh. Letho could tell from the look on Bayorn’s face that he was likely entertaining similar thoughts.

“Let me guess. That’s what you want to talk to me about. The food situation,” Letho said.

“Yes, that is one thing we must discuss, but also—”

Letho huffed and interrupted. “Look, Bayorn, I am sick of talking about Thresha, I don’t want to hear—”

“Letho, that is not what I wanted to talk about!” Bayorn roared.

The two stared at each other with such intensity that a stream of sparks exploding in the air between them would not have seemed out of place. Letho turned away from Bayorn and stepped farther into the cafeteria, kicking a rusted can with all his might. It crashed through one of the windows on the exterior wall, causing it to explode and rain down a glittering avalanche of shattered glass. Pristine moonlight flooded the room now, causing the glass to sparkle like worthless diamonds on the floor below.

“Well played, Letho!” Bayorn shouted. “Perhaps we can kill some more of those foul creatures and eat them, because you’ve surely just alerted their entire species to our presence.”

The can smashed into something in the distance, and the sound rang out like a pistol report. Letho flinched and offered a shrug of his shoulders.

“You gotta admit, that was a pretty good kick, though,” Letho said through a smile that did not extend to his eyes, which glimmered in feral fashion in the shadows beneath his brow.

“Are you crazy? Joking at a time like this?”

“What the hell do you want me to do, Bayorn? Rebuild the ship, conjure us a time warp and fly us back to the Fulcrum station ten years ago? We’re screwed, plain and simple, and everyone keeps looking at me, expecting me to fix it! I didn’t want any of this! I never asked to be the leader. I never wanted to be the chosen one for anything!” Letho’s chest was heaving, his words ragged and excited.

“In that case,” Bayorn said, his own voice rising now and slipping into Tarsi, “perhaps you shouldn’t allow them to worship you as their chosen one then! Sartan-Sien, indeed!”

Letho felt a little bit of his anger fade as the thunderous sound of Bayorn’s voice filled his ears, rattling them. Throughout all of their shared misadventures, Letho had never seen Bayorn lose his cool, had never heard such razor-sharp menace permeate his voice. But he couldn’t stand being mocked, and he allowed himself to swell back up with all the anger and frustration that had been building within him for some time.

“Oh, so here we go,” he spat. “What’s the matter? Jealous? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re afraid that I’m cutting in on your whole Elder thing.” Bayorn scoffed and threw his arms up in a gesture of marked frustration. “Listen to me, Bayorn. I haven’t done anything to deceive the Tarsi. I’m just trying to survive all of this. If they’re dumb enough to believe that I’m some magical space savior guy, that’s their problem.”

As he spoke, Letho hammered the tip of his finger into Bayorn’s chest. Enraged, Bayorn grabbed Letho’s forearm and twisted. A bone or two inside Letho’s wrist broke with a popping report, and he gasped, staggering back, a look of disbelief in his eyes. He couldn’t believe that Bayorn, of all the creatures in the universe, had just broken his wrist.

All of the anger rushed out of him, replaced by the jagged pain that shot up his arm. He staggered on wobbly legs, clutching his wrist. And then, just like that, the pain was gone. The bones had knitted themselves back together.

But the emotional pain did not dissipate so quickly. Letho shoved it down somewhere deep in his chest where he locked away pain to be digested later, just as he always had. Left behind was an unpleasant numbness that he could feel in his face.

Bayorn rushed to Letho, a look of apology across his face. But Letho placed his hand in front of Bayorn like a recball player stiff-arming an opponent. Bayorn stopped in his tracks, gasping, his chest heaving.

“I am so sorry, Letho! I did not mean to—”

A languid, reptilian smile spread across Letho’s face. “Don’t worry, Bayorn. I can take it. Advanced healing capabilities, remember?”

The sound of a Tarsi clearing his throat caused Letho and Bayorn to turn. Maka was standing at the entrance to the cafeteria, and the look on his face told Letho that he had witnessed the entire scene. He locked eyes with Letho, and then his eyes flitted to Bayorn, who now stood with his back to Letho, his head hanging low so that his chin rested on his chest. Letho would never be able to forget the pain he saw in Maka’s eyes at that moment, or the icy dagger it plunged into his own chest.

“Hey, Maka, listen. I didn’t mean what I said. You know I would never—”

But Letho didn’t have the opportunity to finish his sentence, for the sound of clawed feet scraping against dirt and desiccated underbrush filled the air, along with the familiar chittering sound that Letho had first heard at the crash site.

Bayorn had been right—Letho’s carelessness had alerted nearby creatures to their presence. He scolded himself as he sprang up from the floor.

A shadow flitted over Letho’s back as one of the fell creatures leapt through the shattered window, talons extended, foul froth wreathing its toothy maw. Letho turned, his hand instinctively going to Saladin. But even with his quick reflexes, he wasn’t quick enough. The beast was on him before he could draw the sword. He collapsed under the creature’s weight, feeling the warm press of its diseased flesh all over him, its stink enveloping him and causing him to retch.

A blur of green appeared in his peripheral vision, and then a roaring emerald freight train was bearing the creature up and away from him. Letho sat up to see Maka driving the creature to the floor; an eviscerating swipe of Maka’s claws silenced the beast’s terrified squeals.

Letho’s eyes darted to the window that the thing had shattered. More of the creatures were trying to shove their way through, a scrambling mass of arms and heads screaming for flesh. Even as he watched, one of the creatures’ heads got wedged against the window frame, was pushed through by the throng, and had its throat torn open by a stray shard of glass.

“Bayorn, the tables!” Maka shouted as he stood up from the remains of the fallen creature. The two Tarsi bolted across the room and bulldozed several of the dining tables toward the opening. Letho snapped out of his daze and followed behind them, gripping one of the tables and pulling it along. The tables shrieked as they ground against the tile floor, and it was enough to cause Letho’s teeth to grind together. But it didn’t drown out the screeching roar of the mass of creatures separated from him by mere inches of plasteel.

Letho, Bayorn, and Maka shoved the tables against the opening, forcing the throng of mutant limbs back through the broken window frame. Letho and Bayorn held the tables in place while Maka stepped back, scanning the floor.

“What’s the plan, Maka?” Letho said. The screeching rose to an earsplitting pitch at the sound of Letho’s voice, and the table began to shudder as the beasts pounded on it from the outside. Letho saw the face of one of the mutants, only inches from his own, smashed against the glass, tracing grisly smear lines in the muck.

“There!” Maka shouted. He darted a few steps away and grabbed a long length of iron bar that was about the thickness of one of Letho’s fingers. Maka took the metal and looped it around a metal bar protruding from the wall of windows. Then he looped the other end around one of the support bars underneath the tabletops and twisted it a few times.

“Bayorn, I got this. Help Maka!” Letho shouted. He pivoted, removing his back from against the crushed pile of tables and pressing against them with his hands. His boots scrabbled a bit in the grit on the floor, but at last they found purchase,and with all his might,he shoved the tables against the gathering horde. Bayorn and Maka grabbed some more metal bars and fastened the tables in two more places. It looked like it was going to hold. The throng outside continued to press forward with absolute abandon, but the barricade barely rattled.

Just as they completed their work, someone began shouting for help in Tarsi from the front part of the building. “We can’t do any more here. Let’s go!” Letho shouted. Bayorn and Maka fell in step behind him, and the three of them headed toward the rising din of conflict.

****

The room where Letho and his cohorts had made camp was now in even more disarray than when they first found it. Any piece of furniture that had any weight had been wedged against the doorways. Thresha and two Tarsi crouched behind more furniture near the room’s only windows, occasionally rising to fire through shattered windowpanes with assault rifles they had retrieved from the shuttle crash site. Muzzle blasts lit the room like a mad funhouse, displaying the faces of Letho’s comrades in stark, shadowy contrast.

“Letho, where have you been?” Thresha shouted.

A twisted face with eyes in the wrong place and a quivering maw full of black teeth appeared at the window in front of her, claws scrabbling to pull its body through a too-small opening even as shards of glass tore its flesh to ribbons. Thresha pulled a knife from a scabbard on her thigh and plunged it to the hilt in the creature’s skull. It fell limp and began to shudder as its nervous system continued to send panicked signals to its dead brain.

Another gnarled arm shot through a broken windowpane just above the deceased mutant and clawed at the cinderblock interior wall. Letho ran to Thresha, drawing Saladin as he did so, feeling the sword thrum with power in his hands as it cycled back to consciousness. He thrust the sword into the darkness on the other side of the window, felt it sink into flesh, and heard the scream of the creature. The mutant’s hand immediately went to the sword. Letho watched in horror as the hand grasped the blade and began to tug, almost wrenching it from his own hand. But the sharp blade pared the flesh right from the creature’s palm and fingers as it repeatedly clutched and pulled at Saladin.

Finally, Letho pulled the blade back toward himself, and the creature’s bald, scab-riddled cranium appeared. Letho twisted the blade, ending the mutant’s suffering and unleashing a torrent of black ichor that spilled down the wall in spurts. Thresha’s eyes locked with Letho’s, and they seemed to flash a faint glimmer of approval.

“Nice one,” she said, offering him a rather charming, lopsided grin.

“Thanks,” Letho said. “Saladin, talk to me!”

“Master, as always it is my pleasure to serve. One moment while I search for available satellites. None found. Scanning for nearby closed-network security cameras. Found. There are numerous unknown biological entities, identified by you and your associates as mutants, converging on the southern wall of this building.”

“Yeah, I know that. Can you see anything that we can use to get out of this? A vehicle that still works? An escape route, anything?”

“Sir, vehicles that were not properly stored and maintained would have ceased to function centuries ago. Scans of public records servers and utilities maps I have found indicate no subterranean maintenance tunnels save for small-scale drainage and sewer pipelines. Due to our proximity to the coastline and the fact that this area is close to sea level, belowground structures are unfeasible, as they would be constantly flooded.”

“Saladin! Come on, buddy. Give us a way out, anything!” Letho didn’t like the hollow ring of desperation that he heard in his own voice, nor the look he saw in Thresha’s eyes as she continued to scrutinize his every move. He could hear his own voice yammering in his mind, telling him that he needed to flee, to seek safety, that survival was the great and singular imperative. The realization that this might be it, that death might be coming in the form of razor claws and rotted teeth, filled him with a sense of dread that rivaled that which he had felt on Alastor and Abraxas’s ship.

Yet even so, there was a part of him that was almost tranquil. The center of his consciousness was a bastion surrounded by chaos and upheaval. He feared death, and he certainly did not welcome it, but at the same time he was so tired.

It’s okay. You had a good run. It’s going to hurt really bad—don’t kid yourself on that one, Letho. But you won’t have to carry the burden anymore. No one will be looking to you for answers. Just a little bit more suffering, and then it’s over.

The copilot voice that had chided him for so long continued to preach this new sermon of peace through annihilation, and Letho had to shake his head from side to side to regain some sense of control over his own thoughts.

“Sir? Based on data I have collected regarding your body’s response to trauma and your enhanced strength and speed, it is entirely possible for you to survive your current circumstances. Unfortunately, the odds for survival are significantly lower for your associates. Remaining in this building will virtually ensure their death. The number of creatures approaching far outpaces current ammunition supplies.”

Letho groaned. “I appreciate the cheery assessment, Saladin. Now how about some advice on how we can all survive this mess?”

“You and your cohorts’ best chance of escape would be to split up and make your way through the creatures on the north side of the building, where the concentration is lower. I see multiple areas where the clusters of creatures are thin and it would be possible to break through. I can assist you in regrouping once you have escaped.”