Page 6 of Xerxes Ascendant
“Part those pretty lips for me, baby. You’re gonna...”
...gonna lunge forwards in a sudden explosion of speed and ferocity, grabbing the man’s ankles to yank him off balance and bring him to the ground. The generator beside them gurgled to life just as Akira folded all four limbs around his prey: legs and arms locked in place to keep him still and quiet, and his forearm cutting off the man’s breath.
“Mfhfh!”
Akira began to silently count, measuring his opponent’s life in how desperately he struggled against his chokehold.
A shuddering rattle from above had both men’s heads jerking up to where the handle of the gun had appeared over the edge of the generator, the weapon vibrating loose with how vigorously the box shook.
The man clawed and thrashed with renewed vigour.
It became a deadly race between the pressure Akira was applying to the man’s vulnerable throat, and the movement of the gun. If the weapon shook itself free into the thug’s reach before Akira had rendered him unconscious, he might find himself without a head after all, and that would be a crying shame when he’d evidently decided he wanted to live.
Althoughdecidedwasn’t quite the right word: he had instinctively responded to the incoming message on his runepad with an urgent, fierce need to survive that far surpassed any rational thought. It had violently extinguished all of that earlier morose apathy, and thank fuck for that.
Akira Miyasaki was not going to lay down and die.
He’d fought his entire life for things that had once seemed hopeless – his own survival on Xerxes’ streets, his HouseMastery, his family’s safety and security – and would continue to do so, because he still had things worth fighting for.
Like a beautiful blonde with an easy grin and a heart of gold. Muscular thighs and a strong hand and a sly murmur directed into his ear that could made Akira weak at the knees. Vocal opinions on the difference betweenproper musicandthat toneless shit they play these days, and a fondness for collecting strays: humans, cats, and idiot bosses alike.
Akira would survive for Kyle Randall.
The gun wobbled, teetered, and finally fell, landing squarely in the lap of Akira’s opponent.
But it was too late to do the other man any good, for the thug had already passed into oblivious unconsciousness. Akira eyed the weapon cautiously and then eased out of the chokehold to reach out and flick the gun’s safety on before setting it aside.
Then, carefully avoiding the wetness that had spoiled his own clothes, he lay the limp body down on the street and began to strip it. He worked quickly, efficiently, not giving a damn when whipping the cap from his head caused the man’s skull to smack against the concrete. If the thug woke with a headache, he should consider himself lucky for waking at all.
Akira dressed himself in the slightly too large blue overalls, work boots, and gloves, and picked up the gun.
Ensuring the cap was pulled low over his eyes and his head was bowed to hide his chin – and the colour of his skin, which was nothing like that of the man he was pretending to be – he staggered down the street and around the corner to the impromptu sector checkpoint.
Someone ahead called out to him with a name that wasn’t his and a question in their voice. Bear.
Akira didn’t look up. He had his left arm curled around his stomach as though fielding an injury, and jabbed the right, which held the gun, urgently back towards the way he’d come.
“Shit. Epsilon got away from ya?”
Akira nodded frantically, gesturing with more vehemence and letting out a low moan of pain. “Hurry,” he rasped, low and quiet enough that it was a noise that could have belonged to anyone, and Bear took the bait.
Akira felt him rush by, confirmed by the glimpse he received from under the brim of his cap of pounding boots and a flickering shadow, and was unsurprised when his assumption that the men would be more concerned about their target than helping each other was proven correct. Such was the nature of their work...and the inherent selfishness of Xerxes.
He didn’t glance back. He had seconds, a minute at the most, before the half-naked body was found and Bear realised what had happened.
Plenty of time for the city to reclaim him as one of its many shameful secrets, shrouding him in the seedy streets and dark corners in which Akira Miyasaki thrived.
-
He paused, having instinctively been about to turn left at a familiar street intersection before realising his mistake. With the shearing off of the surface and most of Level A in the explosion, the city’s elevators had been rendered unusable, their tall shafts open to the air and their cables ruthlessly snapped. Only the stars knew how many people had been in the elevators that night, for their deaths were lost among the tens of thousands crushed, burned, or smothered by Mayor Mackenroth’s destruction.
Akira turned right instead, heading down the street to the huge pile of debris some enterprising souls had smoothed and reinforced to make a ramp between Levels C and E. Collapseslike this one were being transformed from destructive chaos to opportunities of convenience all across the city, with Xerxes’ residents once again showing their indomitable resilience and adaptability. Their home nearly falling from the sky and being split in two wouldn’t stop poverty, or starvation, and so despite the terrible events of that night, thousands of people had trudged to work only hours later to ensure they could continue to put food on the table. And with the elevators destroyed they’d found other ways to traverse the city; routes that were already being programmed into the autonomous cars judging by the way one limped and whined its way up the slope past Akira.
In a year or two, it would feel as if it had always been like this. Xerxes’ wounds would lose their rawness, scabbing over and taking on the same resigned dreariness as the rest of it.
Joining the incline from where the rubble intersected Level D and following it downwards, Akira finally felt safe enough to withdraw his attention from his surroundings and check his runepad.
The display declared he had one new message. Using both his thumbprint and a one-chance eight-digit code to unlock it – far too much of Akira’s life and business was on this thing to not take its security seriously – he brought the message up, only for disappointment to flood his throat.
