Page 79 of Xerxes Ascendant
The police car lurched and began to fall from the sky.
Security officer:You need clearance to board the lift to the surface.
Lower resident:But my work permit says surface utilities.
Security officer:A work permit isn’t a transport pass. Get out of the line before I write you up.
-Overhead on Level C
CHAPTER 23
Kyle
If Kyle had thought about it –properlythought about it, with the kind of time and quiet reflection that he didn’t have – he might not have saved Benedict Mackenroth’s life.
Might have recalled all the terrible things he’d done, not just recently but throughout his miserable life, and how the light in Akira’s eyes dimmed whenever he spoke of the man. Might have decided that a monster like their mayor, who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, didn’t deserve to be saved.
But Kyle didn’t think.
He just saw a person tumbling over the edge of the open-topped car as it rocked violently to the left, and flung out an instinctive hand to haul him back in. With his hands still bound behind his back, the mayor fell like a rag doll into Kyle’s lap, his muffled yelp extinguished by the sudden impact.
“Stay down!” Kyle yelled at him, not that the trussed man could go anywhere of his own volition, and rose to a crouch to join Akira where he was frantically jabbing at the car’s touchscreen.
“Override with manual control!” Akira barked at it. “Four-two-two-seven-one-nine!”
“Ma..al...trol...eng...ged,” the AI croaked back, and part of the dashboard panel slid downwards to reveal an array of physical buttons and a protruding lever thing that Kyle didn’t have the first clue about.
But he’d long held a view that there was nothing the Master of House Epsilon couldn’t do, and that truth continued to hold firm now as he watched Akira wrap a slender hand around the lever with the same competent confidence as he would a man’s cock. The differences in operation were stark, however, and the aggressive wrenches of the joystick as Akira fought to stabilise their descent brought an abrupt and well-deserved end to his X-rated analogy.
A foot jabbed hard against Kyle’s thigh, and caught off balance, the unexpected blow sent him sprawling over the controls. The car veered sickeningly to the left again before Akira wrenched him clear and worked the vehicle out of its corkscrewing spin, tossing a dark look over his shoulder at Mackenroth. The man lay helplessly on the floor where he’d been tossed, bound arms straining and his shiny shoes now scuffed. His chest heaving and there was blood trickling out from beneath the gag.
A wave of guilt washed over Kyle. Had he bitten his tongue when Kyle grabbed him? Should he have been more careful?
“Don’t,” said Akira sharply, apparently guessing the direction of his thoughts. “You think he wouldn’t do worse to you, given the chance? He just tried to kick you out of the car, for stars’ sake!”
So he had. Kyle rubbed at the sore spot on his thigh, looking balefully at their captive mayor. He glared back.
“Hold on!” Akira ordered. “We’re going down too quickly. We’re not going to make it over the edge!”
What edge?Kyle asked, or he would have, if he’d had the time…and the breath. Because it was then that they hitsomething solid, the front of the police car crumpling like paper and the back jerking upwards in response. All three of them were flung clear of the vehicle.
Pain scalded Kyle’s palms and injured shoulder as he impacted with the ground and slid along it, the friction making it feel far hotter than plain concrete. Standing in Xerxes’ massive engines scale of hotter.
He cried out, clutching at his arm. Allowing himself a second of misery and then forced himself back to his feet, rising without using his hands because they hurt too much. His head was already frantically scanning back and forth for Akira.
Something collided with his back. Something much softer than what they’d hit before – and clingier, and which smelled like Kyle’s favourite scent in the world…
“Akira,” he gasped, recognising the shape of him as he wrapped himself around Kyle from behind. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Akira growled into his neck, clawing and clutching at him. The intensity of his gaze, when Kyle was finally able to force him to sufficient stillness to turn in his arms and embrace him back, dared Kyle to call him on the lie.
Which he did, hissing with wild fury upon noticing the cut seared across Akira’s right cheek, and then the scrape on his leg where his ruined trousers hung in tatters around his knee. “You’re bleeding! Let me look at you!”
“No time. The sniper will have seen us go down,” the Master said shortly, and then glanced around and winced. “Along with everyone else.”
The police car was a mangled ruin of metal and exposed electronics, an alarm wailing blearily somewhere from its insides, and pieces of twisted wreckage were strewn in every direction. They had been exceptionally lucky. If the pair of them been thrown even a few metres further, they might not have landed again until they hit the planet below.
For their crash site was within spitting distance of the edge of the city itself, having collided with one of the pale stone walls that surrounded the wide walkway on which they stood. Perhaps the privileged idle might have once taken strolls here, gazing out over an expansive nothingness with the planet laid out before them and Xerxes at their back. It had that pompous air of unhurried luxury to it. But chaos had been wrought on this once-pretty space, not just by them but the Fall itself…for there were ugly, empty gashes in the concrete where posts and pylons had been ripped free from beneath, some leaving chasms large enough for a person to easily fall through.
