“Zion,” someone rasped from below, and that wheeze, that whisper, it dragged me to the edge.
“Gedeon,” Zion and I breathed simultaneously.
A grimy hand peeked out of the hole, and we grabbed it, twisting it around, scrutinizing it for any injuries, yanking on it?—
Cursing, Gedeon pulled his limb out of our grasp. His pained grunt slapped me in the face.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, squeezing my fists and choking from disturbing the fracture in my pinky.
“You didn’t know,” Gedeon said from the darkness. “I think my lower ribs might be broken.”
Zion scowled at the pyramid of rubble imprisoning Gedeon. “If we move any of these blocks, the rest will fall on top of you.”
“And I can’t pull myself out.” A heavy sigh echoed in the gloom. “Great.”
I shifted as the wreckage dug into my knees. “So what do we do?”
Zion tugged the ends of his hair. His gaze flicked around, one circle, two, three, four?—
“See those?” He pointed out the smaller fragments making up what you could call the entrance to the pyramid. “If we can remove them, the structure should hold.”
“And one of us can descend to help him crawl out,” I finished for him.
“Exactly.” Grabbing hold of the first chunk, Zion smiled wryly. “This is why you learn to wield weapons in both hands.”
I shook my head at his attempt to lighten the mood. “Not funny.”
But even with the ruined finger and wrist, in less than an hour, we had freed Gedeon out of his prison. As we hurried to check him for any additional wounds, so did he, fussing over me the longest despite me rolling my eyes and promising Zion had already done so.
“He’s used to fighting with his feet barely holding him up, but you are not,” Gedeon cut off my string of protests as he prodded my ankles.
“Stop coddling me, or your ribs won’t be the only thing that’s broken.” I gave his crotch a pointed look.
He chuckled, further stoking my irritation at their overprotectiveness. At this point, the suspicion they would always treat me as if I was made out of porcelain had taken root.
Huffing, I turned my back to both of them and stomped deeper into the ruins on a hunt for a way out. Steady footfalls trailed me, imbuing me with smugness. They could shield me as much as possible, but the bastards knew when to stay back.
Like when my emotions were all over the place. Today had transformed them into a jungle with trees sky-high and branches as thick as my thighs. I couldn’t figure out what I was feeling anymore.
But the longer we walked, the slower my pulse raced. Tiredness set in, the exhaustion affecting our pace and tempting us to lay down. Soon, I couldn’t think about anything else but taking the next step. And the one after that. And another one.
But the lower we descended, the better Spire had held up. We didn’t need to duck or slither through tight spaces anymore—we could finish our journey by climbing down the stairwell. The lower floors had barely been affected besides crumbs of paint and plaster covering every single corner, including the empty security station in the lobby.
“Were they warned of us coming?” I mused as we headed for the exit. “Neither of the six Heads are here.”
“They’re probably hiding,” Zion scoffed as we stepped outside, into the street that now boasted fallen bits and pieces of the Spire. And the dead.
Rivers of corpses.
Bodies lay sprawled on the sidewalks, thrown over garbage cans, curled around streetlamps, slumped against apartment buildings, strewn on their backs across the road or on their bellies atop the hoods of green-banded’s personal vehicles, all shining in silver.
Puddles of blood seeped into the asphalt, staining it for eternity. Crooked limbs formed a pattern of agony. The gray, black, and white clothing of the black-banded absorbed the crimson flowing out of their chests and heads. Our own people dotted the road like flowers in a grassy field, their outfits as colorful as petals. To finish it all off, Ilasall’s soldiers marred the street, their eyes glazed over, free of the city’s clutches.
A battle had broken out while we’d been paying a visit to the Head of Ilasall, and we had missed it all.
“We have to find them,” Gedeon ground out, meaning the Heads of Nutriment, Education, Labor, Health, Military, and Welfare, the latter my former employer, the one whose genitalia I wanted to shove down his throat.
He deserved to choke on his balls for considering population control to be welfare.
