“Well, maybe if I find a pretty one like yours one day, I’ll try it out myself,” he replied.
Thankfully, he didn’t suggest trying out mine because I probably would have knocked him out.
We flew over the city of Zenarkin and left its limits in no time at all. We sailed over the treetops toward the old, abandoned New York.
It looked quiet down below.
In the days following the raid on what remained of the renegades that Raiza originated from, I’d received no reports of any attacks on the fringes of my territory. No stolen supplies, none of my men killed, nothing.
Now I could focus on expanding my borders even further.
I searched the ground below for any evidence of a recent human occupation. I didn’t see anything noteworthy, so I stopped looking and decided to spend my time digging through the reports about this electronic signature in a place where there shouldn’t be one.
I was aware that there was a significant underground system beneath the streets of the once populous city. There hadn’t been anything of interest to me before about it initially, but I imagined we might be able to utilize the existing structure to develop more research labs and incubation chambers with the purposes of expanding the population.
Zenarkin had been established and built before I took the helm. Building a whole new city from the ground up would add that much more to my legacy.
All that was left would be to stamp out what remained of the human resistance there. There were pockets of them all throughout the abandoned buildings. They hid as best they could, and I hadn’t yet thrown the full power of my army at them with the intent to conquer them all. To be honest, if they hadn’t been particularly bothersome, I would have just let them be.
That was going to change starting today.
I put a call back into base.
“I want every observation drone we have assigned to New York. I want to know where the human heat signatures are. I want to know where they are hiding. All of them.”
“Yes, Commander,” Naxyn replied. “Consider it done.”
The city came into my sights and my airship began its descent. Within minutes, we were on the ground. The sun was high overhead.
It was going to be a good day.
I stepped forward, the crunch of crumbling pavement beneath my feet. Kathar followed as we closed in on the location of one of the anomalies. At first, I didn’t see anything at all on a cursory look. There were several broken-down buildings to my right, as well as a number that were partially collapsed on my left. I surveyed the area and found nothing, turning back toward the structures to my right. There was nothing that indicated that the source was underground. It should be somewhere visible.
The dilapidated buildings looked sturdy enough to climb up a few floors. After a more thorough study, there was one that appeared to be the most likely option above all the rest. As I moved closer to it, I noticed a hand-drawn picture tacked onto the wall with dried mud. It was a face and when I drew near enough to make it out, I started at the realization that it looked deceptively like my Raiza.
The top of the paper was labeled with the word ‘Traitor.’
There was a brief description beneath the drawing, mainly detailing her betrayal to humankind by lying with an alien. Itblamed her for the slaughter of her people, giving no indication it was by my order and not hers.
I ripped it down.
It annoyed me that the humans would label her like that. No one branded my pet a traitor. She had no choice about where, who, and when I’d decided to attack. I wouldn’t stand for it.
I looked around for any others quickly. Thankfully, I didn’t see any more or I would have ripped them all down.
“Do you think it might be up there, Commander?” Kathar asked. He only glanced at the ripped paper as I crumpled it in my hand.
I squinted up at the rusted metal walls. There were a few exposed steel beams, which were probably one of the only reasons that the building was still standing.
“I think so. Let’s climb up and see what we find,” I replied.
He gave a quick nod and jumped up high enough to test his weight on one of the beams. The whole building creaked a little in protest, but it remained standing, which I thought was a good sign. He pulled himself up onto a nearby ledge before looking around.
I joined him. He didn’t offer his hand because he knew I wouldn’t take it. I went up by myself.
There wasn’t anything on the second floor or even the third. We made it all the way to the sixth floor before we started finding what looked to be a thick wire running along the floor. It was newer than the rest of the building.
We followed it until we approached a room without a roof. It was open to the elements and the floor was covered in solar panels.I turned around and followed the wire in the other direction, finding a battery at the other end.
