The wind howled through the maintenance level of the Clock Tower, carrying with it the metallic taste of rain and impending violence.
"BOOST!"
Corbin Monet roared, the air around his fist warping into a localized hurricane. He drove his punch downward, not at Paul Strahm, but at the slate roof beneath the Mime's feet.
The impact was cataclysmic. The slate shattered, the timber beams groaned and snapped, and the entire section of the roof collapsed inward.
Paul fell. He didn't scream. He simply dropped into the gloom of the clockwork mechanism room below.
Corbin didn't wait. He dove after him, landing on a narrow metal gantry surrounded by the colossal, grinding brass gears of the city's timepiece.
"End of the line, clown!" Corbin shouted, scanning the dust-choked air.
A silent pressure hit him from the left.
It wasn't a fist. It felt like a solid steel beam swinging out of nowhere. Corbin was blasted sideways, slamming into a spinning cog the size of a carriage wheel. The breath left him in a pained wheeze.
Paul Strahm stepped out of the shadows on a platform above. He was battered, his gray coat torn, but he moved with an eerie, fluid grace. He raised his hands, miming the action of racking a shotgun slide.
Click-clack.
He pulled the trigger.
An invisible slug of kinetic force slammed into Corbin's shoulder, spinning him around. Corbin gritted his teeth, the Boost under his skin flaring hot to absorb the impact.
"You're annoying!" Corbin spat, launching himself off the cog. He closed the distance in a single leap, aiming a knee at Paul's chest.
Paul didn't dodge. He stood his ground and mimed a riot shield.
Corbin's knee hit an invisible wall of force. The shockwave rattled his own bones, but he didn't stop. He grabbed the edges of the invisible barrier, feeling the psychic resistance against his palms, and pulled.
With a roar of effort, Corbin shattered the construct. He reached through the dissolving force field and grabbed the fabric of Paul's mask.
"Gotcha!"
He ripped.
The fabric tore away. Paul staggered back, his pale, unremarkable face exposed to the dim light of the clock room. His lip was split, bleeding a dark trickle down his chin. He looked tired. He looked hollow.
But he didn't look afraid.
Corbin wound up for another punch, his fist glowing with pressurized air. "Stay down!"
Paul caught the fist.
He didn't use a mime. He caught Corbin's wrist with his bare hand. The impact should have shattered Paul's arm, but the Mime stood firm, his feet sliding only an inch on the gantry.
Corbin's eyes widened. He's strong. Physically strong. He's not just a caster.
"Why?" Paul asked.
His voice was quiet, flat, cutting through the grinding noise of the gears.
"Why are you fighting so hard for that boy?" Paul demanded, shoving Corbin back. "You aren't a Paladin. You don't wear the badge. This isn't your job. He means nothing to you."
Corbin stumbled, regaining his balance. "He's a kid, Paul. He's eight years old."
"He is a catastrophe in human skin!" Paul shouted, his composure fracturing. "Do you know what he is? Do you know what that gas does? It killed people, boy. It killed his own parents."
Paul circled him, his eyes dark and hard.
"Someone like Oscar... he is always going to be a nuisance. He isn't meant for the simple, cushy life that every other kid gets. That is not what he was born for. That is not what we were born for."
Corbin stood still. The gears ground on, filling the silence.
He thought about the shipping container. He thought about the beds. He thought about the number nine etched into the uniforms.
"I'm going to ignore that last sentence," Corbin said, his voice dropping. He let out a long sigh, his shoulders relaxing slightly. "Because I think I get it now. I think I understand you a bit more."
Paul tilted his head, confused by the shift in tone.
"From the look of all those people in that container," Corbin said, pointing a bruised finger at the Mime, "they were all experiments for someone. You. Oscar. All of you."
Corbin took a step forward.
"And you're mad," Corbin stated. "You're pissed off that me and Ruben are fighting so hard for Oscar right now... because nobody ever put in any effort to fight for you."
Paul's face went rigid. His eyes, usually so dull and unreadable, suddenly took on a weird, unsettling look, a mixture of profound vulnerability and absolute, homicidal mania.
"You think you know me?" Paul whispered.
He threw his hands out. He mimed the pulling of a pin.
BOOM.
An invisible explosion detonated directly between them.
It wasn't a directed blast; it was an omnidirectional shockwave. The gantry they were standing on buckled.
Corbin was thrown backward, over the railing. He flailed, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. He caught the edge of a lower support beam, his arm wrenching in the socket. He dangled there, hundreds of feet above the churning machinery of the tower's base.
"You don't know anything!" Paul screamed from above, looking down at him.
Corbin groaned, pulling himself up. "I know... enough..."
He hauled himself onto the beam, gasping for air. He looked up to retort, but the sound of heavy boots on metal stopped him.
The service door on the far side of the clock room burst open.
Three figures stepped onto the main platform.
Bruno Fernando, his rune-mask glinting in the gloom. Kade Varro, pistol drawn. And Rosette St. Jon, her blood-spear already formed and glowing.
Corbin froze, crouching on the beam. Great. Now it's a party.
He was caught between a terrorist with a complex and a kill-squad of elite Paladins.
Bruno barely glanced at Corbin. His masked face turned toward Paul Strahm.
"Target acquired," Bruno rumbled, his voice distorted by the filtration unit. "Lethal force authorized."
Paul Strahm didn't run. He didn't cower. He stood straight, adjusting his torn coat.
CRACK.
Audible pops echoed through the room as Paul rolled his shoulders, his bones shifting. The pressure in the room intensified, a psychic weight that made the air feel thick and oily. He wasn't aiming his bloodlust at just the Paladins. He was aiming it at everyone. At the world.
"You want the boy?" Paul asked, a terrible smile spreading across his split lip. "You can have him. But you won't like what you find."
"Surrender, Strahm," Kade shouted. "It's over."
"The drug I gave him," Paul continued, ignoring Kade completely. "I told the thief it was medicine. But it wasn't. It was a cocktail. A massive, concentrated dose of Phencyclidine."
Bruno stiffened. "PCP?"
"Mixed with combat stimulants," Paul laughed, a dry, hacking sound. "It messes with inhibitions. It disconnects the mind from the body. It boosts the Ego's output by removing the safety rails of the human brain."
Paul looked at his hands.
"I may have given him way more than was necessary, though," Paul admitted casually. "I thought it would be best to go through every city I could with Oscar. A traveling circus of rage. But... I am struggling with just one city. So, I am ditching him here. In Brumália."
"You monster," Rosette hissed.
"Here is the punchline," Paul said, his eyes gleaming. "Once Oscar dies from the overdose, and he will die, his heart can't take that strain, the gas he emits won't disappear. It will calcify. It will become a permanent cloud of rage that settles over this city forever unless you destroy his body completely. Atomize it."
Bruno stepped forward, his fists clenching. "That... that is impossible. Egos fade with death."
"Not when they are chemically fused to the nervous system!" Paul shouted. "I learned it from the best! The doctors from your lands! The ones who cut me open and sewed me back together!"
Paul threw his arms wide. He looked like a conductor facing an orchestra of doom.
"So go ahead! Kill me! Save me! It doesn't matter!"
He mimed grabbing two massive levers in the air and pulled down with all his might.
The air inside the Clock Tower screamed.
Paul wasn't attacking a person. He was attacking the structure. He mimed a demolition implosion.
The massive brass gears groaned. The support beams shrieked as invisible charges detonated on the load-bearing pillars. The entire building lurched, stone and metal rupturing in a cascade of noise.
"THE MINUTE OSCAR'S HEART STOPS," Paul screamed over the deafening roar of the collapsing tower, "EVERYBODY DIES!"
The wind whipped past them at a deafening roar, tearing the tears from Oscar's face before they could even slide down his cheeks. They were hundreds of feet in the air, riding the back of a massive, serpentine construct of amber light that cut through the gray ceiling of the world.
Oscar was huddled against Ruben's back, his small hands gripping Ruben's hoodie so tight his knuckles were white. He was shaking, a violent, rattling tremor that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the chemical fire Paul Strahm had injected into his veins.
"I'm sorry," Oscar sobbed, his voice thin and breaking against the wind. "I'm so sorry, Ruben. I hate myself. I hate this!"
He buried his face between Ruben's shoulder blades. "I wish I was never born! If I wasn't born, none of this would happen. Mom and Dad would be alive. The city would be safe. I shouldn't be here!"
Ruben's heart clenched. He adjusted his grip on the dragon's reins, fighting the turbulence.
"Don't say that," Ruben shouted over the wind, his voice shaking. "Don't you ever say that again, do you hear me?"
He reached back with one hand, grabbing Oscar's arm to steady him. The boy's skin was burning hot, feverish and clammy at the same time.
"Everything is going to be alright, Oscar. We're going to fix this."
"I feel it coming!" Oscar wailed, his body arching in a spasm of pain. "It's boiling! The medicine... it's not stopping it, it's making it louder! I can't stop it, Ruben! I can't hold it in!"
Ruben looked back. Oscar's eyes were dilated, the pupils swallowing the irises. Veins were bulging in his neck, throbbing with a dark, unnatural rhythm.
"Listen to me!" Ruben yelled, trying to pierce through the drug-induced haze. "After today, you won't ever have to deal with this hurt again. We're going to get you help. Real help."
Ruben squeezed the boy's arm.
"You are going to live a regular life, Oscar. You hear me? You're going to go to a regular school. You're going to play football, or video games, or whatever you wanna do. You're going to have friends who like you for you, not for what you can do. You're going to grow up and you're going to love life. Not everything lives under one dark cloud. There's sun above this fog, kid. I promise."
Oscar cried harder, burying his head into Ruben's back, his small body racking with sobs. "I can't... I can't stop it..."
"Great speech."
The voice was casual, drifting through the air as if they were sitting in a coffee shop rather than hurtling through the sky.
Ruben's head snapped to the left.
Lance Onida was there. He was floating effortlessly, his hands in the pockets of his black bomber jacket, matching the dragon's speed without breaking a sweat. Just behind him, her cape snapping violently in the slipstream, was Elise Vogel, her spear glowing with lethal green light.
"Did you learn that from Dario?" Lance asked, his silver eyes twinkling with a cold amusement. "He always did have a way with the inspirational monologue."
Ruben cursed, his mind racing. How? How are they right on top of us?
Then, he saw it.
A tiny, black droplet of liquid detached itself from the hem of his jeans and flew backward into the wind. Ink.
Bruno, Ruben thought, a spike of frustration hitting him. He didn't just let us go. He tagged us. He made us the hounds so he could follow the trail.
"Slow down, Rayo," Lance commanded, his tone shifting from playful to authoritative. "Hand the kid over. The best bet is to bring him high. Stratosphere high. If he pops, let him pop where there's no oxygen to carry the gas."
"It won't work!" Oscar screamed, his voice sounding wet and gargled. He looked pale, his skin turning a sickly shade of gray, looking like he was about to vomit. "It's too heavy! It'll fall!"
"Stay back!" Ruben shouted, banking the dragon hard to the right to put distance between them. "He's sick! Can't you see he's sick?"
Elise Vogel surged forward, her face twisted in a snarl. "The audacity," she spat, her voice amplified by her own Ego. "You are a criminal, Rayo. You are a fugitive running with a biological weapon, and you dare to give us orders? You have no authority here!"
Oscar tried to speak, to warn them, but he choked, retching dryly.
"Shut up!" Ruben roared at the Gold Paladin, his protective instinct overriding his fear of her rank. "Just shut up and let me think!"
He didn't wait for her response. He leaned forward, pressing his chest against the dragon's neck.
"Fly," Ruben commanded. "Faster."
The amber construct roared, a sound like a furnace igniting, and surged forward with a burst of speed that pinned Ruben to its back. At the same time, Ruben swept his hand backward.
Forge.
A dozen smaller dragons materialized in the wake of his flight path. They weren't built for damage; they were built for obstruction. They swarmed Lance and Elise, a chaotic wall of wings and claws meant to buy him seconds.
Ruben didn't look back to see if they held. He just flew.
They tore across the skyline of Brumália. The speed was blinding. The wind pressure was immense.
And then, something beautiful happened.
The massive wings of Ruben's dragon beat with such force that they created a vortex. As they banked over the spires of the cathedral district, the downwash blew away the eternal, suffocating smog.
For a brief, fleeting moment, the gray curtain parted.
Below them, the city was revealed in crisp, high definition. The cobblestone streets shone with rain, the copper roofs of the old merchant houses glinted in the rare sunlight that pierced the gap; the river winding through the center looked like a ribbon of silver rather than a sewer. It was a city of gothic beauty, usually hidden by its own industry.
But Ruben couldn't enjoy the view.
The smell hit him first.
It wasn't the metallic scent of the city anymore. It was a smell that started in the back of his throat and coated his tongue. It was sweet, sickly, cloyingly sweet. It smelled like overripe peaches rotting in the sun, mixed with the sharp tang of burnt sugar.
The gas, Ruben realized with a jolt of horror. It's leaking.
Oscar wasn't exploding all at once. He was venting.
Ruben inhaled, and the reaction was instantaneous.
His heart rate didn't just speed up; it slammed against his ribs like a fist. The muscles in his jaw locked tight, his teeth grinding together with a sound like crushing chalk.
A wave of heat washed over his brain. It wasn't fear. It was red. It was pure, distilled aggression.
He thought of Paul Strahm, and he didn't just want to stop him, he wanted to tear him apart with his bare hands. He thought of Elise Vogel, and he wanted to turn the dragon around and drive her into the ground. He felt a sudden, irrational hatred for the wind, for the clouds, for the very air he was breathing.
No, Ruben thought, his mind reeling as he fought the urge to scream. Don't let go. Fight it.
He felt the anger flowing in his veins, hot and seductive. It told him to stop running. It told him to turn around and kill everyone who had ever looked at him wrong. It told him that violence was the only answer to the question the world was asking.
His hands shook on the reins, not from cold, but from the effort of not crushing them.
Ruben forced his head down, tearing his eyes away from the horizon, trying to ground himself.
He looked down at the city below, the beautiful, exposed city that was about to be bathed in this sweet, hateful poison.
But... the people.