Requiem (67 page)

They walked
back to the two ships, waiting on the edge of the city. Therin
boarded the shuttle Seline and Belameir had arrived on, ignited the
engines and headed for home.

Seline stood
for a moment on the loading ramp while Sear started the ship. She
looked at the smoke, rising from the burning casinos, reaching into
the windless sky, holding it aloft like great pillars.

Belameir placed
a hand on Seline's shoulder. She turned with him and entered the
ship. They ascended through the atmosphere, littered as it was in
the waste and debris of space races that never even came within
sight of the finish line. Enormous billboards a hundred metres wide
projected images of shoes, suits, optics, coffee machines. Their
colours blinded, turned to the maximum to pierce the blanketing
waste circulating the planet. An eternal cycle of consumer items
bore down upon humanity like the placards of an invisible god,
smothering both those who could afford its promises and those who
couldn't but who would die just for the chance to.

The skyline was
ignited. The flames peeled from the Earth and swept into the night
sky. Sinn burned. The Corprotocracy burned. The entire Earth
burned.

The Warlord
stood in a daze, in a state of euphoria. These flames, he thought,
would draw Icarus like a moth. They would invite the rapture.

Voices swirled
around him in the dark spaces, just out of sight. Not a single word
could be distinguished, just a wall of meaningless sound. There was
a flash of light in the distance, another pillar of smoke was
building up to the sky. The pyre was climbing ever higher, so high
that he might climb upon it and reach the gates of heaven itself.
Beneath the mask, he was smiling to himself. Beneath the mask, he
was comfortable.

McCullum's body
was where he had left it. In the corner, away from the light that
came through the window. There was blood sprayed over the ground in
a sort of arc around him. The Warlord's mask hid the stench but he
could imagine it easily enough.

He could
remember his last visit here. The rattling death inside McCullum's
chest. The words he said to him, the assurance he gave. The Warlord
had failed in his own attempts to administer humanity's final
antidote. The serum had been a failure. The attempt to take the
girl as hostage had been a failure. It was Icarus itself who had
decided their time had come and the moment he knew this was true
was the moment his conscience was cleansed.

He looked from
the flames to the street below. A shadow, somehow darker than the
night sky. A man was stumbling from one of the alleys, clutching
his stomach. He fell to the ground in the centre of the street. He
was gasping and muttering. The man was struggling to rise to his
feet. He collapsed, tried again but fell on his side. He waited.
The Warlord turned from the window and descended the stairs to the
ground level. He walked out to the man who was on the ground in the
middle of the road, propping himself up with one arm, clutching at
his stomach with the other. The faint trace of moonlight and the
flames of a nearby building illuminated matted facial hair,
wrinkles etched deep into his skin like trenches of war, split and
bleeding lips, calloused with blood and dirt.

'You're hurt,'
said the Warlord.

'Yeah, no
shit.' The man looked back the way he'd come. 'It's fuckin' crazy
down there. I don't know what the fuck's gotten into errybody.'

'Are you not
happy?'

'Happy? Why the
fuck would I be happy? What's goin' on?'

'We are going
to die.'

The man looked
over the Warlord, his eyes adjusting to the light. 'You're...
you're that fuckin' Warlord! Shit! Just my luck.' The man hobbled
off. The Warlord did not move.

'The pain will
be over soon, my friend. Be grateful. It is the day of
thanksgiving.'

The Warlord
heard the familiar pattering of footsteps. He did not need to look
to know who it was.

'Sir,' came
Donny's tiny, panting voice. 'Sir, I got your message. I started
running as soon as I heard you were back.'

The Warlord
smiled.

'It... it's
finally happening isn't it?'

'Yes,
Donny.'

The Warlord
could see a small black box in Donny's hand but didn't care to ask
what it was. Donny grabbed hold of the Warlord's hand. The Warlord
wrapped his fingers around the tiny, brittle bones.

'I'm scared,'
Donny whispered.

'There's
nothing to be afraid of.'

'Everyone's
screaming and running around. They don't know what to do.'

'Then nothing
has changed.'

Donny said
nothing.

'We knew this
time would come didn't we, Donny?'

'… Yes,' he
said, his voice shaking and uncertain.

'What is it?'
asked the Warlord.

'It feels...'
he didn't want to say the word. He didn't know much but he knew
that word would hurt him. The Warlord looked at him. 'It doesn't
feel right,' Donny finally said. A tactful compromise.

'And what does
'right' feel like?' asked the Warlord.

Donny hated
those questions. The ones he didn't understand. Why couldn't people
just speak plainly? Donny gripped the Warlord's hand tighter as an
apology for his traitorous thoughts. He looked up at the Warlord,
at the mask that had always terrified him. He waited for the
Warlord to repeat his question but he didn't. And so Donny didn't
answer; instead, he thought of the girl.

The girl had
become his knew favourite thought. Where the face of his imagined
mother once resided he now saw the girl's. He didn't even know her
name but he'd never forget her face. Dirtied, bloodied, and
hopeful. Through her own sorrow she had shown him kindness. Donny
had run from the strange girl all the way back to the fallen
overpass – his favourite hiding place. He'd dug up the vid player
he'd stolen from a dead man years ago and watched the videos the
girl had given him. The song being sung by the little girl seated
on the floor was playing through his head.

'If IIII were
brave, could you be saved?'

He was sitting
next to the girl on the end of the bed, singing the words with
her.

'Was it myyy
fear

That leeefft
you here?

I seeeaarch
for shelter above the tide

But can't
decide where weeee should hide'

He realised he
was singing the words under his breath. If the Warlord heard him
then he gave no indication.

Donny let go of
the Warlord's hand and felt in his pocket for the small book of
quotations the Warlord had given him. He took it out and held it
before him in his left hand, the blackbox in the right. Two gifts.
The blackbox was singing to him while the book had fallen quiet,
almost dead. He looked at the blackbox.

'Is this...
happiness?' he asked, the words barely crawling from his
throat.

The Warlord
looked down at Donny, then at the blackbox. 'What is that?' he
asked.

'It's my
happiness,' said Donny.

'It's a
blackbox. Where did you find it?'

'My friend gave
it to me.'

The Warlord
looked back to the sky. The sentinels had blocked the light of the
moon. Their darkness was descending, lower and lower, silencing the
distant cries of those still trying to outrun them.

'If this is
happiness...' Donny looked up at the sky, filled with swarming
blackness. 'Then what is that?'

'It is mercy,'
said the Warlord.

'But mercy is
supposed to make us happy isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'Are you
happy?' There was stress in Donny's voice. The Warlord sensed
something different in his questions.

'I will be
happy in death,' said the Warlord. 'The only place that suffering
cannot reach. The only place where I may find peace – where we may
all find peace.'

'But- but what
about the people that already found peace?'

'You mean those
that have already died?'

'I mean...
those that are still alive.'

Something had
definitely changed in the boy.

The Warlord was
floating above it all, watching himself from miles above. Clarity
escaped him. He had traversed that tightrope of moral
responsibility right until the last. Until the absolute last. He
couldn't climb down now even if he tried. There was nothing left
but hope. Hope that everything he'd done was right and true, that
he, as humanity's shepherd, had led them down the right path. He
was tired, so tired.

'What about
those that are still alive?' Donny repeated.

'What about
them?' the Warlord said absently.

'If they found
peace then why don't we follow them?'

'It is too late
for humanity. The Earth was doomed well before Icarus arrived. We
have been feeding upon our own flesh for far too long. We cannot
change.'

'But...
I
can.'

The Warlord
gave no response.

'And...
you
can.'

Still no
response.

'And if
we
can change then maybe...'

'Such an idea,
Donny, means nothing now. Maybe a long time ago we had that chance
but we missed that boat.'

Donny's hand
slipped out of the Warlord's. 'Then we swim.'

'And where do
we swim, Donny?'

'I don't know.
Somewhere... anywhere.'

'You're too
young to understand that there is nowhere to go. There are no more
chances.'

'But, how do
you know?'

The screams
were evaporating in the encroaching shadows. The red eyes of the
sentinels passed over the barren Earth, a wave, sweeping across it,
cleansing it.

'You disappoint
me, Donny. We have been over this many times before. Many others,
including myself, have seen the values of NeoCorp in action. I have
seen what the Earth once was and what it has now become. I have
seen mothers kill their children, children kill their mothers,
people die in their thousands, minds become corrupt with avarice
and indifference. All are signs of death and decay. It has gone on
long enough. Where pain ends, mercy begins.'

'But, how do
you
really
know?'

'… I do not
claim to have absolute certainty but there are times when optimism
simply cannot be justified.'

Donny felt as
if the destruction of the world around him were taking place inside
his own head. The world he thought he knew, the world he had been
given by McCullum and the Warlord were shells of what they once
were. They were unstable, fallible. They could be broken down and
dismantled in ways he never realised; with a simple melody and the
words of a young girl.

'So... you
don't really know.'

'I know
enough.'

'It may be
enough for you but what about me?'

'What about
you?'

'Maybe I still
had a chance to change things, to hope for something
different.'

'You don-'

'Maybe I had a
chance to be happy! Maybe everyone else did as well! You took that
from us! From me!'

'In a world
such as this your happiness will not last. The passing antidotes of
life will always be bound by the inescapable gravity of death.'

'No! Not for
me. You don't know that. How could you?'

The questions
were relentless. They were chiselling away and burrowing into his
skin. He grabbed just under the front of his mask to remove it. He
hesitated, afraid that fear would flood through from the
outside.

'It was a
decision I had to make, Donny. I did what I had to to minimise the
suffering of this world.'

'It didn't have
to be like this! You didn't try hard enough!'

The Warlord
ripped the mask off and threw it into the dirt. The coldness of the
night pressed into freshly exposed skin.

He roared down
at the boy, 'I didn't try hard enough?! I sacrificed so much for
this! I sacrificed everything! I did what God and every last one of
these pathetic souls could not. I crawled through hell for you.
With the world upon my back I crawled through hell!'

'Well maybe
hell is where you belong!' cried the boy, tears rushing down his
face. Donny threw the book of quotes at the Warlord. It slapped
weakly against his chest and fell to the ground.

Donny ran off
into the darkness as fast as his legs would take him. The Warlord
listened to the hard patting sounds of his feet hitting the dirt.
He bent down and picked up the quote book and held it in his hand
as if judging its weight. He closed his fist around it and threw it
into the darkness as well.

A flash of red
shot out of the darkness. It hung before him. For a moment his own
reflection was illuminated. Scarred, helpless, skin greyed and taut
like the corpse in the library attic, like the ruins of Sinn. He
was surrounded by the desperate cries of a billion souls. Some half
way to heaven, others half way to hell, while he remained alone in
the darkness at the edge of the world not knowing which way to go.
He waited in limbo for the answer to his question. A question for
which even God himself had no answer, stuttering and faltering in
his ear until the end of eternity. The darkness pressed down upon
him. His mind screamed as his world died.

It was not
long, less than half a day before Earth had been harvested. The
shroud of metal collected once more and moved towards the sun. They
grouped in formation around the corona, swarming and spreading like
a disease across its hemispheres, smothering every inch of warmth
and life it offered in vain bargaining.

Those who
thought they had escaped to the far reaches of the solar system
could see the eyes of the sentinels approach while the bulk of
Icarus's forces eclipsed the sun. They turned their backs, closed
their eyes and ran into the darkness screaming while the sun
waited, placid and shivering beneath the shadow of Icarus's throat.
Its last act: to illuminate the face of its own destruction.