![]() ![]() She could step forward, leave a mess on the sidewalk, and it'd be the same either way.įorty years ago, a secret organization vivisected a dead god to kill another. Her own face looked back at her, and time stopped. The city's smog broke for a moment, letting just enough sunlight through to glint off the glass. She pulled one hand from her grey and white windbreaker, clutching a thin tube with a silvery-black, marbled fluid, held in by an old rubber cork. Was it any wonder the city had six thousand parahumans? Nobody lifted a finger, or even a phone.Īgents always chose the worst of humanity to use their powers. The next person in line checked his golden watch, glanced at the street behind him, and stepped up to use the ATM. Somewhere ruled by a shard cult or worse. If not? Then in six minutes, at that speed, they'd be on a one-way trip to a slaver camp far off into the fringes, where the authorities didn't have enough reach to follow. If the abductee was lucky, the cops on the roads ahead wouldn't be in on it, and they'd enjoy a quick, painless death as a hostage at the first barricade. This far out on the fringes, the nearest patrol car would be twenty-eight minutes away. Express abductions, just uncommon enough to catch a victim off guard. A final token effort to find the hope she'd lost.Ī short scream rose up from them, and her eyes caught a plain white van speeding away from an ATM. More about their species than any person could bear to know.Įnough that the patterns started to look familiar.Īnother searching gaze at the humanity below. Reams of data cataloguing all the known agents, their capabilities, and their impenetrable language.Įverything she'd helped to gather over a decade of blind, stumbling communications. She'd paid for this with some of the most valuable information in the multiverse. Old wire technology, unrecognizable by today's standards. We never changed, she thought, sneering at the scene eight stories below. The world broke, and they scurried off to hide, only to come back and rebuild it all over again. The world ended, and fifty million people came here, to rebuild the world they'd just left. They were all as angry as she was, just for different reasons. The evening commute was the seething thing it'd always been, and this time she took comfort in it. Luminocity could prove to anyone God was dead.īlakely counted time with the cold dirge, watching the slimy creatures dressed like people wash through the street below. A cesspit where humanity's worst sins bubbled to the top and boiled over. A wendigo of steel and glass, always feeding, always starving. A street's worth of shuddering high-rises groaned their damned chorus in that din, promising misery to the foolish creatures whose short-sighted greed gouged them into existence.Ī city born of unchecked growth and unsated need. A chill wind whipped in from the south, wailing through the alleys with a hollow voice echoing the city's pulse. ![]()
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