Rings of Rhea - Part 1.4

After some miscommunication they agree to follow the path Craig took. Through much charades and hand-waving, they discover they both have the same intention to get to the next level of the structure. Packing away their belongings, they start off to reach the vast haze between the maze of buildings and the barrier keeping them and the next level. They know not what they will find, but it could very well be better than their current locale.

The trek up the stairs and through the many holes made by the guardian takes much longer than either of them think it should. They were so bent on meeting each other that they lost track of time to an immense degree. For that matter, the tunnel created by the guardian is much longer than either anticipated. This kind of technology, the kind allowing for effortless floating and burning through solid concrete, was an unknown as well. Every few openings they cross, Craig stops to look at the wreckage, wondering just how such a thing could exist.

As he surveys the edges of these holes, he cannot find a hint of residue or dust. As if the walls were built that way in the first place, the only debris is from some segments that have since collapsed from the lack of support.

Adele looks at him with curiosity in her one good eye and tugs lightly on the sleeve of his jacket. He dismisses whatever he was thinking, and moves onward, beginning to see familiar terrain. He tries to tell her this with a smile and a bit of a skip in his step, but her questioning expression tells him that it does not come across as well as he had hoped. Shaking off the knowledge that he still cannot “speak” with Adele, he continues onward, a few steps ahead of her.

Upon finally seeing the pale yellow light through cracks in the ceilings, they turn a corner and come upon Craig’s former battleground. Pointing down a turn in the line of holes, he singles out the crumpled corpse of the guardian.

As they look over the wreckage for anything useful, he notices that both shots pierced straight through the ceiling above them as well. Curious, he steps over the various bits and pieces of the machine and stands directly underneath one of the holes in the ceiling above him. The edges are charred, as if melted away by some obscene heat, and light filters through from the haze above. Thinking back to the gun Adele used to break down the wall, he hazards a guess that it was the weapon responsible. A long rifle-shaped thing, the weapon looks more like a crude carving of a gun made from a ragged gray metal. Tiny circuits and pipes and wires encircle the barrel and leave barely enough room for one to grasp the handle.

Adele calls his name and points skyward with a questioning look on her face. Understanding her need to move on, he leads her several more rooms away before they come upon the collapsed ceiling that Craig fell through before. Upon seeing the ragged edges of the ceiling, he realizes that he cannot reach it on his own.

Craig taps Adele on the shoulder and cups his hands together and placing a foot into them, indicating one of them lift the other up to the ledge. Adele cocks her head and shrugs his shoulders. With a sigh, he grasps Adele’s hands. Lacing her fingers together into a cup with the palms facing up, he points up to the ledge. After a moment, Adele furrows her brow, but nods in understanding.

After Adele lifts him up to the crumbled ceiling, he hauls himself to the top, once more able to see the ocean of skyscrapers. Before he has the chance to lend a hand to Adele, she winds up and throws her bag by the strap up to the ledge. As it lands with a heavy thud that seems to shake the entire building, Adele lets loose a jump that baffles Craig with its height. Grasping the ledge with one powerful hand, she effortlessly pulls herself up, wearing a proud smile on her face.

***

No matter how many times he saw the expansive void of the space between the city and a barrier, he always found his to jaw go slack. To be fair, he has seen it only four times. As he gazes upwards into the haze, he hears Adele milling around their current rooftop surveying their surroundings. With her back to him, Craig notices for the first time the rock-hard muscle tone in her back and shoulders. Despite that, she is still a head shorter than him. An image of a diamond breaking a larger rock in half pops into his head.

“Seems accurate,” he muses to himself with a chuckle. Looking over her, he calls out, “Adele!” At least they know how to get each other’s attention. As she comes jogging back to him, he points up at the barrier above them, then himself, then puts up four fingers. It takes some minutes of finagling, but she manages to understand he is trying to tell her this is the fourth barrier he has seen.

He points up at the barrier again and then at her, then shrugs his shoulders in a questioning way. She looks up at an angle from Craig in thought, silently mumbling her own language to herself and counting on her fingers. For a moment, Craig thinks she is recounting the last hundred years of her life, for how long it takes her to come up with an answer.

With one hand, she holds up “1,” and then “5” shortly after with the other hand. From Craig‘s point of view, the one is on the left, and five on the right. One five.

At least their number systems seem to be the same.

He shouts, “Fifteen?” as Adele puts up her hands to make him keep his noise down. He quickly realizes how loud he was and looks around cautiously, but still felt a deserved thwack on the back of the head from Adele. To him it is now no wonder she is so strong compared to him.

His own strength has increased during his time spent in the city, far beyond human limits as he understood them. He has long since figured he would improve without end. Back when he started out, he could barely run far enough from a machine to escape, let alone outrun one or keep pace with it for what felt like days as he has done recently. Thinking of the weight of the weapon that Adele owns, he suspects he never would have been able to budge it when he first woke up.

As he thinks this over, Adele grabs his arm—he would have reflexively jerked away if her grip were not so strong—and drags him over to the wall of a nearby building. Before he can say anything she puts a finger to her lips to silence him, her eyes wide and alert. She points around the corner and begins crawling towards it. With a bit of squinting through the haze, he sees the faded silhouette of a machine, already feeling the scent of oil and grime creep into his nostrils.

On five spindly legs composed of sharpened metal girders and ball-socket joints, it trudges across the landscape at ten times their height, each step jostling an entire being. The main body, a ragged mess of cables, pipes, loose bolts, and a broken carapace, carries a long and animalistic ceramic skull on its armored shoulders for a head. It turns from side to side, scanning everything around it with eyes of light.

A Wolf with surveillance components, and a shriek loud enough to draw every machine for miles.

They settle themselves up against the wall and wait for it to pass. In their silence they refuse to let even their breath make a sound, drawing in only the necessary amount of oxygen. Their hearts beat in tandem with the lurching steps of the Wolf as it slowly disappears into the haze, the light from its eyes cutting through the fog and revealing all before it.

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A/N: A chapter of interaction and moving right along. More to come soon.

Comments and constructive criticism are both much appreciated!