Rings of Rhea - Part 1.5

Interim records corrupted.

Skipping 2 hours, 47 minutes, 4.5443281 seconds

Initializing…

As Adele scans the landscape with a strange pair of binoculars, Craig can do nothing but wait for her hours-long survey to finish. From their vantage point atop a tall building, her gaze edges constantly around at a snail’s pace like a clock hand at half tempo. As of yet, none of the Wolves in the distance have noticed them. When she took the device from her bag, he noticed a plethora of other tools inside: rope, a knife, heavier clothing, her rifle, and some other objects he has never seen before. In his idleness he cannot help but stare at her solid figure as she fulfills whatever duties she deems necessary— duties Craig never thought were possible with his want for equipment.

He wants to know how to survive as well as her, scars and all.

“Craig,” she whispers to him, being sure not to alert any nearby machines.

“What is it?” He remembers she cannot understand him, stands up, and walks over to her. She takes the device from her eyes and offers it to him, a finger pointed to the unseen horizon. After focusing his eyes on the inside of the contraption, he witnesses a large screen, big enough that he has to search around with his eyes to see every corner, revealing an area much further away from their current location as if the fog never existed.

Along the sides of the screen are various moving graphics of information along with graphs, text, charts, and alternate viewing modes. He soon finds that he cannot read any of the information or text for the life of him. Noticing Craig’s jaw has gone slack yet again, Adele lightly taps him in the back of the head with a sigh. Snapping back to attention, he adjusts his eyes over the eye pieces and truly looks at what she was trying to show him.

He sees a stark white tower, still half enveloped in ever more distant haze. Its size is at least a hundred skyscrapers wide at the base and narrowing as it rises, blinking lights highlighting the silhouette. Adele points towards the tower, a little towards the sky, and says something in her language as she takes the binoculars from him and puts them away. Craig has no idea how far away the thing she showed him might be, but in the miles of vision the haze allows them, it was nowhere in sight.

* * *

The further from their meeting place they go, the less frequent the machines are as the height of the surrounding structures becomes ever more archaic. Instead of a steady bob and weave in height throughout the area like before, they find it necessary to weave around clusters that stretch halfway to the barrier above. Craig thinks of entering them to see what they hold inside, but decides against it for for the slight movements that he has been detecting out of the corner of his eye. They are clearly mechanical, but too small to be Snatchers or Wolves, while too large and too few in number to be members of a Swarm. Either way, they are only following them, so he brushes them off as a threat while still paying mind to how far away they keep themselves.

Several buildings have been subject to some explosion or another, revealing the innards of the neighboring twenty or so structures around it as if a chunk had been entirely removed. The buildings reveal their ragged inner support bars around the edges, and a large heap of rock and slabs of concrete rest at the bottom of the massive hole.

Craig sighs with relief when he sees the destruction is not the same as such caused by the guardian. This is raw and natural destruction compared to the debris-free details destroyed by mechanical creatures so much more powerful than he. Adele gives him a questioning look in response to his sigh, but moves along nonetheless without questioning him.

Traversing the around the gaping crater in the landscape, they find a thick concrete wall extending to either side of it. Whatever made the hole clearly destroyed a segment of the wall as well. It is just barely tall enough to halt their progress. There is, however, enough space to walk along the edges of the hole past the barricade. As they proceed, bits of broken supports and slabs of cement slip off and fall into the pile below with each step they take. Some of the fluorescent lights that were broken clean in half from the collapse let out infrequent spark like metal-on-metal collisions. Craig’s bag bounces against the wall as they get by one step at a time. He wonders how Adele, with such a heavy load of equipment, does not simply break the floor on which they are walking.

Off in the distance, from along the length of the massive wall that blocked them before, a soft rumbling emanates. Craig cranes his neck in the direction of the sound, curious as to what could have caused it. Adele does the same, glancing at him as if to make sure that he heard it as well. He points forward along their path with a nod, and proceeds along their narrow walkway. After only a few more steps, another rumble sounds from the same direction. This one is much closer.

A low vibration surges through the walkway as if someone had plucked it like a string. Pieces of the half-destroyed floor fall down and add to the rubble below them as they struggle to keep their footing.

As soon as the shaking ends, the pair glances at each other, wide-eyed, before breaking into runs. Another crash shakes the concrete under their feet, as if converging their location. Craig weaves around the various spikes of metal leftover from support bars that cross his path, Adele having a bit more trouble than he due to her larger bag. The shaking generates cracks in the edges of their once-safe walkway, their footsteps merely adding to the effect as they sprint with all their might towards what they assume to be a safer locale.

Craig looks up to see pillars of dust and debris rise through the haze, like a bomber making a slow and steady run along the length of the wall. The ragged buildings around them begin falling apart from the tremors. A chunk of metal the size of his head clips Craig’s shoulder on its way down, nearly forcing him down if Adele did not grasp his sleeve in time to pull him up.

As Craig begins to lag behind Adele’s surprising speed, a metal rod jutting out of the floor trips him up. He barely manages to stay on the path, rolling roughshod across the walkway and hitting his head against the concrete floor. After several tumbles he stops on his side, struggling to get back up with eyes front towards Adele.

Thanks to a chance glance back, she rushes back to him and grabs his arm to yank him to his feet. His legs can barely keep up as his right-side vision turns red from some untold amount of blood. The next explosion cracks against the sides of their heads like a strike to the eardrums, a wall of sound save for a high hum being drowned out in the process. Despite the steam of his breath and the sweat and blood blocking his vision, he sees Adele for the first time with urgent horror in her eyes.

The explosions behind them increase in frequency as they break past the edge of the hole, careening down a slope of toppled skyscrapers. As they reach a landing point several stories down—with varying degrees of “landing” between them—Craig searches about his vision with his good eye for someplace safe. All over the landscape are buildings far taller than the rest, like trees in a forest. He spots one such structure nearby.

“Adele!” he calls out mid-leap as he points over to the taller building. Already feeling specs of rock and dust from the explosions at their necks, Adele nods her head and follows. Feeling along the concrete and letting his hand skate along it as he passed the side wall, as if to see if it is real, they crouch against each other and wait for the next explosion to arrive.

After covering their ears for what feels like a century, they both jump at one final thunderous sound. It pushes outward waves of dust before the blast jettisons concrete outwards in a spray of chunks, each larger than either Craig or Adele. Wind from some unknown depths in the distance blows clouds of dust and grit past the edges of their barrier, spraying into their eyes and scraping their skin in a sandstorm gust. Several boulder-sized slabs of concrete crash into and around the wall, but it holds fast.

As if nothing had happened at all, silence reigns over the landscape, though it may be due to their ears having been ravaged by the noise. Craig keeps his hands to the sides of his head as he opens his eyes, his right eyelid stuck shut from dusty blood, and tentatively looks around. Adele does the same, pieces of loose stone sliding off of her clothing as she stands up.

A layer of dust settles over the landscape. Chunks of concrete jut out of the surrounding buildings like rocks on a beach, their constitutions continuing to crumble from the newfound weight as the minutes pass. After taking a moment to digest what happened, Craig and Adele slump against the wall and slide to the ground in exhaustion.

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A/N: As always, constructive criticism is much appreciated.