Riven (Mirus 2)

The first rumble was like distant thunder. Seconds later, the shockwaves sent Ian to his knees. Auggie lurched into the column. The hostages screamed. Everyone in the room stopped for a long moment as more explosions sounded and the building continued to shake.

For an endless moment, Ian was lost to the past, the building coming down around him, his body shrieking in agony as tons of concrete became a temporary tomb and silenced the screams of the innocent. A second explosion ripped through his memory, snapping him back to the present, back to reality.

It was happening.

The charges were going off.

Marley was still alive. Relief was stronger than the next shockwave that rocked the building and cleared his mind. He had to retake control of this illusion. Ian surged to his feet as the floor shook. “Go! Go now!” he shouted to Auggie.

The other man dove into the fray as Ian sent a spray of bullets into the cluster of Underground soldiers behind the hostages.

In his mind, Ian began to reconnect to all the constructs, feeling their panic. He sent the additional members of the Underground he’d fabricated running for the stairs, abandoning their post. Auggie snagged an assault rifle off one of the bodies and hot-footed toward the hostages like a fullback on the football field as he shouted orders at the rest of the squad. The floor bucked beneath them like a live thing. Debris fell from the ceiling. The concrete pillars cracked, chunks crashing to the floor. An urban wa

r zone.

The hostages might have been fake, but the danger was real enough as Ian fought his way toward the others. He worked with them, falling into the rhythm of a team one last time, as they worked to free the illusory people from the ropes, the bombs. The fake detonator had gone down the elevator shaft with Harm, so they were able to cut the ropes, remove the very real explosives without problem.

“To the roof!” he shouted.

He brought up the rear as the rest of the team shepherded the hostages up the shaking stairwell.

“No good!” shouted one of the Walkers. “Door’s jammed.”

“We’ll backtrack to the next floor, try to get a line across to the next building,” said Auggie. “It’s lower than this one.”

Another explosion went off. Their crew reversed, bursting out onto the next floor, another of the thermite-laced levels. The building listed to one side now. Ian was slowing, fumbling and exhausted, his leg aching, and an assortment of fresh injuries wailing in protest as he followed the group to the opposite side of the floor. Someone shot out one of the wide picture windows. The sound of shattering glass was lost in the rumble of chaos below.

A second Walker shot a grappling hook at the neighboring building. The hook caught, held. They tied off the line and began sending people across. Walker. Hostage. Hostage. Walker. Hostage. Hostage. Walker. Hostage.

On the last hostage, the building shuddered and the line broke. The man swung down, down, slamming into the opposite building, but hanging on as the other Walkers pulled him up. Ian could see the hostages hoofing it toward the emergency stairwell on the other roof. In his mind, as soon as they hit the lower floors, out of the sight and sound of the squad, they would fade, the illusion having done its job.

A rumble and a shriek heralded the lower level supports truly giving way. In the distance, he could hear sirens wailing. The building trembled, a colossus about to crash like a slain giant. They had less than a minute while the sequential explosions traveled up to these final floors.

“Time to dematerialize, man.” Auggie sliced the anchor cuff Ian had forgotten about off his wrist. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

“No, you won’t,” he said, strangely calm as he released the last shred of illusion.

Auggie’s jaw firmed. “If you run now, we’ll just have to come after you again.”

“I’m not running. I’m burned out. Can’t dematerialize.” It was nothing more than the truth. Maintaining an illusion on this scale for this long had burned through his stores of energy. He’d been wrong, and he was far beyond fumes at this point. Marley wasn’t a permanent battery when out of range after all.

Auggie looked around, clearly trying to formulate another plan. “Maybe we can—”

Ian cut him off.

“Go. We did here what we couldn’t do before. Let me have that, let this atone for my sins. We both know this should’ve been my fate a year ago.”

Auggie hesitated, compassion and respect coloring the air around him. He reached forward, clasping Ian’s arm, and clapping him on the back. “It was an honor serving with you.”

“Likewise.”

Auggie climbed up onto the ledge.

“Let your heart be your compass, my brother. It’s wiser than our masters,” said Ian.

With a final look back, Auggie made the leap, sailing across the divide as the thermite on the floor below ignited, blowing out windows. As the floor beneath Ian collapsed and the world became a ball of molten flame, he breathed Marley’s name.

And fell.