Flick and Sam took no liberties in wasting time, both of them saddling the geo bike with a nervous determination to complete their personal mission. Neither of them knew how to pilot a vehicle like this and even if they did, they didn’t have the time to teach the other all the ins and outs. If they were going to do this, they would have to do it blind.

  In spite of his longing desire to drive a geo bike, one that had plagued him for months on end, the urgency of the situation made his hands tremble with fear. Now that the beast was only a hairs length away from his touch, Flick found himself scared to wrestle it under control. He didn’t know how to ride, but he did know the process to start it, which was arguably the most terrifying part of all. In order to wake the geo bike, he would have to place his hand on the smoothened metal circlet in the centre between his legs, the only part of the bike that wasn’t distinctly vascular looking on the surface. He knew exactly what placing his hand there would entail, and how he would have to keep it in place for as long as possible for the bike to operate at maximum capacity. Flick suddenly remembered all the wincing faces of his coworkers, nurturing their hands in pain.

  Knowing all of this, it wasn’t any surprise that his hands were shaking as violently as they were. But he had to do this, there wasn’t any time left to spare on fear or self-pity.

  With a deep breath he slammed his hand onto the engine’s start mechanism.

  It sank, instantly, shifting beneath the circlet and into the guts of the bike itself. There was no resistance on entry, it literally gave way to his hand as if it was fine metallic sand. Once he delved deeper into the beast, he could feel the gears and metal tightening around his forearm, pulling at his torso for him to push further. As much as he wanted to leave, he had to press on and find what he was looking for, the thing he heard lied in the centre of the bike.

  Eventually, around elbow deep, his fingers stumbled upon a hand-sized ring and curled around it as quick as possible.

  Now came the difficult part.

  Once Flick turned the handle anticlockwise, the pipes surrounding it began to glow with heat that radiated through the whole creature, this was where the waiting began. He had to sit through the mounting, burning energy, slowly rising in ferocity until it was ready to kick-start the bike at max speed from the get-go. Flick could’ve started the bike immediately and slowly gain speed, but if they was to make it to the ruins in under an hours’ time he knew this was the best way to do it.

  Flicks hands felt unharmed, something he very much expected, the gloves on their own could withstand heat strong enough to melt through steel. His arms, however, were getting increasingly hotter to the point where he could see steam emanating off of his jacket’s sleeve. He could feel the fabric on the inside of his sleeve melting, lacing itself over his skin. Flick grit his teeth and tried to ignore the pain.

  Once the bike had reached its peak, his blood was almost scorching in their veins. Any more than this and he risked losing his skin, if not his whole arm entirely, if there was any moment to start the bike it would have to be now. And so, with his mind set on controlling the monster that was lying in between his fingers, he yanked his whole arm back out with the handle firmly gripped in his palm.

  Like a chainsaw revved, the bike exploded into life and roared a deafening siren of convection currents and heat. The bike heaved snow inside of its pipes faster than Flick had ever seen, with an intensity that made them glow like beams of light, tracing themselves into a mobius strip. Flick and Sam launched up the mountain of snow that encased the pillar and out onto the open plains of barren earth, all at the whims of the bikes power.

  At first, Flick could barely control it’s ferocity, struggling to force its front down onto the ground so as not to fling them both off. With every laboured attempt to overpower the bike it would wobble and shake, and whenever Flick let the thing do what it wanted he could feel it veering off course massively. But once they managed to get on a straightaway of snow and ice he was surprisingly good at staying steady, at least to a degree. Whether it was his impeccable balance or his reflexes he couldn’t quite tell, but whatever it was Flick was forever indebted to it. In only a matter of minutes the two of them were well on their way to the ruins.

  Sam on the other hand, had barely noticed a thing, entirely focused on welding together the parts for a somewhat functional weapon. The cutter she had been given was modified, courtesy of her own ingenuity, with a small lens focusing the heat into one, fine beam. Using Flick as a shield from the sprays of ice that occasionally kicked up like tiny frozen daggers, she fervently mashed metal into metal. It didn’t take long for the frame of the gun to take form, a spindly skeleton of screws and bolts.

  Sam was well versed in metalwork, and essentially all things engineering, her time putting together the Pillar felt no sooner than yesterday to her fresh thawed brain. Although despite this, she still wasn’t perfect and was distinctly more used to doing work in her head than with her hands.

  The bike jolted suddenly and sent something soaring past her, something she desperately needed.

  A compressed oxygen canister.

  It was the only thing that could possibly replace gunpowder, especially under such time sensitive circumstances, and now it was quickly flying away from them.

  It went by so quickly that she didn’t even realise what had happened until it was well beyond her vision. A part of her sank, there was no chance she could get it back, even if Flick stopped the bike there was no guarantee that they could find it in the snow.

  However, she felt something strange in the palm of her hand, something familiar that was nestled firmly into her as if stuck there with glue. Mixed in with the other parts in her lap, an oxygen canister almost identical to the one she saw fly past just seconds ago.

  Did I…? she thought to herself,

  Did I imagine that?

  She was startled when the bike jumped, it was entirely possible the part hadn’t left her lap at all.

  Sam’s head ached again, a pulsing dull pain that felt like her brain was clamping in on itself. She resisted the urge to claw at it from where she sat, scared that it would distract Flick or worse, scatter the parts she still had. Regardless of whether her vision before was just a fear induced lapse in concentration, or that she had simply miscounted her pieces and had more than she originally thought, Sam didn’t have time to linger on strange curiosities.

  Eventually through some difficulty, she managed to slot the oxygen canister inside and seal it shut with fused metal. The gun was complete. Just as she finished her creation the bike began to slow down, the looming dead ruins had finally revealed themselves while she was working, and Flick was preparing himself for the hunt ahead.

  They hovered into a nearby corner, where large spikes of building debris met the broken-down remnants of a brick wall, a tiny shelter in an otherwise vast open space. As the two of them disembarked, shuffling through the ice as noiselessly as they could, It was hard to believe that at some point these artifacts were considered skyscrapers. That at one time they were the epicentre of human life.

  Some of the buildings had only their blank roofs peaking out of the ground, whilst others managed only to stretch up a necks worth of length before stopping, dead. Lightbulbs inside were black with the sky that surrounded them, and the windows and doors had nothing to keep in, or out, any more. There was an understanding, a quiet whisper in the backs of their minds, that this sight wasn’t intended. Even to Flick, who had only seen of the large cities of old in movies, there was a stifling sense of dread. If monuments such as these could decay and wither so easily, the pillars could just as easily fall if the world saw it necessary.

  It was especially hard on Sam. Though her mind raced as she began recognising structures, she tried to force herself not to think about it. There was a chance she used to walk through these streets two thousand years ago, met people and made memories in these buildings. Not everyone could escape into the pillars, Sam remembered the screams and beatings at the pillar gates, screams that eventually stopped altogether. Below the ice, beneath their feet, the skeletons of those screaming, beaten people could be huddled together, looking up at her.

  None of that mattered though, she wasn’t thinking about it anyway.

  Flick wasn’t quite sure how well Sam was dealing with the overwhelming situation, but something about the air around her told him she needed help.

  “Hey…” Flick pensively asked, “Are you okay?”

  Sam flinched at his loud voice; the deafening silence of the ruins made anything loud by comparison.

  “… Yeah I’m fine. Don’t worry about it”

  It was hard not to worry, but recognising the urgency of what they needed to do Flick choked back his concern.

  He broke the silence once more, “Let’s start combing through the buildings for any signs of SMILE.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Flick had to make sure she was okay to keep going, he looked at her patiently for a response.

  This time she nodded solemnly.

  Whatever grief filled state she was in Sam seemed to have snapped out of it, at least for now, and followed Flick into the nearest open building. The two went from rubble to rubble, trying to find even the slightest hint of SMILE’s presence, but no matter how many floors they scanned nothing ever revealed itself.

  Flick had even gotten the cutter back from Sam and used it as a torch, a desperate attempt to find something he wasn’t seeing before. But even with the extra light, there was nothing. Time began to move faster, with each building left vacant the seconds and minutes seemed to tick by ever so slightly quicker than usual. Sweat wasn’t visible on the inside of a helmets’ visor, but both of them swore that they could see pools of it forming on each of their glass faces.

  “I’m sure we’ll find something eventually” Flick reassuringly whispered under his breath, “we just haven’t looked hard enough yet!”

  The positivity that exuded off of him did help ease Sam’s nerves just a bit, but she could also sense his growing doubts in the shakiness of his voice. Determined to find SMILE she responded, trying just as hard to be comforting.

  “Yeah I’m sure that’s it! Why don’t we search for something specific instead of what we’re doing right now?”

  Flick admittedly liked this idea, this whole time they hadn’t had a strict guideline for what they were looking for, hoping instead that they’d find clear traces of the gang by chance.

  He thought for a second, then came up with a plan. “Yeah good idea! What about one of the taller buildings then?”

  When he pointed out the broken down skyscraper just out of view he subconsciously recognised what he had done. The taller buildings had more spots to hide in, but also took twice as long to search. With the time running out for the two of them, he figured that searching them now might give better results, if any, but there was something different. He didn’t know why exactly but the image of the giant buildings, crumbling under gravity, filled him with an unknown dread, and based off of Sam’s strange reaction to the idea it was clear she felt the same way. Whatever it was, something made them overlook the tall ones, something the two of them only just now noticed. However, with Flick pointing to them, there was no way to ignore them any longer, the giant monoliths of the past had to be explored.

  Once they got closer it was clear what was making them so nervous, as flakes of concrete and chunks of copper wiring fell from just quick glances. The whole building was falling apart at the seams, the fact that it was as tall as it still was seemed to be nothing short of a miracle.

  Flick gulped as he looked back at the smaller, safer spaces still available to explore. It was dawning on him that every ruin here might’ve been the same height, or at least similar, to the one in front of them, that each of them fell at some point. A single bump into a lode bearing wall in this mammoth wreck would cause the whole place to collapse, he was sure of it, like a grey tree with shoddy glass leaves.

  This was the only place they could go though, SMILE had to be here, if anywhere.

  With bated breath they both stepped into its decomposing carcass. The inside was just as decrepit as they thought it would be, chunks of wall completely missing, holding up the ceiling by invisible hands. Wires hung like vines from trees, and Sam found herself jumping each time one would brush past her shoulder, as if it was a snake or tongue. By the time the two had clambered halfway up the ruin they had completely forgot what it was they were searching for. The simple fear of such a vulnerable and uncharted space was enough to overwhelm them entirely.

  It was only when they remembered their purpose that they found themselves surrounded by footprints. Footprints that were definitely not their own.

  “Flick?” Sam whispered,

  “Yeah,” Flick replied, carefully, “I see them,”

  “Do you think…?”

  “Maybe,” His heart pounded in his chest, “Could be a scout groups, it’s hard to tell,”

  Sam bent closer to the snow and scanned the indents for any sign of how new they were. She compared them to their own and found them to just as clean, which only meant they walked through recently.

  “I don’t think so,” she eventually began again, “They’re too clean. If these were older, even by a day, don’t you think they’d have stuff in them? Like chips off the wall or ceiling?”

  She was right, or at least Flick thought so. It was the first time he had seen anything like this, some sort of evidence that SMILE had been here, and couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and his mind raced with all the possibilities.

  He nodded to his friend for them to keep going, if the footprints were fresh like she said then even more evidence was sure to be nearby.

  Eventually they reached the far end of the building, faced with a dingy stairwell. Due to the state of the building in most of the rooms the walls were almost entirely gone, with only tiny strings of concrete connecting floors to ceilings. This particular stairwell was no different, the walls behind and around the steps had vanished with time, leaving only a cold black void to keep them secure.

  Flick and Sam looked at each other.

  Do we keep going?

  This thought permeated their minds. Footsteps weren’t definite proof after all, there was no wind on the surface so it’s not like footsteps could be erased by time like they normally would, their cleanliness easily described as chance. Flick thought to himself deeply, about the risks of climbing up further. The walls of the stairwell were gone, how secure could this place really be? Footprints weren’t enough of a reason, a good clue for sure but not worth killing themselves over by toppling the place under their weight. Even still, the urge to climb called to Flick, beckoning him to do it anyway.

  During this intense moment of silent debate, Sam stumbled upon a sheet of rusted metal that rested against the side of the stairs.

  “Uhhh… Flick?” she cautiously called her partner over “What is this?”

  Flick raised a brow, “…Metal?”

  “Yeah I know its metal dummy,” she sighed at Flick’s incompetence, “I meant what is this?”

  She rubbed her finger along the rusted surface of the plate.

  “See?” Sam continued, “Its rust, how can this be rusted when its essentially a void out here?”

  “uh…” Flick clearly found the rust a little strange too, but couldn’t articulate why, “I… don’t know? I mean I know things rust with air and stuff but-“

  “Oxygen, it rusts with oxygen and water,” Sam corrected “It’s just weird that something this corroded is here of all places… and here, look at this too!”

  Flick looked closer to where she was pointing, a small patch on the back of the plate with tiny scratches along its surface. There were hundreds of little symbols, each formed out of the etchings seemingly by random. But as the two of them looked closer there was one symbol amongst the many that stood out to them the most, a smiling face buried behind crowds of drawings.

  Flick froze for a second before excitedly speaking to Sam “This is a sign right?! doesn’t that mean…”

  “…That this is some place important for SMILE,” She cut him off, looking up the stairwell.

  Flick silently nodded, knowing exactly what Sam intended to do.

  Somehow the steps were pristine, as if the march of time hadn’t ravaged their appearance like the walls that surrounded them. The unending silence that filtered through the air along with the uncanny appearance of the stairwell only added to Sam and Flick’s growing unease. This feeling built further the more they climbed, with every corner they turned and step they dusted past, a sense of dread began to line their throats.

  None of them knew what lied ahead, just outside of their peripherals, sets of matte black curtains they had to swiftly pass in order to ascend. It coated their brains with a corrosive fear, that singed their every nerve and thought. After the third or fourth corner turned, they both stopped dead in their tracks.

  The room that splayed before them here was incredibly open, most of its floor was missing and only connected by loose chipboard planks haphazardly placed here and there, as makeshift bridges. This alone was proof enough that someone had been here before, as many times to warrant bridges being made, but something else drew the two closer inside.

  A light. Shining on the very back chunk of concrete floor that still somehow remained. The two looked at each other, and with their lungs still tense from fright, continued to investigate.

  “Holy shit Sam, are you seeing this?!” He skipped towards the fixture, almost causing a plank of wood to collapse below him, “They were here! SMILE was definitely here!”

  Sam was too shocked for words. Everything caught her attention, especially the equipment left behind. From oxygen canisters to carbon fuel rods, they were all laid out on cabinets and piles of rubble. Papers too, stuffed into any open space they could fit in. If any of them had even a trace of involvement from SMILE, it would be more than enough to hand into authorities.

  This room could be the thing that puts them away, the ones who woke her up with no way of returning to sleep.

  As she looked around the room one object caught her attention more than most. A small, yellow orb that bobbed in the darkness, like a ceiling light hung a tad too low to the ground.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Flick grinned beneath his glowing mask, “Okay, with this we definitely have enough evidence to investigate further” he turned back to face Sam “Don’t you think tha-“

  Just as he turned his face to meet hers, a small man stepped out of the shadows from where Sam was looking, a yellow mask dwarfing his body.

  “SAM!” Flick yelled as best as he could.

  The figure rushed at her and drew a steel spike from somewhere on his back.

  He stabbed at her wildly, contorting his body with inhuman reach. Sam sucked her torso inwards, narrowly avoiding what would otherwise be a fatal blow, and stumbled back. She expected the small figure to retreat, or pause for breath, but instead he lunged again like a man possessed. She twisted to his side and pushed at his undefended body, sending it tumbling into what remained of a wall nearby.

  She never used to tremble at conflict before but suddenly found herself unable to stay composed. It was only for a second, a fraction of that even, yet she was left breathless and shaking. Sam couldn’t believe someone had just tried to kill her so effortlessly.

  It didn’t take long for the small man to regain his footing, but instead of charging back towards her again he simply stood completely still. Sam could feel his eyes, shielded by the black outline of a smile, piercing through her. Sizing her up.

  She was afraid, and she knew that whoever was attacking her was starting to realise it too. The fear made her angry, the helplessness she felt was nothing like she could remember and she cursed herself for even being capable of it.

  Just then, she remembered something.

  Sam reached into her jacket pocket and swiftly pointed the barrel of her gun at the man. He froze in place at the sight of it.

  Sam smiled, and pulled the trigger.

  There was no flash, just an explosion of compressed air and in an instant his head flung backwards, with a scarily sharp noise of metal grinding on metal. The gun shattered the moment the trigger was pulled, but it didn’t matter. She could tell that the bullet had connected and something deep inside her finally became calm.

  Flick too was completely still. He had only seen guns in diagrams and comics, he never expected them to be this loud and... effective. In his mind he had just witnessed what he believed to be one of the most dangerous examples of human ingenuity, and more importantly the taking of another man’s life.

  That was until the masked spearman lurched his head back forwards slowly, the bullet lodged neatly into the surface of his stained mask. It hadn’t made contact with his skin.

  Sam wasn’t usually one to be consumed by the irrational, her observant nature made it hard not to deconstruct any situation that most would consider supernatural. However, even if it was for just a moment, seeing the man she just shot gaze at her as though nothing had happened made her whole being tremble, much worse than her shivers before.

  “H…” she whispered with a shaky lip, “How did you…?”

  Flick on the other hand had the opposite reaction. Seeing the man shrug off what would normally be a sure-fire way to die gave Flick a spur of adrenaline, unlike nothing else he’d ever experienced before. It was a moment of calm before action, any second now the attacker would lunge before Sam again, Flick could see it so clearly.

  He traversed the fragile planks as nimble as he could and placed himself between Sam and the attacker.

  Instinctively he pulled out his fusion cutter, holding it out in front of him ready to turn it on at a moment’s notice. He knew more than anyone else that a fusion cutter could do some serious damage to flesh and bone, and was ready to demonstrate it if the situation called for it. Seeing this snapped Sam out of her fear, reinvigorating her to fight back. She combed the floor for a chunk of scrap metal from the gun that she could use as a weapon, and settled on a sharpened piece of the barrel just next to her foot.

  The SMILE member started to gain momentum, at first simply shuffling towards them but soon, once he was close enough, he broke out into a mad dash. Flick was about to retaliate, his thumb turning the cutter up to the highest setting it could go to, until he noticed something.

  A small shuffling noise behind him, something almost entirely masked by the attackers heavy footsteps in front. Flick figured it was just Sam stumbling in place, but his instinct told him to turn around to check, just in case.

  Another yellow figure slowly stepped out of shadowed hallway, just in time for Flick to catch a glimpse of their yellow helmet. He span around in place, hoping that whoever was sneaking up on them would wait to attack just a second longer. But before he could do anything the figure already had their hands raised far above their head. There was something in the persons hands, a weapon with weight to it that hefted through air slowly. Flick noticed the figures shadowy finger squeeze something on the handle.

  An engine blade’s roar echoed around the room.

  It was instant. The new attacker swung down with all of their might, cleaving straight through Sam’s back. Tattered pieces of her jacket fluttered around the room. She was speechless.

  Before Flick could even react, the spearman charging at him had finally got within striking distance and thrusted his spear as hard as possible. Flick had no choice but to dodge, forgetting that Sam was only a few feet behind him. The tip scraped by Flick and flew back into his friend.

  The piece of metal lodged itself deep inside of her abdomen sending her stumbling backwards. Her hands hovered over the spear, poking at it gently as if it wasn’t there. She felt weak and cold. Her legs gave way and stumbled some more until her foot slipped through a gap in the concrete floor. In one moment Flick saw her, standing there half-dead, and in the next she had vanished into the floors below.

  Flick couldn’t tell how far she had fell, but he heard the noise of a body colliding with concrete. It was louder than any engine blade’s humming drone.

  “Why would you…” he spoke aloud, not realising.

  What followed next was a flurry of attacks one after the other. Punches from the small man, a pugilist without his spear, and fervent swipes from the stocky engine blade wielder. The punches collided with Flicks arms as he brought them up to defend himself, but whenever the sword swung too close to his body he flung himself across the floor to get away from it.

  Despite the engine blade’s owner being quite large for a swordsman he swung it with complete precision, even more than Flick’s previous encounter in the Pillars ventilation. His swings cut through the air like they were laid out by a ruler, even when Flick managed to dodge it only felt like he was moving the way he wanted to.

  After ducking around the room avoiding as many blows as possible Flick managed to centre himself, giving ample distance between him and the SMILE attackers. From where he stood he could finally look down through the numerous cracks in the floor. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find when he did, maybe he simply wanted know if what had to happened to Sam was real. Either way, when he saw her curled up body three or four floors down he felt a sickness that he had never felt before.

  The cuts alone would’ve exposed her body to the void of earths atmosphere, but shattered glass from her helmet smashing against a concrete slab confirmed what he had suspected. Whether it was his hubris or inexperience he didn’t know, all he knew is that he was now confident. He knew that Sam was dead.

  Flick didn’t have the liberty to grieve, right now there was two men staring him down, wanting to send him to the same fate. Their painted smiles mocked his futile efforts of survival, mocked the fact that he even bothered coming here in the first place.

  Flick’s anger grew to a boiling point. He steadied his arm in front of him, releasing a guttural scream as he pulled the handle on his fusion cutter.

  It erupted into a towering flame about three feet tall, crackling and fizzling with carbon fusion energy that Flick had never seen before. The sight was enough the make the two attackers hesitate, mesmerised by the inferno that stretched out before them.

  “WHO ARE YOU?!” Flick yelled, a vain question he didn’t intend to be answered.

  The two charged at him immediately, the desperate cry from their target reminding them that he was only human, despite the fire he held in his hand. The stocky man swung low, intending to cut Flick’s nimble legs from escaping them any further. Flick, instead of simply jumping over the blade, rolled over the large man like a table landing on the other side of him with ease. Without waiting he span his arm around to bring his fusion cutter through the man’s side, but despite more than fast enough the smile member blocked his strike at the hilt before the fire could reach.

  The man swiftly kicked him in the chest to create distance, still wary of the unique weapon in Flick’s hand. But before Flick had the chance to process what had happened, he remembered the man behind him and swiftly turned to face him. Sure enough they were there, running up to him with their arms locked in place. He swung down to cut him through the middle.

  Flick was sure he was fast enough this time, the fusion cutter was essentially weightless, even the fastest fighter wouldn’t be able to escape it from the distance they were in. However, the same thing occurred; the small SMILE member sidestepped his slice instantly reprising with a right hook straight into the visor of Flicks helmet.

  The punch sent him backwards, so far backwards that his foot lodged itself in a crack near the ledge he wasn’t anywhere near just seconds prior. He fell immediately, still dazed from the punch.

  Luckily for Flick he managed to land only a single floor down, however more importantly he had to check the stability of his helmet. The glass wasn’t cracked, somehow, although he could feel that with any more force behind the small man’s punch and his visor would be entirely shattered.

  Even without weapons they could easily kill him. When he came to, the small man stood in front of him but surprisingly the engine blade wielder was nowhere to be seen. Flick came to the conclusion that the man before him jumped down after his target and their partner took the more reasonable option of the stairwell. Sobered up from the punch prior his anger had all but vanished, instead replaced with survival instinct. In his mind a one-on-one scenario was much more favourable to his limited experience, but even still one thing stuck in his mind

  How did they avoid me so efficiently?

  This question bounced in his mind, trying to find a solution to increase his odds of survival by even the tiniest amount. That was when he suddenly realised something about his appearance that differed from his attackers. As the two stood in a stand-off Flick reached behind his mask, clicking a tiny switch out of place.

  His visor’s LED face shut off leaving just a smooth black glass staring back. The brawler before him froze, for just a second.

  They were watching my eyes?

  It finally made sense how they could avoid his attacks so effortlessly, before this his mask was showing them where he was looking, showing them where he was going to attack. Giant glowing eyes pointing directly at where they should dodge. With the handicap turned off, in Flick’s mind he now had the upper hand.

  The two paced around, each unsure of how to approach the other, with the SMILE member’s method of detecting Flick’s intent gone it had finally became a somewhat fair fight. Flick had a weapon, he had none. Shaking out his doubts, the man rushed at Flick. At first he seemed as though he was about to launch a left punch, clean at Flick’s helmet like he did with his right hook before,but in a sudden movement he jerked down to the right, ready to strike him in a sharp, fast uppercut. With Flick’s composure finally returning he saw through the attempt at a faint and moved just an inch back.

  The man’s arm sprung upwards like a piston, scraping by Flick’s jaw and leaving him wide open. Without any hesitation Flick gripped his fusion cutter as hard as he could and sliced at the man diagonally from his left.

  Of course despite how hot a fusion cutter’s beam gets, it could never slice through something traditionally like a sword might, after all it is just plasma. Moving at the speed that Flick swung, the blade of the fusion cutter simply passed straight through the man as though nothing was there. If he wanted to cut through him he would have to move painfully slow, like he was sketching the blow with a fine red ink. However Flick knew this entirely, even though he didn’t cut the man in the traditional sense the heat from the plasma alone was enough to completely scorch his insides in an instant.

  The SMILE member stood still, as though frozen in time. Suddenly he began sputtering, violently shaking as his chest twitched from searing pain. Flick, despite knowing the outcome, didn’t anticipate just how gruesome his attack was. As brown, scorched blood seeped through the man’s ladybird as he wailed in excruciating pain. The shriek lessened as he choked on more and more of his own ichor. Eventually, the screaming stopped altogether. He dropped to snow laden floor, completely still.

  Flick had never witnessed another person dying, and never had intention of seeing such a thing. But what he saw when he cut that man down what he saw was much more than just someone dying. It was the complete massacre of a human being, who died in the worst way imaginable. For a minute or so afterwards Flick couldn’t stop himself from shaking. His stomach was practically trying to turn itself inside out to get him to vomit at the inhuman sight he just watched unfold. Whatever he witnessed just now was not supposed to be seen.

  “ZIPP!” the engine blade wielder’s voice tore through the silence of death, the grief in his voice evident, even to Flick.

  The man brandished his blade once more, jutting it towards Flick as a declaration of revenge. The sword was unusually thin and sported shimmering silver colour that shone like the snow around him. It didn’t look like any other weapon he had seen before, unnaturally clean and pearlescent as if unable to be marred in any real way.

  Despite its colour the blade itself was actually quite ordinary, no pipes or bulky screw-heads or any misshape whatsoever, just a straight smooth sword like any other. One might’ve even seen the thing as a standard weapon in an army, that is if it wasn’t for its strange hilt.

  It had a circular, black hand-guard that wrapped around the handle’s entire circumference, with enough space between it and the handle to fit an entire arm. The closest thing Flick could compare it to in appearance was a sword stuck inside of a ring.

  Surprisingly enough in contrast to the blade Flick had seen before the handle had little to no mechanical components jutting out of it too. Instead, the handle was smooth, with only a few buttons running along it. As Flick stared it at its shape trying to gauge its abilities, he noticed the large rings gap around its edge as if something was supposed to move around it.

  In a fit of rage the new assailant pushed the button on his blade’s hilt, and marched towards Flick with a fervent determination. At first nothing happened, only a whirr and click seemingly coming from within the weapon, however suddenly Flick saw what the button was truly meant for.

  The bladed part of the sword started to move around the ring/hand-guard, as if it was being pulled on a track, and in time his sword became a buzz-saw with his hand as its bore.

  The sight of metal spinning at such high speeds made Flick shudder and cling to his weapon a little harder, that is, until he realised the fatal flaw with using his fusion cutter in combat. Flick could not block.

  His weapon being made of energy meant that it couldn’t collide with anything, let alone block something moving at as high of a speed as that. What made matters worse for him was that the fusion cutters fire looked a lot more anaemic than before, in fact it’s flame had almost completely vanished leaving only a small flickering candlelight in its stead.

  He panicked, the man was gaining distance on him and the speed of his sword only seemed to get faster with each passing second. Without a weapon he was doomed, and his cutter was the only thing on hand that he could use in the first place.

  Flick thought of a solution, one he was dying to test out ever since he used a fusion cutter for the first time on the job. Calming his nerves for the final time, he dashed towards his attacker, a move that caught the SMILE member off guard. In an instant the man began to, like a switch blade, twirland flip his engine blade around his whole torso. It was miraculous how the blade never cut him, like a master of swordsmanship the weapon seemed to glide from hand to hand, spinning all around him.

  With the sword detached from the security of its hilt, it flew around the handle at breakneck speeds, the man’s appearance went from a somewhat stocky square of a person to a whirlwind of movement and metal. As Flick got within distance the man stopped his flourish, and swung his weapon directly at where his targets torso would be. This move would’ve caught an advancing adversary cleanly in the chest, ending their lives instantly, but Flick dropped to his knees the second the blade looked as though it would connect.

  Flick wasn’t advancing towards the man at all. He pulled the thumb ring of his fusion cutter andthe bottom mechanically opened itself up, like the maw of a snake. The second his knees touched the icy ground He skidded cleanly underneath the blade, barely missing its razor-sharp edge, and slid past the man’s legs. As he did so he scraped his fusion cutter into the sparse patch of snow that laid dusting the ground beneath him, and pressed his thumb ring back into its natural position. The device snapped shut, consuming the snow inside, and without hesitation Flick revved the handle on the cutter one last time.

  Just as he had hoped, the towering flame returned in all of its glory, ready to tear through next victim. He had always thought the carbon snow could be used as straight fuel in contrast to the compressed carbon fuel rods. And in this moment he blessed his own intuition for guessing correctly.

  Although the fusion cutter was back in its towering glory the SMILE attacker didn’t flinch, he simply twisted his torso around to meet flick and brought his whirring sword down onto him.

  The man knew well that giving Flick even a second to act would mean his death, a single touch from a flame that intense would be fatal. Flick couldn’t block, as long as he continued his assault then eventually his target would tire and dodge ineffectively. Flick too remembered that he couldn’t block but instead of dodging, as the man assumed, he charged back bringing his fusion cutter up to meet his engine blade.

  Despite the man’s clear superiority combat, his lack of foresight caused him to make a fatal error in this battle. Yes, Flick couldn’t block any attack with his fusion cutter, he was all but useless in defence. However, he didn’t take into account what that fact actually meant.

  Flick’s weapon, a pure blade of superheated flame, couldn’t be blocked either. Flick swung his fusion cutter clean through the careening engine blade, passing straight through it as though it wasn’t even there. A parry that could’ve only been achieved by his ghostly burning sword.

  The plasma blade sliced straight through his skull. He didn’t even have the opportunity to speak before collapsing entirely, smoke and embers leaking from the pores in his face.

  Flick stood breathless before the two people he murdered, his hands still shaking violently from what he had done. It was only after a minute or two when he realised he had a time limit. Overexerting his body in the way he did almost definitely took a toll on his oxygen supply, any time he once had was shortened by at least twenty minutes. And despite how desperately he wanted to bring Sam’s body back to the pillar, he simply couldn’t without dying himself.

  “I’m…” he whispered, hoping Sam could hear him somehow, “I’m sorry”

  He sprinted as fast he possibly could back to the geo bike, his mind replaying the memory of the past hour over and over again as if it was a dream. But no matter how hard his brain tried to numb what had happened, Flick knew that it was all real.

  The trip back to the pillar was a blur, tears mixed with sweat and pulsing bruises made his sense of time completely irreparable. All he knew, was at one moment he at the rubble and the next he was making his way back up the elevator to the factory district in silence.

  He stood in the locker room in complete shock for what felt like hours. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about what had happened, even now that he was in the comfort of the pillar, thinking about what had happened to Sam. After a while he determined the best course of action was to tell Simon as soon as he could. He kept his hands in his pockets, and his head down further than it normally would be. There was a chance someone knew that he left, and they knew that then they’d also know that he left someone for dead.

  The whole way back to Miss Witcherton’s school he never looked anyone in the eyes, and whenever he sensed someone else’s looking at him he forced his legs to move a little faster. He exploded into the room that Simon was staying in and saw him hunched over his desk. When he entered, Simon immediately shot up from his notes and began asking questions.

  “Oh good, Flick,” he started, twisting out a knot in his shoulder from writing, “I need to ask you something. Do you know where Sam is?”

  Flick could barely contain his fear.

  “Sa-,” he couldn’t say her name, not after how he abandoned her, “Sh-she.. I didn’t mean… Fuck man!”

  Flick fell to the floor and wrapped his own body as best he could.Noticing Simon’s growing concern he tried to muster his little remaining nerves.

  Taking a deep breath he continued, “Okay... We tried to find SMILE, right? But then they found us… and then one of them was behind and I didn’t see it in time, and I fucking jumped out of the way like an idiot an-“

  “Flick, calm down man. What happened to Sam?”

  “She’s dead Simon!”

  “Are you sure?” Simon edged closer to Flick

  He tried to calm himself down more, shaking as he spoke, “Yes… Jesus man, her helmet broke and everything!”

  “Oh thank Gaia,” Simon breathed a relieved breath

  “I know I’m sorry-” Flick paused, unsure of what he had just heard, “Wait… Why would you…?!”

  Simon stood up finally, his expression was unusually serious. Flick had never seen it on Simons face before, nor anyone else’s for that matter.

  “Listen to me Flick, the bomb wasn’t what woke up Sam.”

  “Huh?” Flick replied confused, “how does that?-”

  “It was You fucking about with the lock on the freezer, messed up the program that keeps the founders frozen.” Simon sat back in chair, unconcerned with the words he was saying, “You woke her up too early, man.”

  Flick went eerily quiet, “W-what?”

  “It’s not just that either, the usual re-awakening procedure heats the subject up with minute amounts of radiation see?” He shoved a bundle of papers into Flick’s shaking hands before continuing, “But because of you she got way more radiation than she was supposed to, an amount that would cause a normal person’s DNA to mutate thousands, if not millions of times. Basically its fatal.

  “But if you look here,” Not stopping to let Flick breath he kept shoving more and more notes into Flick’s arms, “...You can see that the cryochambers keep the subject alive regardless of what happens. You could decapitate them in those things and they’d still live until the unfreezing process.

  “Listen, when a person’s DNA mutates it does one of two things, both to do with rapid evolution. It either A; negatively effects the person which causes the body to basically kill itself.” he hesitated for a second before sliding Flick a final piece of paper, printed off of Simons laptop, “… Or B; the mutation assists the body in a positive way, giving the person an extra feature that normal people wouldn’t usually have”

  Flick looked down at the paper before him, millions of lines typed out by codes. Each one beginning with ‘mutation number’. Most of them had no descriptions other than identification, but all of them ended with ‘POSITIVE’

  “Simon, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that because of what happened, what you did, you’ve effectively eliminated option A…”

  Simon turned away from Flick, downing the remainder of his caffeinated drink, “That’s not all of the mutations either Flick, she was mutating, constantly, every second that she was still alive.

  “It’s a good thing she’s dead now man, she might have been a human being before waking up but now?? I don’t think I can even consider her a being in general. If she wasn’t dead she’d probably be the most dangerous living thing on the planet,” he paused for a moment, “Hell maybe even the universe if she was left for long enough,”

  Flick could hardly believe what he was hearing, if Sam hadn’t died back at the skyscraper’s rubble, what would have happened? Despite his intense shivering at taking the lives of two people that night, imagining what could’ve happened gave him a strange existential dread. If Sam did survive back then, how bad would her mutations have gotten.

  It was pointless to think about it for long, her glass was shattered in the fall during the fight, and two stab wounds should’ve been more than enough to end it. Still, Flick harboured a dread that he couldn’t quite shake.