The Axiom Project | Introduction. (Part 2)
Smog-laced air and the noise of taxi horns filled the space where the windows on floors 7, 8, 9, and 10 used to be.
A small draft from the East River shifted the powdered glass that speckled the floor in some places and completely coated in others. Prints of combat boots filled up the negative space and trail until the shoes had knocked off every bit of glassy sand left.
These floors were all administrative, with the tenth belonging to the chief executive of Enterra Pharmaceuticals, Albert Dwyer. Today, he had a meeting with a prospective partner downtown, but had decided to step in early. Walk the halls, speak to interns, check on morale. It’s earned him sincere respect within his corporation, even if it made him divisive in the larger scope of Big Pharma.
So when it came to the failed trials for their latest contraception drugs making the news, it looked as if there was blood in the water. Dwyer was convinced, with the scientists who labored over these, that one day, there’d be a pass. Maybe. Until then, there was blood in the water. Shareholders were losing faith in his good nature. Women’s activist groups were sending hate mail accusing him of not caring about lives.
Think of your daughters, Dwyer. What would they think if their dad made a drug that could kill them, or their chance at giving birth? He remembered that one letter, scrawled in vicious red script. It jarred him enough that he had to come back to the office, to his corner office overlooking the FDR, with Roosevelt Island peeking up at him from the East River. He had two daughters, 16-year old Genevieve and 14-year old Charlotte. A beeline was made from the limo, through the elevator doors, out through the tenth floor and into his room, with its floor to ceiling glass partitions and solid oak desk with mini-liquor cabinet. He stared out of the windows, just before hearing the piercing shrieks behind him. Only when he turned around did he fully notice the army that had marched on through his offices.
They were all dressed in red, in varying shades of it. All were made taller from boots usually worn by soldiers. And all could be models in one of those magazines that offered him subscriptions. Maxim, GQ, Vogue… that unnerving, unnatural beauty that he saw when he met his wife… except amplified.
And weaponized.
They approached him and his employees without weapons, but with flaming hands and fists. Swirls of energy trickled and weaved through their fingers and wrapped around their forearms. As they marched from the East 43rd Street Side, you could see steam come off their shoes and gravity couldn’t stop their hair from lingering upwards. They were supernatural, and one strayed ahead from her group. Straight to his office door.
— — Shouldn’t we be going faster, Ben? — — VISOR doesn’t get concerned, but he knew all of my habits. I leaned towards the hasty, so flying at a relatively slower speed forced the question out.
“Yeah. But something is off. I would think they’re in attack mode, but from all I see,” through a quick zoom and thermal scan, “it’s almost like a standoff between unarmed employees and the Rouge. Can you intercept their communications.”
— — I can’t. They’re jammed, and if I try to break through, we’ll tip them off. — —
“Slow it is then.” Still no significant movement. “We’re no more than a couple of minutes out anyway.”
Her eyes were made of storm clouds, and the closer she got to Dwyer’s door, the more he could see the red ring around the irises, with lightning-bolt lines trickling into the grey. She stalked him patiently, and he backed further into the glass corner facing the FDR.
Her hands were smooth, but you could tell they were strong? Dwyer could. The fingers were tipped with black nail polish, glossed and reflective of the swirls of scarlet energy that coated the air around her hands and forearms. Translucent enough to reveal the hands, the veins and muscles that were visible through the skin. Opaque enough to look like a tangible, physical extension of her body.
She reached inside her field jacket and pulled out a black device that resembled a scarab. A black chunk of hair — most of it was shoulder-length, smoother than obsidian, and straighter than a harp’s cords. She reveled in the scarab’s beauty as though beauty was her THC, then placed it on one of the doors to Dwyer’s office. She gave a slight touch to the center of the beetle. Its six legs dug themselves so slightly into the pane and its belly glowed ruby.
Dwyer was now more or less pinned to the door, a photo frame clutched against his chest. His two princesses and the love of his life for over 20 years at Genevieve’s Sweet 16 in January. Charlotte had brown hair, just like her mother, with wisps of blonde floating through the strands. Genevieve was a spitting image of him, with darker, almost black hair and eyes that leaned towards a crystal grey. Her smile was immaculate, but somehow, this girl’s smile was even more perfect. And her eyes, even darker, had an overwhelming brilliance to it. This was still Genevieve, but at the same time, she was equal parts more of her and none of her at all.
But her voice kept the same timbre, the same sweet tones as it always had.
“Genny.”
That smile grew broader, and the shivers down his back rippled with the force of a tsunami. “Think of your daughters, Daddy.”
The scarab’s glowing stomach pulsated quicker. And quicker. Then, it stopped.
The glass in front of Dwyer caved in, as a sheet of ice would when falling straight into water. The windows he had leaned on dissipated into the air.
I plummeted. There was no choice really — I’d seen a set of windows drop, or disintegrate — whatever it was, they disappeared and a body dropped straight into the void. And I dropped with it.
I learned that there’s a technique to catching falling civilians. Learned it from some comic book argument about some webslinging vigilante trying to save his falling girlfriend. There was no way to; not from his super sticky web or freefalling to catch her before she hit the ground. Physics. From that one issue, I learned crucial lessons:
One, don’t intercept them too fast. I’d more or less caught up with him, but unless I slowed down from my 130 mph streak down the East River, I’d literally snap his body in half. So I halted myself enough midair and dropped with him.
Two: proximity to the ground matters. He and I were now, what, less than five stories from the FDR drive. VISOR flashed me the unfriendly reminder:
— — Exiting Safe Rescue Altitude! You need to pull out of your dive now! — —
Thanks, VISOR. I grabbed him immediately, and the suit secured him and attached him to me in an electrostatic capsule around the two of us to lessen drag. Three stories now. The ground was coming up faster.
Two stories. No traffic below, but cars were speeding downtown. “Let’s go, VISOR.”
— — Auto-Pilot Activated. — —
My wings unsheathed. Arms reached for the ground, palms wide open. Gauntlets slid over them and cannons activated. The SUV barrelling in the lane I was crashing into swerved to the right. Or left. Perception’s hard to grasp when you’re upside down.
Just then, a pulse of light shot from my cannons. The force rippled against the ground and backflipped us in midair. Feet above the ground now, and my wings now lit up. We found ourselves hovering, and my eyes were lined up with the sign at the overpass 10 feet away from us. “8’ 4” Clearance.”
I heard coughing. Dwyer turned his head away from my suit’s suitplate and upchucked onto the middle lane of the highway. I held onto him with one arm and patted his back with the other.
“Thank you,” he mustered his words weakly. “And also… thank you.”
We went from a hover to a slow ascent. “You are very welcome. I definitely got my cardio in today.” He chuckled just as an incoming call appeared on my screen.
— — INCOMING CALL | Stunts — —
“Put him on.” I heard someone clearing their throat in dead silence. “Stunts?”
A clear voice, devoid of accent answered. “You good over there? I can come collect the man on your waist.” I swiveled around and found a graphite-colored aircraft staring at us from above the water. Its nose and underbelly were red, and even as it stayed stationary, there was something menacing about it. It looked nothing like any fighter plane. Sure as hell wasn’t American. Wasn’t even of this planet. But it definitely was familiar.
“That you?” The ship somehow tilted itself upward slightly as if to nod. It made its way to me, and I cruised over to meet it. It was about fifty feet long and another sixty from wingtip to wingtip. I floated below the undercarraige and made it to the rear, where a loading bay was opening up. VISOR was syncing information with it.
— — SCX loading bay open. Stunts will be greeting you in a second. — — I dropped into the loading bay, Dwyer’s feet and mine lightly making contact with it. The electrostatic bubble that held him up finally deactivated. He fell to his knees and clutched his throat and stomach.
“I got it from here.” Stunts walked up to me, smoothly, the face of his helmet marked with the same red shield crest as his warship. “You good?”
“Yeah.” I gave my helmet a couple of taps, then let my wings ignite again. “Gotta clean house.”
“Cool.”
I fell backwards from the SCX’s deck, into open air, and jetted back to the building.
— — I’ve got a read on 30 Rouge agents towards the back of the 10th floor. — —
That’s it? An affirmative chirp echoed in my ears. Cool. I swooped low to the ground, right above the cluster of cruisers assembled in front of the building, then shot straight up, landing in an awkward three-point stance on the powdered glass and debris salad collecting on the 10th. Computers were crushed, office chairs ethered and crumpled. About 300 employees were held together, menaced and circled by an army of thirty. I couldn’t make out any weapons, but the Rouge never really needed any.
An agent, with a halo of an afro behind her chocolate mousse complexion, noticed me first. I noticed her fingers, each tip igniting like a match in slow motion. Soon, her whole hand and forearm were engulfed in this raw, crimson energy.
A red circle formed around her irises, and leaked to taint the light brown, down to her pupils. The heads of her teammates turned to face me, in the fucking creepiest act of choreography I’d ever seen.
“You don’t belong here, Hero.” You could hear every muscle fiber clench up when she balled up her fists.
I stood up straight, cannons reverting back into gauntlets, exposing glowing, charged-up fists of my own.
“Funny. If I remember right, you’re the ones who broke in. I’m just here to kick your asses out.”
