Rain of Fuchsia Ghosts

"Hack the gauntlet!" I shake Jade's wrist. The Avenue des Mille Consensus rushes toward us at two hundred kilometers an hour. The gray concrete slabs await our flesh.

Her fingers cling to the chipped metal of the TEN'KAI-JOKER armor. The wind tears the skin from our cheeks. Below, KARTIKEYA.X's drones deploy a grid of crimson lasers. The trap is set. The General of the Circus connects her tablet. Her biometric uplink grabs onto the street's intranet.

I open the floodgates. I spit my Incoherence into the metropolis's arteries.

The advertising billboards explode. Shop windows twist into funhouse mirrors, vomiting a legion of fluorescent reflections. A hundred holographic WUKONG.0 clones erupt from the facades, snickering in unison, drowned in a tornado of fuchsia confetti that masks the sky. The drone sensors choke. Their processors spin out of control before this riot of absurd clones. The Standardization algorithm stutters.

Each holographic double costs me. The armor demands its tithe.

A fraction of conscience. An ounce of compassion. A sliver of empathy. I distribute my soul to this army of burlesque ghosts to feed the Grand Récit. My chest hollows out, siphoned of its warmth.

We smash through a ventilation grate in a crash of twisted sheet metal. The darkness of the Veins swallows us. End of the fall. We land in a heap of rusted piping. Dust and freezing concrete.

Jade coughs next to me. She wipes a trickle of blood from her chin, her eyes wide with shock. I stare at her.

Why did I grab her during the jump?

The question hits me. Loyalty? Respect? My mind rummages through the void left by the Parade. Nothing. Only a barren abyss remains. I might have executed this rescue solely for the joke. For the irony of the gesture. Above our heads, the boots of the Order trample the tarmac in search of us. How many more pieces of myself will I have to sacrifice to keep the stage?