The Lighthouse of Ruins

Jolanda strikes the wood. Once. Twice.

The blood-stained leather smacks under her flayed palms, and this dirty noise becomes the backbone of our charge. Six chromed hulls plummet from the grey sky. The drones of Stabilité do not fire right away, gauging our trajectories with their iron logic, trying to classify this bastard rhythm that staggers each of our steps.

They have no file for Marisol's cadence.

I pounce on the first one. My obsidian hand plunges into the white breastplate, piercing the armor before the evaluation of the thermal threat. The alloy drips onto my forearm. Pain nails me to reality, a raw bite, a carnal victory confirming I still inhabit my own skin. I crush the machine. I fold it. The Flamme gnaws at my own tissues while I twist the chassis to forge a base.

A second drone spits a containment net.

I raise my left arm. The mesh liquefies in mid-air, raining in burning drops over my bare shoulders. Lio slams his iron bar against a piece of sheet metal on the ground, adding a metallic crash to the continuous roll of the taut skin.

Boom-tak. Clang.

I grab the third by its frontal optic and weld it to the first. The circuits melt in a kiss of magma. I stack them, twist them, unite them. We build an obscene lighthouse amidst the rubble. A furious pyre of dead technology vomiting thick black smoke toward the clouds, forcing the Mutation to display itself in broad daylight. The air crackles, heavy with this heat that carves the memory of the Oubliés into the retina of a world refusing to see us.

Jolanda stops her beat.

She wipes her cheek with the back of her bloody wrist.

The ember of the steel totem illuminates the face of the infant asleep against her hip.