The Price of Noise

The patrollers' headlights tear through the storm. Three armored bipeds emerge from the icy fog, drawn by the geyser I spat into the sky of the Obsidian Sector.

They march in step.

The order of Stability comes to crush our noise.

I do not intervene.

The woman shoulders her weapon. She fires. The recoil throws her to the ground, the blast ricocheting off the first robot's breastplate in a shower of blue sparks. Lio cries out. He charges with his rusted iron bar and strikes the articulated knee of the second machine. The steel resists. The teenager collapses under the counterattack, his nose bleeding, but he crawls, grabs a cable, pulls with all his might.

Jolanda beats the sticky leather. Boom-tak. Marisol's rhythm.

Fire rises in my bones. Not mine. Theirs. The Flame of the Forgotten is not passed down through inheritance. It is torn away in the muck, when bare knuckles strike polished metal. I watch these starvelings defend their survival. An old man drives a construction stake into the optic of a fallen attacker. The automaton twitches. The old man spits on the punctured lens.

Mutation takes root here. In this blood staining the snow.

I let the brawl rage. The air saturates with fury and short breaths. My chest ignites. One of the bipeds knocks the group back with a blind sweep and aims a sonic cannon at Jolanda.

The drum stops.

I leap. My obsidian fist sinks into the warm armor. The matter melts. I crush the internal mechanism in a heartbeat.

The refugees pant on the devastated platform. They bleed. They stand upright.

In the distance, a siren sounds, so deep it resonates in my calves. The viaduct floor sways beneath my boots. Whatever is approaching is no longer a mere patrol.