This is turning out to be quite a weird fic, and not at all my usual style of posting. I 'm quite literally making it up as I go and hoping to all hopes that it's decent enough for public viewing. This second chapter came from a fanfic challenge given to me by (I believe) Hyperpsychomaniac, and since the challenge result seemed to say just what I was going for with the story so far, I decided to use it as a chapter rather than writing another, cause I'm lazy like that. ;)
Disclaimer: See Chapter One.
Two.
"Earthquake? You have got to be kidding me, EARTHQUAKE?"
"Yup. Rictor-Scale Five, that's what they're saying."
x
He hadn't expected this. Not any of it. Never in his worst nightmares had he thought that this kind of thing could have—
Odd then, that the local news broadcasters are passing it off as an earthquake.
Ha.
Yeah, this is an earthquake. The sky is turning violet, power lines are blowing up or shutting down at random and the whole city is crackling with heat and static energy because of an earthquake. The locals of Conestoga Hills probably aren't going to buy that one for much longer…
Something round and made of metal flies past him before he has much time to think about that, near taking off his weapon hand. The jolt throws him backwards with a painful sounding "crack". He didn't see it coming. He didn't even feel it until it had already gone past and he was on his back in the dirt.
'Ah!' he pulls back, swearing. "Ow" would be an understatement. The metal was sharp and sliced through muscle, striking the bone underneath. He felt the skin tearing. A few seconds later it starts to hurt.
'Kid! Mark, are you all… Oh, Zoar.' Ace pauses and stares at Mark's shoulder, for a moment Mark can't make out why, and then he remembers that Ace has probably never seen human blood before.
'It… It's okay, Ace.'
He tries to move. He knows pain, but he's never felt anything like this. He remembers cutting his hand on a potato knife once… how old had he been? Seven? Eight? Young enough so that the pain and the sight of the blood had scared him as much as it's freaking Ace out now. As much as it freaked him that time when it was binary code, deep and blue and liquid-like and draining out of Sparx, one painful digit at a time.
'It's not alright, kid, you're hurt…'
'I-it was probably a hubcap or something. Ace, don—'
He cuts off, swallowing in pain; Ace takes a hand away from his shoulder. There's a smear of red on his palm. Ace stares at it for a long moment, like it's some kind of foreign entity.
Sparx has her sword clutched close to her chest, like a shield against anything that might hit her. The air crackles with the sword's energy, bright pink and burning. 'Chuck?' she half yells. 'Chuck, please, tell me you made a mistake and this is gonna stop any… second now!'
Chuck's face looks white, reflected in the light from his computer. 'It's a no go. I… I still can't see anything.'
'What?'
'I said it's not there, I can't find it, alright?'
'No, we tracked it down. Th-that Datastream rip… thing or whatever it was! It was here!'
'Well it's not here now! Maybe... maybe there was a mistake in the system.'
Sparx stabs at her surroundings. 'Look around, Chuck, does THIS look like an accident to you?'
'I know what it looks like but… but I'm not reading anything! This isn't the source, it's just a reflection a… a spin off, a secondary growth!' Then he turns around and blinks, and it seems that in all the chaos he actually somehow missed seeing his best friend getting sliced open by flying metal. 'Holy… Mark what the–'
Mark doesn't hear the rest of his question. It hurts so damn much he can't focus on anything. The knife hadn't gone as deep as this, had it? He can't remember. He was just a kid playing around. Just some stupid little…
'Kid?'
Mark jolts. Then realises that's a mistake, because his shoulder feels like its on fire and frozen numb at the same time. Ace has a hand at his back like he's trying to hold him upright; Mark pushes him away and doesn't quite know why.
'Dude, you're a mess!'
'Chuck, will you just find it already?' Mark snaps, signalling back at the laptop.
'I-I'm looking, man, but I can't get a signal.'
Sparx is still using her sword, holding it out lengthways to shield from debris. Blue energy is mingling with pink and reacting, like those chemicals in test tubes they'd been shown once in chemistry class. The blade is cutting into her palm. Mark knows how she feels. His shoulder's pounding. Everything is shaking and trembling, with the metal bones of the junkyard falling apart all around them and blue and silver energy racing over the earth. It feels like somebody's ripping the city apart from the inside out. Mark decides they'd be more likely to get out of here alive if he tries to ignore that.
'O-okay stop, Chuck, not here! We have to get out!'
Ace's face changes from agreement to dismay in less than a second. Mark barely notices it. 'Random…'
He's looking over Mark's shoulder and into the junkyard. It looks as if a storm's been dragged down to earth. Everything's so much more dark and black and cold than before. Or maybe that's just him. Everything's bursting with electricity and he can't tell where the sky ends and the junkyard begins.
Random Virus… the junkyard. Okay, now Mark makes the connection…
Oh, hell.
'Too late for that, Ace,' Sparx's voice is oddly quiet as she gazes back into the chaos that used to be a junkyard. Not even a cyborg could get out of that… mess. She sinks back behind the car wreckage they're using as a shield against the elements. A second later she grabs Chuck's shoulder and wrenches him forwards a few feet, just before the blinding blue energy takes over the vehicle they're using as shelter. 'And if we don't fix this whole thing soon we'll be in the same freakin' mess!'
'We could run for it?' Chuck suggests. His voice squeaking in a way that would have been funny if he wasn't so noticeably terrified.
'Run WHERE?' Sparx snaps, she sounds angry at the very thought of it. 'You know anywhere in the city that's NOT doing this?'
'A-actually yeah.' He taps a button on the laptop. Mark doesn't see which one. 'The… the carnival.'
'What?' Everyone yells at him simultaneously. Including Mark.
'Kilobyte,' Sparx spits the name, like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. 'Oblivion, we should've known, Ace!'
'Maybe him, maybe not, but whoever caused this, the whole source is definitely echoing from the carnival.' Chuck shields his face, metal shards are flying everywhere.
'T-that's what you... said last time,' Mark forces out.
'I know, I know, but you can call me on that later, dude, I'm sure this time! It's not a heavy signal so I didn't pick up on it before, but now it's the only hole in this whole system, it's gotta be the one. We have to get there!' He glances at Mark. 'Um…then again a hospital would probably be a better idea…'
'No. No hospitals,' Mark swallows. 'Not with these two.'
'Then you're just going to have to leave us, kid.' Ace points out.
'Dude, you're bleed—'
'I know, just… it'll stop,' he lies. 'Look, this is the only thing keeping you two from being ripped up,' he held up the amulet. 'If we separate—'
'Give one of them the amulet, then!'
'You think we haven't tried?' Sparx reached out and tried to take the amulet from Mark's hand to demonstrate. It didn't work, her hand was pushed back, reflected in a glare of gold light, like a bubble. 'The damn thing is glued to him, it won't let us at it!'
'Oh... crap, now you tell me!'
Sparx opens her mouth to yell a retort, and then she hits the dirt and crumbles on her side before anyone can breathe. There's pink electricity bursting everywhere and the screen of the laptop looks like it's about to explode and Ace is yelling, but Mark can't make out the sound. His hand touches his shoulder and grips the material, soaked and red.
He makes out one word, though. Something someone is yelling over the racket. The air is burning, alight with blue and pink and filled with shadows and a thin stretch of light is ripping through the junkyard, smashing through the wrecked cars and cutting them in half.
'Random! Random Virus!'
Random? Random Virus. Mark blinks hard, knowing this would be a really, really bad time to pass out. Why is someone yelling for him?
...You know, doing stuff ad lib is kinda fun :). Concrit is appreciated.
