Song from Previous Chapter
"Time to Say Goodbye"
Artist - Jeff & Casey Lee Williams
Maybe red's like roses?
Maybe it's a pool of blood,
The innocents will lay in,
When in the end, you've failed to save them?
David unlocked the prison and entered, Vanessa following behind him, looking around curiously.
"I never knew this building was here." Vanessa said to David as they walked down the stairs. They reached the two cells and David turned to Noir and Xerxes' cell. Noir was lying on her top bunk reading a book while Xerxes slept on the bottom one.
"Noir! Time to go." David yelled, opening up the cell as Noir slowly got off her bed and walked over to him.
"The walls are falling, and you need our help." Noir told him.
"Right, the walls are- oh, yes, you're right. You're telekinetic too and we need all the help we can get to fix those walls." David explained to her.
"I'm not telekinetic, the demon is." Noir turned away quickly, murmuring quietly to herself as she looked down slightly. "He needs our help-why should we help them-they'll die-why should we care-we'll die-you don't know that-he does though-than touch him-he doesn't want too-do it, or everyone will die." Noir turned back to David.
"Noir, you okay?" David asked her.
"The demon will help, but we need to see the future. You're future to see if we will survive." Noir told David. David sighed and reluctantly held out his arm.
"Do it." David offered. Noir hesitated and looked at David's arm, and touched it.
All David saw was purple. Noir saw David's future.
THE XIAO LONG CHRONICLES
VOLUME 3 - EVERYBODY LIES
CHAPTER TEN
DAY 49
"You're...pregnant?" Indiana asked Anna, he and Kiley sitting opposite her.
"Yeah, about a month ago, found out a week before David came back. But, yeah, I'm pregnant." Anna confirmed. Indiana turned to Kiley.
"Hey, you aren't-"
"I'm not pregnant." Kiley deadpanned.
"Oh, thank god, I'm not ready for that yet." Indiana sighed in relief. "But congratulations to you and David."
"Thanks." Anna thanked. "I'm gonna go find David, any idea where he is?"
"I heard he needed to check the tower, he'll might be there." Kiley suggested.
"Right, thanks." Anna got up to leave.
"Oh, and well done on the baby." Kiley yelled as Anna exited. "I'm gonna be an aunt!"
David, Alex, Joshua and CC continued towards the tower, listening to the grymm bashing on the wall near them.
"Those walls are getting loud." Joshua noted.
"We're working on it." David assured. "Although, they have been like that for a while. If you went outside, you'd know."
"I have important work to do!" Joshua justified. "Look at that, a fully functional AI!"
"I would prefer it if you didn't refer me as 'that', I have feelings too, even if I don't have a human body." CC interrupted.
"My apologise." Joshua told the AI. "I'm just more of an indoor kind of-"
"David!" They turned to see Vanessa running towards him.
"13? What is it?" David asked.
"The wall! It's bending, it's going to fall if we don't do something!" Vanessa exclaimed fearfully.
"You three, go sort out that tower, move those grymm away. I'll deal with the wall." David ordered them and ran with Vanessa to the wall while Alex, Joshua and CC ran to the tower. They reached the wall, the noise of the grymm on the other side of the wall exponentially loud, pressing their undead bodies against the metal, bending it towards them.
"You see!? Not good!" Vanessa yelled over the sound of the grymm. David looked at the wall, thinking what to do.
"We need to bend it back, hold it long enough for CC to move the grymm away!" David told her.
"Wait, what's a CC!?" Vanessa asked, confused.
"Crimson Cube, an AI Joshua created, he can move the grymm away!" David explained quickly. "We can push the wall with our combined telekinesis, force it back until CC can move them away!"
"This wall, with just us two, it's not going to be enough!" Vanessa told him.
"I know where we can find another."
Anna froze when she was walking towards the communication tower, the sound of the metal creaking under the pressure becoming more and more apparent. She snapped out of the trance and sprinted along the path and ran into the tower, reaching the locked door with the lock smashed and the doors kicked open. Cautiously, she unsheathed her katana and quietly walking in, looking around the tower. The tower had a circular base with a single set of double doors as the only way in or out. A pillar in the centre of the room, a meter in diameter with dozens of computer consoles, all of them flashing red ominously.
"Hello?" Anna called out.
"Anna?! Get over here!" Alex yelled, Anna lowering her katana and ran over to him, gasping and covering her mouth when she saw Alex clutching his stomach with an arrow in it, and Joshua on the ground with an arrow through his right eye, piercing the back of his skull.
"What happened?" Anna asked, running over to Alex.
"I got attacked, I didn't see who." Alex said, and winced. "You need to take the arrow out, put pressure on the wound until we get to the hospital."
"Okay. Just...take a deep breath." Anna told him, Alex taking a deep breath and nodded. As quickly as she could, Anna pulled the arrow out of Alex's stomach, who strained in pain as he suppressed a yell of pain. Anna quickly pressed her hands against the wound. "You're aura should kick in, heal the would partially until we get you to Doc." Anna told him, who just laughed.
"Aura. Humanities greatest weapon. I guess you didn't know, but mine isn't unlocked, only fully trained hunters do." Alex told her, and she looked at him surprised.
"Then why did you make me take the arrow out? You're gonna bleed out if we don't-"
"Look out!" Alex pushed Anna away as an arrow flew by her and stuck into the wall next to Alex's head.
"Technically, it's a bolt, not an arrow." Anna and Alex turned to see Darren walking towards them, throwing aside his crossbow as he reached behind his back, grabbing a pair of tomahawks. "I'm afraid my work here isn't done, and I can't have any distractions." Anna got up, holding out her katana.
"What are you doing?" Anna demanded. Darren smirked, twirling his tomahawks.
"Bringing down those walls."
David unlocked the prison and entered, Vanessa following behind him, looking around curiously.
"I never knew this building was here." Vanessa said to David as they walked down the stairs. They reached the two cells and David turned to Noir and Xerxes' cell. Noir was lying on her top bunk reading a book while Xerxes slept on the bottom one.
"Noir! Time to go." David yelled, walking up to the cell as Noir slowly got off her bed and walked over to him.
"David, what are you doing here?" Hecate asked, walking up to the cell door.
"None of your business." David ignored her, unlocking Noir's cell door.
"Hey, I've here too, I deserve to know.
"The walls are falling, and you need our help." Noir told him.
"Right, the walls are- oh, yes, you're right. You're telekinetic too and we need all the help we can get to fix those walls." David explained to her.
"I'm not telekinetic, the demon is." Noir turned away quickly, murmuring quietly to herself as she looked down slightly. "He needs our help-why should we help them-they'll die-why should we care-we'll die-you don't know that-he does though-than touch him-he doesn't want too-do it, or everyone will die." Noir turned back to David.
"Noir, you okay?" David asked her.
"The demon will help, but we need to see the future. You're future to see if we will survive." Noir told David. David sighed and reluctantly held out his arm.
"Do it." David offered. Noir hesitated and looked at David's arm, and touched it.
All David saw was purple. Noir saw David's future.
Eva looked down at the foot of her hospital bed, paled skin and helpless while a nurse removed the IV bag from her. The door opened and David entered, Eva noticing the limp as he entered. David turned to the nurse. "Would you excuse us, please?" The nurse nodded and walked out of the room with the IV tower as David walked to the foot of the bed, next to the blinds which were partially opened, the windows covered in rain and thunder outside. The lights were off so the room was dark. Eva looked at David, revealing the bandage over her throat. "I'm Doctor Gordon." David introduced himself.
"It's good to meet you." Eva murmured, lacking emotion. David looked away for a moment and coughed, looking back at her.
"You're an idiot." David told her, Eva just looked away. "You have a tapeworm in your brain. It's not pleasant, but if we don't do anything, you'll be dead by the weekend."
"Have you actually seen the worm?" Eva asked.
"When you're all better, I'll show you my diplomas." David deflected the question.
"You were sure I had vasculitus too." She reminded him. "Now I can't walk and I'm wearing a diaper. What's this treatment going to do for me?"
"I'm not talking about a treatment, I'm taking about a cure." He corrected Eva. "But because I might be wrong, you want to die." Eva glanced at David's right hand, which was pure metallic black.
"What happened to your hand?" Eva asked.
"Lost it in a bar bet." David lied. She noticed the cane David was holding in his left hand.
"What made you a cripple?" Eva asked him. David sighed, trying to think of some excuse.
"I poisoned a leg muscle. Caused an infarction." David answered truthfully.
"Like a heart attack?" Eva compared.
"It's what happens when the blood flow is obstructed." David explained. "If it's the heart, it's a heart attack. If it's in the lungs, it's a pulmonary embolism. If it's in the brain, it's a stroke. I had it in my calf muscle."
"Wasn't there something they could do?" The patient asked him.
"There was plenty they could do, if they made the right diagnosis, but the only symptom was pain." David elaborated as Eva listened intently. "Not many people get to experience muscle death."
"Did you think you were dying?"
"I hoped I was dying."
"So you hide in your office, refuse to see patients because you don't like the way people look at you." Eva figured out. "You feel cheated by life so now you're gonna get even with the world. You want me to fight this. Why?" Eva asked. "What makes you think I'm so much better than you?"
"When you're scared, you'll turn to me." David told Eva.
"I just want to die with a little dignity." Eva admitted, tears coming to her eyes.
"There's no such thing!" David yelled, leaning closer to her as she glanced away. "Our bodies break down, sometimes when we're 90, sometimes before we're even born, but it always happens and there's never any dignity in it. I don't care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass. It's always ugly. Always. Ugly." Eva turned away, tears streaming down her face. "You can live with dignity, we can't die with it."
Eva turned back, cheeks wet from tears and glared at David, who remained undeterred.
"Noir. Noir! Noir, can you hear me?" David asked as the petite girl held onto is arm, breathing heavily as purple veins came from her eyes.
David and Alex opened a set of double doors, continuing down the hallway.
"You made it a week." Alex told him, surprised.
"And won my prize." David added, with a hint of cockiness.
"Congratulations." Alex said sarcastically.
"Miranda's a sucker. I would have done it for two weeks off." David told Alex.
"Yeah, it was a piece of cake." Alex muttered with a tired sigh as they reached David's office. "You learn anything?" David stopped with his metal hand on the door handle.
"I'm an addict." He admitted, pulling open the door and entering his office, Alex following him in just before the door closed.
"Uh...okay." Alex said slowly, unsure what to say. David walked behind his desk and took a letter out of his coat pocket.
"I'm not stopping." David told Alex.
"There are programmes. Miranda would give you the time." Alex suggested. "You could get on a different pain management regimen-"
"I don't need to stop." David cut him off.
"You just said..."
"I said I was an addict." David cut him off again. "I didn't say I had a problem. I pay my bills, I make my meals. I function."
"Is that all you want?" Alex asked him. "You have no relationships."
"That's a lie and you know it." David said coldly.
"Not officially, you do." Alex reminded.
"We both know it has to stay that way." David told Alex.
"You alienate people." Alex added.
"I've been alienating people since before I arrived at Cydonia." David reasoned.
"Oh, come on! Drop it!" Alex shut him up. "You don't think you've changed in the last few years?"
"Well, of course I have. I've gotten older. My hairs gotten thinner and greyer. Sometimes I'm bored, sometimes I'm lonely, sometimes I wonder what it all means." David explained.
"No, I was there!" Alex interjected. "You're not just a regular guy who's getting older, you've changed! You're miserable, and you're afraid of yourself-"
SLAM!
"Of course I've changed!" David yelled, slamming his metal fist on a shelf, making a fist-sized hole.
"And everything's te leg?" Alex asked after a brief pause. "Nothing's the pills? They haven't done a thing to you?"
"They let me do my job, and they take away my pain." David told Alex, removing his metal fist from the shelf. "They let me function." With that, Alex exited David's office, defeated, while David sat down at his desk, rubbing his left calf.
Noir let go of his arm, slowly backing away. David leant down a little to her eye height. "Noir, what did you see?"
"You're future...it's so dark, so horrible...you're going to become cold, heartless, but you will save people by dong that. You will stop the grymm and save Cydonia." Noir told him.
"So will you help us?" Vanessa asked, entering the cell.
"It is our destiny."
Darren swung his tomahawks downwards, Anna leaning backwards to avoid them and leapt back, lunging at Darren. He moved back and hooked his right tomahawk on the katana, loosening it from Anna's grip and causing her to release it as it fell to the ground. Darren knelt down and tripped Anna up as she skidded along the floor, stopping a few feet away. "I expected an Inhuman to fight better. You're not even a challenge." Darren taunted. Anna groaned as she got to her feet, picking up her katana and holding it defensively.
"Why are you doing this? You're just going to kill innocents for nothing?" Anna asked.
"Orders are orders. Especially when your superior was supposed to kill you years ago, take out your eyes to see if you could see without them." Darren told her.
"Adam. Your with The White Fang." Anna figured out.
"In today's life, every faunus is in the White Fang. You just don't know it yet." Darren charged forwards, swinging both tomahawks at Anna while she expertly dodged them or hit them away with her katana. She ducked under a swing and kicked him in the chest, slamming him into the wall and stabbed the katana in the wall, catching on his shirt but missing him. "Missed." He head-butted her and kicked her away. He pulled forward but was still caught on the katana, he crossed the blades of the tomahawks and sliced the handle off the katana, pulling off it. He flipped forwards and used the momentum to throw a katana at Anna, who barely dodged it, only to be flipped kicked across the room, the air knocked out of her lungs. She winced as she felt the pain in her infected arm.
"And Reginald said Inhumans were superior to humans and faunus, that we'd never stand a chance." Darren taunted to Anna as he approached her, who still lay on the ground, clutching her arm. "Pathetic." He swung his remaining tomahawk and sliced her stomach, causing a deep cut as blood began to spill out.
David, Vanessa and Noir ran to the most damaged part of the wall, the metal wall almost collapsing under the weight of the grymm.
"Alright, concentrate, we don't want to accidentally rip the wall from the ground. Just bend it back into place. Got it?" David asked.
"Yes." Noir answered as purple veins started to come from her eyes.
"I'm ready." Vanessa assured, and the three of them focused their aura and semblances, holding out their arms as the metal wall began to move away from them and bend back into their original position, the grymm being forcefully pushed back.
"Keep pushing it back!" David yelled, the three of them focusing their combined telekinesis more, the metal walls bending further until they went back to completely up. The walls bent back into shape around the perimeter of the community until eventually, the walls were back up. They lowered their arms, relieves that the walls will stay up.
"Thank god." Vanessa muttered, relieved.
"Anna!" Noir yelled. "You have to save her! She'll die!"
"What!? Where?" David demanded.
"The tower! The tower!" Noir pointed towards the tower as David sprinted towards where Anna was.
"Please...stop..." Anna begged as she held onto her bleeding stomach, Darren strutting towards her.
"If you could have just waited, you're death could have been quick and painless." Darren told her with a tired sigh. "I guess you'll have to settle for this." Darren held out his right hand, a small black portal appearing on the palm of his hand. Across the room, a black portal began to expand, slowly pulling Anna in.
"No, please!" Anna grasped at the floor, but there was nothing to hold onto.
"Oh, don't worry, this is a way for me to kill you...'kindly'. You'll age inside the portal, and I will use your life force to strengthen myself until you die." Darren told her as slowly walked forward towards Anna, who desperately grabbed for anything to slow herself down. "And your child, I can use an entire lifespan to strengthen myself, I've never tried that before. You can live well knowing that you died for science."
"Please, I'm begging you!" Anna yelled helplessly. "Don't let me die."
"Sorry, as I said." Darren told her tauntingly. "Orders are order-" Darren chocked, looking down to see a blue energy sabre pierce his chest, directly through his spine. David kicked Darren off his lightsabre, who collapsed to the floor, choking on his own blood. The black portal sealed shut right before Anna hit it, who sighed in relief. David stepped over Darren, blood spilling out of his mouth as he gagged for air. David thrusted his lightsabre down, piercing Darren's left eye, killing him.
"Asshole." David pulled out the lightsabre, deactivating it and sheathing it.
"David..." Anna whispered, reaching out to him. David ran over, kneeling next to her. She breathed heavily, trying to suppress the pain as tears came to her eyes. "The baby..."
"Anna, they baby is fine, there is no way he cut deep enough. I promise." David assured her as she sniffled to keep her tears from escaping. "Let me see." Anna nodded, moving her hand away to show him the wound. "Doc can fix that. Do you know where Alex and Joshua are?"
"Joshua's dead. Darren killed him. Alex's over there, he's been shot." She gestured to the corner of the room.
"Come on, I'm getting both of you out of here." David helped Anna to her feet as she cried in pain. He lifted her arm around the back of his neck and they both moved over to Alex. "You still alive?"
"Barely, but I'll live." Alex told him.
"Damn, though I'd finally gotten rid of you." David joked, holding out a hand.
"Screw you." Alex took the hand, getting up.
"Hey, where's CC?" David asked him.
"Uhh..." Alex thought.
"Oh, I was busy with the tower. Did I miss something?" CC asked as he floated down to their height from the roof.
"Anything you can do about this?" Alex asked, looking at his stomach.
"Don't move." CC ordered, and glowed bright red. A red laser fired from the centre of the front square and hit him in the stomach, Alex trying as hard as he could to yell in pain to move. After a few seconds, CC dimmed and the laser went away. "I cauterized the wound, you should be able to walk on your own if you man up a little."
"I hate you." Alex told the AI.
"I do not require your friendship to function properly. I am perfectly capable of doing my directives without human assistance. Now, I need to finish the work with the tower." CC went to fly off, but a loud alarm went off through the tower, the monitors flashing red.
"What's going on?" Anna asked.
"The signal in the tower has been flipped, it's drawing the grymm towards us. Your lightsabre caused a signal and the tower replicated it. Darren planned this to happen." CC told them. Outside, they heard the walls creaking and bending. David picked Anna up bridal style and ran to the door, Alex just behind as they saw the walls collapsing, the grymm storming into Cydonia. The citizens were screaming as they ran to their homes, but the grymm grabbed many of them, tearing them apart limb from limb. David looked down at the helpless citizens, horrified at the people being torn apart before his eyes.
"David, what do we do?" Anna asked. David looked at the army of grymm, heading towards them.
"I don't know."
There'll be no rest
There'll be no love
There'll be no hero in the end,
Who will rise above
Replies to Reviews
Ou0: Hmm, I wonder if those walls will hold, and if they can deal with the grymm, especially since there are certainly too many to deal with at once. I guess they'll just have to look to the Sky for answers. Also, I didn't specifically state it, but all the OC's who went to Vale for the Vytal Festival returned to Cydonia as planned, except David who had to postpone die to his injury. Alexander and Vanessa were back before David was, they had been back for two weeks along with the other OC's. Thanks for reviewing!
And there we go, the walls are down, the grymm are killing people. How will David stop the grymm and save Cydonia? Or, more importantly, CAN David stop the grymm and save Cydonia? Only time will tell...
Just a note, I have created a wikia based on this universe that you can use to find out about the characters, locations and most importantly, physical appearances.
The website is: the-xiao-long-chronicles .wikia wiki/ Main_Page
And remember to follow, favourite and leave a review, and I'll see you all in chapter eleven!