VI.
Into Dust
(Part Two)

and I'd do anything to make you stay.
no light, no light,
tell me what you want me to say.

"The research!" The professor pleaded with the faceless Gear helmet before him, its blank blue eyes utterly devoid of human empathy. "We have to save the research. Everything else can go to hell! Do you understand that?"

It was clear from the desperate body language of the helmet's owner that he did nothing of the sort. The tiny handful of COG soldiers—the closest in the area able to respond—were treating him like he was insane, but Adam Fenix didn't care. Like he'd so deeply intoned in his SOS, none of it mattered anymore. The research was everything; a matter of life and death.

"It's a highly defensible location," Adam urged, grasping for better bargaining chips. "We can hold it. We'll fight in the damned foyer if we have to!"

The other, much younger Gear let an anxious glance slip down to the courtyard that sprawled down over the hill in front of the Fenix Estate; its staggered stone staircases had become the impromptu battlefield where his men now fought. "With all due respect, professor," he said for perhaps the sixth time. "It might be defensible...with twice as many Gears as I have now. My boys can only give you time to get out."

The chevrons on the soldier's arm plate—scratched stripes of fading blue paint—identified him as a corporal. Rank didn't count for much these days, but it did suggest that he was probably a bit green; still falling back on his drills from Basic rather than hard experience on the field of war. It was becoming clear that this man and his fellow soldiers wouldn't understand the gravity of the unfolding situation. But they were willing to fight; with yet another line of roaring grubs inching up the estate's opulent front porch, that was all Adam could truly ask for.

"Please...if only you knew how important—"

There was a pause, and then the corporal twitched. "Sergeant Fenix?"

In spite of the flying bullets and clamour of the battle below, Adam halted, mouth parted with confusion. Sergeant? He hadn't been referred to by rank in at least twelve years, and even if he had, it was Major Fenix. Then, after a split second's bewilderment, Adam realized that the corporal was glancing slightly over his shoulder. Before he could put the pieces together, the other Gear gave an uncharacteristic whoop and waved his arm high.

"Sarge! Man, are we glad to see you!"

Adam whirled blindly around, oiled shoes slipping on the debris, just in time to witness the familiar, bulky forms of two Gears emerge onto the destroyed Fenix lawns. Time itself seemed to hiccough as two pairs of eyes, identical shades of glacial blue, locked onto each other.

"Marcus!" Adam practically choked, approaching his son. He could feel the pit of his stomach falling out, but somehow, he knew he shouldn't have been surprised. Dom was at his son's side, too; something else Adam wasn't shocked by. "What in God's name are you doing here? You're going to get yourselves killed!" Adam shot a pleading look to Dom. "Both of you!"

"C'mon, Dad," Marcus growled. It was clear he was doing his best not to yell at his own father. "I've come to get you out of here."

Me? Adam nearly scoffed at such a trifling issue as his own safety. No, this late in the game, only one thing mattered anymore. The professor shook his head. "I've got to save my research. Do you understand how important it is?"

For a second, Marcus' emotionless battle mask slipped, revealing the faint pall that the dreaded R-word had left over his features. Of course, he knew the importance of his father's research. Like a child living in the permanent shadow of the overachieving older sibling, he'd been raised around it his whole life.

Adam opened his mouth to explain further, but Marcus just narrowed his eyes, gave a curt grunt of understanding, then jogged off to join his fellow Gears against the Locust. Dom followed silently, the sergeant's loyal shadow, slipping Adam an acknowledging nod as he passed.

"Keep your head down, sir."

No sooner had the boys rounded the ornate fountain atop the cascading courtyard, the course war cries of oncoming drones carried on the wind, and the guns kicked back up into their brain-numbing storm. Undaunted, Marcus skirted around a towering cypress tree and into the shelter of one of the hip-high brick walls. If fighting in the tattered gardens of his youth bothered the man, he never let it show.

"Okay, everyone find some cover!" he boomed. "Spread out along the wall."

Adam wasn't sure why he was paused by the notion, but he'd never seen his son in action before. Marcus was a good sergeant, he thought plainly.

Suddenly, the other, nameless corporal was in Adam's peripherals, hurrying back again from the frontline. His voice was muffled by his helmet's filter, but there was no mistaking the edge of exasperation as he spoke. "Professor, can't we just...I don't know, grab up all your research and take it with us?"

"No, no, it's not some...some hard drive you can just download." Adam hissed incredulously. In fact, the more the professor thought about the terabytes upon terabytes of data he'd meticulously amassed—more than a decade's worth—the more baffled he became, even at his own work. "There's far too much. The house must be defended!"

The Gear leaned forward, gun dropped to his side like he was about to make a final attempt at getting Old Man Fenix to come to his senses, when he froze completely. His helmet was facing straight down to the stones at his feet.

Adam had civilian shoes; made of softer material than chunky Gear boots, with much thinner soles. He felt it instantly.

Marcus' voice rose over the staccato fire of guns. "Tremours!"

At once, both Adam and the corporal were moving, preparing for the very ground below them to drop out as the shaking rapidly escalated.

"Take cover, sir!" the corporal cried back. "You should be fine up here!"

Adam had never fought frontline during the Locust war, had never seen an Emergence hole that wasn't a full city block away; but he knew what tremours meant, and had seen the devastation they brought. The trembling ground was disorienting, and he scuffled towards the nearest wall for cover. He crouched down in its shadow, middle-aged joints protesting at the action, and watched the stones around him for the tell-tale signs of cracks or sinking earth.

"Keep it together, Gears!" Marcus called evenly to the men lined up beside him. "Keep it together!"

For a surreal instant, the frantic scene seemed to mute itself, with even the grubs giving a moment's hesitation, and then the quake reached its jarring peak. Adam scanned the leveled stairs below, blue eyes darting in a desperate effort to foresee the danger, when he caught a flash of movement by the huge fountain at the courtyard's very bottom. The copper gear at the fountain's head was vibrating. A breath later, and the entire monument cracked back at an angle before collapsing completely.

"Shit..." Marcus hissed. "Shit!"

Suddenly the lower grounds had become a roiling ocean; the stones pulsing and cracking as if the earth below them had deflated. Then, a nightmarish shriek struck clean through the air, and the courtyard stone gave way to eight thrashing, behemoth legs.

The Corpser moved like a mountain brought to life; hulking, shaking spider-flesh that clambered slowly over the rubble of its own Emergence hole, legs hooking at the cobblestone in wide arcs. All around it, the ground crumbled and collapsed to reveal another wave of grubs.

"Dad! Dad!"

Adam spun around, squinting through the gunpowder air. Marcus was ducking into cover behind the adjacent wall; with a start, Adam realized his son had the Hammer of Dawn's targeting laser in his grasp.

"We gotta bring the Hammer down on that Corpser!" the sergeant called over. "We won't make it otherwise!"

Adam had no idea how or why his son had come to be in the possession of the tool of devastation, but a stray bullet pinging off the brick by his ear reminded him it hardly mattered. "But we don't have satellite relay from the CIC." The professor grimaced. "You'll have no way of knowing when the Hammer will come online!"

Marcus' cold gaze swept slowly over his father's worry-wrinkled face, then down at the targeter in his hands. He gave an unceremonious sniff.

"Okay, then guide me."

It took several precious seconds for Adam to fully comprehend what his son was suggesting. He balked. "Guide you...Marcus, I can't—"

"You used to say you had every cycle of those sats memorized, Dad." Marcus interrupted. "Now's the time to put those numbers to good use."

The men hunched down as the Corpser released another eardrum-shattering shriek. Adam sneaked a look over the cover of the low wall; instead of climbing back down into its emergence hole like usual, the Locust monster had started dragging its colossal weight up the stairs. The Gears might have been able to fend off the drones, but as the Corpser shredded its way through a hundred years of stone and metalwork, it was clear there was no other way.

"Alright," Adam nodded grimly. "Listen closely."

Twenty years later, and those words still triggered his son to snap up and pay attention like no other. Adam took a deep breath, then squinted out at the rolling grey sky.

"If the sats are still running on the same schedules they used to, then we should have had coverage for some time now. But the weather...Look there: there's a break in cloud cover to the north and blowing down fast—do you see it? That might be enough of a clearing for the Hammer to come online, but if it does, you'll have seconds at the most. At the most, Marcus. You'll get one chance at painting the target...if we're lucky."

The sergeant dipped his chin to show his perfect understanding. "You just say when, okay?"

"Yes, okay."

A couple stairways down, Dom was shouting encouragement to his fellow soldiers and effectively helping to stave off the onslaught of grubs. His Lancer rattled out the last of its clip; in the moment it took to reload, the corporal stole a glance up at Marcus. Seeing his friend sighting up with the Hammer, he appeared to mouth a silent "shit yeah" of anticipation before turning back to the fray. That was always something Adam had admired the Santiago boy endlessly for: his unflinching loyalty to those he held dear. Sadly, the professor realized that that loyalty likely stemmed from the fact that nearly everyone Dom had held dear was gone now.

Marcus was all he had left; him, and the flame of hope he kept alive for poor Maria.

The ground shook with the Corpser's staggering approach; the gap of sun among the clouds was nearly upon the desperate battlefield. Adam crouched at Marcus' side, but the hard bulk of the sergeant's armour made it difficult to lean in too closely.

"God, Marcus, be careful," Adam muttered, unable to keep the anxious strain from his tone. "Make sure there are no Gears in the blast radius. And remember, you only get one shot at—"

Marcus shook his shoulders irritably; it might have looked like a mere shifting of stiff muscles under the jointed steel pauldrons, but Adam recognized it as his son's clear signal to back off. Marcus had mastered the gesture when he was just a boy.

"I know, Dad. Give me some space."

Adam grit his teeth, frustrated by his own hovering doubts. Come on, this isn't new. I was a major, damn it. Taking in a bracing breath, the professor dropped his head and thought back to his days as a frontline Gear. "Look, just...try to relax. Drop your shoulders. Breathe."

It felt like something a man might say to his young boy during their first casual outing to a shooting range, but it sounded wholly unfamiliar coming from Adam's own lips. He'd never taught Marcus how to shoot; he'd let the army take care of that instead.

"Steady, son...Steady..." He wasn't even sure the younger Gear was hearing him now. It might have been over a decade since he'd seen action, but Adam knew well the tunneling vision and narrowing focus that came with crucial aiming. He kept a watchful gaze trained on the approaching cloud break; only moments remained. Marcus would be ready.

Then, in an instant of natural brilliance, rays of sun pierced the low cloud cover, setting the desolate scene alight with gold fire. Adam touched Marcus' shoulder.

"Now."

Marcus began aligning the target before the syllable had even ended. Five narrow ruby lines streaked through the smoke, dancing tentatively before converging neatly on the Corpser's rearing bulbous head. And then the air itself exploded.

Adam had his knees braced, but he was still blown back on his heels by the sheer force of the Hammer strike, the light of its column of searing destruction branding through his closed lids. He half expected the same to happen to Marcus, but the sergeant remained steadfast, his hands maintaining his target.

There was no scream of immolated drones, only the continuous, mind-numbing roar of the Hammer, tinged with the Corpser's strangled death shriek. When Marcus' finger finally peeled off the trigger, the booming beam simply evaporated into the air, leaving swirling smoke and fracturing debris in its echoing wake.

"Ha-hah! God damn it, Marcus, you did it!"

Dom was bounding up from the lower level, boots clearing three stairs at a time. He skidded to a halt and gave Marcus a vicious congratulatory shake. His cheeks were still red from the Hammer's blast of heat. "I mean, I'll kill you myself if you ever bring one down that close again, but shit, that was awesome."

Adam thought briefly of giving Marcus a shoulder squeeze of similar praise, but thought better of it; the sergeant was probably still jumpy from calling the strike. Adam settled for a tired nod.

"Well done, my boy."

For a heartbeat, Marcus just looked mildly stunned, staring blankly at his father, before swallowing.

"Well done yourself," he mumbled.

But before his lips could crack even the scantest ghost of a smile, yet another round of gunfire tore holes in the moment, and all three men buckled back down behind the wall. Dom groaned, reaching up to blind-fire over the bullet-riddled stone slab. "Damn, more of them?"

"Guess we didn't close that E-hole after all," Marcus snarled, then leaned around over the stairs.

"Gears!" he bellowed down at the handful of remaining soldiers on the lower level; thankfully, their squad didn't look any thinner than it had upon their arrival. The blue-eyed helmets twisted around to watch the sergeant. "Regroup and get ready to high-tail it! We can't hold this position much longer."

"High-tail it?" Adam pressed, frowning. "Marcus, I can't leave. My research..."

"Don't know what to tell you. We don't have the firepower to hold the estate; simple as that." Marcus was instantly cold and professional; the seamless flip was somehow disconcerting. "If I keep us out here much longer, I'm going to start losing people."

It was hard to miss the possessive seriousness in the younger Gear's voice. Adam marveled distantly; Marcus had fought by these men for only a few short minutes, and he was already holding himself responsible for their lives.

Then, an approaching sound tugged all their eyes to the sky; the rapid chopping of air. Seemingly from nowhere, the gloriously familiar black hull of a King Raven emerged from the low clouds, its rotor blades churning up the smoke from the Hammer strike. By some miracle, it seemed someone else had heard the professor's pleading SOS. However, a twinge in Adam's gut told him that these new Gears were here to evac, not to dig in and defend.

Gratefully taking the KR's appearance as their unofficial recall, the helmeted Gears pulled back and made their way to the impromptu LZ in the Fenixes' front yard. Adam trotted after them, wanting to beg them to help him protect his research from the grubs at his heels, but he knew he had no right. The endless data stashed away in his basement had always been his responsibility, and his responsibility alone.

The KR slowly descended towards the cobblestone. The resulting windstorm buffeted the walls of the ancient Fenix estate; to Adam's horror, one of the cracks in the facade split wide, and the masonry gave a dying groan. One whole wall seemed to buckle slightly, shaking dust onto the dead lawn below.

"Damn it, I should have seen this..." Adam growled. His feet began moving on autopilot, taking him towards the estate's regal doors. "A Hammer strike this close will have weakened the house; I need to get in there..."

A massive gloved hand took Adam firmly by the elbow. The professor reeled, finding himself pinned down by two scalding blue eyes. "Dad, forget it!" Marcus yelled. "The research can't be that important. We're alive, and we're going."

Not that important? Oh, Marcus... Of course, the boy didn't know about the hidden door in the wine cellar; the secrets embedded in his own childhood dwelling. The web of those dark truths was getting so thick, Adam was afraid he would never be able to pull the sticky strings apart.

"No, son, you...you don't understand. I need to go back, I need to save—"

"Dad. Dad. There's no time. Just this once, I'm asking you to forget about the goddamn research." Marcus' eyes flared with hot desperation, and there was a note in his deep voice that Adam didn't recognize. "Please just come with me. Please."

Adam looked long into his son's face, worn thin with exhaustion and frustration. He opened his mouth in another attempt to explain, but he knew deep down that the time for words had passed. Giving his head a single apologetic shake, Adam wrenched his arm out of Marcus' grip and rushed off to the house as quick as his aging muscles would allow.

Suddenly, there was a muffled cry of "Boom." Before anyone could even duck down, the KR's tail was engulfed in a hellish fireball. Scalding heat bloomed on Adam's face, and he watched, stunned, as the blazing bird spiralled out of control just metres off the ground.

It swung right over him.

He felt the explosive impact of metal on stone, felt the tremours of cracking beams and brickwork; but in that final instant, he could hear only one thing.

The agonized voice of his son, screaming for him, as an avalanche of obliterated estate wall hurtled him down into blackness.

end.