It had been three days since Michael's meeting with Swallow. After they had parted ways, Michael had been forced to wait as the mercenaries supposedly did their work. He'd heard nothing back, and each hour the crawling beneath his skin grew worse. Sitting uselessly as time ticked by took a greater toll than the explosive scrabble of his previous mission at the Bastion. The feeling refused to disappear, until he'd finally been driven back out into the city. He needed to move, to get out of his apartment and do something. Now, with sunset drawing closer, he stood in the shadow of a tall, skeletal building.
A hot wind rolled across the asphalt, sending billows of dust drifting into the air to hover in seeming defiance of gravity. At the edges of the lot, the waist-high clouds caught the light, shining faintly in the evening sun. Up ahead, the Tombstone dominated the empty ruins around it. The jagged, half-finished skyscraper stretched into the sky uncontested, looming over all the other buildings below. Back when the inaugural slabs of concrete had been laid down, the tower had been marked as the first of many. Had construction gone to plan, it would have faded into obscurity amidst a sea of similar facades. Instead, it had become a single spindly frame of steel on the horizon, poking out above the abandoned streets around it.
It wasn't Michael's first time visiting the building. In fact, it had been one of the first places he'd ever explored, back when he'd barely even scratched at the swathe of empty streets. Drawn by its sheer presence, he'd cautiously wandered through the dark and empty entrance. Back then, it had seemed even larger—an indomitable pillar reaching up into the sky. At the time, he hadn't left the ground floor, but now his eyes traveled slowly up the side of the building.
As he entered, Michael glanced over the gloomy interior. Construction on the lower levels had progressed far enough to let the space actually feel enclosed before it was abandoned, and the air was stale and dry. Throughout the space, narrow steel frames marked what would have become interior walls, interspersed between the thick supporting pillars. Everything was mottled and discolored, the unavoidable result of years of exposure. Michael didn't spare it a second look, striding quickly towards the central stairwell. He wasn't here to spend more time in cramped darkness.
Even in the half-light, the escape to the next level was visible. Blocky stairs rose into the air next to an enormous wall of concrete—the empty elevator shaft. Together, the two formed the core of the structure, and Michael took the stairs two at a time.
At the first landing, he circled around the staircase's central dividing wall and came up short.
Instead of continuing up to the third floor, the way in front of him was completely blocked. The narrow stairwell was packed wall-to-wall with whatever construction supplies hadn't been worth clearing away from the site. Thick beams, piles of rusty rebar, and enormous spools of cabling blocked the way forward, and that was only the topmost layer. The haphazard pile spilled up the steps and into the darkness. In the very back of the heap, the darkness solidified into what might have been a final, proper barricade.
Michael clenched his fists. Once again, he was blocked. The obstacle in front of him sat smugly atop the stairs, its very existence an affront. This place was supposed to be empty, free from the endless barriers that surrounded him every day. Now, he was only minutes in and he'd already hit an impassable wall.
Breathing deeply, he glared at the obstacle. Then, slowly, his gaze shifted to the left. Next to the stairs, an opening beckoned. Compared to the overwhelming blockage, there was only a waist-high safety railing installed over the dark doorway. Michael stepped closer, and leaned sideways over the rail.
Craning his neck, he stared up the soaring, empty shaft. Far above him, the walls seemed to narrow with distance, coalescing to a point. Bands of light illuminated one wall in regular strips, shining in from the doorways on each floor. Without the elevator itself in place, it was completely barren save for the series of openings up along one wall. The closest opened up into the void ten feet above his head, out of reach.
Or perhaps not.
He was sick of being turned back, forced to wait. At his waist, the tendril of the Machine Army uncoiled. Twisting into the air, it stretched out longer than he'd ever flexed it before. Four feet, then six, then eight—until it felt right, comfortably unfurled. The tendril had thinned to barely a thumb's width, yet Michael felt nothing but strength pulsing from within. With a thought, a twisting seam raced up the tendril, and it split cleanly in two.
With hands half-raised, he rolled his shoulders, and the tendrils moved. Slowly but surely the twin limbs rippled back out of the way, winding behind his lower back before rising to hang above his shoulders. At each end, the tips curved down, twisted and jagged. Michael stared at a patch of concrete above his head, and with a thought, he pushed.
The tendrils slammed into the solid stone, wrenching him a step forward from the sheer momentum. Resistance was nonexistent; the Machine Army cleaved through the concrete with contemptuous ease. As Michael stared at the resulting anchors, he let out a long breath.
Reaching up to grip the tendrils in each hand, he braced himself and curled up, carefully lifting his feet clear of the floor. For a handful of seconds, he hung in place. Beyond the slightest hint of pressure around his waist, there was nothing. It didn't hurt at all.
Dropping back to the floor, he focused for a moment, and the tendrils rippled, pulling themselves out of the wall with a slow, deep scrape. This time, when Michael looked up the shaft, his eyes were glued to the first opening. Two steps placed him directly beneath it, and he reached upwards even as his arms remained at his sides.
The first spike drove into the wall a few feet short. Once it was secure, Michael moved. He carefully pulled himself upward into the air, contracting the tendril and dragging the rest of his body behind. As he drew level with the initial anchor, the second spike slammed itself into the wall as high as it could reach. For a few seconds he remained motionless, then the first loosened and he continued to rise.
His destination drifted down into view a few seconds later, and then there was hard stone beneath his feet. With his head tilted back he stared upwards, eyes alight. The open doorway beside him was forgotten in a heartbeat.
The second span was ever so slightly faster than the first, machine limbs smoothly extending and contracting, propelling him onto the next outcrop. The third was faster still. As he repeated the motions again and again, the pauses shrank and a rhythm grew.
By the time he passed the tenth floor, he stopped pausing at the landings. They were only breaking the flow.
Hand over hand, spike over spike, he crawled inexorably up the empty elevator shaft. Other than the repetitive cracks of metal driven into concrete, the only sound was the soft crumbling fall of dust. Below him, a line of staggered holes tracked up the barren wall. As the repetitive motions continued, Michael's thoughts calmed. The incessant urge to get out and move finally began to fade. The floors continued to pass by as his focus fell away from the mechanical limbs. It was easier to let himself stop thinking and just move.
He didn't come back to himself until one of the tendrils reached upwards and smacked sharply into the concrete roof. The final landing was just below him, an opening to the roof of the Tombstone. Slowly, he lowered himself back onto solid ground.
The light had changed during his ascent, and Michael walked towards the western edge of the open roof. Looking out at the horizon, he let out a melancholy sigh. As fast as his ascent had been, he'd missed the sunset. A narrow strip of orange was all that remained, as purple clouds stretched across the sky. At the opposite edge, to the east, the colors had already begun to darken. He lowered himself to the ground.
The summit was here, beneath his feet, but whatever he'd been looking for hadn't appeared. The relief of the rhythmic, numbing climb wasn't quite the same. There had been something quiet and peaceful in his previous forays, the solitary expeditions uncovering hidden pieces of the city and isolated vistas. The slow, unhurried crawl of exploration had been soothing in a way he couldn't quantify. This trip had been… different. But in the end, he'd made it all the same.
For a few minutes, he simply sat and watched the sky.
Far below, a small, blurry shape sweeping down the street finally broke him out of his thoughts. It was definitely a person, but from this height Michael couldn't tell much about them. Instead, what drew his eye was their speed. They were positively racing past the empty buildings, moving quickly enough that if there had been any cars on the road, they'd easily be keeping pace with them. Now fully engrossed, Michael looked back the way the cape had come and spied another, more familiar figure sailing through the air. He couldn't tell who was on the ground, but there was only one cape who could fly in the city. Even if there wasn't, Peregrine's distinctive rise and fall as he flew was unmistakable. Remedy was out on patrol.
With a second look, Michael amended his previous statement. The two of them were moving too purposefully for a patrol. They were going somewhere. As he sat by the edge of the roof, looking down at the pair, Michael was struck by the urge to follow.
He frowned. He was working with Splintered Arms now, however begrudgingly. Even though he'd only been on one mission, there was a chance the heroes could recognize him. Besides, he hadn't even brought a mask—
Of course. He was being stupid. He just wanted to take a look, so there was no need to make things complicated. He wasn't out as Fathom right now, it was just him, just Michael. If he kept his distance, he would be nothing more than another curious civilian. Hell, he might not even be the only one.
Pushing himself to his feet, he jogged lightly towards the empty shaft.
His descent was faster than the initial climb. The tendrils braced against opposite walls as he slid down, a low scrape echoing through the shaft. The darkness at the bottom grew steadily closer until, finally, the last opening arrived and Michael stepped back out onto the ground floor. He took a moment to orient himself before picking his way towards the edge of the building.
Even with the speed of his descent, by the time he emerged Peregrine had vanished from sight, lost behind the streets. The cape had been heading west, away from the bulk of the abandoned buildings, and Michael followed.
He'd barely made it a dozen feet before he stopped, suddenly reminded of the obvious by an awkward tugging along the bottom of his shirt. At his waist, the twin tendrils of the Machine Army remained flared out, idly writhing through the air behind him as he ran. Under the brunt of his attention, they shrunk and recombined, compressing to finally lay flat along his scar once more. Thus secured, he resumed the chase.
The first three intersections passed without any sign of the heroes, as Michael scanned the rapidly-darkening sky. The two capes had been moving ridiculously fast, and their eventual destination might have not actually been anywhere nearby. To further complicate things, the streets were growing less built-up, busy city blocks giving way to the occasional apartment complex interspersed with rows of tall trees and overgrown gaps. While nice to look at, it was impossible to see anything through the underbrush. Slowing to a walk, he was just starting to contemplate giving up the search when he reached the fourth intersection and saw a faint figure past the nearby rooftops. Flying in a lazy circle, Peregrine was barely visible further up ahead and off to the right.
It wasn't long before the other cape was once again obscured by the trees, but by then Michael was almost positive he was in the right place. With one last look up and down the road, he clambered up the slight hill and pushed his way into the small patch of woods.
Breaking through the edge was the hardest part, and the undergrowth thinned out slightly once he made it another dozen feet into the brush. The entire area was much longer than it was deep, the back edge of the miniature forest only another hundred feet in front of him. There, the trunks stopped, though the accompanying bushes made it impossible for him to see what lay beyond. Judging from where he'd seen Peregrine, however, the capes probably weren't that far away.
It only took another minute of picking his way through the woods to reach the edge, and Michael slowly eased through the tangle of branches until he could finally catch a glimpse of the expanse beyond the trees.
His destination was surprisingly ordinary. Separated from the road by the belt of trees that Michael now hid in, a trailer park stretched out before him along the side of a large, shallow hill. A single main road ran up the hill away from him, with smaller branches fanning out and leading to the various single- and double-wide homes. All of the twenty-odd mobile homes were on the nicer side, with actual lawns marked out, and even a few garden plots visible. However, most of his attention was drawn to a different spot.
Near the top of the hill, two hundred or so yards away, Michael could see capes gathered. It was more than just the two he'd seen before; at some point a van had arrived, and now five figures were gathered together in a tight group. He squinted at the gathering, incredulous. If those were all capes, that was the bulk of Remedy's team right in front of him. What could have possibly required so many heroes in one spot?
He was violently broken out of his thoughts when the sensation of tinkertech suddenly appeared at the edge of his range, approaching from behind him.
