2 The Argo IV

Ryth walked with his hands stuffed deep inside the pockets of his trench coat. He walked wordlessly, the people of sector 33 knew better than to ask questions. Doors slammed shut and curtains were drawn tightly as he passed. His boots left footprints in the sand. They were of a dark red color. It wasn't his blood, but a mixture of daeril and human and lesser Deathless. In the fifteen seconds, four had fallen, two humans, one daeril and the lesser Deathless. Before his eyes, the fallen were rising from the ground, as if levitated by an invisible force. The fight was rewinding before him, here comes the first, twenty-one possibilities lay out before him. Down he goes, here comes the second, forty-five ways to end him. Strangely, he vaguely recalled slaying the daeril, so he decided it had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was working for the lesser Deathless, anyway, so down it went.

A hundred and eleven outcomes in total, he concluded. Outcomes with Ryth victorious, a hundred and ten. Outcome where Ryth falls, one.

Unacceptable. At once his mind was in full gear, the first warrior was upon him, he sidesteps and draws the sword, instead of bringing it down on the unprotected part of the warrior's wrist he spins the sword in a horizontal arc, it flies through the air like a boomerang. It would decapitate the daeril which held Nymph and she would be free. Without the sword and with the first opponent still standing, he would be unable to combo the second, leaving him surrounded by three attackers. The moment would be gone. He saw himself fall with a fatal cut to the spine.

He turned left and continued down Ranger's Alleyway. Ranger's Alleyway had nothing to do with Rangers, just like the random names of the other alleyways of Sector 33. As he strode down the familiar alleyway that would take him back to his bunker, civillians shrank back before him. Kids peeked at him from behind the shelter of their mothers' aprons. They looked at the visor of his full face sand mask with the expression of a child that was looking at some creature that was alien. Meanwhile the adults kept their heads down. To them he was indeed something alien, something to be feared.

His notepad, the datapod along with six folded blueprints for an enhanced Solar-trans blade was stuffed into the metal enhanced backpack. The Solar-trans OX dual blades, uncharged though, he clipped to his belt. He would charge them when he got to the Argo IV, his personal aircraft.

He heard soft footfalls on the ground outside. The metal doors slid open. Ryth didn't look up.

"You're leaving." said Nymph. She had prodded herself up and was sitting on the crafting table, her slender legs dangling off the edge. Ryth went to the crafting table, kicking the things he had scattered around it into a pile along with some other things he couldn't carry. The pile he incinerated with a wave of his hand.

"I can't stay. Not now that they know I'm Deathless." He slung the backpack onto his shoulders and walked to the bunker door.

"But you aren't like them, are you?" asked Nymph.

This Ryth choose not to answer, he looked at Nymph, her eyes and cheeks were a little swollen from crying. Jet black hair ran down her shoulders, they were chest-long and ended in small ringlets.

"A few miles in to the west there's an abandoned mineshaft. It leads to an open pit. My aircraft awaits me there." he paused, then added: "My aircraft runs on solar energy, I expect it to be fully charged and ready for departure in two hours."

He walked out the door.

It took him thirty minutes to reach the entrance of Mineshaft No.9, abandoned years back when two miners were unaccounted for after a mining session. Inhuman noises were reported afterwards and no one dared venture here anymore. It was the perfect place to hide the Argo IV. Ryth walked onwards into the darkness, feeling and following the rail with his feet as he went. After a while, he saw something metallic, reflecting sunlight up ahead. The Argo IV, just as he had left it here many moons ago. He walked up the ramp, breathing in the familiar scent of steel and mechanisms. He went into the cockpit, pushed a lever and a panel concealed in the cabin floor slid back revealing the Aegis Armor Theta version. Ryth gazed at it for a moment. The polished helmet gazed back at him. He smiled a little, satisfied that it had been untouched. Then, he slid off the heavy trench coat, unbuckled his combat boots. These, along with his plain shirt and pants he put into the now empty compartment. Half naked, he stepped into the armor, it clicked welcomingly into place. At last, he put on the helmet.

Hssssssss…

Fresh, filtered air rushed into his lungs as he inhaled. Microneedles injected something cool into his veins and he felt his adrenaline surging. With a sigh, Ryth sat down on the cushioned pilot seat. A panel lit up. "Low power" It blinked. "Recharge." Said Ryth, and the command was accessed.

He exited the aircraft and sat down on the ramp. Now he would wait.

An hour went by. He heard the footsteps before she came into view, and saw her before she noticed him. There was Nymph, coming out of the railway tunnel. Her dressed was gone. In its place were a T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. She also wore a leather vest with pockets outside the T-shirt, and her chest-long hair was now tied back in a ponytail. She was here, and she had been scared, he could see. Relieved when she saw the sunlight, she had stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him, fully armored, the Deathless Blademaster.

"You're early." Ryth said, his voice was metallic and deep. "Good." He added. The Argo IV was seventy percent charged, but it'll charge itself during flight. He walked into the cockpit and sat down. His finger hovered over the ignition switch. Then, he realized that the girl hadn't moved.

"Are you coming or not?" He asked over his shoulder, and she came up the ramp, dumped her backpack on the floor and sat down in the copilot seat next to him. She gazed at him, nervously. Ryth gave her the best reassuring smile he could manage, but realized with stupidity that he was wearing the helmet and there was no way Nymph could see it. To his surprise, the girl smiled back at him, and he noticed she was remarkably pretty when she did so.

The Argo IV was almost two hundred and well past its prime. Still the engine roared like beast as it lifted off the ground. For any civilian who looked up at the sky, in the few seconds that followed, they would have seen something rapidly gaining altitude, flying past the borders of Sector 33, out into the unknown.