Anthem's Fall

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Thirty-One

Vengelis

Vengelis held the remote close, glaring at the stage floor as he tried to wrap his mind around the impossibility of Hoff's words. A sensation of frustration and alarm traveled down the length of his spine. After a prolonged moment of stillness, he suddenly shouted, fully knowing there would be no response.

"Pral Nerol is dead, Hoff. The Felixes killed him in Municera. He's dead!"

Another silence.

"What is happening?" Madison asked him nervously.

Vengelis held up a stern hand to silence her. Madison and Kristen exchanged a look of subtle concern at his abrupt volatility. Vengelis thought back, recalling the video feed of Nerol's death in the Municera laboratory when the Felixes had been awakened. Vengelis watched the male Felix, Felix One, kill the old scientist. Or had he? Vengelis's face contorted with concentration as he racked his memory in an attempt to recall every minute detail of Pral Nerol's laboratory video.

"Should I start reading the report again?" Kristen asked.

"Be quiet," Vengelis said, desiring only silence. He held his hand across his forehead and closed his eyes, trying to focus on visualizing the video he had watched so many times aboard the Harbinger I. It came back to him vividly. After the Felix had awoken on the steel laboratory table, the machine had proceeded to kill one of the assistants and the warrior Von Krass. Pral Nerol had hit the security alarms just before the video feed went black.

Pral Nerol had not been explicitly murdered.

Everyone who had subsequently watched the feed had assumed it, but there was no footage of it. The old man Nerol could still be alive, though it was tremendously implausible. Municera had been utterly leveled, and everyone in the city slaughtered. Vengelis recalled the heat and stench of the burning city with unpleasant clarity. When he had burst through the cloud cover, he had thought the once metropolitan and sparkling Municera to be a vision of hell, destruction incarnate. If Pral Nerol had somehow managed to escape the city, surely the old man would have presented himself in Sejeroreich to aid in Anthem's defense? And even if Vengelis was to make the assumption that the Felixes somehow spared or overlooked Nerol during their rampage, it still did not explain why Pral Nerol would be on Filgaia or how he got there. It also failed to explain why he would have a motivation to murder Hoff and Darien, or, for that matter, how the aging man would even be capable of defeating two of the strongest soldiers in the Imperial Army.

One thing was certain: if Pral Nerol was alive and on Filgaia, he was going to pay dearly for the slaughter he unleashed upon Vengelis's people and proceeded to flee from. There was no choice; Vengelis knew he had to investigate this at once. He turned and looked to Kristen and Madison, who each looked troubled by the sudden severity of his expression.

"I have to leave for a moment," Vengelis said, his voice distant.

"What?" Kristen asked.

"Something has come to my attention. I need to check on it immediately."

Kristen's gaze flickered momentarily to the shattered windows and street beyond. Vengelis glared at her, guessing her intentions of escaping the moment he was not there to hold her and the rest of the convention.

"If you try to escape and slip into the evacuation out of this city, my solution will be to indiscriminately slaughter the migrating masses. Do you understand me, Kristen Jordan? If you choose to take your chances and flee from this room, you will be gambling with millions of lives—including your own."