Memento Mori

5.3 - THE GUNSLINGER

OF COURSE the metro is the only thing still running. Like a deadline, never late.

It's a train for ghosts now. Two lines of empty seats stretch down the eight cars, creating a serpentine corridor of shattered glass, scorchmarks, and bent poles. I sit by myself at the front, elbows on my knees, eyes on the floor. My heels tap restlessly in the silence. The deck tilts from side to side beneath. Heartbeat thumps pound through thin sheet metal as we roar over gaps in the rails. Outside, the burning undercity cascades past in a flow of fiery color. The crust between the two cities is turning the Vents into the world's largest pressure cooker. Plumes of smoke flash through the metro's broken windows, passed in the space of a breath. The heat has built to an infernal level. I use the few minutes of silence to sync with the new JOY Krey left me, tuning the neural link, turning off the training wheels. My two classes glow back at me in the rattling silence. I stare at the martial arts Ulysses gave me, my face a hollow mask of grief. A swipe of my fingers deletes them for good.

As I'm about to close down the projection, my eyes catch on a small alert blinking in my slowly populating contacts. I tap it on a whim. No message comes up. Just a recall button for the three airboards we synced to my old JOY. Location, somewhere in the edge of the Kwa-Hon block, probably in a dumpster or someone's home after they were looted in the chaos. Not sure if it'll even do anything- or if the board is still intact- I punch the key and shove the sphere into my pocket. Stand, grab a handhold.

The familiar towers of the Five Rings Block, walled in by fires on every side, emerges from the ashstorm. Ulysses' headquarters is sprinkled with infrequent lights. None of that frenzied activity like when we arrived last night, when he was putting on a show for both me and his own gang. They'll know by now. And judging by the absence of anyone watching the metro station as I disembark, well. Not everyone likes Dynasty.

Flickering overheads bathe the graveyard metro station in stream cam flashes. Tattered posters of pro fights from years past are stuck to the walls, flapping and whispering. Trash and empty bottles roll along the tiled ground. I wander the catacomb of tunnels until I'm about to emerge into the snowbound undercity. Ash billows heavy and fast down the station entrance; clouding in flurries. I stifle a cough in my elbow and keep covering my mouth as I ascend the smooth-worm steps. The only thing waiting for me when I exit onto the sidewalk of the deserted four-lane highway that runs the perimeter of the block are the howls of the wind and the catlike, electric purr I've come to associate with everything Shimano Heavy Industries makes.

The last of the three airboards, the only survivor of the chaos after the Lighthouse, hovers patiently amidst the blizzard. Soft cyan running lights pulse through the curtains of ash, beckoning me closer. Meter-thick air cushion between it and the pavement. Its nose is mangled and dented, the rest of the board scratched to hell, like it flew through three brick walls to get here. But it responds perfectly to my touch as I step aboard. Foot controls still familiar.

I do a quick left-right burst to test the propulsion. Then I'm jetting through the snowstorm, carving the undercity air like a comet. Darkened towers loom out of the mist like giant obelisks, gone in a blink. I weave through them all with ease. I know where I'm going. And the doors are already rolled open when I get there. I leave the board humming out on the towerside.

The Haymaker Gym, stripped baren just like I left it, the shadows of the bar lurking in a faraway corner. More a mausoleum than a gym now. Huge ceiling, pillars evenly spaced, concrete polished to reflect spotlights that no longer shine. Fires from the next block over pour burning light through the gym's two vast bay doors, stretching my shadow well ahead of me. Clicking bootsteps carry ahead as I pass under the roof where so many legends of the Vents first earned their knuckles.

He's waiting for me like a shrine's guardian statue. Half his battered armor bathed in the burning ambiance, half in shadow. The hood of Wishbone's cape thrown over his helmet, only the black glass peering out from beneath. More an accumulation of mementos than whatever is left of the warrior beneath. A man without a face of his own.

The Armiger doesn't wear those mementos like trophies. They're a part of who he is like he's a part of this place. Disciplined like the spirit of the man who built it. Rigid as the concrete. Grey as the ash. Watching without watching. Each piece of him mismatched with the others, but not out of place. One of the Anvil's vambraces wraps around his right wrist. Wishbone's cape wavers at his ankles. That jackal helm. The hilt of Sarah's Sixer resting in a holster at his hip.

He waits for me to come to a stop in the light of the other bay door, twenty paces away. Reaching up, he throws back his hood, exposing the ears of his helmet.

"You are a fool to come here. This place has nothing left but death for you."

"It has more than death." My voice echoes hard and hollow across the concrete expanse as I level a finger at Sarah's Sixer. "That doesn't belong to you."

"There is only one rule in our world, and it is not that the weak decide for the strong." His faceless helm inclines towards the holster around my thigh. "If you deny it again, it will cost more than blood."

My body loosens. Braid rustling in the ashen wind. Heels squaring up for grip. Centering on that zen moment that belongs only to Gunslingers, the shattered silence. Imagining the path my hand must take, picturing it, locking it in my mind.

Us, this, it's all talk. Stalling till that moment collapses inwards. We both answered the dare. His shoulders roll, arms slowly falling to his side, gloved hand waiting, just like mine. The final flash of a collapsing building ignites his pauldron with light.

"You mistake me," I quietly say.

His helmet leans to the side. "And how is that, gunslinger?"

My eyes narrow.

"You assume that I give a damn."

A single heartbeat separates us.

My hand flashes for the holster. His perfectly matches. Both guns clear their sheaths in a microsecond. Two gunpowder flashes, two thunderous clangs of chains and a crash of flaying metal explode the warehouse silence. Smoke drifts from both barrels, held in perfect firing form, as a rain of metal shards clatters down. A moment of horrible quiet descends in the aftermath as I stare straight into the Armiger's helm, wavering. Blood begins dripping down my cheek.

The moment doubles.

And he falls, a bullet hole puncturing the armor of his heart.

The Sixer clatters as it hits the concrete.

Ears ringing, my hand trembles as I slowly lower the 6-Teba, or whatever is left of it. Save the grip and small chunks of the frame, the rest is scattered around me in pieces. Slowly, I reach up to touch the cut one of the shards left on my cheek. Two fingertips come back bloody. The shaky remainder of the breath I was holding makes its way out while I wipe the blood on my leg and ease the remnants of the gun back into its holster. Then I stride towards the Armiger.

I always knew I would lose to him. So I let him win, and I gave him a perfect target. We're equals in speed, but he's the far better marksman. Center mass his preference every time I've seen him pull the trigger. He does not miss, not even when it would drive his bullet like a nail into my own gun, perfectly positioned to intercept. And in the extra frame it took his gun to rise, I'd already fired from the hip and brought the 6-Teba to bear as my shield.

"Fight dirty," I whisper to the gym. "Just like you taught me. Right?"

My cape sweeps across the floor as I kneel and collect the Sixer. Heavy metal fills my hand with a weight of burdens. Black and white, scarred and striped, it fits perfectly to my fingers. It spins in my hand like a knife as I rise.

Before me, the Armiger bleeds out without a sound, if he's not already gone. I feel the need to know something about the man. Find some reason, some answer that can scrub the haunting gunshot that chases me every time I close my eyes. But as I reach out and slip two taped-together fingers beneath the lip of his helm and start to pull up, his hand snaps out to stop me, locking around my wrist like a steel manacle. We freeze together.

But nothing else moves. His hand stays locked around my wrist for a long moment before finally falling limp and slipping away. A reflexive reaction of nerves, nothing more.

I slowly take my fingers back and rise, leaving his helmet on.

The way to Ulysses lies open ahead. I flip on the gym's old disc reader before I leave, taking the music and the Sixer with me into the darkness.