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."
Vengelis reached out and pulled Kristen close to him by the collar of her shirt. "That means stay. It's a command a dog can follow. Let's hope a scientist can, too."
"Fine," Kristen said, straining her head away from him in disdain. "God! I'm not going anywhere!"
"Where are you going?" Madison asked.
"I need to check on something," Vengelis looked out the windows and began to walk toward the empty panes. "You have no excuse not to be here when I return. If the doors to this room are pried open and you two are ordered to evacuate the building by some sort of authority, refuse them. This ballroom is in the only safe building in the city, and—for now—I would like to keep the both of you alive. If you leave, your lives will be in jeopardy. I should be back in a minute."
With that, Vengelis turned from them and accelerated through one of the tall window frames and into the open air and sunlight of the street. There were crowds raging everywhere along the avenue. With all routes off Manhattan destroyed, the would-be evacuating masses were festering and boiling over. Under the imposing overhead displays depicting a decimated Chicago, chaos alone reigned.
Floating over the street, Vengelis stared at the screen of his Harbinger I remote and tracked the linked remotes of his Lord General and Royal Guard. Darien's was not being detected anywhere, but Hoff's was blinking from several blocks to the north. The dot of the Lord General's remote remained ominously stationary as Vengelis stared at it indecisively. He ignored the multitudes on the streets and flew north a few hundred feet above the avenue, periodically looking down as he moved toward the flashing location of Hoff's remote. Vengelis did not know which was more concerning, the stillness of Hoff's blinking dot or the total absence of Darien's.
Vengelis soared past a lofty office tower, his lithe reflection moving swiftly across the darkly mirrored windows. A peculiar sight met him from below, and he straightened as he looked down upon the scene of the street ahead. There was a crowd of people huddled around a shadowed mass on the pavement. Vengelis looked back to the monitor in his hand. The flashing location of Hoff's remote was directly where the circle of people had gathered. He glared and cautiously moved forward, his attention darting about the surroundings.
Men and women pressed and crowded around the motionless mass, and as Vengelis neared, he saw it was a prostrate body. With a stunned breath he recognized the unmistakable glint of Imperial First Class armor. It was the lifeless body of Alegant Hoff. Someone had killed his Lord General. Vengelis glared down at his fallen subordinate before quickly raising his vision and squinting sharply into the bright skies all around him. There were just clouds, steel spires, and the wind. The attacker had left in a hurry, whoever it was.
Nerol. Why had Hoff said it was Nerol?
Vengelis descended and touched down on the pavement beside the bruised and bloodied corpse of his highest-ranked general. There was an upsurge of screams and trampling of feet behind him as the men and women watched him descend from the sky. Vengelis stood beside Hoff and looked at him expressionlessly for a long moment, unable to keep his wits afloat in the growing confusion. He glared at the giant's battered backside as he kneeled down to his motionless body and saw the Lord General's armor was cracked and broken in places. Someone had fractured his ribs. Vengelis ran his fingers down Hoff's back and saw evidence of a brutal liver strike—the killing blow. He frowned and let his hand rest on Hoff's lower back. Whoever assaulted him had done so with technical and practiced precision.
People were shouting, though Vengelis was so lost he took no notice of the insurgence encompassing him. With both hands, he reached down and rolled Hoff over on the pavement, pushing the giant Lord General onto his back. Below the thick bristles of Hoff's heavy moustache, a streak of red-brown blood spread across his wide chin and neck. The Lord General's lifeless eyes stared vacantly into the sky.
"Nerol couldn't have done this," Vengelis murmured under his breath and shook his head. Whoever did it was strong, very strong, and certainly not an old man.
A prickly feeling rose on the back of his neck and Vengelis turned, once more searching the brilliant sky above him. He half expected to see the grim outline of a woman floating between the two tall buildings and smiling down at him with blonde hair and blue glowing eyes. Vengelis quickly shook the notion of Felixes from his mind and grabbed hold of Hoff's enormous forearm, pulling the Lord General onto his own shoulder and easily lifting off the ground and ascending gracefully to the top of an adjacent building. He let Hoff's body rest against the backside of a stone ledge. One more Primus life claimed without any semblance of validity or commemoration by this nameless struggle. The last Epsilon placed a hand on his Lord General's shoulder and allowed himself a moment's silence before lifting back into the sky.
Vengelis was actually surprised at the anger he felt over this crime. He tore off the rooftop and flew high into the air over the city, scanning the entire surrounding area. His gaze traced the horizons of endless blue ocean to the east and flat meadowlands to the west. The bright roof of the world was dotted only with the scattering of thin clouds. He looked into the expansive and empty horizons and decided that whatever killed Hoff was surely still in the city, so he brought his gaze back to the rooftops of Manhattan.
Vengelis found himself in a dilemma.
On the one hand, it was his desire—no, his responsibility—to determine what killed Hoff and where Darien was. On the other, it was unbelievably dangerous to leave the one and only sliver of a hope he had at defeating the Felixes, Kristen Jordan, unattended to. He looked down and carefully scanned up and down each avenue and street below. Noxious black smoke rose from one intersection, where the mangled wreck of a helicopter smoldered into the pavement. Where the hell was Darien? Surely he had fought alongside Hoff against their enemy? Vengelis pulled out his Harbinger I remote again and scanned for a location on Darien's remote. The monitor flashed, no readings in proximity.
As Vengelis glared at the message, something caught his attention momentarily above the city to the south. It had been nothing more than a dark dot against the light blue backdrop of the sky. He snapped his head up and stared intently in the direction of the movement, hair blowing across his forehead in the breeze. In his peripheral vision he had seen something soar above the buildings and rooftops.
Without another moment's consideration, Vengelis pocketed his remote and erupted toward the collection of skyscrapers to the southwest.