The Justiceers - Part One: Chapter Four
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
by Daphne Garrido
Part One: Darkest Nights
1.4
Miriam came up gasping for breath, body surging with the stirrings of this unique container of water, its chaotic waves engulfing her senses. Across the plaza she’d seen Arthur and The Beast make it clear of the disintegrating courtyard, neutralizing pests with brutal efficiency.
She’d not thought this would be going so poorly.
Those unclear messages of intuition led them into the heart of Oliath, its central most plaza. They’d not known what to do from there, and so they waited.
Arthur and Miriam were feeling most relieved from their time cruising city limits, sitting back and taking in the sights of this bustling metropolis seemed more interesting than it usual for such well traveled souls. Miriam was pestering source for more information.
It had been standoffish, speaking in riddles.
‘We’ll just have to see,’ was the most solid answer she’d get.
Sometimes, she felt as if it spirit was dismantling her from the inside — teasing and triggering, saying the very things which would set her off most — so she might learn to be better from the mistakes they’d bring out of her.
Such an impatient girl, feeling the need to know, wanting it all right now.
Source had been working that down to the bone. Though, she’d still found her anxieties persistent, cradled so deep in her guts. Born to such an unfitting planet, and a family who’d no idea what to do with her, its toxic ways of living had worked into inescapable parts of her personality.
She’d just have to do the best she could.
Miriam had been assured that would be enough, and there was a part of her which always knew when source was being honest. Her ‘choir’, as Arthur so enjoyed calling them, would speak in different tones. Some, she’d know as truth. Usually, it was just being that ‘tricky bitch’.
She’d love it regardless — her heart was far from simple in and of itself.
After a solid half-quadrant spent in witness of the absurdly large fountain-pool with all its spraying archways at the center of the plaza, those towering mirrors of illuminated and reflective light beads which gleamed down upon it all, something began to happen in Arthur’s belly.
‘Fucking fuck,’ came out him instinctively.
His words told more of what gut had spoken than he’d understood when feeling it. Something bad was happening. They’d not want to be here for it.
‘We’re going’ he’d commanded, firing up The Beast with eyes unfocused as if seeing to some other plane.
Miriam didn’t hesitate, she never would. A benefit of her gift, she’d often find herself quite prepared to respond vigilantly in crisis when called upon, forced to presence by source pouring through with furiously clear and commanding steerings. In these times she’d not feel herself, as if source itself was driving her.
In this moment, stepping nearer Arthur, Grammaton began to shake from its depths, a lowest rumble rising so quickly towards crescendo. Everything from here would seem to happen instantaneously.
In retrospect, with the rapid-fire decision making and instinctual pouring forth of righteous calls to action, these following moments would be remembered by Arthur and Miriam in slow-motion, every movement feeling most considered, beyond what they might be capable under ordinary circumstances.
Miriam’s hand was sliding onto Arthur’s shoulder, letting him know of her presence, when the cobblestone beneath her feet began to shudder. He’d been searching his gut for direction, some way free of this unknowable, pending catastrophe.
Finally looking to Miriam, the concern in Arthur’s eyes had brought a focus previously unknown to the woman. He’d not need to tell her to follow as The Beast cut out across the plaza.
Someone had screamed first, then there was a crash. Miriam looked up to see enormous pieces of cathedral falling from such heights to shatter upon the avenue below.
One splattered a man before her eyes. ‘Yikes’.
The shouts of terror were multiplying, debris falling more rapidly, swells of Grammaton protruding upward before collapsing back into themselves. The Beast was running at ‘Miriam-speed’, exactly as fast as she could keep pace with, something in-fact programmed under that name.
Arthur controlled The Beast by neural implants which allowed him full access to its functions via augmented-reality displays he commanded with thought. He’d resisted the integration of this technology at first, but it would save their lives this day.
Shrieks arose, directly behind them, with new levels of urgency and abundance. Miriam had spun around, noticing Arthur slow The Beast to look with her.
The ground where they’d just been standing had imploded. Horrible things were crawling from its depths; hexapedal creatures, or ‘six-legged fuckers’ as Miriam would often call them. Their gently curved and skittering appendages emerged from beneath a darkly shimmering, shell-like carapace.
There were so many them. People were being shredded by these foulest insectoid creatures, gutted. The size of men they were.
From the nearest jagged edge of this cave-in, began to form a crack, accompanied by incredible tearing sounds below. Faster than Arthur or Miriam could think, the ground split between them, everything falling straight down along this line into a furiously expanding gash.
They’d no choice but to turn away from each other, the Beast only just staying gripped to the still-standing ground which immediately ceded to the crevasse in its wake, Miriam throwing herself into the waters of the fountain, needlessly plunging head-first.
At least, that had been the plan. It was more of a bellyflop.
Regardless, she’d emerged to witness anew the destruction surrounding, met by the waves created from the forces stirring this surprisingly deep water. After checking to see that Arthur was okay, perhaps hesitating for a moment of amazement at the way he was ruthlessly dispatching these ‘insect fucks’, she’d not waited to see the fountain begin crumbling into Grammaton.
Miriam was a pretty good swimmer. She loved the water.
It was a strange peace she found in this moment, letting her source and insight be charged by this greatest element of nature while everything crumbled around her. She’d reached and scaled the fountain’s farthest edge in haste, overcoat, pants, and runners soaked through.
She’d finally looked back to see the fountain’s waters draining rapidly — having escaped only just in time — its highest, sculpted structures toppling into the now enormous hole growing at the center of the piazza.
These Cryptoids, as they would come to be called, were everywhere.
‘Fuck yes!’ Miriam’s inner voice shouted, knowing born alongside.
‘We can use it!’
“Finally!” Miriam had affirmed aloud, searching the distance for Arthur, prying open her overcoat to reach into its most hidden pocket. He wasn’t where he’d been — there was so much happening at once.
She’d looked for signs of death.
It was there she found her Arthur, at the furthest end of the complex, demolishing patios of soon-to-be collapsed cafes — The Beast’s effector fields eviscerating outdoor furnishings and rubble in its path alike — literally exploding Cryptoids which came near.
Arthur was aiming to outrun this cave-in which was growing ever larger, trying for Miriam’s side of the plaza; he was coming for her.
Now in the palm of her hand was Miriam’s soon-to-be favorite toy. She’d activated the modified shock wand, itself telescoping to full length, and source began moving her towards Arthur’s bearing, sprinting.
The sounds of some newfound and enormous catastrophe echoed directly behind her. She’d not looked to see.
There were nearly a dozen of these sickening demons between herself and the place she’d hoped to soon find Arthur. Her wand would throw a cruelest fan of flaming inferno. Oh, how very modified this shock wand had been.
She called it Scorcher.
Its outpouring of flames would expand from the finest pinprick at its outfacing tip, enveloping outward into a fanning inferno. Miriam had friends in cool places. It was time for Scorcher to do some scorching — straight melting ‘these cunts.’
Once she’d realized how effective this contraption she had thrown together on a whim really was, how brutally it was deflecting advances from her newfound nemeses of the soul, how incredibly easy it was to burn right through them — Miriam found bliss in her wrath.
All the while she’d been watching Arthur and ‘his magnificent ass’. He’d made it across before the collapse had gotten too far along, now helping a woman who’d almost been torn to shreds by a Cryptoid he’d then exploded. Though she was a mess, that woman was alive, and he always knew how to speak with people in shock.
By the time Miriam was through with her fun, path to Arthur cut clear, that woman had already been running to join a mass of people escaping the plaza by a path he’d cut for them.
The Beast finally turned her way, relief in Arthur’s eyes.
Those next moments would live in Miriam’s mind forever. Just as before, some act of most twisted fate had shot a rapidly developing crack into the paved stones between them, her heart sank so deeply.
Until she’d seen what her Arthur was doing. The Beast was flaming forward, straight towards this most promptly forming fissure. He’d not hesitated a millisecond. The ground had been falling out beneath The Beast before he’d even reached where this newest breach began.
There was a blast; aflash. Miriam felt source move her a few steps to the left.
Arthur and his heaviest beast rocketed into the air, soaring no more than three feet high. Yet, it was enough. He liked making adjustments to his toys too.
It all crashed down, The Beast’s lowest frameworks grinding the cobblestone so shambled from this ever-persistent quake. Not to give, shock compressors holding, lifting Arthur back to a cool six-nock hover, its momentum carrying to a sliding stop where Miriam had only just been standing. He’d looked over at her like it was nothing.
“Hop on,” he told her like the ground wasn’t still crumbling beneath him. Miriam obeyed this request. Bracing the beast, flinging her legs up over its farthest armrest to land her ass right upon his lap.
He’d pretended she didn’t knock the wind out of him, ever the gentleman, before they’d torn off together, The Beast flying its fastest, Arthur his fiercest.
Miriam was lost in the moment. There was awe of the raw destruction which had befallen the plaza so quickly. Then, as she’d turned back, Arthur’s beautiful face so close to hers, their bodies gently bobbing with The Beast.
At once, it was right before her; Miriam’s whole heart. Arthur was smiling.
‘Oh, this guy,’ source had spoken in its truest voice.
‘We love him.’
Miriam couldn’t care less about the mayhem surrounding their escape, staring into this amazing man’s gorgeous eyes. She’d said it aloud, through her own softly formed, toothy grin.
“Yes, we do.”
Arthur didn’t need to hear the words she’d responded to. He’d known what she meant.
