The Sword Chronicles: Child of Ash by Collings Michaelbrent

Author:Collings, Michaelbrent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: wizrd, action, sorcery, coming of age, romantic, dystopian, science fiction, steampunk, superheroes
Publisher: Written Insomnia Press
Published: 2019-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

9

Arrow stared at the thing that had just spoken, blinking through a haze of pain and exhaustion that dulled his senses. "How can you be Alpha? I just heard an explosion where Alpha was."

"What you spoke to was simply one of my shells, which I discarded as soon as the Core co-opted it. But not before I set the self-destruct protocols." Alpha –

(How can it be Alpha, how many Alphas are there and what in the name of the Gods is going on?)

– cocked his head. The red spray of hair was exactly as it was on all the other people Arrow had seen; the face the precise duplicate of the others. He was dressed this time in some nondescript gray pants and an equally gray and boring shirt with buttons up and down the middle and a pocket over either breast. What looked like tools peeked out over the tops of the pockets, and as Arrow watched the man/thing/Alpha took out one of the tools – a long, thin cylinder of some dark metal – and jammed it into his ear.

Arrow screamed in surprise and sympathetic pain at the suicidal act as the cylinder sank halfway into Alpha's ear, which meant that he had just sunk a good four inches of metal into his head. But not only did he not die, he didn't even seem to mind. He simply switched the grip on the cylinder, twisted, then pulled. A length of fine string came out of the end of the metal.

Alpha ran his forearm over a piece of wall. The sign of Faith blinked once on his wrist, once on the wall, then a small hole appeared near the flashing light. Alpha pushed the end of the string into the hole. Lights flared and danced along the length of the cord. Purple and blue and green, Arrow thought he had never seen colors so vibrant and bright.

He would have laughed and clapped in delight had this been any other place or time, but as it was he could hear movement in the corridor the way he had come, and knew that the Guardians were after him still.

Alpha seemed to understand Arrow's concern, because he gestured at Arrow and then at the string connecting the tool in his head to the wall. "I overestimated your stamina. We won't be able to outrun the Guardians, so I have to strip away this part of the Core. That involves a manual interface. Risky, because I have to interface my own O.S. with the Core O.S., which means it could co-opt my base code, but if it works..."

Alpha's eyes glazed. Arrow expected him to open his mouth and make that scratchy, jarring sound Arrow found so disquieting. Alpha stood still and silent.

Movement down the hall caught Arrow's attention. He turned his head – and even that was a struggle, so drained was he by the last day's events and the flight through this strange place – and saw three Guardians limping toward him.

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