Adhara's Sonder

Chapter 30: Anubis

The next morning, from atop the tallest mountain Cyrus could see the city below. It was still in shadow as the sun rose from the far side of the expansive wasteland outside the city. He had been up for hours already, disintegrating blocks of cast aluminum and iron into powder to fill the bottom of the mountains' craters with thermite, but it wasn't until the sunrise that he felt the gravity of the day. This day. Somehow, it didn't feel like he had expected it to.

He had been building up to this point, this apex of his destiny, for so long, and now...it was almost anticlimactic. After adjusting his diamond nanorod armor under his clothes, Cyrus removed his helmet and sat on the edge of the crater, watching the clear morning dawn.

The city looked so peaceful from up here, Cyrus thought to himself. Was it right of him, he wondered, to disrupt that peace, and throw the city into chaos? He wondered if he were doing the right thing—how history would remember him. Had he become the Anubis that Adhara had warned him about so long ago?

And yet, Adhara had taught him an important lesson. "There are always growing pains that come with change." Human beings don't like change, as is their nature—but the alternative is stagnation and eventually death. To survive and move forward fell on the shoulders of those brave enough to face the unknown—and brave enough to face the hatred of his or her fellow man.

Growing pains. It was okay to be afraid, Cyrus told himself. As long as he was doing what he knew, in the end, was for the best. And to that end, sacrifice was inevitable.

He put his helmet back on.

With a snap of his fingers, Cyrus ignited the thermite. The fizzling flames followed trails to the other mountains, and in less than an hour the mountain range was engulfed in fire. A few more minutes and the thermite started to melt through the rock, and streams of lava pushed out of the craters and began to run down the mountainside towards the city.

In a single bound, Cyrus leapt from the mountaintops over to the master AirShift tower, landing at its base. Glancing up occasionally to watch the lava's progress, he hacked into the AirShift system and sent it into overdrive. The towers wailed. High above, the dark clouds swelled, fed by the noxious fumes billowing from the reawakened volcanoes. The storm spread towards the bay, slowly closing its eye over the city. As its shadow passed over him, Cyrus leapt into the air again, high enough to hear a murmur of thunder before landing just outside an entrance to the Pipeworks.

The freight platform waited for him just inside the tunnels, laden with his astatine-coated uranium bullets and other weaponry. The platform took him towards the center of the city. He finished mounting his shear blade and conductor blade, to his left wrist and right wrist respectively, as he sped through the tunnels, passing some that were already filling with lava.

He finished mounting the retractable blades as the freight platform stopped, just beneath the city square. Cyrus unloaded the bullets and propellant, and in a small, latched metal container, the polonium-210, which he clipped to his belt. He left an explosive, like an oversized pipe bomb, on the freight platform. When he had finished unloading his stockpile, he covered the bomb with a tarp and sent the platform through the tunnels towards Acryogen headquarters. After watching it disappear, he reversed the gravity around him, levitating himself and his weapons up to the surface.

The city square was deserted, but Cyrus could hear the fallout siren echo through the empty streets. That was good—most people will have evacuated or be taking shelter. Fewer innocent lives lost this way. And by now, the members of the rebellion equipped with gauntlets would be in position.

Cyrus felt the explosion before he saw it, and he turned to Acryogen headquarters, the triple towers looming in the distance. A pillar of fire burst from the top of the middle tower. Cyrus smiled as the clouds closed in, watching his plan come together. Then he frowned as a blast of energy shot past him, missing his head by centimeters. He turned calmly to see a Bouncer drone looming behind him.