Adaxia

Chapter 9: Semantics

5 Months Later...

Luna scrambled out of the ruins of a previously bombed Diner, the streets were empty as usual save for the occasional patrol, thought It wasn't hard to hide from them. It'd been 5 months and no one knew who their attackers were, they belonged to no country and yet they had the military force of one. It made everyone uneasy that a corporation had this much control over them but it made Luna the most uneasy. Luna was no genius but she knew her history and she'd never heard about any attack on New York let alone most of the world until 2048.

Luna nodded to her companion across the street, her name was Andrea and they'd both met on Attack Day, Andrea was considerably younger than Luna and she was pretty sure that she was all Andrea had left. Luna sprinted across the wide avenue making as little noise as possible before taking cover behind an overturned SUV.

“Did you see something?” Luna questioned as she poked her head out from behind the SUV and surveyed the area, “Are they coming?”

“What? No. Sort of.. Alec called.” She stuttered as she handed Luna the primitive Nokia mobile, “He wanted you to call him back.”

Luna sighed, Alec always had a knack for calling during salvaging missions, it was either that or when a patrol was close. Luna could have sworn someone kept turning the silent mode off. Luna thumbed the autodial button and brought the phone up to her ear.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end answered, “Who is this?”.

“It's me you ass, what do you want?” Luna said furiously.

“You're kidding me, right? You did not just call me a-..” The voice on the other end sighed, “Just get back to base, it's getting dark.” he sighed.

Without another word Luna thumbed the, 'END CALL' button and shoved the phone into her jacket pocket, Luna quietly gestured for Andrea to follow her as they started to make their way up the avenue. Luna hadn’t noticed before but it was getting darker earlier, Winter was coming, perhaps she'd get the chance to see this majestic snow that everyone kept talking about..

“So..” Andrea whispered nervously as they waited for an armoured patrol to pass, “What's up with you and Alec?”

“Nothing.” Luna said in a cold tone, “Nothing is wrong.”

“Why did you call him an ass then?” Andrea said, she was pushing her luck trying to get Luna to open up.

“It's none of your business, stay focused.” Luna said sternly as they slunk into an alleyway. At the end of the alley lay a red door, Luna knocked on it three times with each knock equally spaced apart. Andrea was further up the alley on lookout. Within seconds the door was opened and they were both ushered in. They had taken in more injured than usual and thus floorspace was limited, without adequate access to medicine most of these people were doomed but Luna dare not think about that. Death was common enough back in her own time. Alec was standing on the far end of the wide room which Andrea had suggested was some kind of, 'Yoga Studio'. He was waiting by a bank of monitors, Luna tred carefully and made her way across leaving Andrea to tend to some of the wounded.

“Did you get it?” Alec asked turning back to the monitor bay, “I really hope you got it..”

“Alec you can't keep sending us out on these missions, I swear the patrols are getting more frequent..” Luna explained, “It's getting too dangerous for Andrea. You can't keep calling us in the field.” She explained in a concerned tone.

“Well maybe if you turned your implant back on..” Alec suggested, chuckling to himself. From the day Luna arrived in this time Alec's voice had been gibbering on in her ear. He'd just been some lonely computer programmer who'd been tapping into the right frequency at the right time, them meeting was pure luck, the attack was not. The implants were mandatory for all Ministry personnel and rumours were constantly floating around about the Ministry using them to take remote control of workers to spy and so on.

“Don't even Alec.” Luna sighed, she was getting angry again, “Where's Sierra? I need to talk to her.”

“Out back working on the Impala, but don't bother, you have a visitor waiting in your quarters, says his name was David or something stupid..” Alec said as he shooed her away before focusing back on his monitors which were tuned into every CCTV camera in Lower Manhattan.

'David.' Luna thought to herself, what a pleasant surprise, after deserting her in a foreign city for 5 months he had finally decided to rear his ugly head. Luna contemplated whether to bring her spiked plank but decided against it, she didn't want to mess him up TOO much.. Luna purposely made a racket as she clomped up the hallway to meet him, she still didn't get why people made, 'Neighing' sounds around her. Luna stormed into her room only to find David sitting on the end of her bed and admiring a picture of the Empire State Building on her bedside table.

“Ah.. So you're Miss. Fancy Revolution Leader now, I expected your quarters to be.. Fancier.. Perhaps more French Industrialist?” David quipped, Luna shot him daggers.

“What do you think you're doing here?” She asked in a calm, yet faltering tone.

“Oh, right! Yeah I was in the neighbourhood and I thought I might pop in. I won't lie, despite all the dying people on the floor it's still a lot tidier than the base on 5th street. I swear that place smells like old people.” He explained as he slipped out of his jacket, stood up and tossed it onto the bed behind him, “So. How have you been?” David smiled.

“Oh you know, I was just thrown roughly one hundred years into the past and involved in some kind of war that I'm pretty sure never happened, you know, girl stuff.” She huffed.

“Excellent, are you ready to go? I have the Skyline fuelled up and ready to go out front.” David smiled as he fished the keys out of his pocket and dangled them around. Luna really had no idea what she saw in David.

“I'll meet you out there.” Luna said in an annoyed tone, she didn't know why she had decided to go with him and she was still unsure as to whether she would. Why didn't she ask him where they were going? She'd only known him for a few hours, or was it a few months? Technically she never knew him because she'd never been born yet but that was all semantics she supposed. She tredded across the carpet of broken bodies yet again, as she made her way out the back door she turned back to Alec who hadn't even noticed her.

“I'm going out, Alec.” Luna left before he could respond and jogged down the alley and around the side of the building where she found David leaning on the side of the Skyline.

“Are you sure you should have that in the open? Won't that create some kind of universe ending time paradox or something?” Luna said nervously stopping almost instantly in her tracks, it looked brand new.

“Please, if the universe was going to end it would have ended by now.”