Anthem's Fall

Chapter Sixty Nine

"Do you now understand the task I'm asking of you?" Vengelis said.

"I—" Kristen stumbled. "How can I possibly tell you how to destroy these Felixes when I don't even know what you are, let alone them? It isn't that simple! That's the very intent of Vatruvian technology—vast complexity."

"I don't know how you'll do it, but that is your task. And if you can't succeed, I will begin a genocide that will leave a gaping and disfiguring scar across your civilization's memory. That is, if they don't do it themselves." Vengelis nodded to the rising sounds of unrest filtering from outside.

"You can't," Kristen said. "You're asking the impossible!"

Vengelis reached out and forcefully yanked the Harbinger I remote out of Kristen's hands. She fell forward and looked up at him with a fierce aversion. Vengelis decided she was going to need some motivation. If a technology could be made, it could be unmade. That was Vengelis's position on the matter, and he was not about to stray from it. To suggest the Felixes were indestructible was to suggest his civilization had reached its end, and that was not an option. There had to be a way. It was a matter of ingenuity, and this young woman obviously had ingenuity aplenty. Kristen just needed help coming around to the severity and actuality of her plight; she needed to have as much depending on her efforts as he did.

Like him, Kristen needed the fear of destruction driving her labors.

Vengelis pressed the transmit button to connect with Hoff and Darien. He would order them to begin destroying the city from the south portion of the island upward. The building Kristen, Madison, and he now occupied would be the last remaining structure in a desert of ruin if necessary. He waited a long moment, but received no answering transmission from their end. Again he pushed the button on his Harbinger I remote with growing irritation.

There was no response.

"Hoff! Darien! What the hell are you two doing?" Vengelis held the remote close to his face for a long moment, expecting to hear Hoff's deep voice.

Yet nothing came.

At last he let his arm fall to his side in bewilderment. What could they possibly be doing? Faint tremors of angst traveled through him. Now was not the time for unforeseen complications.

"Wait. Whatever you're about to do, wait." Kristen said, seeming to guess his intention. "I will try to help. I really will. But you are going to need to tell me more about what you are. You can't simply demand results and expect them to appear. I need more information to work with."

"What do you need?"

"Well . . . first, we need to discuss your power. You and those giants . . . how are you so strong?"

"We simply are."

"You have the power to destroy cities. I think it's safe to say we have established that." Kristen looked up to the live broadcast of a devastated Chicago on the projector screen and trembled, but continued. "Does that power reside in you? Or are you and those two giants wielding some sophisticated weaponry or technology that I can't see or, I don't know, is somehow beyond my comprehension?"

"We don't brandish smoke and mirrors, if that is what you're asking. The power you have witnessed is raw, corporal; it is within us. Technology itself is archaic and ineffectual when compared to my people's innate power."

"So you are telling me your strength—whatever its scale may be—is inherent? You were born with the ability to destroy cities with your bare hands and sustain gunshots to the chest?"