For the second time in thirty years, the entire world has fallen asleep...
Thirty years after the Greymen caused the decimation of her people, high school drop out Rain Collins spends her days learning to pickpocket and hold her booze. Yet she long...
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The wall was still exploding inward when the Regressives charged out to meet our attackers. The rocks tore at them just as viciously as they had at my father, but the Regressives pushed through, unharmed and unhindered, wounds closing as quickly as they opened. "Father!" they screamed for the Speaker as they charged.
"Dad!" I screamed as they charged.
All at once, the rocks stopped flying, the Regressives stopped charging, everything was silent. As the dust settled around them, the Regressives began to rise. Up and up. A loud rip. Their heads continued up and up while their bodies fell down. Several small rivers of blood formed on the ground, each sourced by a spurting waterfall.
Carried by magic, the heads changed direction in the air, out instead of up. Toward the newly formed entrance they flew, out of Sanctuary.
"Is this all of them?" a voice asked. It came from outside of Sanctuary, but sounded as if it were in my ear.
"Yes," said another voice, a familiar voice.
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
The heads fell. Some rolled back into Sanctuary, others away. Before they settled, hundreds of feet stepped over them, on them, kicked them out of the way. The Masters were here.
The city was gone. Dr. Farrah has betrayed us. The Speaker was dead. Dad was dead. The Regressives were all dead.
And the Masters were here.
They did not charge, but sauntered casually around the fallen bodies. They were unafraid, unthreatened, unchallenged. We had already lost. At the head of the posse, a stately man led a beautiful woman by her hand, like a debutante's escort at a storybook ball.
The woman surveyed the hall ahead of the rest, while her escort whispered in her ear. She nodded or shook her head in response, taking in the faces in the hall. They stopped at my father's corpse. The woman bent down, pushing the rock away with a light tap of a single finger.
"Oh, Ned," I heard her in my ear.
"Mom?" Billy said, stepping up to the woman. The woman leading the Masters' assault on Sanctuary. The woman who was Dr. Farrah.
The stately man slapped Billy with the back of his hand, sending him flying into the arms of the other farmhands. He rushed forward, charging his mother.
"How could you? The Speaker and Ned are dead! The Regressives. All of them, Mom. You've doomed us all. You've doomed me. How could you?"
The man moved to slap Billy again, but the doctor held up a hand. He stilled. "Really, dear. You must stop indulging your horde's every whim."
The doctor tittered. "Nonsense." She turned to Billy. "How could I, you ask? How could I not? Billy, dear. All we've ever wanted is to be free. This is that chance. The Speaker could have made us Masters so we that we could have fought. He had that power. But he was too short-sighted. He had the solution to all of our problems, and he hid it in space for decades. Finally, he returned, and he still kept the solution hidden, jealously guarded."
