Skye City: The Darkness of Emmilyn

Airship

We head downstairs to a canteen with cheap plastic decor, eagerly eating a second breakfast – this one bacon, eggs, sausages and tinned tomatoes. Our meat is burnt to a crisp so we wash the taste away with fruit juice and then I drink my first ever coffee which is scorching hot and trust me, tastes foul.

Checking out of the hotel we march through the outskirts of Abana which are as crumbling and derelict as the outskirts of Medio. A motorcar zigzags through debris on the road, driven by someone either brave enough to carry on as normal or desperate enough to flee. Grey tower blocks bear cracks, even though I see no evidence of a nearby bomb blast, but this is not entirely unexpected. Apartment buildings vary in quality, depending on when and how they were built and some were made from the cheapest possible materials. If the shard struck one of these blocks, the impact would have brought down half the buildings in the neighbourhood. And when the tanks arrive I expect things to come crashing down like a tower of cards.

As we pass the spiked steel fence of a primary school, a small number of soldiers approach on foot and one of them yells, 'Stop!' but they are blasted by telekinesis; their bodies skidding through rubble, up the kerb and mostly into cracked cement walls – one into the base of a withered tree. The unflinching Lanya says, 'Grab their weapons and kill them. This is not the time for mercy.'

Otess and Arturo grab rifles from the subdued soldiers and Kyan pulls our mother's fingers from his eyes as they fill squirming bodies with lead. Arturo hands me a rifle and I guess this is necessary but represents a step up from my previous shooting practice. If I pull the trigger now it will not result in a stun blast, it will result in a messy death. We march on; our feet splashing through a river of blood then leaving red footprints on the road.

As we leave Abana City we see soldiers patrolling the hard-shoulder of a dual carriageway with a mechanoid in tow. The black and green contraption is ten feet tall and its arm juts into the road, forcing light traffic into the overtaking lane. The soldiers must feel invincible with such a bodyguard, but they are experiencing a false sense of security because we have three superpowered teenage girls and an idiotic android.

'Get Kyan into cover,' Arturo whispers and Mother leads him up a tree-lined embankment to hide behind a factory wall. We crouch among roadside trees as the mechanoid rises into the air in sync with Lanya's hand and smashes down, crushing three soldiers. I guess now is the time for me to join the fight. Fuck.

I open fire as the soldiers scatter, maiming or killing all four and the damaged mechanoid fires a rocket from its lying position. The rocket stops mid-air and flies back towards the mechanoid, exploding on contact and the nearby gun victims disintegrate. Trees sway and traffic comes to a standstill as Arturo runs towards the twitching mechanoid which remains partially intact. He lunges as its gun-arm rises, tearing off its chest-plate and ripping the circuitry apart.

'My Goddess... I... killed... those men,' I gasp as Arturo joins my side and the rifle trembles in my hand. Corpses may be a familiar sight now, but death feels so different when the victims died by your actions.

'Get used to it. Life is now kill or be killed,' Arturo says as though I have not endured this hell for weeks.

Our mother and Kyan descend the embankment to meet the sight of a broken mechanoid and roasted human flesh, yet my little brother fails to flinch as we pass the carnage. We follow signs on the dual carriageway to the neighbouring Jezmund, marching into a store to collect clothing and provisions for our journey without paying.

Next we locate a town square which has a greater public presence than expected, much greater even than East Shields. Rifle butts poke from our backpacks as we sit on steps before statues of men of horseback. The area is paved with white stones which have suffered no damage, stretching half a mile outwards. Behind the square stands the iconic metallic pyramid which so far looks unscathed, but I doubt it will remain this way.