Tale of The Broken Sword

Chapter Thirty Six : On the Trail

17th February, AD 2057

Washington D.C. – Former City

“Hurry!” Warren shouted at us as we crossed the bridge and into the open square where the airship had crashed. Wonder why a crashed airship brought so much attention from the rest of the people? It’s just an airship, nothing else, and it will emit the same pattern of radio waves as the one we sought out for. The pilot’s probably dead as well, so there’s no use of finding and interrogating one.

“Over there,” Janice pointed out into the wreckage smacked right in the middle of the city square. Its slender, aluminium body was crumpled like no other. Tons of debris scattered around the airship, ranging from twisted metal to splinters of wood and glass shards.

“Whoever was piloting that shuttle,” Simmons grimaced. “God bless his soul.”

I nod, scanning around the city for signs of any movement. I felt that the loud crash has brought a lot of attention already from everywhere. So I’d half expected packs of wild dogs and scavengers running towards our direction. Instead, nothing emerges out of the smog. The street stood empty, with pure silence fills the air.

“Kelson,” Warren called out to me. “Come over here!”

“Aaron, you take point.” I said before heading into the crashed airship. Warren was already there, kneeling against the control panel. A small chunk of it was ripped out and there was no sign of the pilot’s body.

“The pilot survived the crash,” Warren said, examining the interiors of the airship. “And he took the beacon with him.”

“He’s probably heading for the main beacon location.” I instantly concluded. “We got to hurry. The pilot might not be far away.”

“What makes you think that?” Warren asked, perplexed.

“Just a hunch,” looked right in Warren’s eyes. “Well, you mentioned about the spires, right? Those things might’ve served as some sort of teleporter for those people.”

“Now who says that I’m watching too many movies?” Warren grinned. “Let’s go then!”

Leaping out of the crashed airship, I saw Simmons was already on the other side of the square scanning around for any clues of the runaway pilot. He waved his rifle at us and pointed at the main road leading out of the square, indicating the pilot have gone through that way. The main road leads to a bridge that connects to the heart of the city. At the long bridge across the Potomac River, a part of it was destroyed, leaving only a narrow strip of concrete still connecting it to the other side.

Reaching at the edge of the bridge, I looked at the other side of it and knew that jumping across it wasn’t really a good idea. Simmons was frantically searching for another alternative route bypassing the bridge. Realizing that there was no other way than to leap across the gap, Simmons walks back a few steps before breathing in heavily.

“Are you nuts?” I said. “The gap is too wide for us to jump across.”

“You’ll never know,” Simmons flashed a grin before running towards the edge of the bridge. At the last moment, his thrusts his legs and propelled himself towards the sky before landing just a foot away from the edge on the other side of the bridge.

Upon landing, a fairly large chunk of concrete rock separated from the cracked edge of the broken bridge, splashing into the still, murky water below. Simmons nearly felled to the back before managing to balance himself. I heaved a sigh, feeling relieved about it. Simmons slowly peeked to the edge and wondered how it might’ve have been to fall into a radioactive waste. He could’ve been slowly burned by the liquid.