The Soldier Looking out over a shaken war zone, a lone soldier sat in thought. How had it come to this, his mind asked him. He had no answer to that question. Around him, the wind scratched at the broken helmets of those who had fallen. Some of those helmets belonged to people he once knew, people he once loved, and cared about. Now, it was just him, and he didn't feel much need to be cared about. "So, it's finally done," a voice broke the man’s deathly silence. He didn't move his head to see the face of his last remaining friend; he knew it would look beaten, weathered, and almost sad. The devastation around him was sad enough. His friend sighed as he sat by him on the ledge of Terrin’s ’Legacy’ Library, making soft clanking noises as his armor shook around its fur lining. Legacy. A fitting name for the last upright building in the capital of the only recognizable landmass on Earth. Yes, the soldier thought. It is a legacy, and I think we'll just leave it right here. Chapter One Terrin was a huge city, the likes of which Earth had never seen before. Essentially the big brother of the famous ’New York’, it spanned nearly twice the area of its predecessor. It also dwarfed its little brother in height, boasting colossal towers of such size that it was difficult to see the last third of the buildings’ height from the ground. New York did beat it’s bigger brother in one aspect, though: Diversity. Terrin’s self-maintaining city-government imposed certain codes limiting a few ’select persons’, as they called them. It was, in many senses, an exclusive club for the wealthy - only the rich could live there. Sam Layner was not rich. He didn't live in the city, he simply ’visited’ it, every day, almost all day. In truth, he lived just a few miles off the western border of Terrin, in a tiny village consisting of a few apartment buildings. His friends, Lyle and Jessie, were also from his village, and also ’visited’ Terrin every chance they got. Today, the three of them were making a particularly important visit: Lyle was more than a little excited to show them something. "You’ll never believe it! I don't even know how to describe it, it just- It’s amazing!" He kept going on about it nonstop as he guided them through a rocky maze. Terrin did need supplies to function, and their quarry made just as good an exploration zone as a source of supplies. Sam slipped and kicked a small rock loose as e slid back a foot. "What is it you’re trying to show us, Lyle?" He asked for the seventh time that morning. Lyle’s glasses caught a shine from the Sun, giving them an almost daring glint. "It's a door!" Jessie never talked much, but Sam understood her confused look perfectly well. Regardless, they continued to follow Lyle. "I found it after one of their blasting missions!" His smile looked almost nonhuman, like his face was in danger of breaking. Sam finally saw the door, crawling over the last rock in the pile. His arms ached, and his legs were numb, but immediately he thought out loud: "Lyle, this is in the middle of a blasting zone." Lyle laughed, a jolly giggle. "They marked the area unsafe for future digging! Didn't you notice the signs and flags while we were climbing over this wall?" Sam briefly wondered how they hadn't been caught doing just that, but shook it off. The trio now stood before the door, with Lyle in the lead. It seemed out of place, a stark white plate with a green circle gently glowing in the center. Jesse asked, "Is it safe? It's glowing." Suddenly, the door opened. It was strange, silently dropping downward without being touched. Lyle smiled even more as he stepped through. Sam and Jessie followed, waiting to be impressed by something fantastic, like a vault of gold. Instead, the door led to a blank room, coated almost entirely in dust. From the door, Sam could see only a small part of the room. On the farthest wall, a rack of oddly-shaped tools hung above a bench. The walls were dark and dull, almost like empty computer screens. There were no obvious light sources, giving the room an almost gloomy atmosphere. Lyle and Jessie blocked the view of the rest of the room. Lyle, always the first to go in and explore, went in without warning, leaning in close to whatever he could dust off. Sam quickly joined his friend in exploration, but Jessie stayed back, stealing glances at the door outside. “Come on Jess,” Lyle said, “Nobody’s going to come down here into a restricted area!” Jessie didn’t seem convinced. She assumed her self-imposed guard duty, leaning against the wall with a dull thud. A soft flurry of dust drifted from the ceiling. Outside, the sound of the quarry workers was barely audible, and the vibrations from the drilling machines were quiet. The trio was all alone in this quiet, ancient place now, and Sam was starting to get some of Lyle’s interest in this chamber. Suddenly, something caught Sam’s eye: a subtle green flash from the side of a table Lyle had passed. Jessie saw it too, it seemed, and she worriedly looked at him. Lyle was too busy brushing off a section of the wall to notice, and Sam wanted to see where the flash came from. It blinked again, and he moved towards it. "Lyle, I found a button or something," Sam’s investigation revealed an interesting find, "Should I press it?" "Of course!" He was practically hopping of the walls in excitement now. Jessie looked concerned - she had always been the conservative one of the group. "What if we’re not supposed to be here?" She asked. Usually, her speech would have sufficed to stop her friends from doing stupid things, but Lyle and Sam were too enthralled by the possibility of finding this strange room’s secrets to listen. "Push it!" "Guys, you really shouldn’t-" "Pushing it anyway!" As soon as Sam touched the button, and without warning, the room flared to life. The walls suddenly turned stark white, like the door, and symbols began to run uin steams along their panels. Several lights flared into life, their brightness clearing all the shadows from the room. Lyle dodged a falling torrent of dust, while at the far end of the room, the wall’s surface flickered to life, showing bright text. Welcome. ---- By the way, in the event that this would be a movie in the future, would it be worth giving ten percent of movie profits to my friend/editor?
Glass. That was all that remained of New York's coast. The soldier strolled along the empty shore, his boots clicking softly with every step. His friend walked alongside him, silent. One would have called the sight surreal: two heavily-armored men casually walking on a massive block of glass, while the dark ocean reached out to touch their boots. The wind shook the fur lining at their necks, and flung salt against their helmets. To their right, a ruined building, indistinguishable from the rest, sagged and groaned. A few stray pieces of metal fell out onto the barren street, out of sight from the soldiers. "I seem to recall a time," his friend’s voice echoed lightly from inside his helmet, "when I saw a picture of this place." He chuckled. "Would you believe that this used to be sand? The water looked so clear..." A loud snap stopped his speech, and the two soldiers ran to avoid the building's mass as it fell. Chapter Two Sam looked at Lyle, who looked back and grinned. "I told you it would be awesome!" Around them, the room was ablaze with activity, flashes of light beaming across the walls and on several freshly activated screens. Jessie had figured out that the door opened for her, and only now she chose to explore as well. Carefully, she touched one of the walls, and jumped when the screen burst into a flurry of information. At the top of several lists of text,the screen showed: Jessica Alburn 17, born 3-8-2137 Agile, fast, yet careful in risk-taking. Compatibility: High Welcome, Jessica. She beckoned the other two over, and Lyle hesitated, for once. "How does it know your name? What's ’compatible’ mean?" Lyle Trunan 18, born 5-2-2137 Intelligent, quick in thought, quick in choosing. Knack for inventions and modifications to technology. Compatibility:... The screen seemed to flicker for a moment, before showing the word 'high’. Lyle looked nervous; none of them had ever had any documents taken of them, and yet this room knew them as well as they knew themselves. Samuel Layner 18, born 2-19-2137 Capable in all fields, fast learner, innovator, agile. . . . Here the screen froze again, and the room went silent. After a few seconds, all the screens went blank, leaving only the lights scattering soft shadows across the room. "Sam." Jessica's voice had a tinge of fear and excitement in it, "What did you do?" Lyle was busy tapping the wall, trying to talk to it. Sam had no answer to her question, BS let her know as much, but as he distractedly walked to the far corner of the room, all the lights flashed back on. Once again, screens flickered to life and text flashed across the walls. A low droning suddenly blared out, filling the room with sound and shaking all the remaining dust off of any walls. In fact, the room was shaking more violently than it had before, and the lights were becoming brighter. - "Eyewitness reports say that the object was hovering before it disappeared, and that there were people inside it as it went. All mining work at the quarry has since been halted, to evaluate any damages caused by the event." This was three days after Sam, Lyle and Jessica had entered the room. After their first visit to it, it had seemingly vanished and left them about a mile off the quarry. The TV report continued showing footage of a massive crater, just outside Terrin. The room hasn't actually disappeared; it had moved. In fact, the trio found themselves somehow finding it time and time again, tempted to enter, but always refusing after the incident. Lyle had been particularly scared by it, stoically refusing to leave his house for the first day afterwards. Sam continued watching the TV, as it moved on to more political news. The reporter paused for a moment after glancing down at her papers, before saying: "In politics today, President Tyner has issued forth a new act against rioters, dubbed ’Calvin’ by his supporters. The act has passed through legislation with only two oppositions out of the seventeen advisors, and is set to launch in one week. Calvin is designed to, as Tyner himself had said, ’Put rebels in their place, by any means necessary. As their places in this city cannot be decided by themselves, we will force it upon them.’ There have been several complaints, some issued just minutes after the initial announcement, but none have been addressed yet." The broadcast cut to commercials, and Sam decided to go to sleep. It was late, and the sun had long fallen. As he entered his room, he considered how big Terrin had to be for this kind of act to be necessary, and why there were riots in the first place. Then again, he'd never spent much time in the heart of the city. Either way, the city's size was not enough to hide what Sam saw through his bedroom's window. Off in the horizon, he saw Terrin’s skyline light up. He saw a ring of light spread from the flash, and he saw half the city disappear before his eyes.
Amidst the cloud of dust raised by the collapsed building, two figures shambled about, dropping pieces of rock off of themselves as they went. The soldiers had survived, but the building had left more than a couple stone bits in their armor. "To think, a building would be my end. Silly, that's what it is!" The second soldier brushed more rock out of the fur around his neck, and patted his chest plate once more. "A real shame this darned armor stopped working." A pale flicker of light showed at his shoulder before dying. "Hey." The first soldier had finally spoken a word. "Sir?" "Who started this?" Another building crumbled in the distance. "Sir?" "Who was it that did all this?" He gestured to the New York streets, lined with streaks of shining glass and shapeless debris. "Why did this have to happen!?" "Sir, you did nothing wrong, I don't have an answer for you, bu-" The man stomped on the glass below them, silencing him. His helmet folded back, collapsing into its slot in his armor, and he turned to speak to his friend. Grey eyes looked intensely at the helmeted soldier, and a thinning beard was all that concealed his face. "Sometimes I get the feeling I started this. And you know what? Sometimes I trust my instincts." He said nothing more, and they waited for their ship to arrive, watching the black ocean spreading across the glass shores. Chapter 3 The evacuation needed no orders. Everyone near the blast had simply run,collectively fleeing from a shared threat. A quarter of Terrin, the mighty city, had just been wiped off its map, but there would never be a full evacuation. People would take each other in, care for them, and provide work and aid until the area became depopulated. Nothing had really changed with the blast for Sam, though - he had no affiliation with it. Lyle’s parents lost their jobs just then, and watched them burn up in a red haze. Jessica’s parents were never home, so she didn't get affected much at all either. However, they all decided to join the crowd that was gathering, as if to watch a great bonfire. The air was silent, and the atmosphere was grim, the pitch black night emphasizing the titanic flame rising up. "It's like the finger of god," a bystander near them breathed. Sam's attention shifted when Lyle patted him on the shoulder. He turned, and saw that Lyle was earnestly pointing at a point in the distract behind the crowd. Jess had already started moving towards it. "Let’s go! It's trying to tell us something!" Jess's eager whispering was a sudden change in character, but she seemed genuinely concerned with the point in the distance. Sam squinted to see it better, and he saw what Jessica meant: It was a green man, waving to them. Normal logic would have prevented then from going, but something about the man drew them towards him with great urgency. Every time they would near him, he would move away, still beckoning to them. By the time he finally stopped, the crowd was far from view, but the blaze still hung ominously in the sky. Now, the man was standing before them, showing the entrance to the room. The look on his face was one of earnest as he beckoned to the door, and Sam could swear he flickered for a moment. "Please, enter. Quickly!" The man's voice was clear, and silky, but it carried an intense kind of weight. They went in with little hesitation, and saw the room once more. Now, it seemed larger, with an extension easily doubling its size in the back. More benches and screens populated the room, and the screens had gone from sleepy scrolling text to frantic characters, zipping across the walls. The man had entered the room with them. "Please, do not be afraid. I understand you are confused, but there is no time for explanations." Lyle immediately piped a complaint about a ghost man. "I am not familiar with the term ’ghost.’ You'll have to excuse me. I tried to warn you before this happened, but you refused." He waved a flickering - yes, Sam saw, it was definitely flickering, almost transparent - arm towards a screen showing a huge map, with a red mass encompassing a quarter of it. Leading them to the new area, the man continued, "This facility was fully active once, and your presence has reactivated it. However, there is someone on this planet, who knows of me." "You?" Jess suddenly seemed concerned. "I am not a ’human.’" He said, "Please do not be alarmed. I am actually a simple functional unit..." He paused for a second, "... A 'robot', if you will." A couple straggling lights pulsed to life, and the new area became fully visible. Across its long hall shape, three tanks lay, and a single large workbench-type object filled the center. "That explosion was the first of many potential attacks... It could have been avoided if you had come sooner." He lead them over to the tanks, and the tanks burst open to reveal their contents. A single gauntlet lay in each, pulsing lightly with a greenish hue. "Please," the man's voice regained its urgency, "Take these before the next attack is made!" Seeing as he'd already made it this far into a strange place with this strange flickering man, Sam decided it wouldn't make much sense to turn back now - a decision that, once again, any normal person would never have made. As he put on the gauntlet, his vision faded, before he found himself hurled into a sea of information. Instantly, he realized that this room was far, far more than it seemed, and that he had just been given a purpose. To his right, Lyle had also put on his glove, and a flash burst throughout the room. "Woah."
Night had fallen over the already blackened city by the time they made shelter, surrounding their lit campfire with oblivion. The fire was nothing special, a still-burning piece of wreckage from a ship with a filter over it. It provided some warmth for the soldiers, and its glow reflected softly off their armor. A roasting can of food rations filled the air with a thick scent. The helmeted soldier left the camp, excusing himself, with a rifle in hand, to find another fuel canister for the fire. His commander stayed behind, grey eyes constantly darting to any signs of movement. He saw nothing, but two knives still danced in his hands, ready until his friend returned. A metal plate behind him shifted, clanking softly as it moved. The soldier closed his eyes and moved, too tired to look at the fight. Before he even expected to, he had buried his knives into the intruder’s neck and into their ribs, and was throwing them to the ground with the extra leverage. It had been so long ago that he had first done that, he thought grimly, and yet it was no easier. As he hacked off his defeated foe's helmet, he couldn't help but wonder: Why? The answer came to him almost as quickly as the question: he hasn't been doing the fighting. It wasn't his will to do all this - he was just being played. Like a chess piece making a wrong move, he thought, unknowingly opening his King to check. I'm probably a knight, he thought. I hate knights. Chapter 4 "The gauntlets you wield now are not of human origin, you should know," the man said, although Sam suddenly knew him as Kel, an ancient janitor of sorts. "They were, however, designed for humans. There is a war fast approaching, and these are the only tools you have that can save you." As he spoke, Kel passed by new sections of the chamber, swiping his hand across the walls and activating the sleeping machinery. The walls’ silver-white color suddenly shifted to pitch black, and began to fill with symbols. Underneath the screen, a panel unfolded and flipped open, resembling a series of keyboards. A solid-looking bench also rose from the floor to compliment the setup, and a table on the other side descended from the ceiling, covered in centuries of dust and forgotten tools. Jessica, now more daring and now familiar with this place, went to the table. Dust came off of it in torrents, as she worked to reveal the work surface Kel was anxiously leaning over. "This was like, a giant workshop, wasn't it," Lyle was in disbelief, looking around at the array of tools quickly populating the chamber. Kel nodded in response, and carefully inspected them. As he went, restoring the workshop to its former status, he spoke. "That explosion in your city was devastating to many, and there is a high chance the shock is delaying any fear reactions. It was a human action. Unfortunately," he became grim, "They found a Foundry first. Like this one, theirs held a piece of my creators’ technology -" he flickered erratically at the mention of 'creators', "but they did not see the good of it. Instead, they were driven mad by it - they intend to kill all who are unworthy of this technology." Jessica flexed her hand experimentally, and jumped when a green spark brought her gauntlet to life and began to glow. She commented, "I still don't know what this all is, and you want us to defend ourselves against terrorists!?" Kel stared curiously at her. "You were late to heed my warnings. There is, unfortunately, no time to explain further. The next attack is imminent. Please, bring forth your hands." His words were urgent in their meaning. Sam's view of the room went dark for all of a second when Kel touched his arm. The pearly material suddenly engulfed him, blinding and chocking, but then released him and he could see clearly. In fact, everything seemed more vivid now. He looked at his hand, and jumped. His entire body had been covered in armor, white plates giving the impression of a silver knight. Green lights danced and flickered around his hands an shoulders, and e was aware of a subtle him in the back of his head. Kel's voice rose. "You must go now! This way!" He waved to a doorway previously unseen. Having no choice with Kel's desperate urging, they stepped in, Lyle first, then Jessica and Sam. They stepped out into the city, looking down the street at a man. He wore a suit and a crooked smile, and in his left hand, he held a perfect red ball. "Ah, you made it to the party too! How lovely it is to have others!" Jessica felt dread at the sight of this man and his smile, and she stepped back, almost not noticing the lines of characters starting to line the edges of her vision. The humming in the back of her head grew a little louder, and Kel's voice suddenly spoke to her. "There is no time to delay! Go!"
Chapter 5 -The Soldier- The next day brought silence, emptiness, and storms. A cover of smokey blackness cloaked the city, rolling with flashes of red and raining masses of burning metal down on the streets. There was no water falling from above, and no winds accompanying the downpour - there were only the dull thuds of wrecked ships and men smashing into the ground. It had been a long time since he had seen a real storm, with water and wind and fog. It would probably be never again that he would see one, with the weather cycle’s complete destruction from the use of superweapons. Glass, he thought, was a clear case of such destruction - he himself had called in the beam that turned the coast solid. A ruined cockpit tore into a building above him and his friend; he saw a helmet fly off into the distance. Where the helmet left his line of sight, he saw pillars of light shining down on the surface. It was beautiful, the way the ground shined from the light, but it was terrible, the way the glass shined brighter in its wake. The storm raged on, groaning above them as it swirled with crimson flashes. More wreckage fell and ricocheted off buildings, but the soldiers continued their journey. They had a while to go before they would reach Legacy's border, with the constant collapse and hostile presence. Sometimes a scream or roar could be heard, but it was all in the distance. Suddenly, a voice pierced the air. It was a woman’s voice, but the rumbling of the storm dulled it a bit. The soldier and commander nodded to each-other in agreement, as they ran towards the voice. It was clearer now what was happening; the sounds of gunshots and mechanical shrieking were overcoming the storm's groans. "Is that all?" Her voice was ragged, but strong and loud. "Come on out, you freaks!" Signaling to keep quiet, the commander led his man with him up the side of a collapsed building as they crept towards the scene. They could see her now, in burned armor still glowing with heat, a scorched helmet hiding her face. Her left hand held a rifle, dimly glowing with its last supply of energy, and her right hand was empty, but glowing. She stood atop a toppled wreck, surrounded on all sides by corpses and ruined machines. Her head constantly shifted, scanning everything in her surroundings for danger. She didn't see them; neither the soldiers nor the next wave. "Commander, no!" The larger soldier called as his leader jumped into the site. He could only scramble after him up the ruined hotel corridor they'd been hiding in. Reaching the window, he heard a pinging sound. It was quick and shrill, and it was accompanied by a flash of light. A second later, he saw his commander pushing the woman out of the way as a blade sliced into her perch. His armor was glowing now, fur linings bristling, and his right hand, like hers, was also shining. He raised it towards the horde of invaders, and in an instant, they were dead. He had seemingly appeared everywhere at once, and taken all of them by knife. Maybe now, the soldier thought, this was why the commander hated war. He jumped down as well now, to join the pair on the ground. She was recovering from his shove, and he was standing, arms folded behind him, silent. "Who are you?" She asked, voice more ragged than before. His arms remained folded as he spoke. "Commander Xero, they called me once. I don't care much for rank anymore - it’s Leon." She nodded, regaining her breath, and laughed. "Commander Alburn, pleased to join you." Leon's ’squad’ introduced himself as Henry, before hastily retreating for an inner thought. He'd heard the name Alburn before, long ago...