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1376 Words
His team wasn’t slow to press the advantage, and as his world went dim, Matt saw them tearing apart their remaining pursuers.
12
Matt watched the distant ruin intently as Liz carefully cut the barbed crossbow bolt out of his back.
The pain in his back was far less intense than the pain in his head.
Matt repeatedly went over the choices that they… No, that he had made to reach this point.
Their AIs were picking up a few questions and cries for help, but the ruin was still actively shooting down every satellite that orbited the planet anywhere near it. Because of the destruction, the connection to the PlanetNet was spotty this close to the runaway ruin.
All Matt could think of was the rift breaks that had taken his city by storm.
A still foggy memory flashed before his eyes. Matt was being escorted to the bus stop by his mother, whose face was still blurry. She listened to him talk about something he couldn’t quite remember. He thought it was about some show he used to watch, but he couldn’t put a finger on it after so many years.
As he watched a swarm of golems lifting up a tree, the memories continued to flood in.
After he boarded the bus with his mother, he remembered sitting with his friend, and chatting with them about more innocuous subjects that he couldn’t quite remember.
What he did remember was the scream. The horrible, ear-splitting scream. Someone to his left had seen it first, and the screech they had let out at the sight was as startling as it was mind numbing. They rushed to the side of the bus, to get a glimpse of the creature that was a mix between a turtle and a porcupine. The monster seemed massive to the younger Matt, but it was really the size of a small car. It was large, but not an unusual size for a Tier 4 monster but, as a child, it was huge, larger than life. The rift-rage filled monster launched a volley of massive spines at the road, directly in front of their bus.
The spines were longer than Matt was tall at the time, and they skewered a passing car as they screamed through the air. A few even punched through the side of the bus. One kid was impaled through the leg, but overall, the passengers had been lucky. Matt could see that now, looking back. But at the time, he was simply petrified at the mere sight of an injury.
One of the bus tires was completely shredded by spines, but the driver was able to react in time to avoid disaster. Instead of driving to the edge of the city, where their school was, he drove away from the monsters and toward the city center. Heading for the wealthier, better defended portion of the city proved to be the right decision, as more than half of the general populace was wiped out during the rift break.
Matt remembered waiting in the ballroom of the fancy hotel they had stopped at, waiting for news. He still felt the fear that came with watching kids getting picked up after another, as their parents came and got them, with his own nowhere to be found.
Matt reached for his canteen, but his hand shook so badly he needed to grip it with both hands to avoid spilling any. The water when he got it down only seemed to give the bile which was churning in his stomach a path to follow to his mouth where the taste lingered.
He remembered being a part of the group of children that were left overnight, and how they had eventually come to the realization that no one was coming for them.
That first night had set the tone for the next few weeks.
Adults had tried to dodge questions, and no one wanted to tell them the truth about what had happened.
There was more than one rift break, which led to mass hysteria across the entire capital city of planet Lilly. The monster that attacked his bus was from one of three rift breaks that had rampaged throughout that particular borough. The second rift break produced a rat-type monster swarm that had eaten everything in its path. The third rift break produced a fire elemental that had burned down entire neighborhoods, along with giant swaths of land.
The building that he lived in was attacked by the rat swarm, and not even a single body was able to be recovered. The building that his father helped build as a civil engineer had been set alight by the elemental. Even the concrete had been reduced to ashes.
Matt watched as another group of golems rose into the air, with some cargo he was unable to identify.
The twinges in his back were nothing to him compared to the guilt that he felt.
Matt felt numb to everything in the world, other than the massive pit in his stomach.
How many have I killed today?
The thought had been haunting Matt from the very moment he had been roused back to consciousness.
He was brooding about how many more would be killed as each second passed.
His hopes of a higher Tier intervening had been dashed as he witnessed the path of destruction widen instead of being contained.
Even without his AI tracking the ruin’s movements, he already knew that it was headed toward the city they had arrived at when teleporting into the planet.
He hoped that whoever the Seven Suns had sent to oversee the place would be able to take the ruin out once and for all. It was a small hope, but it was the only thing that helped.
As he felt the bolt being carefully pulled out of his back, he heard Liz ask, “You good, Matt?”
She rubbed his shoulder, but her normally soothing touch was no comfort to him.
How could he face the most important woman in his life after what he had done?
He had no doubts that this was entirely his fault. If he hadn’t pushed to investigate the vault, this would have never happened.
If he hadn’t insisted on powering up the ruin to get into the vault, this repressed nightmare wouldn’t be recurring before his eyes.
He was so used to rifts being self-contained, that he had gotten accustomed to none of his actions having any real consequences.
From their vantage point, they were able to see skills being used, and golems flocking to the areas where the latest victims were putting up resistance. Now, he was sure that the death toll was only increasing.
His stomach kept insisting on purging all of its contents, and it was only the complete insensibility to anything but his guilt that prevented him from vomiting.
Liz tried to get through to him again. He was unable to keep from flinching at her touch. He didn’t deserve her compassion.
“Matt, talk to me… Please? You’re closing up. Even Aster is worried.”
He looked down at Aster, who was curled up at his feet. He felt a pang of remorse, but kept their connection closed. Even she couldn’t handle the cold that he bore in his heart.
It was his burden, not hers.
“Liz…I did all of this. This is my fault.”
He half expected her to hate him, and the other half expected her to deny it. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.
Liz plopped down next to him and picked up Aster. The fox took her usual place on his lap.
She looked into his eyes with her glacier blue gemstones, but he found it hard to return her gaze. His bond looked at him with love and acceptance, while pushing both at him, along with partially formed comments of reassurance.
He didn’t deserve that either.
Liz interrupted his mental self-harm when she leaned her head on his shoulder and squeezed his hand. Her whisper barely reached his ear, “We f****d this one up pretty badly, huh?”
Matt blurted out, with more venom in his voice than he intended, “Not we. It was me.”
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