Vice and Virtue

Chapter - 16

Still in a little bit of daze, I walked up to Renae and helped her up. ‘Was that really him?’ I asked her with hesitation. She kept her eyes closed and her teeth clenched but gave me a nod in agreement. ‘Theo! Did you know about this?’ I asked him. ‘We wouldn’t be on our toes if we knew about it, don’t you think’. ‘Fair point but I really can’t trust you now, can I?’, ‘Take her and get as far as you can from here, we’ll hold him back for as long as we can’, ‘You do understand that he has purple flames don’t you? He’s part of the higher echelon of flare city’. ‘You still don’t think we could work together after watching this?’, ‘I admit I’m having second thoughts about it but we’ll have this conversation later. For now, come back alive, we’ll be waiting at the phoenix’s grave at dawn’. With that I took Renae and disappeared behind them using her teleportation. We barely made it out of the city. She was exhausted and hurt and I wasn’t in any better shape either, so we walked slowly, with her arm around my shoulders and I acting as her support, till we were able to find an abandoned shack a bit farther from the capitol. ‘don’t worry about me, I’m fine here’. she’s probably right about that but for some reason I didn’t want to leave her alone at present. Maybe I felt like I might lose her too if I leave her side because I just lost someone really close to me under the most bizarre circumstances. ‘Weren’t we supposed to be immortal?’ I muttered to myself, pacing the little space in the shack. Renae tried to ease some of her pain, dressing her wound and trying to get some of the strain off her legs. ‘I’ll quickly check our surroundings but I’ll be right back’ and I bolted out, back towards the city. Running through the rubble and the wild bushes, all I could think about was the possibility of Kai still alive and buried under some rubble, somewhere still near his murderer. I caught glimpses of explosions and shockwaves as I kept vaulting over broken concrete, through the lifeless outskirts. I could feel the intensity of the fight miles away from where it was actually happening.

Leviathan still scaled the sky above us, lightning flashed all over, followed by the horrendous thunder. The air tasted metallic and dry, some kind of radiation was spreading out in the capitol and I was concerned by the kind of affects it would have on us and mainly on Leviathan. I stopped abruptly in my tracks, hesitant to enter the city again. The whole area in front of me is in the red zone right now. ‘Purple flame? No more healing? There’s an obvious amount of radiation in the air too but if it’s caused by those flames, Jason wasn’t supposed to be standing anymore…’ I kept thinking about all the possibilities of what could have been the reason for a Cyan like Kai to be rendered mortal again. I’m certain that he’s dead because he would have showed up already if he could still heal. ‘Till now the only methods to kill Cyan have been to drain their energy along with their very soul and also to literally neutralize the very matter that forms the body of a Cyan. There are few Cyan with power strong enough to achieve that aside from the three beast emperors. The radiation could be part of the answer but which role does it play? Its damage isn’t faster than Kai’s healing rate’. I slapped my cheeks with both hands to snap myself out of this useless thought cycle. ‘Ryan! Snow was able to find me. This is a one way transmission. So, don’t worry about me and do whatever you have to. You know where to find me after. So don’t die on me like him’ Renae’s words felt a bit comforting but they were more assuring than ever to me. I was still a bit hesitant but at least I knew that she is safe now. Instead of running through the battered streets, I took to the high-rises because parkour was comparatively easier when I use my abilities. It started to pour cats and dogs with the contrasting heat from the battle near the rogue division. All of the fatigue was catching up and with the added affects of the unstable weather, it was getting harder to maintain my consciousness. It was quite comical because I haven’t even done anything to have collected this much fatigue. In my persistence, I kept running towards them but I knew something was definitely off because I kept stumbling and sudden bursts of pain shot through my left arm up to my neck. It wasn’t long before I collapsed midair, breaking into one of the brittle buildings and losing consciousness.

Back in the mid-2020s, this was the time of my life when it was the toughest for me to stay sane, stay normal. Literally every little thing irritated me and every time I got irritated, all that went through my mind was ways to get away with murder of the said person that misled my plans for the day. Life used to feel so meaningless, actually pretty worthless to be honest. I spent my days stuck at home, thinking about the kind of life I want to live. I lost interest to hang out with my so called friends too and distanced myself from them slowly. I hung out at a few cafes and malls by myself trying out new stuff and actually having some peaceful time by myself. Those were the times when, I guess all that mattered was my own comfort but now, I actually had people I care about and life mattered more than it did back then.