EE 87, May 6 | Curfew Begins
Few were there to dine now at Jeanne’s place, but the dinner itself took advantage of the free meals hosted to all students within Bermuda and remained as eloquent as always. Nazca had, understandably, remained in the hospital, visiting hours closed and bandages having been changed out during her nightly wipedown. Franz, as if trying to make up for the sheer amount of time he had lost during the day, opted to remain at the ryokan-style apartments. Another one of the students there had fixed up the front doors by then, and he was free to catch up on his personal research and accommodations while chewing on some non-descript one-handed meal. Inti had been missing since yesterday, and no one had bothered to look for the Dynamicist from the Incan Empire.
So dinner remained a gorgeous, yet frigid affair. Bang and Jeanne ate in a quiet that clearly indicated something was amiss, and Ryuuko had nothing truly to add beyond speaking of her own post-curfew plans, regardless of what the Vietnamese Egoist had argued about during the morning. In the end, there was nothing that could be done about the Prodigious Dragon and her reckless lust for revenge. It was a small comfort, at least, that she would be with Shou and Valeriya during this, even if their meeting place of choice was vague and ill-defined. Jeanne had no comment to make, and Bang had no task given. There was one more day and one more night before the Frenchwoman would stand trial, but the information that they held remained frustratingly lacking, tied more with obscure abnormalities within this artificial island rather than the matter of the pyromaniac and the man-bat.
And when the bones were picked clean, when dessert was served and finished, Ryuuko left, leaving just two alone in the suite meant for one.
Jeanne relocated to a seat by the patio, stared out the window, and with her index finger, covered as it was by black leather gloves, began to trace something upon the wooden table before her, content, as it were, to disregard Bang’s presence.
It would, perhaps, be a long night.
Ten bells chimed with discordant sorrow, and the mist fell once more, shrouding the grave-like city in a silence most profound.
…
Sector 1 – The Inner Circle
James’s ears were, for the most part, still ringing. If one thought of clocktowers in Bermuda, there really was only one clocktower out there: the one that rang with such ferocity that one’s ears hurt even if they were at the very perimeters of the island. Perhaps it was loud enough even to reach the surrounding oceans. And it was that loud, to be
inside the clocktower while it rang was a recipe for suffering, even with the proper protections in place. As it stood, his head still ached and there was still a real good chance of permanent hearing loss, but for the time being, the British Polymath wasn’t bleeding out from his ears, and now, he was alone at the top of the clocktower. This high above, he was finally able to see the clear night sky that watched over Bermuda every night, the crescent Moon escorted by an entourage of twinkling stars. Even though these were but conceptual illusions, brought about by divine decree rather than by the existence of tangible, celestial objects, there was still something romantic about it.
Not, of course, that it mattered. Though he was unable to make out the shape of the ocean, James was able to clearly catch the moment in which the fog rolled in. It had come in with a speed akin to a tsunami, enveloping the city from all sides within the same span of time as the ten tolls of the clocktower’s bells. From the ground, it may have appeared slower appeared as if it
gradually formed from nothingness, but at his vantage point, it was a swift transformation, a very concrete one.
And, as well, he noticed it.
Though the fog encompassed all parts of Bermuda, it did not wash over the high walls that separated the Inner Circle from the rest of the academic island, leaving a pocket of clarity. Was this to be a ‘safezone’ then? The gloom of the clocktower, bereft of any light but a solitary lantern, offered no answers. Machinery whirred and clicked, well-oiled gears spinning with the regularity of a metronome, all of it without the touch of Formulization, and yet, at the top of the clocktower, he could still see nothing.
At this point, standing upon the only spot of civilization unclaimed by a fog that hid everything, from saints and sinners to demons and mortals, James felt a creeping loneliness.
A loneliness only heightened, when something
irregular intruded upon the regularity of a clock’s gears.
Tip tap.Footsteps sounded, climbing the spiral stairsteps of the freestanding tower. Distant still, but inevitably closing in.
Sector 4 – Waterfront Wharf
During daytime, this part of Bermuda was one of the liveliest portions of the island. Featuring a small, eclectic display of shops and services, there was a distinctly tropical-festivity feel to the place, with smooth pavement gradually giving away to sand-dusted boardwalks the further east one travelled. Abya Yalan glassbowers would create wonderful sculptures, European clockworkers had entire orchestras held within musical boxes, and Far East chemists mixed up safe but explosively satisfying fireworks. For a place to rendezvous with friends, it was one of the best to be, and for a place where friends met often, the value of a portable, high-quality camera was immeasurable in capturing the fleeting moments of one’s youth, the sparse leisure that a Polymath affords themselves.
That, however, was during daytime.
In the night, the night smothered by the salt-stained fog, silent except for the distant roar of the ocean, the mismatched silhouettes of the eclectic quarters made for a nightmarish display. Streetlamps burned brightly enough to cast everything in a yellowed hue, but even that was a sparse comfort. Franz was but a man. Lucretia had handed off her greatest weapon. And Bunga, their bodyguard, had the infamous distinction of being one of the weakest Egoists within Bermuda. Perhaps the concoctions that James had managed to whip up for her would help even out the odds a bit more, but on the other hand, the biology of each individual Egoist was vastly different.
Perhaps the bottles she now had with her were worth less than a placebo.
Still, they gathered, a few blocks away from the Atelier du Moor that they sought to stake out. The mist would be omnipresent, by nature, but for now, all that caught the attention of their trained eyes was the spark of Sukoro Jinga’s Starsteel Formulizations, emerging upon the few inorganic components that made up this sector’s buildings. Time will tell of the fruitfulness of their designs.
Sector 8 – Blockscape
Ultimately, no matter the strength and durability that the Tsardom’s powered armors granted, the black-tinted plates offered not the natural, graceful mobility that any classically-trained Egoist would obtain, and it was decided that Shou and Ryuuko would locate Valeriya outside the testing facility that she would be breaking out of. The two Egoists had met a couple minutes before, Shou armed and Ryuuko ready, and their accelerated steps propelled their forms through the mist at such speeds that it was as if they were bounding ten meters for every step, wind and fog curling off the edges of their clothing as they shot past Brutalist monoliths, their stark shadows cast by fog-piercing fluorescent lights.
And then, rounding the corner, they saw it, a silhouette of black.
For a moment, Ryuuko’s memories of the night triggered, memories of incomprehensible darkness, of impossible conjurations, of the obsidian cocoon that swallowed her companion whole. Had Valeriya already been taken?
But no, this had more shape than that, more substance. Tubes and plating, weaponry and containers, The necessary equipment for connection to the Telesma, as well as back-up generators in the form of Steam Cores. And more than that, it was the style of it that made it doubtlessly something of the Occident. It was a style that pronounced terror, the terror of the Tsardom’s Armored Infantry, of walking deadmen clad in scorched sarcophagi, wielding gatling coilguns to reap the wheat that was the Fatherland’s foes. It was a philosophy that evolved from the study of the French Blast Knights, of metal that brought strength for the man to exercise their malice.
It was domination. It was the boot that pressed against the traitor’s throat.
It was nothing that presented much threat at all to Ryuuko and Shou, though, and the trio all had more things to worry about than whether one of them would betray the others. Namely, how exactly were they to ‘investigate’ the abnormalities brought out by this fog? Certainly, they wouldn’t be so foolish as to replicate the steps that Shou took to be attacked, yes?
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