Confliction: Chapter 1

         Zanez put his back against a warm stone wall and jammed a clip into his handgun.  His foot sank into the dry soil of a lawn that was once well maintained.  The grass was still green, but was stiff and hard. He was well below the level of smoke, as the wind swept several stories above over the valley and carried it further into the distance.  He could breath with ease, but the smell of burning and ash was unmistakable.  The heat from the fires just behind the wall on his back destroyed the usual calm and coolness of the flatland night that was all too familiar to him.
         He peered around a jutted pillar in the wall, catching a glimpse of long shadows cast by flame along a cobblestone path leading into the city.  Four men stood in casual clothes swaying back and forth in mirth singing a song and, sharing a bottle of something unfit for consumption, all with cigarettes dangling from their lips.  Blue smoke swirled around them and the ashes landed in the dead grass below their steel toed boots; a long way from their rifles leaning against the city gate.
         One man sat a short distance from the small party on a charred boulder, humming to himself and moving a rag slowly along the fuel tank on his fire rifle. His shoulder-plates were adorned with bullet-holes, and his chest armour covered in tiny black scars and dents where he had been grazed by a spray of ammunition earlier in the night by whoever had stayed behind in the commotion.  Armed, armoured and sober.
         Zanez circled around the celebratory campsite in the dark of the night, several meters of safety between them until he was directly behind the only threat, calmly polishing his weapon.  Creeping slowly, low to the ground and feet resting on soil and sound masked by darkness and the distant roaring of flames and wind, he moved an arms distance away from the him. The soldier hummed the chorus verse of Anoosa in the Plains, before the painless sting of a bullet ended the song prematurely.  The stumbling soldiers turned to greet the gun fire head on, only having time to glance at their weapons fifteen yards away before landing, face first onto hot cobblestone.
         He stepped over their bodies, and made a quick dash into the city limits, dodging some small fires burning on the side of the road.  His eyes scanned the shadows dancing behind crumbling walls, and inside gutted buildings, looking for a sign of an attacker; only their aftermath.  Infernos blazed so hot they had burned themselves out after only a few hours, leaving behind embers where there was once homes, and charred ash where there were parks.  The light danced around him, sending his shadows both into his pursuit and his lead, causing him to startle on more than one occasion.  He breathed subtle smoke quickly into the bottom of his lungs.  He jumped over a blackened pole that had been burned through at the bottom and fallen, flattening a swing set in a park across the street, and blocking the road, which had forced someone to leave their truck and continue on foot.
         He squinted and looked south, just able to make out shining lights imbedded in the dark silhouette of the spire of downtown Kiookia in front of him with a backdrop of ash and night sky.  He moved towards it, more slowly than before, hiding behind abandoned eighteen wheelers and fallen debris, much of it still warm to the touch and preferring to make footsteps in soil and grass than asphalt and stone.  As he got closer to city central, there would certainly be more opposition.  Kiookia was a city in a spire; built on top of itself.  Over a thousand years, the wealthy had been seeking to get close to the gods that they believed resided above the little hill Kiookia was built on, and the best way to be close, was to be higher than everyone else, so they would build their humble little flat topped homes literally on the roofs of the people below them.  Then in a few years, a new wealthy person would build on top of them, and the cycle would continue again.  This brought forth a massive tower of the religious and the prestigious gravitating to the top, while the poorer moved into the obsolete homes below. This trend continued and, assisted by technology, Kiookia tower grew unfathomably high, stretching above clouds and skylines, pressurized at the highest reaches, and industrialized at the deepest depths.  The rich continued to live towards the top, serene, simulated and optimized while the less fortunate populous gravitated towards the base;  The poorest below the surface, literally clinging to the pipes that carried the waste and trash from the rich miles above, to the poor down below.  Because of this, an attacking force would need to be careful in Kiookia tower because that was where the good stuff was, from a looters perspective.  Toppling it would leave little to plunder, and shutting down power would result in an exhaustive climb that exceeded a million stairs and the labyrinthine passages of a poorly planned city.
         Built around the tower were now the remains of a small ring of middle class homes, small businesses, studios and warehouses that extended a mere kilometre away from the base.  These were of little value to the attackers, and so, many of them were gutted without being searched, some steel doors not even knocked down, outlasting the walls around them.  Kiookia was a town of treasures, and no doubt there were many valuables hidden underneath the piles of ash and charcoal, to be unearthed by a future archaeologist.
         He reached the base of the tower, a dense amalgamation of flat walled stone houses, poorly and individually painted, deliberately clashing, split up every few metres by dense and immensely heavy pillars of alloy that supported the daunting structure above. Broken flower pots were still hanging by frames of wires, roots protruding from the bottom, searching for more soil. Steel frames of reconstruction grip the ceilings above and dig into the floor, while tiny glowing meters wrap around them, ensuring the years built above these homes, stay above them.  He moved alongside tacky, peeled yellow and red walls, looking for the entrance to the upper floors that he knew must be around somewhere.
         A sudden scream of a woman stood out from the ambiance.  He froze, only eyes darting in the direction of echoes bouncing between half walls, and through small tunnels. The sound had been distorted and unusual.  The reverberations were close together; it came from nearby.  He breathed slowly, drawing air into his lungs at a steady rate to make no sound.  More echoes bounced out of the remains to his east, a heavy thud, likely of a body on a surface, and a small skittering of stone rolling across asphalt.  Zanez continued along the wall, putting the sounds behind him, and checking fallen street signs for an idea of where the elevator was. He put his foot down on something solid, but soft beneath him.  He looked down, seeing the body of what looked like a man, face down and half buried underneath broken glass and blackened stone.
         Another shout, this time words, distorted, that he was unable to catch came, slightly further away as well.  He turned and paused again, slowly lifting his foot off the bruised back that steadied him.  A quick exhale of frustration, and he turned in the direction of the sound, ducking under a fallen steel brace that had crushed two parked ambulances.
         He emerged into an open park that he recognized from his childhood.  It used to be mostly empty of people, and filled with small birds that would peep to one another and share crumbs.  Now the small square was bathed in a sickly orange light, leaving long, eerie shadows from statues that waved back and forth along the ground.  The trees that lined one side of the park burned as towers of hellfire, with roars and groans as fire consumed them and their strength began to fail.  Three goliaths of men in red metal armour were encircling a small girl. One of them stood in front of her, holding her arms far above her head leaving her bare feet dangling just above the ground. She was shouting at them, and trying to kick them.  One of her toes was bloody, and looked to be broken.  She was wearing a long thin coat that stopped just above her knees and red shorts.  A man behind her grabbed the back of her head and pulled it back, exposing her neck to stop her yelling.
         Zanez walked towards an old bench that bordered the square, still untouched by the flames and casually sat down, his eyes carefully assessing the situation in front of him. She was screaming and still kicking her broken toe at the chest of one of the men in front of her.  He unclipped the rifle from his back and pulled a few long, skinny bullets, the size of fingers out of his pocket.  He was in open ground, and made no attempt to hide, just watching the three men chatting about the fate of their victim as he slowly placed the bullets into the chamber and setting them with a click.  They didn't notice him.
         An extremely loud crack rang through the park and echoed off the surroundings.  The bullet ripped through the armour of the man behind the victim, splattering the other two men and the girl with his churned up contents. Her head was released as the man fell to the ground and she let loose a small sound as his grip fell away.  The two remaining men looked up at Zanez, who had stood up and was walking towards them, stepping onto the grass now only a short distance away, gun raised to his eye. The man holding her hands suddenly let go of her and made a quick reach for his gun just as the snap of a second shot broke the resonating echo from the previous one.  He was sent backwards a short distance, as the bullet penetrated a falling hand of the small girl and landed with a crunch in the centre of his chest.
         The third man, had his gun out and had spun around and fired off a rushed and inaccurate round into the ground beneath his feet when Zanez planted a third blast into his unprotected head, sending a splash of brain matter onto the bare feet of the girl.
         She had stopped shouting after the gunfire and was laying on the ground, clutching her arm with her eyes tightly shut.  The bloody corpses were leaking onto the ground as a loud flaming branch crashed from a tree behind her.
         Zanez walked towards her and leaned on his rifle as he reached her side.  He stood above and looked down at her, cocking his head.  She was bleeding badly from her arm, and breathing heavily, but not crying, staring head down at the stone beneath her, avoiding his gaze.
         A minute had passed before she made any significant noise.  A sharp yell. “Well, get it over with please!”
         “Get what over with?” Zanez responded.  He tried to match her tone.
         She looked up at him.  Her eyes were bloodshot and a thin layer of water rested on her lower eyelid.  Dust and clumped blood clung to her cheeks.  She glanced over his outfit.  “You aren't one of them,”  She said, this time quietly. “... and you aren't a soldier.”
         “No.”
         “You shot my hand.” she looked down again.
         “He moved.  I misjudged.” She didn't say anything. “Can I see it?”  This was more of an order than a question.
         She slowly moved her arm upwards and revealed what was left of her hand.  There was a large hole in the middle that spread over the whole palm, leaving a shattered ring of bloody flesh.  Splintered bone  protruded from the ring, and the fingers looked mangled.  Zanez winced a little. “What do you think?” she said.
         He knew there was no way to fix it, even if she could make it to a hospital.  “I wouldn't worry about it,” he said, rummaging through the small pack he kept with him.  He opened a plastic container and pulled out a small yellow capsule, tossing it on the ground next to her. “That should help with the pain.”
         She picked it up with her good hand and ate it down immediately. “What are you doing here?”  she asked as she sat up, still clutching her wrist.
         He glanced around.  Someone would have heard the gunshots.  Reinforcements would be here soon to investigate.  But it wouldn't be long before the pill kicked in.  “I live here,” he said.  “I'm just saying goodbye.”  He watched her tie a skilled one handed tourniquet around her wrist with the ripped sleeve of her jacket. “You should have been out hours ago.”
         She glared at him in response.
         He looked at his watch. “The way north out of the city is clear.” She looked around, so he pointed. “There should be an ATV on the hill directly south of that.  You can take it to the wall and get some help.”
         She moved to her knees now, and looked up at him.  Her breathing had slowed down a bit in reaction to the drugs.
         “People will be here soon.  You should move quickly.”
         “I - I think I was raped,” she stammered.
         He looked down and swallowed sharply. He pulled another two yellow pills out of his pack, placing them in her good hand. “Here.  These might help.”

         He watched the girl run north on bare feet and broken toes, jumping over hot embers on the ground and trying to remain quiet.  He ducked back into the storage container behind the park and made his way back to the base of the tower.  He didn't want to be around when the square was being investigated.  He didn't know if the girl would get out of the city safely.  He didn't care.
         Backtracking through debris and tiny plumes of smoke joining the air, he worked his way back to the side of the tower.  Quiet echoes behind told him that his handiwork in the square was now being examined, and he moved quickly, so he would be safe before someone set out after him.  He knew the elevator he was looking for was just around the next bend.  He put his feet on the front of a blackened car, layered with ash that had crashed headlong into a supporting pillar.  The metal of the car was bent and all the glass smashed, but the dense, heavy pillar was undamaged.  One headlamp was still flickering and buzzing in the silence.  He stepped onto the wheel well and climbed over top of the hood.  A raspy wheeze came from the drivers seat, where the driver, bloody and broken sat unconscious. Zanez' feet hit the pavement quietly.  He did not want to wake the injured man, else he make too much noise.  He slipped out of sight as fast as possible, behind a fallen I-beam from a nearby business that had collapsed sideways, and peered around the corner.
         The elevator area had been cleared away of wreckage, and a hulking yellow bulldozer sat unmanned, but still running, to the side of the cleared space.  Several vehicles with their high-beams on were throwing jets of brilliant light all around the area ahead, leaving long shadows in every direction.  The elevator was lit up with blue and green light, which stretched up along the shaft for miles, a band on the side of the tower disappearing into smoke and night sky, the top above the clouds.
         Six men stood in a half circle in the very centre of the enclosure, listening to a seventh who was pacing back and forth in front of them.  The six of them were each holding a rifle and donned with armour; not the large red armour of the attackers, but in lighter grey equipment.  They were not standing at attention, but rather eyeing the perimeters and gripping their weapons tightly.  Their long shadows licked the side of the tower near the elevator, and spread out in black stars around them.
         The seventh man appeared to be in charge. He was unarmed apart from a long pole that he had picked out of a fire.  He was swinging it around as he spoke, leaving a trail of smoke in the air that persisted, perhaps slightly longer than was natural, before dissipating. He was muttering quietly, more, it seemed, to himself than his comrades, and his voice was leaving long echoes, that made it impossible to make out from a distance.  He was pressing a cloth to his mouth and wearing a leather coat, open in the front, that made him look extremely out of place.
         Zanez eyed him from behind the large wooden beam.  He wanted to get closer, so he could hear what was being said, but the light from the cars, and the attentive guards would make it hard to move in the area.  Even so, he could not have made it to the elevator unnoticed.  This was more men than he had anticipated.
         He continued to hug the side of the tower as close as he could, so he would leave no shadow.  He eyed around for cover.  A good distance from the elevator, a mound of trash, piled by bulldozer would provide adequate cover for listening, but would be useless in a firefight.  On the opposite side of the guards was the bulldozer that he could hide behind, but that would take time to approach without being seen.  Perhaps they would leave if he stayed put, he wondered.  They didn't look like the attackers he had seen earlier.
         He moved backwards a short distance and climbed through the remnants of the collapsed building he had moved around.  Chairs and tables were piled in front of the windows, and mounds of broken glass and ornaments had fallen against the walls as the building had fell down.  When he found his way out of the building, the street he found himself on was clear of rubble.  He crawled behind a barricade and moved his way closer to the gathering of men in the clearing ahead to hear them talk.  The man was no longer muttering, rather talking loudly and addressing his men.
         “The disciples are less organized than I had hoped,” the man spoke, running fingers through his hair.  “They are rather spread out, which makes this very difficult.  On top of that, they have just issued a 'no prisoners' order, and executed all my hopefuls”  A quiver had hold of his voice.  A pause before one of his men spoke.
         “I heard a girl killed three of their men a short while north of here, just before they gave the execution order.”  This man had a gruff voice and spoke with confidence.  “But a bunch of them are around there trying to find where she is hiding.”
         “Three men? Soldiers?”  He was biting his lip.
         “I saw them dragging the bodies away.”
         “Sounds likely.  Darin, go examine the scene.  If it was recent, perhaps we can see what happened.  Jeima, go with him, and try to pick up the trace of the girl.”
         Footsteps headed in Zanez' direction.  He lay very still in a waving shadow as the two men walked by, an arms reach away, their heavy boots crunching shards of broken glass and stone beneath them.  The man kept speaking.
         “Most of the disciples are in the tower, so we can't risk it in there.  Dammit.”  He was frustrated.  Zanez peered from behind the wheel and saw his men looking at one another.  They didn't seem to know what was going on.  All five backs were to him, so he slowly got to his feet and moved towards them quietly.  Five was not too bad if he could get the jump on them.
         One of the armed men spoke. “We should look in the south.  The outer ring is still intact there, and the fires may not have reached some of the refuges yet.”
         Zanez lodged himself neatly inside a tube that had fallen off a nearby semi-truck and stayed very still.  He had a partially obstructed view of the scene, and was in the dark away from any fires, completely hidden.  If they were going to move out, he would see it.
         “We would still need to cut through the tower, if we wanted to make good time, and I would rather not risk coming across Auran inside.”  he was speaking slower now, and looking around at the side of the tower that Zanez had been leaning when he first came across the meeting.  His eyes followed the perimeter.
         “Sir?”  his generals spoke, as he made no further response, eyes just darting back and forth.  Zanez drew a deep breath, wondering what was happening.  The man in leathers eyes were now on the bulldozer that Zanez had just moved from.  A twinge of alarm went down his spine.  He began to crawl backwards, just as the eyes reached him in his position.  The guards turned around and faced him, and he sprang up, as soon as he was outside the tube. He reached for his gun and spun around to run away.
         As soon as he turned, leather flashed briefly into his vision before a blow made contact with his eye.  He staggered sideways, and caught sight of the man standing directly in front of him, examining his fist, and coughing into the checkered red cloth.  Zanez turned around again and leaped over a fallen door darting round behind a concrete barricade, before being knocked around another blow that made him drop his gun.  He pried his own eyes open to see the same man standing over him, smiling down at him and examining him.
         “Who are you?” he asked him, staring directly into his eyes, still covering his mouth. Zanez rolled backwards and reached for his fallen gun.  He aimed directly at where his attacker was standing, but when he came up, there was no one.  A knee to the back of his head sent him flat on his face, and his gun flew out of his hand into a pile of rubble, as his vision narrowed and fell away.


         His eyes jolted open, perhaps a moment before his consciousness came back to him, and he frantically turned around, checking all directions.  Anyone who was there earlier had long gone, and there wasn't a sound of anyone nearby.  A bruise on his eye felt tender, and all his muscles were stiff.  He pulled himself onto his hands and knees and looked around.  He was laying back in the unearthed pipe he had taken refuge in earlier.  Someone had dragged him there.  His gun was beside him too, laying in a conspicuous place next to his head.  He picked it up and put it back on his belt, before crawling through the brown dust out of the tube, and sitting down with his back to a concrete barrier.
         His mind was slowly coming back to him.  Who were those people?  They were certainly not Burning Disciples, because of their dress, and they talked about them as something separate.  What were they doing?  They seemed to be looking for something or someone?  The girl he had helped earlier was mentioned.  Internally he kicked himself for helping her.  It was strange; he had left countless people in worse situations than her without batting an eyelid, and yet today he had felt oddly compelled.  He shook it off.  How had they known where he was hiding?  He stared back at the dusty tube he had just crawled from.  It was well out of the way of the headlights that still gleamed in the clearing, and covered in debris.  It must have been by chance that they had found him, but it didn't seem that way at the time.  That man in leather had been strange.  Something unnatural followed him around.  He had moved so fast, with so much purpose and his hits were so powerful.  Zanez had never seen anything like that.
         He regained his senses and checked his watch; he had been out for all of fifteen minutes.  Maybe his memory was wrong, after being hit in the head so hard.  He stood up and regained his balance.  He carefully surveyed the scene in front of him before he moved out of the cover of his shadows.  The vehicles that were shining light on the area were still running, but the men he had observed had left, leaving no trace of themselves except a black shape laying on the ground in front of the elevator.  No other sounds or shapes were around that made him wary.  He crept slowly across the open surface, towards the enormous metal and stone cliff face, casting long shadows in several directions, assaulting subtlety as he moved.  He came across the figure laying just in front of the green lights of the elevator.
         It was a body.  Clearly a burning disciple, based on his red clothes and flame gun laying next to him.  He had been shot in the side of the throat and had been left right where he fell.  Zanez looked around nervously, for a sign of whoever had killed him.  The headlights closed in on him and his shadow danced around the area, but nothing else moved.  Looking up, a million windows from the apartments and offices above loomed over him, every one could hold a pair of eyes watching. He made a final move for the elevator that was waiting for him on the ground floor and stepped inside.  He requested a floor near the middle of the tower and, following the instructions provided from a staticky disembodied voice, sat down in a comfortable seat within.  The doors closed lightly, and the elevator began its ascent.

         It moved slowly at first, but began to pick up speed. Standing was ill advised in the elevators, especially when moving a long way up the thousand story building.  The speed had a way of pushing you to the floor, and although Zanez was only moving to a central floor, his neck would start to get stiff before the car began to slow down.  The lights in the elevator were an emerald colour, and the glass elevator shaft was an inky blue. As he stared out the tinted glass into the remains of the desolated city below him, he realized that everyone who cared to look up would be watching his ascent.
         The north side of the city that he could see, was darker than he had ever seen it from this view.  The only lights he could see, were bright flames that hadn't burned out yet, but he could make out the ruined shapes of tall buildings he recognized.  Usually a faded, but unmistakable colour would speckle the dark skyline, but that had disappeared, replaced with an ashen grey that seemed to absorb even the darkness around it.  Only small streams of smoke were coming out of a few smouldering stones, but the fires had spread so quickly that some frames were still standing where the flames hadn't lingered for too long.  He stared out the window, frowning at his reflection, tinted green, where even the quiet humming of the elevator seemed to be swamped by the silence of the desolation below.
         He eyed the floor counter above him as it reached upwards of four hundred and began to slow down. He was aiming at the four hundred sixtieth floor where the government archives were, but the room he was looking for was on the massive tower, a good six kilometres through the internal city.  He didn't know what to expect inside; almost certainly not the level of desolation that existed outside the glass cased metropolis, but the dangers no doubt existed.  The city level he was looking at was most highly desired as it contained a great deal of financial and military data, and records from a large number of government studies, as well as an enormous amount of personal information on just about any figure of note.  But what would be priority would be getting wind of any military plans that would no doubt be most valuable for the attackers of this city.  Those records would be a long way away from what he was looking for, however, so he should feel at least somewhat safe while rooting through files.
         The lift ground to a halt two floors below the one who needed to be at, and before the doors opened, he had his gun in hand.  The floor he had stopped at was obscure, and there were far too many to place guards at every stop, but he was ready just the same.  With his finger on the trigger, he ducked around the side as the doors slid open and happily announced that he had arrived at his destination and for him to enjoy his night.  When no bullets or fireballs awaited him, he walked casually out the door and looked for the transportation building on his left.  It was a few metres along the outside of the glass, and as he walked by, he was overwhelmed by the silence and blackness of the floor around him.  The only light he could see came from outside. Between the massive alloy pillars, thick sheets of glass shielded any who would live their lives on the floors up here, shielding them from the intense winds and harsh pressures, all which are invisible to those who often sat in the perimeter parks and stared out at the sunshine to enjoy the artificial warmth that is created from a combination of greenhouse and heat lamps.  Now, it was pure blackness, with the tiny lights from the burning city below, and the cold pushing its way through the glass and filling the air around him.  His footsteps on the concrete were unsettling.  Every creature on this floor could see and hear better than he could, and he felt their eyes as they followed his clicking steps towards the tiny beam of the emergency light that marked the entrance to the stairwell. He heaved the heavy unlocked door aside and walked on his toes up the stairs, two at a time, and quiet as could be in the echoing chasm of stairs.  When he reached his floor, he looked down into the inky blackness of the near bottomless pit of stairs, watching to see any movement of a patrol or a pursuer.  Nothing.
         He found the door marked 460 and pushed it only slightly.  It groaned uncomfortably, and he winced as it did so.  The floor below was unguarded, but this one almost certainly would be.  He peered out the tiny crack he had made in the door.  There were lights on outside, orange street lamps designed to give the artificial city floor in the sky an authentic look. There were two guards at full attention with large rifles in their hands, guarding the elevator door.  Whoever was in charge was no doubt nearby, keeping them on their toes.  They hadn't noticed the moaning door he had pushed off to the side, so he pushed again, and a slightly louder creek rang through the silent square, opening it just enough for him to slip through, but also drawing a look from the guards.  He slipped outside and around the corner of the stairwell, while one guard aimed his rifle, spoke a few words into his radio and slowly walked over to investigate. 
         By the time he arrived to check out the shadow, Zanez was well out of the area.  He ran on the turf in the perimeter parks that were identical to those below it.  Many floors on the middle level of the tower were built to the same design as one another, homes to middle income apartment complexes in the core of the tower, office and government buildings around that and parks and recreation surrounding the perimeters.  The upper floors of the tower were planned communities, built by independent designers, that were entirely artificial, and all different from one another.  In some cases they were designed to emulate other cultural styles, complete with simulated climates and building styles, while others were owned by a single rich family who designed it wholly to their liking. The lower levels, where the base was wider, was sectioned off and sold building by building to smaller companies and individual companies, often making these levels a hodgepodge of disorganization, where small and large businesses alike mixed with homes and factories.  Down there, the upkeep of buildings was more or less random, leading to a few that were entirely redesigned and beautiful, standing right next to a broken down slum. Other levels were government owned, and contained schools, libraries or hospitals, and others still were owned by the church.  Near to the pinnacle, the priests and the church had full control, and the figureheads lived on the five or six top floors.  Festivals were often held on the upper floors, and a large portion of Kiookia's famous culture existed in this tiny fraction of the city.
         The lowest levels of the tower were underground and almost entirely industrial, with all the enormous machines and complicated systems that were required to sustain life throughout the massive complex above it. Pressure and air pumps that counteracted the low air pressure on the upper towers and recycled the air from up above, water and sewage plants that cleaned and pumped waste and water to and from all over the tower, as well as heat and cooling systems that maintained the individual temperatures of each floor.  Electricity was generated at the very bottom several layers via fusion power plants, and needed to be operated remotely by robotics, as those floors were unable to support long term life.  These industrial sustenance layers had moved slowly downwards, deeper and deeper underground as the tower above it grew higher into the sky and required more energy to maintain, and were a massive disorganized mess, with no possible way to reorganize it, although many a mayor of Kiookia had promised to do just that.
         As he got further away from the guards behind him, Zanez started moving more towards the centre of the tower, cutting time between him and the archives he was looking for.  It was a few kilometres away on the other side of the tower, so he moved at a brisk pace.  Never making much of a sound, he ducked between alleys, dark and gloomy.  The air was getting thick and warm for lack of power in the building, and while the emergency generators were working, there was little recycling going on.  It didn't feel like a genuine night here anymore.  Every third street lamp was powered, and made for a dark walk through the least illuminated alleys he could find.
         He breathed lightly, calmly, as he had trained himself to do.  The adrenaline hadn't begun to grip him yet.  To his left and right, tall dark grey buildings towered above him to a deep black roof four stories above that was the colour of a cloudless night, but would change to a happy blue in the day.  Occasionally he would emerge into a street and a breeze of air would hit him, cooling him from the warmth of the confined alleyways.  Here he would need to be careful, as a hundred windows were looking out over every street corner and only one of them needed to have eyes in them to make the rest of his trek very difficult.  Sound carried heavily in these halls.  The sound of an outdoor environment was something that the tower designers were never quite able to simulate, although in the lower levels where the roofs were higher, the echoing effects were powerful.  On these middle level floors, there were closer echoes that carried the laughs and barked orders of the tower invaders through many blocks to his waiting ears.  Although he heard their presence, he could never make out their words as he moved between empty dumpsters and storage lockers, unnecessary on this floor, but placed so as to be the same as the floor below it.
         He took note of the addresses above each door. 4602568.  He had never specifically been to the KoS List Archives, but he had known where it had been for almost as long as it had existed.  He had been dying for a tour of sorts, but the whole floor was heavily secured and armed.  This was a rare opportunity that he would never get again.  Kiookia's security systems and records were paralleled to none, and although he never had trouble getting the information he needed from the lesser archives, the information wanted could often be difficult to acquire, even for him. 4602672.
         Two buildings down the way had their lights on and one had shades moving within.  A bad sign.  He had not expected anyone to be ransacking buildings this far south.  Military and financial buildings were far east and west.  No actual money would be found, and all military records of significance would no doubt be encrypted, it seemed unlikely that a group of mercenary rebels would know that.  He wondered what they were looking for in the personnel files.  4602894 Tax files, employment records, historical accounts, genealogical trees, medical records were all kept in this area, and not just for the people of Kiookia, but for all of those in the nation.  The Kiookia archives were central for all of the continent of Anoosa, because this was where the hard copies were kept.  Thousands of backup files existed in every city, but only in Kiookia were the originals.  Zanez wasn't sure what files had been destroyed before they had evacuated the city and what had remained.  A part of him hoped they had destroyed everything, although such a project would likely take months or years, and they hadn't had that much time. More likely they had destroyed only vital military information.  Another part of him hoped that were true. 4602906.
         He saw the archives he was looking for just down the street.  A small building, unremarkable, except that it was especially unremarkable.  It was only two stories tall, and was on the very border of the park, so he could see the thick glass that led to the night sky around.  A small balcony ran along the second floor, but no equipment was set up outside.  The building was a murky grey and the windows were tinted black, whereas the rest of the windows on the floor remained transparent.  It's contents had recently been moved here, as the information pertaining to the Kill on Sight list had grown too large for it's old broom closet in Anoosa's government building, and required a more official location. They had moved it here into a dumpy little downtown location that used to be a security office, until that had been updated to remote technology.  He muttered the address aloud: 4602924, and stalked around it at a decent distance for a quarter of an hour or so, looking for an alternate entrance, but was unsuccessful.  The front entrance was a brown single door, with the words KoS List Archives written across the front of it in red letters.  He pulled out his handgun and jiggled the handle of the door, finding it unlocked.  Internally questioning his 'luck', he moved inward, placing his hand against the frame and silently shutting the door behind him.
         Zanez glanced around the room, finding a managers office and several cubicles with blackened computers.  The room was dark with a small yellow emergency light in one corner.  Beneath it, there were several bookshelves containing books on law and, (ironically, he thought to himself) ethics.  A water-cooler with a layer of dust on it was full against a wall and an unopened sleeve of paper cups sat on the ground beside it.  The managers office was locked and large windows decorated the wall directly opposite of it.  He looked towards one side of the room and found a staircase that led up to the second level of the building.  There was no elevator.  He moved up the stairs with his gun at his side and looked upward.  Rows of shelves, crisscrossing, reaching up to the roof greeted him.  He holstered his weapon and walked towards the first shelf, examining the name below a small pile of files: “Tisdo Mikotea.”
         He moved upwards along the alphabetical order, running his finger along the shelf where the names were written.  Everything was here on these individuals, from old family records, suspected crime connections, hundreds of witness accounts and every person that they had allegedly talked to since they had learned to do so.  His eyebrow raised as he saw a large stack of papers under a name in a file labelled Execution Records, Vol I.
         As he reached the end of the room, he looked to his right and saw a large room that looked newly constructed against the peeling wallpaper of the office.  It's walls were a brighter shade of the same colour that had perhaps not had time to fade since it's construction.  The door was the same colour as that of the entrance door, except it had a large number '0' in red paint stencilled across the front.
         He smiled to himself and walked towards it, turning the brass knob.  He was unsurprised that it was locked, and wasted no time in kicking in the door that opened with a crunch of splintered wood.  It was dark inside.  At first he couldn't see much of anything, as the only light was being provided from the emergency situations light hanging just outside the door.  His eyes slowly adjusted to the new light level.  Inside were four more long shelves like those outside, but these were overloaded and papers were hanging over the edges in precarious positions. Every corner of the room had small book cases filled with files, and paper stacked atop and alongside them in the floor. Baskets of flash drives were laden on a desk to his right and the walls were covered in maps that looked like a bulletin board.  Bits of string connected pins stuck in the map with files on a desk below it, and four empty chairs faced the maps in a curve.  Nothing was covered with dust.
         He stood and stared at the moment.  A drip of something icy went down his spine.  This was a lot of information.  More than he had expected.  He walked slowly down an aisle and stared at the labels on the shelves being careful not to disturb any of the papers.  Familiar names that he couldn't rest his mind on.  He eyed the basket of flash drives and bit his lip.  There was a single computer on a desk, but it's power was off, and it was unlikely to start.  He emptied a basket on the desk, sending the tiny plastic cases clattering across the surface.  He quickly read the labels on them before discarding them back into the basket.
         It was eerie just how organized the room was.  Every flash drive was labelled with a name, every file had a filing number and every bookshelf had a date range on it. As far as he could tell, the flash drives contained witness accounts, and the shelves contained details on movements, and investigations set up by police.  All unsuccessful.  He went through the drives without recognizing a name and then pulled open the drawers on the desk, seeing yet more papers.  He slammed the drawers and moved on to the next desk.  A particularly thick file was laying open on top of it.  He flipped it shut. 'Associations and Collaborations' it was labelled.  He skimmed the first several pages, his eyes growing wider as he went a long.  He closed the file with a thud and slipped it into a zipped up pouch on his back before moving on to the next bookcase.
         “Ahem,” came a raspy voice behind him.
         He whipped around, gun in hand and fired three shots in quick succession towards the man blocking the doorway.  He dropped to the floor instantly, and dodged the three shots and backed behind the wall again.
         Now Zanez' heart was beating fast.  He aimed at the doorway, waiting.  His free hand fumbled for a knife and he backed behind a shelf to get cover.
         A powerful blast of hot air hurtled through the door, sending papers flying and knocking a shelf off it's legs, sending it crashing into the ones behind it. The air knocked Zanez to the ground, making him shield his eyes from the heat of it.  All the neatly organized papers were crashing to the ground, fluttering in the thick air and getting lost in the confusion.  He continued to point his gun at the door.  The man stomped through the door quickly, and Zanez opened fire.  The shots were accurate, but the bullets never connected, and the man kept coming.  He jumped to his feet and backed away, reaching to his back to pull his sword to his hand.  The hit from his right was unnaturally strong, and burned his chest where it made contact, even through the hardened leather of his clothes and knocked him into shelf that was still standing.  Even against the shelf, he felt his skin blistering. Another hit was coming from the left, so he ducked, and the fist crashed through the plastic shelf, taking several books with the first, and withering them as they floated through the air.  He swiped his sword at the stomach of his attacker, but it was blocked by his left hand, where the sword stopped as if it had come into contact with metal.  The blade was pushed aside with such force it nearly left his hand.  The man then grabbed Zanez' leg with one hand and lifted him above his head.  He clutched with both hands on his wrist and kicked the side of his head, but he hardly seemed to feel it.  Zanez felt his stomach lurch as he was catapulted out the window and down to the layer of dirt and grass in the park below.  He landed in a spray of broken glass and onto his spine where he rolled feebly towards the thick glass that led to the outside world below.  He got a look at the window he had crashed through, and the man who was now standing there watching his victim.
         He was a small man, actually a decent deal smaller than Zanez.  He was wearing thick red pants, but no shirt.  While not particularly muscle bound, he was hairless and thick.  His face was unsmiling and genuinely curious, with a trick brow above both eyes that almost connected in the middle.  His head was shaved.  Zanez crawled towards the shell of the tower, and leaned his head against the glass.  The small man jumped down and landed on his feet just below the building, in a grassy patch that blackened and turned to ash as he walked through it towards him. His hand glowed and he made a throwing motion towards Zanez, as a glowing ball of flame leaped out of his hand and careened into the bulletproof glass behind him, where Zanez had been not a fraction of a second earlier. A crack the size of a bowling ball remained when the smoke cleared, and Zanez had gotten back on his feet.
         Zanez was reaching for a bigger weapon when he was hit in the stomach by what seemed to be some sort of projectile knocking the wind out of him.  The man stood a few metres ahead of him and yelled.
         “Who do you think you are?” he asked.  Zanez was catching his breath, so he couldn't answer.  “What are you doing here? How did you get into the tower?”  There was an ounce of genuine confusion in the mans voice, that he would have echoed if he had been able to spit out a word through the gasps.  The little man reached out with his hand which became engulfed in flame and reached out towards him, the fingers growing grotesquely long and gnarled.  The burning hand gripped him by his face and lifted him up off his feet.  The flames seared his skin and he screamed whatever little breath he had left in him. A trail of flame led back to the Artist behind him.  He whipped Zanez around and smashed his head at full speed into the glass, just below the already existing crack.  He saw stars and darkness, but kept his consciousness.  A small white light grew in the centre of his vision and expanded until it was all he could see.  He crawled around on his hands and knees trying desperately to see the grass between his fingers, and the dirt under his nails as he clenched his hands.  The man was still asking him questions although he did not register what he was saying.
         As his vision slowly came back to him, he noticed a small crowd had gathered; a group of ten-or-so soldiers dressed in heavy red body armour with flame rifles hanging lightly at their side.  Big smiles adorned their faces.  They were enjoying this.  The Artist was playing with him like a cat would with a mouse.  He looked and saw his blood on the glass where his head had made contact, and a small crack that had split off from the smash the fireball had made.
         Zanez pulled his shotgun off his back, and heard a murmur go up from the group gathered around him, pointing their weapons at him.  The artist just laughed and folded his arms in front of him and cocked his head.  He knew his shotgun was capable of blasting a hole in a brick wall, but it wasn't much more than a spitball gun to this guy.  He held it behind him and looked up facing the artist in front of him who was smiling at him, making eye contact.  His eyes burned red for a brief moment and he took a deep breath.
         He unleashed a shell at the glass behind him, in the centre of the previous crack at point blank range, cracking a hole straight through to the other side. The park filled with rushing wind as the pressure equalized, knocking everyone to their knees, including the artist, who lost his focus for just a moment.  His shotgun flew out of his hand, but he held grip on his sword closely.  Zanez struggled to his feet and jumped towards the crack. Guided by air pressure he slipped into and through the crack, holding his blade close to his chest. Next thing, he was outside of the tower, ten thousand feet above the city below him, a thick layer of smoke between him and the ground.  As he began his rapid descent he turned his back below him and faced up towards the floor he fell from.  A dark roar of pure rage echoed out the crack after him, and the whole night was rocked by an explosion that shattered all the glass on the level, followed by a blast of flame and energy that spread outwards into the night, and sending Zanez spiralling out of control away from the tower.
         He held the tight grip on his sword and regained what remained of his mind.  Shards of glass were all around him, racing him to the bottom, and the wind was icy cold rushing past him.  He slowly sucked in some air and turned over, angling his body and flapping like a wounded bird, trying to bring himself closer to the building that he had escaped from.  Black floor after black floor rushed past him faster than he could count and an alloy column that he knew stretched from deep underground straight to the upper echelons was right nearby his face.  He swam and adjusted his position alongside it.
         He swept through a layer of smokey clouds and suddenly the night became clear and the air warm.  He turned to see the south half of the city as a smoking war-zone  Machine gun fire rang loud and clear, even so high in the air.  Tall buildings were collapsing, completely cloaked in inferno, while jets of flames from the attackers shot through the night sky, white hot and dangerously contagious.  Some city blocks were entirely on fire, and others were as of yet untouched by the chaos, but wouldn't escape for long.  Plumes of smoke rose from every home and building, taking peoples lives into the skies and leaving only dust and ash behind on the ground.
        He propelled himself forward ever slightly until he was more or less parallel with the glass rushing up at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour and glanced downwards.  He didn't know how far down he was and the darkness was making it difficult to see the ground below.  He held out his sword gingerly at arms length, letting it scrape against the glass, causing a slight hiss and a trail of sparks to be left behind.  The glass got thinner as he got lower, but it was still nearly half as thick as his blade was long, so he needed to take it gently.  One wrong move and he could lose an arm, or worse, his sword, and that would be it.  He angled the blade upwards, grabbed the hilt with both hands and plunged it with every piece of strength he could muster, deep deep into the glass.  An ear shattering squeal and an exhale of relief shook him as he kept falling, leaving a trail sliced up the side of the enormous building.  He was slowing down, as he held on tight and looked down.  Suddenly, he could make out the features of the ground below him, much closer than he had thought.  He closed his eyes and jerked to a sudden halt as his blade ran out of speed; hands slipping free from the sweat and sending him crashing to the ground several metres below, landing on both hands painfully.
        He rolled over, wincing in pain, and cradling his wrists.  Pieces of broken glass were laying all around him from the explosion up above.  He inhaled rapidly, each breath sweet relief after his rapid descent.  His blade was still jammed into the building well out of his reach, and even if he could, it was dulled beyond uselessness.  A roaring wind of ambiance reached his ears between breaths, and a warm breeze covered him like a blanket sweating, despite laying on the hard concrete ground.
        He took some time to gather his wits.  He had only come in contact with two or three artists over the last year, and every one of them had left him battered and bleeding.  Most men were lucky to survive a single encounter with a hostile artist, but Zanez was not most men.  Although he had no way of knowing he wouldn't follow him out the window, nor that he would have been able to survive such a ridiculous fall, Zanez was more willing to take his chances with a five kilometre fall than with an angry artist.  He had gotten enraged after having lost hold of him, and had blasted out the entire floor of the tower; ill thought out, considering the immense wealth of information that had likely been destroyed in his wrath.  His mind went to the room and the enormous piles of papers that he had been rummaging through when he had been stumbled upon, and how it was now gone forever.  He was relieved, but there was also a twinge of regret hidden deep at the back of his mind.
        He tried to roll over, and pain shot up his back, and he felt his skin tearing as he moved.  He winced and forced himself onto his side, eyeing a small pooling of blood where his back had been pressed against the side.  He ran his fingers along his back, and felt the gash that ran from the small of his back up to his right shoulder blade.  It stung when he twisted as he sat up and tears filled his eyes.  He must have scratched himself as he slipped out the tiny hole he had shot in the glass.  He worked his way to his knees, reaching into a pocket along the side of his hip, and finding it empty.  He grimaced in frustration, remembering that he had given his painkillers to the anonymous girl he had met earlier.  He found himself reeling in frustration and promised himself that if he had come across her now, he would have put two bullets in her to save her the pain. 
        He had to be moving soon.  The artist could be down here soon to check that he hadn't survived the fall, and in fact could have jumped himself and had no trouble sticking the landing.  Zanez had landed in a park, almost entirely concrete and largely clear of rubble, with two lines of trees to each side of him.  A few stone statues of previous mayors adorned the square, some of them scratched by time, but largely unaffected by the carnage and chaos that was tightening around the city.  The tall, well trimmed trees swayed in the hot wind, dancing what could be their last dance.  He made it to his feet with a great deal of pain, and once he was there the pain largely went away.  Every time his left foot connected with the ground, a small shock went all the way up his back, but he kept moving, pushing his way through major metal gates that had been split at the lock with an axe.