#51

Jacob and Lex followed Doctor Kai out onto the front steps. “Dude,” Jacob said then. “Um.”

“What?” Doctor Kai said.

“We, uh. Seem to be several hundred feet above the town.”

“You're thinking about that first. That's a good thing.”

Jacob turned to him. “What am I supposed to be...”

Then he saw the plume of smoke. The same as in the news video. Beneath it, he could see nothing, except the protruding ribs of fractured buildings.

“Ah.”

There was a pause, with the high winds filling what would normally be awkward silence.

“So, your House can travel across the sky and cover a hundred and sixty-plus miles in twenty minutes. Can you drop us in without anyone who's down there noticing us?”

“I think something to that effect can be conjured.”

Lex sat down as gently as he could on the stairs.

“So, wait. We might have to fight terrorists down there?”

Kay, or Kai, or whoever, who had been focusing on disguising The House as something else, looked at Lex with disdain. “Your brother is down there fighting the terrorists for you. Now, I know your family has indoctrinated you enough on the particulars of supporting your troops, so frankly, you should be able to do a better job at fighting these 'terrorists' than Jacob here.”

“You put 'terrorists' in finger quotes,” Jacob said. As, indeed, the Doctor had.

“Oh yes.” He paused. “They're not terrorists. They're actually Imperial Guards. I told you about them.”

“Ah.” Jacob still didn't know what that meant, but clearly Doctor Kai was some sort of pretentious dipshit, and therefore able to resist the most biting of interrogations.

“I'll bring us down,” the Doctor said. “I've refreshed your ammo and I have as much as you need for the task ahead. Remember. Do not let them activate any sort of breaching device.”

Jacob didn't know what the breaching device would look like, but for now it didn't matter. He was also considering the idea that McGee Manor itself might have some sort of weapon on it that the Doctor was neglected, but again, he was not in the mood for reasoning with nincompoops.

The House descended, and Jacob felt anticipation. It was likely that Lex did as well. There was a storm rising in that smoke, or some such bullshit. Bad metaphors, heh. It was like he was acting like Amos now. He was almost...

Of course he didn't foresee that Doctor Kai would push him off of the steps.

The fall was a light one, much lighter than Jacob was afraid it would be. He rolled with it but Lex didn't, and for a second, given the groans, it looked like Lex was badly hurt. But he stood up fine and didn't complain of anything. Before them, they could see the recreation center for the U campus, in twisted ruins. Again, surrounded by smoke, suggesting everything inside was burning. In its lot, a bunch of broken cars could be seen, alongside what looked like a wrecked U.S. APC.

Lex saw the APC and began to sweat. “Holy cow,” he said. “If my brother's guys couldn't deal with this...”

Jacob just shrugged and walked forward. He, too, was sweating. But he stuck to his pistol, and then turned back to look at The House. He saw then that it was flying past and over them, with Kai still aboard.

“I'll meet you up ahead!” the cry came. But then its speaker was gone.

“Shit.”

Lex turned to look at Jacob. “Maybe he's securing the town? The news said the town was being destroyed, too...”

“Yeah.”

Jacob started going forward, with Lex behind him.

Jacob was already weighing his environment. The smoke would cut off breathing. And his long metalhead-style hair could get caught on things. Maybe he could swing it around like The Shadow's cloak, to get people away from shooting at his head or something. Who knows. His shoes were in good shape for this sort of thing. And unlike Lex, as mentioned, he had been here before. But Amos could be anywhere. Likely without his phone. Jacob didn't have his own phone, so that didn't matter...

In the distance, he heard the sound of something exploding. It was far away, though, so that was alright—though each explosion could be lethal for anyone they were looking for here.

They made it across the “lake” (really just a valley) between the two prominent dorm halls. It was now a crater-covered wasteland. The cafeteria was ahead, relatively safe. Maybe people would be in there.

That was when they saw the soldiers. American soldiers; from their universe. Not any of that “Imperial Guard” shit. (Though what does an Imperial Guard even look like? he wondered.)

“Hey! Look!” one of the soldiers shouted. “Civilians! Survivors!”

The platoon ran up to the two at once.

“Look, kids, we gotta get you outta here! How—how did you even get out here in one piece? We're bombing everything to Hell!”

Before they could say anything, the soldiers had grabbed their arms and were dragging them into the health office, on the other side of one of the dorms.

Lex resisted at once, and when they took him inside he tried bolting for it. Jacob was the one to lunge after and knock him down; he then took him back. “Stay together,” he said simply.

He surveyed the soldiers. They seemed panicked, and rightfully so. Whatever was going on was out of their hands, almost; but they had such huge guns. That suggested things about the size of the enemy army; if they were small, they would be well-trained. Or, there could just be a lot of them.

He also remembered that these were, if Doctor Kay was to be trusted, invaders from another dimension or some shit. It would be unwise to underestimate them. But if there were Imperials, there must be an Empire. And if there was an Empire, there must be an Emperor. (Such a thing was obvious, and Jacob underestimated the skill of anyone who wouldn't realize that immediately.) If these were “Guards”, then maybe the Emperor himself was here. If they took down the Emperor, they could conceivably stop the Guards. Or, possibly, make them angrier.

He was about to relay this information to the soldiers when one of them turned to Lex. “Well, shit, son,” he said. “You look like someone I know.” Professional breakdown. They were panicked.

“I'm looking for Marcel Vecchio!” Lex said. “He's with you guys, supposedly. I'm his younger brother.”

The platoon moved back in shock, with the jump moving sequentially; here they seemed like one thing, one true unit, and this made the next statement even more crushing. “Private Vecchio...was one of us.” He made sure the emphasis was very, very clear.

Lex's eyes widened. “No.”

The soldiers tried to look away. So did Jacob, as Lex seized the soldier and screamed and screamed.

Eventually, he stopped, and slipped away, next to a shattered vending machine.

Jacob was quiet for a very long time after this. “What are we up again?”

“These...things, are pretty easy to spot. Covered in red clothing. We can't tell if they bleed or not, and they take our dead away. For what, we don't know.”

Jacob fell back to silence for awhile. “Have you killed any? And have they started setting up any sort of...device?”

The soldier shook his head. “No on both. They just showed up and started...killing everyone. Blowing everything up. They don't seem to care if people escape, though. And we can't take them down; fuckers have too much armor, or stamina, or something.” The soldier's view became more suspicious. “Who are you, exactly?”

Jacob was about to speak, but suddenly he was knocked down a nearby ramp. Another soldier did a similar thing for Lex. “Hostiles spotted!”

The soldier rolled off Jacob and got his rifle ready. Jacob peered over the lip of the ramp-wall. And indeed, there were hostiles.

They were tall humanoids, clad, as the soldier had stated, in all red. They were “humanoids” because under all of that armor, they may not have even been human. The bulges revealed that indeed, what they were wearing was a sort of armor. The armor was barely decorative at all; almost entirely practical. Though at the arms and on the back, some short ribbons of a fine red silk trailed—this could have been decorative, but Jacob knew it could also be for distractions. It was light enough to move swiftly with very slight motions. The helmet disturbed him most of all; it seemed completely featureless, not even containing a visor. Robots, maybe? With external sensors? Or something else?

The Guard—he guessed it was a Guard—was armed only with a pike of sorts. The pike itself was dripping with fresh blood, leaving no secrets as to how recently it had been used.

“Don't...do anything,” the soldier whispered. He was shaking and sweating profusely. He had said these things couldn't be killed, and with the look he was giving him, Jacob knew it was likely the case. So he started sweating once more as well.

“Is that one of the things that killed my brother?” Lex asked angrily. The others tried to shush him, as he had nearly shouted this.

“Yes, yes, it is,” the soldier gasped quietly. Lex's eyebrows narrowed. Then, he let out a cry.

“NO YOU DUMB SACK OF—”

But it was too late. Lex had lunged out, ignoring anything in his way, towards the group of tall soldiers. One instantly turned on him. There was a swift, nearly invisible motion and—

Jacob couldn't look. He felt his hands start to shake.

“No, no, NO!!!” One of the soldiers shouted. He too stood up and the others followed him. They were shouting indiscriminately but bravely fired into the crowd.

Jacob stood up and watched as the bullets impacted, and then...did nothing. The Guards advanced slowly, as if they knew their invincibility; they most likely did. Then, the one at the front charge, and before Jacob could even reopen his eyes from blinking, the soldier was impaled and crushed against the vending machine.

Jacob knew it was too late and started running. The others didn't notice him escaping; even if they had, they had only a dozen seconds to notice it.

Behind him, as he went as far from the smashed health office as he could, away from Lex's remains, he only heard the quick sounds of spears flashing through the air—or something far too similar.

The gunfire stopped, and even once he made it to the Student Center, at the direct middle of the campus, he knew that he was running out of time. He just had to remember that quote-idea: “running out of time”. Because the second he stopped thinking in those sorts of absurd and clichéd action-hero terms, he was fucked.

“Or else he was fucked”. Heh. Keep it up, Berkley, he thought.