7.2
After landing on the rough metal roof of a skyscraper, Blake grabbed a radio from the helicopter and stepped down carefully.
There was a trap door of sorts at his feet, intended for exactly this purpose–helicopter landings. The city of Iron wasn't made to be navigated by foot, so roofs were the most common landing place.
But try as he might, Blake could not pull the door open. He grabbed the handle, a black steel ring, with both hands and wrenched it upward with all the force he could muster, finally forced to accept that it was stuck.
He stood up and sighed.
Grabbing the radio, which he'd set on the ground beside him, he tuned in to a local channel, but all he could hear was static.
How embarrassing, he thought, sitting back down and dangling his legs off the skyscraper's edge.
Thunk.
Blake spun around, and what he saw was a man climbing up through the trapdoor. The man was wearing an all-gray uniform, only the upper half visible as he stopped climbing to speak.
"Who are you?" he asked in a colorless voice, face devoid of expression.
"Hello," Blake greeted politely. "My name is Blake Stane. I'm from Blackpool, in charge of element research."
"Where are your credentials?" the uniformed man asked.
"I'm not carrying any," Blake replied. "But surely this helicopter is enough to verify my status."
"You are under arrest."
The officer climbed out of the hole in the roof, and five others, all dressed in the same awkward gray suits, followed behind him.
Blake raised his eyebrows, but he didn't put in any effort to resist as the men handcuffed him and led him into the trapdoor.
The men moved without speaking, all assuming their positions with perfect efficiency. After descending a narrow, spindly ladder, they ushered Blake into an elevator and pressed the button labeled "11".
On floor eleven, the elevator doors slid open, revealing the six men inside dressed in gray and one dressed in black, arms cuffed behind his back.
The gray police stepped forward, but this time, Blake didn't move. Beneath the flickering white elevator light, he smiled.
"Hello, Zero."
The police followed his gaze, and their reaction was immediate. Every single one forgot about Blake, instantly pulling pistols from their hips and aiming them at the pair of purple eyes that faced them through a glass pane across the hall.
Zero grinned, revealing the perfectly white teeth that matched his perfectly white hair.
An officer reached for the radio just below his collar.
"We've located White Hair. Building 11, floor 11. Requesting immediate backup."
Zero stepped forward to the glass pane.
The officers kept their pistols trained on his body.
"Stop!" one yelled. "Don't move!"
Zero raised a hand to the glass, still grinning just as broadly, and rapped his knuckles on the surface. Then, cupping his hands on either side of his mouth, as if calling out to someone a great distance away, he mouthed the words "Watch out."
Something moved in the dark room behind him.
CRASH
The windows shattered, instantly replaced by flying tables and metal drawers. Massive objects careened through the air, accelerating straight into the police squad and slamming their bodies into the wall like a tsunami.
The lights flickered and went out.
In the ringing silence that followed, Blake carefully picked his way over the crooked limbs and seeping blood, glad that he'd chosen to wear black and not white.
Upon crossing the hall and reaching the place where the glass pane used to be, he looked up and faced Zero with a small smile.
"I see you've made a name for yourself. Just the opposite of what I asked you to do."
Zero bowed his head and apologized, hardly making any effort to hide the sarcasm in his voice.
"Sorry sir! I couldn't help it!"
"I'm not upset, because now I've finally seen your authority with my own eyes," Blake replied. "I honestly doubted that you would acquire it."
Zero stood back up straight, smile dripping with satisfaction.
"Where's Kwame?" Blake asked, refusing to waste any time even on such a miraculous reunion.
"Jail," Zero replied frankly. "He's too obedient to break out."
"Could you have helped him?"
"Eh, maybe."
"You should have."
"Sorry sir!"
"You can apologize to him on the way out." Blake shifted his arms uncomfortably and added, "Come over here and uncuff me."
"Yes sir!" Zero, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, strode through the opening he'd created, lazily kicking shards of glass as he went. "What d'you mean, 'on the way out'?"
"Circumstances are slightly different now, and I think you belong somewhere else."
"Belong? Where?" Zero fingered the chain between Blake's handcuffs. "You know, I'm not good at precise stuff like this."
"Just break the chain."
The metal links separated with a click, and Blake shook his arms out, each wrist still wearing a cuff.
He looked over his shoulder at the officers on the floor. The room was dark, but the elevator light was still on, which made the dark silhouettes of their bodies visible. Apart from the occasional rise and fall of a chest, or the twitch of a finger, they lay there without moving, drenched in a pool of their own blood.
"Let's use another exit," Blake suggested, turning away from the elevator.
He walked over pieces of broken glass and into the depths of the room, his figure too becoming no more than a shadow.
As Zero followed Blake into the dark, he began whistling in a slow, sliding pitch.
The empty room was filled with the eerie notes, echoing what could have been a lament for those soldiers lying dead on the floor.
But its sound wasn't the right kind of sad–instead of a funeral march, it sounded like a killer's march.
Coming to a door with a square of glowing light, Blake opened it and entered a stained concrete stairwell.
He squinted at the sudden cold white light and reached out for a hand rail, only to find that none existed. The stairwell was constructed of concrete and nothing else.
Despite the surface cracks and obvious age of the concrete, it was so smooth that it was almost slippery, and Blake carefully examined each step before he took it.
"Where are we going?"
Zero's voice echoed off the concrete walls.
"You still have that… fixation, don't you?" Blake replied without taking his eyes off the stairs at his feet.
"Eh? …yeah, I guess."
"I have a feeling you'll find something interesting if you go to Russon," Blake continued. "There's a character I'd like you to meet."
"Huh?" Zero looked up in surprise. "Fuck that place."
Blake responded with silence.
Zero, unable to contain his curiosity, added, "That 'character'... are they what's interesting?"
"They might be." Blake rounded a corner, continuing down another flight of stairs. "And I'm confident that Russon is a better place for you. It now seems to be the most crucial city. I hear their military is much stronger than seven years ago, and even then it was the most powerful by far." He turned around, looking Zero in the eyes. "But I'm sure you know that better than anyone."
Zero averted his gaze and yawned. "Yeah, alright," he sighed reluctantly. "I guess it is boring here."
"It's Jelani," Blake suddenly said. "You know who he is, don't you?"
Zero froze with one foot hovering in midair. His eyebrows crept up his forehead.
"...he's going back?"
"He is," Blake replied. "And right now, I think he's driven by love. Just the sort of story that would interest you–right, Zero?"
Zero grinned.
"Homecoming? Guess I'll join him."