Berserk

Guess who didn't die?

Dear Leo,

Guess who is still alive?

Were you worried at all? You shouldn’t have been. Guess I can hold my own against an Outsider. With a little help, of course.

Like I mentioned last time, I went on my first mission yesterday. Right before I left, I hugged Mom. She was surprised and asked me if I was feeling alright. I didn’t say anything, and left to go hug Dad. He is just as weird about hugs as ever, even more so than earlier. I wasn’t sure if he realised it was me hugging him, but he mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “bleaker”. I nodded and left.

I had packed a wetsuit, my usual full face mask, the small pocket knife you had gifted me on my birthday and some water into a backpack. The horn was charged and placed in a zippered pocket. I walked the small distance to the metro that would take me to Udayanagari. The metro was open and thankfully they only did a cursory scan at the gate. The car was not too crowded, the people mostly half-day labourers returning to their homes. The walls were as usual plastered with posters for Ogee, accompanied by years-old digital portraits of Ambian. His creepy smile and dead eyes stared at me as if he knew something about me that I did not. Which to be fair, he probably did. At Udayanagari, I exited the metro station. Almost instantly, I felt the whoosh on my neck as Betaal arrived.

“Head to the west EV stand.”

I silently obeyed, keeping an eye out for anything that was out of the ordinary. Till that point, I was mostly just going through the motions. But at that moment, I felt the reality of it settle on me. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine me from even a few months ago trying to do something like this. It felt unreal, weird. I suppressed the urge to cross myself and walked to the stand. Three or four Segals were plugged into the widebar at the stand.

“Get into the third e-rick.”

I counted up from the rear and slid into the seat of the Segal Betaal had indicated. They’re actually far more advanced now. The navpad had a destination input and a  payscanner and I could have just used a Devi to OgeePay the fixed fare. But of course, as Betaal had instructed, I wasn’t carrying my Devi. (Or Aarti’s for that matter. I had tossed it into the same drawer where I’d kept the small silver case I had recovered from the Outsider that had attacked me, the day I first met the Protector.)

I didn’t know where to go, so I didn’t punch in a location. While I waited for Betaal to say something, a young woman slid into the Segal.

“Sorry, this one is taken…” I started to say, but she ignored me and began to type on the navpad. It pinged something, and she smoothly fed some money into the dusty side slot. Then she looked at me directly and it hit me.

It was the Vikram from the beach.

“Who are you?” I asked anyway.

The Segal spooled the charging cord and disengaged from the widebar. It began to slowly peel away into the road and into traffic.

“I hate Segals.” She offered, but nothing more.

“Who are you?” I repeated.

“You don’t need to know who I am. We are Vikrams. It’s what we do that’s important.” She turned to face me. She wasn’t just wearing a full face mask. There was some cloth stitched to the side that wrapped back her hair and attached to the wide, dark-tinted goggles above her mask. The cloth extended down her body, over her neck and into her t-shirt. She had a back pack like mine, which she held close to her. As the Segal began to pick up speed, weaving drunkenly through the main road, I sat back, holding on to the handle on the side.

I kept quiet for the rest of the ride. I had snuck a look at the navpad, and just as Betaal had told me earlier, the Segal was headed towards Vasave. Ten minutes later, the electrical vehicle had disgorged us near the jetty. I had taken the time to fasten the face mask. I tied my hair back as I usually did, to get it out of my eyes. (I wear it pretty short these days anyway, but I didn’t want to risk it getting in my line of sight.)

She began to walk confidently to one of the piers. I could hear a sort of muffled putt-putt, and as it turns out, that’s the sound of a hoverboat idling on the water. She jumped into it, and offered me a hand. I took it and scrambled onboard as well.

She went to the deck and hit a switch or two. It immediately began to slide into the water and out to sea.

She walked back to me and began to slowly pull out a case from the backpack she had been carrying. She opened it up and pulled out tactical wear and a small disc from it. She slipped the vest on over her full sleeved t-shirt and slid her finger along the disc. It glowed bright blue and disengaged from the centre to form the two halves of the battle axe I had seen her wield against the Outsiders. She pulled out a small stick like my horn and stuck it on at one end of the blade and it telescoped to its full height. She twirled it in her hands in the cramped space of the hovercraft but deftly avoided taking off my kneecaps.  

I swear I was not staring, I was just curious.

She must have seen me slack-jawed, because she said, “Betaal warned me about you. If you aren’t fully committed to the cause, you shouldn’t be here. I’ll keep you safe but you will NOT get in my way.”

I bristled slightly at the accusation, but I didn’t want to antagonise her yet.

“Have you killed many?” I asked instead.

“Not enough,” She replied.

I think I had some sort of insight into her at those words.

“You lost someone to them?” I asked. I immediately regretted it, as she stiffened all over. The blue of the blade glowed ever so slightly brighter. A second later, she relaxed but I had definitely touched a nerve.

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have…” My voice trailed off. I honestly didn’t know what to say.

She shot me a look, and even though I couldn’t see the expression on her face, I’m sure I should have been dead already.

She spoke slowly, enunciating each word, like I was slow. “We are Vikrams. We don’t need to know anything else about each other. I’ll have your back. Will you have mine?” Her teeth gritted through the last sentence.

“I just… You know that the Outsiders. Underneath all their weapons and suits, they’re…they’re humans too.” I offered weakly.

“They are not humans. And I intend to send each one of them to the Jahannum they come from.” She said, with a seriousness that brooked no further conversation. She threw her backpack to a corner of the hovercraft and took a seat. I took her cue and snapped on my wetsuit over my usual attire.

The itching in my neck intensified and dulled.

“Good luck. Do you know where your loyalties lie, Vikram?” Betaal’s voice crackled and then it was silent.

We were outside of his eye now.

It took only a few minutes for the hoverboat to slowly mire itself in the marshlands near Boar Valley. The other Vikram spoke quickly and crisply. “The Outsider was last spotted about two clicks northeast of here. I have an idea of what it is. But I can’t be sure. It’s had about twelve hours to understand the lay of the land. We have to draw it out of whatever cave it’s holed up in, planning its attack or relaying information to its brethren. Stick close to me, keep eyes where I can’t. Cut the fucking thing to pieces if you need to.”

“I…I have never…” I stammered out.

It was that moment again. The idea of inflicting violence was fighting with my sense of self-preservation now. A small part of me really just wanted to lay my weapons down and be done with it.

“You’ve never killed. That’s okay. It becomes easier each time.” There was a hardness in her voice that chilled me. She moved on, struggling through the waist-deep gunk and marshes. We eventually managed to climb to higher ground. She moved very confidently, and I got the idea she had done this before. I think the last time I had been to Boar Valley was long before it had even been put in the Red Corridor. A school trip to the marshes to see some indigenous fauna, which I could see everywhere now.

It was scary, alright. I was slowly finding myself in deep water, both literally and metaphorically. 

About twenty hard minutes of trekking later, she held up her hand in the universal sign of stay the fuck where you are. I couldn’t hear a thing. It was quiet of course, and as we both learned when we had that brief phase where we only watched hunting movies, the silence was the giveaway. Something had scared away every animal, every boar, every bullfinch away from this place. Something big. She slowly pointed out the signs to me wordlessly. Broken branches. Bent undergrowth. A little further on, some sort of rectangular impression in the wet earth. 

The battleaxe in her hand began to glow. I eased power into my horn. We moved forward. A shrill beeping started up somewhere in the distance.

There went our element of surprise. The beeping was far at first but quickly advancing towards us. I saw her blade glow dim and bright in the same frequency as the sound approaching us. 

“Lesson one. They can always tell when we are around them. But so can we.” She said this and rushed towards the noise. I raced after her to try to keep up. We burst into a clearing, and the Outsider was already in the middle of it. It roared, the beeping now faint compared to the sounds the creature was making. I could see it better now.  The thing was a large bulky mass. It stepped forward on flat platforms that left a deep rectangular impression in the earth. It was at least two metres tall and padded with grey-green armour, wet and slimy, laden with weeds and marshes. Its head was a leathery visor, with bulbous lenses for eyes. On both sides of its head, it had horns which were glowing and beeping. It rushed us with all the grace of a rampaging elephant. The frame of it rippled, shaking the earth as it moved, and in one hand it held aloft a giant halberd, the tip of which was pulsing blue. It had already built up momentum and it leapt at us. 

I understood what she meant, because as the Outsider came closer, both our weapons started to pulse higher. The thing couldn’t creep up on us. But honestly, I do not think it was designed for that. 

It swung the halberd down, and both of us dived to either side. The blade of the halberd embedded in the soil, and it landed on both feet, its robust exoskeleton absorbing the shock. It turned, yanked the halberd out and roared. I could just about make out words but they didn’t make sense. The roaring was foreign, alien, and distorted by whatever was amplifying the voice through the helmet around the head. It spotted me and began to lumber over to me, this time raising the halberd and pointing it at me. It blinked and a blaze of blue fury burned past me. My reflexes were good, and I had the sixth sense of my horn’s warnings to guide me. I rolled out of the way and back to my feet to see the creature rocking on its platforms. Blowback from the halberd must be quite a bitch. 

I saw the other Vikram go for the knee, but the battleaxe glanced off the padding on the legs. It turned and swung the halberd at her, and she rolled back just in time. As it turned, it presented its back to me, and I raised the horn. I must have hesitated briefly, the power did not amp up all the way. I fired the horn at it. But the beam just diffused off the armour into little sparks. It shook the electricity arcing off its arms and turned back to me. I smiled, and rushed at it, my horn held by my side, just the way I’d practised. Waiting till the last minute to power it fully. The creature stopped moving, a little surprised that it was the one being rushed as opposed to the one doing the rushing. It swung the halberd up and out, and it caught me square in the chest. I bounced back and landed hard on my ass. There was a very solid pain in my chest, but luckily, the blade had been pointed away from me. Struggling to my feet, my chest hurting like hell, I raised the horn and rushed in again. I fired again but aimed low and left. The blast went to its feet. The platforms began to spark, and the force of the beam dug the earth out from under it. It tried to run forward. I ran towards it to meet it. This time it swung the halberd just right, but slow enough for me to move my horn into place just in time to deflect the halberd away, using its own momentum, exactly as I had done to the drones once. The halberd ricocheted off but I had forgotten about its other fist. It managed to swat me away again. I slid into the mud and into a tree. I was beginning to feel a little sore and more than a little tired. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement behind the beast. I got up again, and tasted blood on my lips. I ran towards it again, not bothering to power the horn all the way, but using it to spring off the ground. As it looked at me, disbelief writ large across its flat face, it brought its hands forward instinctively to stop me. It managed to stop my body, but my hand lunged forward with the horn and impacted the helmet. While in contact, I managed to power it up halfway through and spark the point at which my horn and its helmet touched. Power surged through it, cracking the face of it, and causing its horns to go completely berserk, flashing and crackling. It roared and threw me down. As it did, it looked down at its feet, and I followed its gaze. She had used the battle axe at its highest intensity and cleaved straight through the right platform. The creature wobbled and flailed, before crashing onto its side. I walked up to the molten cracked visor of its face that was now level with the bottom of my horn.

Static crackled into violent feedback. Sparks flew across the goggles and the nose. I could hear a soft voice now, more intelligible.

“I am …” it coughed and spat, “…awaited in Valhalla.” Except its face was too damaged to say it quite right. It sounded like Varaharra.

I raised my horn and pointed it at its face, powering it up slowly. Wiping the blood from my lips, I wondered if this was where I had to choose.  

“Allah will not save you.” The other Vikram said and with the battle axe at full power, she sliced the head clean off. (I think she misheard its last words.) There was an overpowering smell of charred flesh and the neck seemed like a stump. The blade had cauterised the wound as it went along. I dropped to my knees.

She came to my side, and offered me her hand. I took it and got to my feet again.

“You don’t have to learn to kill, if you can fight like that. It’s stupid, it’ll get you killed first anyway.” I couldn’t be sure but I think she was joking.

I didn’t say anything, so she continued, “The armour this thing was wearing, it seems to be energy diffusive. Nothing should be able to take blasts from your horn and my axe. And this,” She picked up the halberd, almost as tall as her. “This is new, I think.” She felt along the surface of it, found something and it powered down and split into three pieces that fell to the ground.

“We can use this. All of this.”

“I’m glad.” I probably sounded a lot weaker than I felt because she dropped the halberd pieces and came to me.

“You did good, Vikram. You did good.”

“Thanks, I just wanted to make sure I had your back.”       

 She nodded and began to inspect the body of the dead beast.

I shrank the horn and put it into a pocket.

“Aaliyah” She said.

“What?” I managed to say.

“You asked me who I am. I’m Aaliyah.”  

So I guess I made a new friend, and I defeated a new kind of Outsider in my very first mission, and my lip is only slightly swollen but healing well. I think I may actually be good at this. Still alive, then, still hoping to hear from you soon.

Love

N

PS: I got to keep the blade of the halberd. It fits almost perfectly like an attachment onto my horn.