Oblivion Stone

Ahead, Domi rushed through the next doorway, leaving the corridor behind her. She found herself face-to-face with a half-dozen people dressed in the ragged clothes of Outlanders. They were huddled around a fire that had been set in an upturned canister, warming their hands as they cooked several rats and birds at the ends of greasy sticks hung over the yellow flames. Domi cursed herself for missing the cooking smells—the breath mask had hidden them from her, obscuring the natural senses that she relied upon.

The room itself was a vast open area. The floor was tiled in terra-cotta, a swirling pattern like sea spray created using a series of darker tiles within the mosaic. The tiles had been cracked by the earthquake that had shaken the ville weeks before, and a number of them were missing, now just crumbled to dust. On the far side of the room stood a counter at roughly chest height, indicating that the room had probably been some kind of reception area just a few weeks before. Now it was simply a corpse, the rotting remains of a once magnificent building.

As Domi dashed forward, she became conscious of something coming at her from behind, and she moved just swiftly enough to avoid a harsh blow to the back of her head. She spun to face her attacker, seeing the tall figure dressed in a dark, hooded cloak with a lighter pattern in the weave. The lighter pattern was almost undetectable now, so much dirt had become ingrained in the man’s clothes.

“Submit,” the hooded man spat, following through on his first attack.

Domi ducked as the cloaked man lunged at her again, inexpertly driving a heavy fist toward her face. As the man’s fist sailed over her head, Domi rushed at him, barreling shoulderfirst into his gut and knocking him off his feet. The man fell backward and became tangled in his cloak even as he struggled to right himself. Leaping back, Domi held her gun on him, instructing him not to move. The whole attack and rebuttal had taken less than four seconds.

Behind Domi, Edwards was making his way through the doorway, the black barrel of his Heckler & Koch nosing into the room before him. “Everything okay in here?” he asked.

“Just peachy,” Domi said. “Fuckwit here tried to ambush me.”

Edwards glanced at Domi’s would-be attacker sprawled on the cracked tiles. “Looks like you had it covered.”

Domi’s red eyes flicked to Edwards for an instant, and he saw that her expression was one of irritation. He ignored it, turning to assess the other people in the room.

“Now, why don’t you nice people tell us what the shit is going on here?” Edwards asked, striding toward the group huddled around the fire.

For a moment, no one answered. Edwards glared at them, his snarl visible through the transparent cup of the breath mask. Then, keeping his movements slow and smooth so that everyone could see just what he was doing, Edwards lowered the Heckler & Koch until he had it held loosely at his side. Still, he left the safety catch off so that he could fire it at a moment’s notice.

Then, her voice timid, a woman with ragged ginger hair and dirt-caked clothes spoke to Edwards, her pleading eyes wide. “Are you the new baron?”

“What?” Edwards spit. “Shit, no. The barons have all gone.”

“But how can we have a barony without a baron?” another of the ragged figures spoke up, this one a man with stubble darkening his jowls, a woollen cap pulled low over his brow.

Other members of the group muttered their assent as they cooked the vermin over their little, contained fire.

Domi backed across the room on light feet until she was standing beside Edwards, her pistol still pointed firmly at the hooded man sprawled on the floor. Wisely, the hooded man stayed where he was, his eyes locked on the silver barrel of Domi’s CombatMaster.

“These guys are looking for a baron,” Edwards explained.

“So I heard,” Domi replied, her words laced with cynicism. She glanced over her shoulder, turning her attention from the hooded man for a moment while she addressed the group. “Care to explain why your friend here attacked me?” she asked.

“He’s a Magistrate,” the ginger-haired woman who had first addressed Edwards explained. “You must have broken laws.”

Domi spoke to Edwards out of the side of her mouth, keeping her voice low. “The way he attacked me—guy was no Mag. Way too sloppy.”

Edwards addressed the ginger woman, his gaze taking in the other people in the group before him. “Has your friend here been a Mag for long?” he asked. When no one answered, Edwards turned to the hooded form lying on the floor, casually turning his gun over in his hand so that it caught the light. “Well?”

The man in the hood groaned as he spoke. “Three days,” he said. “Volunteered three days ago. Ville needs Magistrates, right? What the hell did your freak girlfriend hit me with?”

Domi reacted angrily. “What did you call me?” she asked, taking a menacing step toward the self-proclaimed Magistrate, jabbing her gun at his face.

“Mutie, right?” the hooded man asked. “Figures.”

Domi looked irritated, but Edwards told her to ignore the man’s comments.

“So,” Edwards asked, “you’re all here building a ville? That right?”

As one, the group of stragglers shook their heads. “No, sir,” said the stubbled man in the woollen cap, “we came back. This is how people should live. Within walls. Within rules. There’s a place for you here. Can’t you feel that?”

Though not a man given to introspection, Edwards was taken aback. “I think you want to be careful what you breathe in around here,” was all he could think to say. “Lot of nasty crap in the atmosphere just now. Quake churned up a lot of shit.”

The stubbled man nodded. “Thank you, sir. Won’t you stay and help us to rebuild?”

Edwards smiled and shook his head. “Not today, ace.”

As the people stood watching the strangers in their midst, grease from one of the cooking birds spit and the fire flared brighter for a second.

Wary of the locals around them, Edwards and Domi made their way slowly out of the sunken building, both of them feeling somewhat unsettled by what they had seen.

“Seven of them,” Edwards growled, “and they’re planning on rebuilding a ville. Waiting for the new baron to appear. Crazy.”

“The villes do shitty things to people,” Domi told him. “Mangle them.” She glanced back, confirming that no one was following them.

“But there’s no barons anymore,” Edwards pointed out. “They all vanished and became overlords. So what’s drawing these people back?”

Domi stopped for a moment, fixing Edwards with her demonic eyes. “Like I said, the villes mangle people. Give them tangle-brain. The Outlanders know this, and that’s why we didn’t come to the villes unless we had to.”

Edwards looked at the petite woman, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Didn’t you grow up in Cobaltville, Domi?” he asked.

“No,” Domi told him, shaking her head. “Settled there for money. Saw the way people were on the inside.”

“Hah.” Edwards laughed. “You make it sound like a prison.”

Domi said nothing. While she had recognized the differences in ville dwellers from Outlanders, she had never seen anything quite like this—people coming back, choosing to live in the ruins while they waited for the next epoch to begin. It was almost as if the villes themselves had some kind of magnetic pull over their citizens. Domi, who had spent a portion of her life as a sex slave in Cobaltville, knew little of the scientific principles of magnetism, but she understood fatal attraction all too well.

Outside of the wrecked skeleton that had once been a building, Domi and Edwards found Harrington sitting on a mound of rubble that looked out over the ruined streets. He had found three chunks of rubble and was juggling them while he waited for his partners.

“You find anything?” Harrington asked when he noticed Edwards and Domi approaching.

“What do you think you’re doing, man?” Edwards barked. “This is a danger zone—gotta keep alert.”

“I am alert,” Harrington replied petulantly. “You think I can juggle like this when I’m asleep?”

Edwards shook his head, muttering something about eccentric scientists.

“We found a wannabe Magistrate,” Domi explained, “and a group of people waiting for the next baron.”

Harrington sighed. “And so the system reboots itself,” he said. “Are we reverting back to…well, the Deathlands era? Jumped-up little barons fighting it out for their little piece of land?”

“There’s no baron,” Edwards clarified. “They just think there will be. So they’re waiting here, eating rats and setting up a hierarchy of Magistrates to keep the peace.”

Domi looked around her, taking in the ruined structures of the ville once more, seeing the mangled struts where its old Administrative Monolith had once stood noble and proud. “Somehow, the villes call to people,” she said. “Like boys in heat, hormones drawing them to the honey trap.”

Edwards shook his head. “You may be right, but it’s all way over my head.”