Rain. It always fucking rains when someone's about to die. Not the clean kind, either. This is that gray, oily sludge that smells like burnt hair and ozone—the afterbirth of a Stormbeast rift. It's sticking to my hair, stinging the half-healed gash on my cheek, dripping down into my collar.
Why me? That's the loop. That's the record skipping in my head while I stare at the muddy boots of the Royal Guard standing over me.
Ten years. Three thousand four hundred and sixty-two confirmed kills. Six cracked ribs. A lung that whistles every time the wind picks up. For what?
"James of the Third Vanguard," a voice drones.
It's High Priest Malakor. The prick is wearing gold-threaded robes that cost more than a year's worth of ammo for a Ranker squad. He's holding a scroll, looking at me like I'm a piece of dog shit he found on his porch.
"For the crime of Stagnation," he says. "For the refusal to synchronize with the Ninth Generation Gear. For the subversion of the Crown's military evolution."
"Refusal?" I cough, and it tastes like copper. I spit a thick, red glob onto his pristine white hem. "You delusional fuck. I tried. I plugged that Gear Nine prototype into my neural port and it nearly fried my brain stem. It's not a weapon, it's a goddamn parasite."
"Silence!"
A guard kicks me in the kidneys. I collapse into the muck, gasping. The crowd—the beautiful, grateful people of Solas—cheers.
"Kill the relic!" someone screams. I recognize that voice. Old Man Miller. I pulled his granddaughter out of a Level 4 Storm-Crawl six months ago. Now he's red-faced, screaming for my head because the King told him I'm 'obsolete.'
Why me? I was the one who stood in the breach. When the Gears jammed and the beasts were screaming at the walls, I was the one with the knife. I was the one who didn't run.
"James," Malakor sneers, leaning down so only I can hear his pathetic, thin voice. "The King needs a scapegoat. The people are scared because the rifts are widening. They need to see that we're purging the 'weakness' from our ranks. You're just… out of style."
"Out of style," I wheeze, pushing myself up on trembling palms. "I'm the reason you have a throne to sit on, you spineless maggot."
"The sentence is death," Malakor announces to the square. "By the very steel he failed to master."
The executioner steps up. He's carrying a Gear Nine blade. It's beautiful—too beautiful. It glows with a sick, pulsing violet light that makes my teeth ache. It's sleek, humming with an artificial soul that demands more than a man can give.
Is this the payoff? Is this the 'thank you' for a decade of living in the dirt?
"Do it," I growl, looking up at the Royal Balcony. The King is there, swirling a glass of wine, looking at his fingernails. He won't even look me in the eye. "Do it, you coward! Kill the man who saved you! See if your new toys can stop the next Storm without me!"
The executioner hesitates. His hands are shaking. He knows. He's a Ranker too, a kid, maybe twenty. He's seen my logs. He's studied my combat footage.
"I said... move, boy," I snarl at him. "Or are you as useless as the Gear you're holding?"
"I'm sorry, Captain," he whispers.
"Don't call me that. Just swing the fucking thing."
I close my eyes. The stream of consciousness starts to blur into a single, white-hot point of hate. They want a genesis? They want a new world without the 'old' James? Fine. Let's see what happens when the leash finally snaps.
The air hums. The violet glow intensifies until I can see it through my eyelids.
Fuck the Crown. Fuck the Gears. And fuck every single one of you watching.
The blade whistles through the air.
The blade was an inch from my throat when the sky fucking split.
A roar louder than any Gear Nine hum ripped through the square, and then the screaming started. A Shadow-Stalker, ten feet of jagged bone and black bile, slammed onto the executioner's platform.
The kid—the "new blood" holding the fancy sword—didn't even have time to piss himself. The beast's claws hooked into his shoulders and just… pulled. His arms came off like wings on a fly. Blood sprayed across my face, hot and thick, stinging my eyes. The kid was still trying to scream, but the beast shoved its snout into his chest and tore his ribs out of his back.
"Help!" the High Priest shrieked, tripping over his golden skirts.
I wiped the red mess from my eyes and watched. The beast wasn't done. It lunged at the kid's twitching torso, snapping its jaws until his skull popped like a dry piece of wood. Brains and hair smeared across the royal seal on the floor.
The "grateful" crowd was a fucking mess. People were trampling each other, falling over the barricades while more beasts dropped from the clouds. A woman got her legs snapped back by a Crawler. A man was begging for mercy until a Stalker bit his jaw off and left him gurgling in the dirt.
"Where are your Gears now, you cowards?" I barked, struggling to my feet. My hands were still tied, but the executioner's severed hand was still clutching that Gear Nine blade a few feet away.
The King was gone, scurrying back into his hole like the rat he is. The guards were getting slaughtered. Their fancy new weapons were jamming, the "synchronization" failing the second real terror hit them. They weren't soldiers. They were pampered pricks with glowing toys.
I kicked the kid's severed arm toward me, dragging the blade closer with my boot. The violet light was flickering, dying along with the brat who owned it.
"My crime was being human?" I looked at a guard getting disemboweled ten feet away, his intestines trailing out behind him as he crawled. "Look at you now. You're nothing but a buffet."
A beast turned its head toward me, its eyes glowing with a hungry, mindless rot. It lunged.
I didn't have a weapon. I didn't have a Gear. I just had ten years of killing and a heart full of pure, unfiltered hate.
"Come on then, you ugly cunt," I snarled. "Let's see who's obsolete."
I slammed my shoulder into the dirt, rolling hard until my tied hands caught the hilt of the kid's severed blade. The thing felt slick with his grease. I gripped the handle and shoved the glowing edge against my rope. The heat hissed, singing my wrists, and the cord snapped.
I stood up just as a Stalker lunged. The bastard was a mess of wet muscle and teeth. I stepped inside its reach and buried the blade into its throat.
The beast choked on its own black fluid. I twisted the sword, tearing through the windpipe until the head hung by a single strip of skin. I kicked the carcass off the platform and looked at the crowd.
Total fucking chaos.
A guard ran past me, his face half-gone, crying for his mother. A beast caught him by the waist and snapped him in two. His top half kept crawling, dragging a trail of red across the stone before his eyes rolled back.
"James!" Malakor was huddled under a stone bench, his gold robes covered in someone's liver. "Save me! Use the Gear! That's an order!"
I walked over to him, the blade dripping a steady rhythm of filth onto the floor. I looked at the High Priest, then at the beast tearing a woman apart ten feet away.
"Eat shit, Malakor," I said.
I swung the sword and took the Priest's hand off at the wrist. He stared at the stump for a heartbeat before he started wailing like a stuck pig.
"You're a Ranker!" he shrieked, clutching the bloody mess. "You have to protect us!"
"I'm a criminal, remember?" I spat.
I turned my back on him. Another beast, a smaller, spindly one, jumped onto the stage. I used the weight of the steel. I smashed the hilt into its snout, feeling the bone cave in, then shoved the blade through its eye socket. The thing thrashed, spraying me with more rot, and I held it down until it stopped moving.
The square was a graveyard. The King's "new blood" were all dead or screaming, their expensive Gear Nine toys lying in the mud.
I looked up at the palace. The doors were bolted.
"My turn," I muttered.
I started walking toward the gates, stepping over the piles of limbs and the people begging for help. Every step felt heavy, my lungs burning, my skin covered in a layer of death that wouldn't wash off.
I'm coming for that throne. And I don't need a fuckin' sync rate to do it.