Tyrant

Thump.

Something dropped on the bottom level of the decaying house, loud enough to shock both Cerys and Tiny out of sleep. Grey daylight streamed in through the cracked windows above the dusty bed, tunneling through the holes that slashed across the curtains. Dust floated through the air around them, swirling as Tiny wriggled out of the lingering hug Cerys had him in. But he stayed silent—an accomplishment, courtesy of his extensive training—while Cerys silenced her breathing and reached for her gun. Eyes wide and fully alert, the cold metal touched her fingertips as she listened for movement fresh out of sleep.

Nothing?

For a moment, Cerys merely stared out into the silence that fogged the hallway, stoking the dread that clawed its way up her throat. Then she inched off the bed with painstaking slowness, wincing as the old frame creaked with the movement. Touching down onto the ground, Cerys turned and gestured to Tiny to stay. Lifting the gun in front of her, she placed one foot in front of the other, stepping soundlessly out of the room and down the dusty hallway. Her own breath slipped in and out of her mouth in a fragile thread, hard and steady as Cerys took one step down the stairs, then two. Then three.

Thump. 

She froze, hearing it again—though something in her eased at the realization that it couldn’t have been a Chitauri soldier. For all that they were tall, merciless brutes, they weren’t sloppy. They knew how to hunt.

Thump thump. Crackle. 

Cerys furrowed a brow—what the hell just crackled in this house?Allowing herself a bit more room to breath, Cerys moved with ease down the rest of the stairs, relief loosening inside her as movement flicked in the corner of her vision, and both her eyes fell on a piece of fireplace plopping into the fire pit. A few more followed. 

Her shoulders sank as Cerys dropped the gun down to her side, stomach grumbling loudly in time with the relief. Christ, that had scared the hell out of her. Cerys glowered down at her abdomen—honestly, if ever she were killed on a mission, it’d be because her stomach decided to mimic a whale mating call at precisely the wrong moment. Still, she counted her blessings. Since her home was raided and destroyed, she'd been traveling from city to city, trying to escape the Tyrant’s bloodthirsty forces that hunted her. Cerys had hoped for at least a week’s worth of peace before facing off with another Chitauri battalion—or five—on her own.

A lone rebel leader was, after all, the most dangerous thing to be in today’s world.

Cocking her head back, Cerys whistled toward the stairs, hearing Tiny’s heavy footfall scratching down the wooden hallway. Seconds later, he was beside her again. Still staring up at the upstairs floor, Cerys considered going back and getting some more sleep. Unlikely, after that adrenaline rush. And anyway, it was better to get a move on.

Rule #1 of the Apocalypse: To move was to live.

Once you start running, Cerys, don’t look back, her predecessor, Marcus, said the day Cerys agreed to be his second-in-command. They’ll never stop looking for you.

Cerys never thought Marcus’s warning would materialize so soon. The Tyrant had meant to rule them, or so he said, but then the world went to hell several years into his reign. Naturally, the Avengers fell or were lost, and there was nothing left to rule. Even the last encampment Cerys traveled to was destroyed. Bodies—so many bodies everywhere. Humans weren’t living things to the Chitauri—they were just things. 

Some clouds rolled over the sky as Cerys walked out of the house, the weather blocking most of the dawn and casting the suburb in a sparsely warm light. It was much later in the day than Cerys would’ve wanted, but she forced a confident bounce into her step as sheheaded away from the house. 

It was always hard, ignoring the silence that covered the town like a physical weight. The silence of the apocalypse—no one had prepared her for that. Signs of life now peppered the street on either side of her, cars and toys and basketball hoops all worn down by the passing of time. Her breaths grew shallow as Cerys looked at each and every one of them—noting the sheer volume of people that must have lived in this town. Soon enough, another community would move in. Who knew how long they would last?

“Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be,” Cerys sang along. “if they met at midnight, in the hanging tree.” 

The song kept her going, as did Tiny—the last vestige of her sanity. Cerys followed the empty road along a sea of grass fields, hours and hours of wind blowing against her backside. She let it push her to the edges of the neighboring town, where her feet finally began to ache at the first signs of nightfall. The local university appeared in the near distance—thank goodness.

Snow-capped mountains jutted beyond the tops of the buildings, captioning the autumn season. Their peaks disappeared into the clouds, which were starting to look a bit heavy. “Rain,” Cerys murmured to no one in particular, though Tiny did perk up at the sound of her voice. 

The collection of grey buildings sat in place like haunting monuments of the past, situated far down the road from where Cerys was. Were they worth exploring?

Vending machines, she realized. There’ll be vending machines at a university.

Cerys’s stomach growled approvingly in response. The power bar this morning clearly wasn’t enough to satiate it, and finding one or two vending machines was worth the shot. When the Chitauri first invaded Earth, droves of students had fled home to their families—no one would’ve stuck around to empty the vending machines. With any luck, they’d still be there.

It took the better part of an hour to actually reach the campus, the first streaks of rain streaming down the stone buildings around her. Cerys fished out the flashlight from the junk  in her bag, but didn’t feel safe enough to turn it on just yet. Instead, she held it at the ready—no need to announce her arrival to anyone. 

The darker it grew, the more the buildings seemed to loom like menacing shadows. Papers were strewn here and there, fluttering in the wind that cooled the beads of sweat along her forehead. Cerys stopped, prompting Tiny to trot back to her from a trash can he’d chosen to explore. This place was pretty desolate—and no vending machines in sight. Even as Cerys went from building to building, the chances seemed bleak until she found what seemed to be the main one, a grand staircase leading up through multiple levels of a library. 

“Hell no,” Cerys murmured to herself. No way she was trekking up there.

Cerys shook her head as she walked by it. There was a cafe on the first level of the building that had also caught her attention, though  upon closer examination, the cracked glass and open refrigerator doors were pretty telling. Someone out here was as ‘smart’ as Cerys was, which meant that any remaining vending machines had likely been raided after all.

“Tiny,” Cerys said, calling him back from behind the counter as she plopped her bag down on a table. “There’s nothing here, kiddo.”

His happy whine was soothing as Cerys glanced around the looming shadows, halfheartedly rummaging through her bag, producing another power bar and half-drunk bottle of water. Setting the bag down on the ground, she lamented the bed that would be replaced by the cold floor tonight. In another life, Cerys might’ve sat here as an ordinary college student instead, simply having lunch before running off to her next class in the middle of the day. As much as she claimed not to believe in fate, Cerys sometimes wondered if the universe made exceptions here and there—she ended up in college anyway.

One thought led to another as Cerys drifted off into the fantasies of what could have been, until Tiny—who had settled beside her—suddenly perked up, ears high and listening. Whatever caught his attention was something that Cerys hadn’t yet perceived. She glanced down at him with a furrowed brow, then threw her gaze up to the harrowing darkness that had jolted his instincts. “What is it?” she whispered, staring hard in the same direction. 

A shadow moved across the empty space. Cerys tensed as she saw it duck behind one of the bookshelves far from where they were sitting.

Shit… 

Reaching for her satchel immediately, Cerys grabbed the gun. Making a show of swinging it through the air, she hauled the bag strap onto her shoulder, clicking her tongue quietly for Tiny to follow.

Rule #2 of the Apocalypse: Smart prey doesn’t go looking for the predator. 

Moving as quietly as they could in the opposite direction, Tiny and Cerys slipped out through a back door, down a glass hallway, and back into the brisk night. The air was getting colder, clouding like the mists of vapor she once saw pouring off a glacier. Still, Cerys breathed more easily as soon as they were back on the main road, though the feeling of being watched never left her. Muscles tense, Cerys fought the feeling of it death gripping the back of her neck, looking over her shoulder every now and again for signs of movement.

Stars glinted overhead, keeping them company as the clouds condensed and dispersed in thick rhythms, allowing moonlight to occasionally column down to the road in patches. All seemed peaceful and quiet and true to the lifeless dark of the apocalypse. 

Until the glow of the town offset the night sky. 

Cerys paused in the middle of the road, brows slowly pinching at the faint ambiance silhouetting the buildings. A dome of yellow lamplight rose with the mist in a sea of blackness, its furthest reaches barely stretching far enough to cast shadows over us. Light—someone had turned on the lights.

A pang of hope rang through her. Cerys hadn’t seen people since her camp was raided, and for a moment, she allowed herself to stand and stare—letting herself hope. Finally throwing a glance back in the direction Cerys came from, she continued onward at a faster pace, Tiny trotting quietly beside her. It took all of thirty minutes to actually reach the edge of the town, and thirty more to carefully weave through the crumbling buildings on the outskirts of it. The series of random lots covered with patches of dead grass and warehouses began to condense, growing more sophisticated as they entered a more metropolitan landscape—captioning their arrival in what looked to be a small downtown area.

Cerys stared at the nearest corner, around which light streamed onto the ground. Shadows moved back and forth along the ground in brisk movements, her heart pounding as she watched them go. 

People, or Chitauri? 

Inching over to the edge, her breath hitched in her throat the moment Cerys saw them. The moment her question was answered.Battalion upon battalion of Chitauri warriors swarmed the dusty street and buildings like insects in an open area. Some were fighting, others crying out in their disgusting language. All of them were scanning their surroundings, exchanging weapons and pointing in every direction. 

Screams broke out from sourceless shadows, shattering against the building walls. More yelps through a number of windows. Cerys’s breathing stalled, eyes flickering up to the streetlights that continued to glow. People had to have been inhabiting this town, generating this electricity for themselves. 

Mistake, she thought to herself as Cerys looked up at the street lamps. Those were a mistake. The Chitauri had no use for electricity in such areas, and…Cerys should’ve known. She should’ve known better, for her part.

“Tiny,” she hissed, inching back from the corner of the building. 

He needed no other command. Tiny moved backward with her, their footsteps barely resonating in the darkness until—

—until Tiny suddenly yelped as a net was thrown over him. Cerys snapped to him, wide and alert. Then she looked toward the tall, muscular assailant that had him in a choke hold, his muscles moving like sinewy chords beneath translucent skin. The soldier was fast as he grabbed Tiny off the ground, like he was nothing, but so was Cerys… or so she thought. She’d just swung her gun up toward the soldier when her hunger-driven exhaustion suddenly cashed in its cost, and someone else clocked her in the back of the head much faster than she was able to move.

Cerys fell to the ground, clouds of dirt kicking into her mouth. A boot clamped down on her back, shoving her firmly into the earth.“Aj kalj ieksin mar,” a voice began. “Jur laksim navre’te?”

A second voice answered in the same language, and rage cut through Cerys at the Chitauri warrior that had its clutches on Tiny’s net, muzzling him as the other held her down. The second her vision returned to normal, Cerys threw all her strength into turning over and disarming the soldier that held her down. In a serious of sharp movements, she was back on her feet—albeit a bit unsteady—and flesh thumped against armor as Cerys fought hard as hard as she could.

There was about a second’s worth of warning—a quick movement in the shadows out of the corner of her eye—before a flash of light blinded her. Cerys startled backward as a streak of electrical current shot out from the darkness, cutting through her abdomen. It sent pain through her body and forced her to her knees. Cerys was already so weak, so frail—she crumbled easily to the ground and barely managed to look up at the dark figure emerging from the shadows. 

Clad in black armor and a mask that covered his face, a figure sauntered toward her slowly, looking between Cerys, the Chitauri, and Tiny. She breathed out something unintelligible, but her body refused to move. Partly from pain but mostly from fear—fear of what Cerys realized was one of the Tyrant’s bounty hunters. Step by step, he was coming to a stop before her. He was silent for a moment, then the hunter scanned the scene. The two soldiers cowered in his presence, flinching as his cruel voice suddenly rose to speak in their language.

Cerys squirmed in place, fear bleeding into her limbs at the thought of what they were discussing. This was the moment she’d feared for so long—it was the moment she’d been afraid of when her predecessor asked her to lead their faction of the weak rebellion that had sprung up shortly after the Tyrant’s ascension. It was all pointless in the end, leaving every rebel leader scattered and fearing for their lives as they were hunted one by one. 

Adding insult to injury, those who were assigned bounty hunters were never killed on sight. Instead, they were taken away, presumably to the city where the Tyrant resided. It was the one place on Earth that was rumored to be truly alive—though details about it were sparse and unreliable. Little was known about life in Old New York, just as little was known about the Tyrant, whose gaze was rumored to be ‘death’ enough to stop your heart. 

Fuck this, Cerys protested inwardly, but moving her body was arduous. It was hard enough before—now, she was beat to hell as well. The Chitauri didn’t seem to notice her slight thrashes, as they were busy speaking to the bounty hunter as he pointed at her. Then at Tiny. Meanwhile, Cerys’s vision went in and out of focus.

No… Cerys gritted her teeth, tears filling her eyes, her limbs trembling with fear. Move, Cerys! Move!

Rule #3 of the Apocalypse: Be brave. 

Cerys moved like a weight as she dragged her arm across the ground, reaching for the gun that had slid away from her by a few feet. A boot clamped down on her wrist, forcing it into the broken cement. The pain wrenched a scream out of her throat. Yet still, Cerys bore her teeth in defiance and reached for the gun anyway.

“This one is pretty.” A low, menacing chuckle from the bounty hunter. “She will be a pleasure to break.” 

Another zap of electricity, and her vision went dark.