Dragon Horse

Nikolaos washes his hands over the sink, but he stops mid-scrub when a blazing light flashes past the window. It disappears into the distance, somewhere behind the mountains around the glacial fields in the outskirts of the city.

0600. MONO-27, TRIAKOSIA. ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS IN NORTHWEST SECTOR. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY EVACUATION ORDER FROM THE ARCTOLEAN ALLIANCE. INSTRUCTIONS WILL FOLLOW–

Then static swamps the headlines scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

The house rolls up and down, down and up, up and down. Right and left, left and right, right and left. Nikolaos drops to the floor and covers his head. Baba and Ammi crawl out of their room, cradling him to their chests. Nikolaos’ hearing aid screeches with feedback, drilling into the side of his head. Shrapnel rains down on him, slashing at his gloves and the back of his coat.

“O Ouranós Férei Mártyres,” Ammi mutters under her breath. “O Ouranós Férei Mártyres.” Nikolaos squeezes his eyes shut, mouthing the phrase with her, then, mercifully, the house falls still.

“Artillery fire,” Baba murmurs. “It’s Fornax.” His knees wobble when he tries to get up onto his feet, then he gives up, curling up on the floor with his wife and son.

“Cetus will invade the city next,” Ammi croaks. “Then Mensa will raid our supplies.”

“That doesn’t make sense, they’re giving us too much time to escape. Why would they aim for the glaciers?”

“Underground. They’re targeting the outer water pipes of our irrigation system, causing a chain reaction, and flooding the city from the inside.”

The Sub-Equatets aren’t aiming for the Alliance. They’re aiming for the civilians. They’ll kill most of them and leave some of them alive to remember how they destroyed their home. First Helike. Maybe Cepheus and Triangulum next. They have one minute at most to get as many supplies as they can and get out.

Nikolaos grabs his batteries for his hearing aid and his notepad. He gives his backpack to Ammi, who shoves all their rations inside. Baba carries all the clothes he can in a pre-packed suitcase.

A freezing sensation seeps into Nikolaos’ socks. Water leaks in between the floorboards. The lights flicker, then the house plunges into pitch black. An electromagnetic pulse. The shadow sweeps through the sector, consuming every building in its path, the maw of a serpent.

Nikolaos places his hands on the wall and trudges towards the front door. His parents hold onto his furred hood.

In seconds, the water slithers and snakes over his knees, his ribs, and his chest. He strains to hold his head above the surface as it claws at his chin.

Nikolaos’ soaked, numbed fingers barely brush the doorknob. With the last of his strength, he grasps it, wrenches it, and slams into the wood with his shoulder. He spills out onto the street.

His house collapses with him. The bitter, acrid taste of smoke from the cracked chimney tinges his throat. His eyes sting from the torrents of snow and slush.

The rain slices down from the sky, every drop an icy bullet that becomes blood as it soaks through Nikolaos’ coat. The same scarlet spreads from the sirens around him and stains the melted snow that splatters the streets. Foam sprays out from the broken pipes under the cracked concrete, knocking him off his feet. Saltwater crawls over his numbed feet, through the legs of his pants, and stabs into his shivering knees. Static swamps the headlines scrolling along the inside of his skull.

0600. MONO-27, TRIAKOSIA. ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS IN NORTHWEST SECTOR. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY EVACUATION ORDER FROM THE ARCTOLEAN ALLIANCE. INSTRUCTIONS WILL FOLLOW–

Then a name cuts through the cold.

“Nikos!”

Not only a name, but the first voice he ever heard.

“Nikos!” Cadmus calls, his cry fading as the flood carries it further away and towards the silhouette of their half-sunken home.

Nikolaos sprints between the sinking buildings. Froth slithers over the sidewalk behind him, snapping at his heels. He slams his searing shoulder into the door until the hinges snap off and he collapses inside, saline droplets stinging his lips, swimming through the submerged living room.

“Nikos.”

He throws himself into Cadmus’ dilapidated door. His brother’s breath filters out in frosty clouds, the salt tearing and peeling at his jaw until the skin flakes away. He seizes Nikolaos’ wrist with blackened fingers.

“Run, I’m dead either way.”

Nikolaos doesn’t listen. When the saltwater seeps into his collar, he kicks out harder, but he doesn’t know how to swim, so the tide sweeps over his chest, and then his mouth. But if his brother is dead either way, he will drown with him.

He slips beneath the surface. Cadmus’s frosted fingers fracture off his wrist, then the sea pulls him down, and Nikolaos can only watch the bubbling scapulars pouring out from between his kid brother’s teeth as he screams silently, his small skeleton becoming one with the shadowed waters.

A hand hooks onto his furred hood, dragging him out of his sub-zero, subconscious vortex and over to a stretcher as he hacks up liquid from his lungs.

"Ammi,” he mouths. “Baba…”

A figure wearing a crested horsehair helmet looks down on him.

A soldier?

He presses his gloved fingers under Nikolaos’ jaw to check for a pulse. His prosthetic leg shines in the illumination of the flares flying over him.

The god of war.

General Chiyou takes out a radio. The words from the books Nikolaos read about the Kheima stab into his marrow. For a moment, Cadmus’s warm breath billows on the side of his neck as he reads over his shoulder.

Life on earth ended the way it began. With water.

The soccer ball.

He’s forgotten his brother’s soccer ball.

Then his vision, and his home, drowns in the darkness.