Free Web NovelChapter 23: The Sound of Silence.
『"Hello Darkness, my old friend..."』
Hiro nearly fell off his chair, catching himself on the armrest at the last second. "Oh shit! It can talk?" He adjusted himself. "No one told me the nightmare creature was capable of speech! That’s just—that’s just perfect."
Then the Malice moved.
It struck first, four bladed limbs cleaving through the air with speed that left afterimages on the high-definition screens. Each arm ended in what looked like scythe-blades made of concentrated shadow.
Dante slid low under its strike, his hand hitting the ground to propel himself upward in a spinning kick that caught the malice square in what passed for its knee.
It staggered—the first sign of actual vulnerability Amara had seen—and Dante rose with the momentum, slamming his guitar against its jaw in a savage upswing.
The impact itself played a chord, simultaneously unleashing a burst of raw sound against its face like shrapnel.
The Malice retaliated immediately, sweeping all four arms in a brutal cross-cut that could’ve sliced clean through steel.
Maya swung her lantern forward, its glow flaring into a shield of solid light that held against the assault.
"Good looking out, Maya," Dante said, rolling out of harms way.
Maya gave him a strained smile as her boots skidded backward across broken concrete from the force of the cross-cut, leaving grooves in the rubble.
Enraged by Maya’s interference, the Malice leaped upward with impossible height and brought both upper arms down together in a devastating overhead strike.
BOOM!
Maya’s light shield held. Barely.
Then it struck again. And again.
BOOM! BOOM!
Three strikes deflected, but each impact rang out like thunder. Maya was forced to her knees as cracks spider-webbed across her light shield like breaking ice.
Dante and Yelena overestimated Maya’s defense and underestimated the Malice’s physical attack.
By the time they finally made a run for Maya, it was too late.
The fourth strike broke through entirely, catching her full in the chest and launching her across the street like a ragdoll thrown by an angry child.
She rolled, coughing blood that splattered against the rubble. However, the lantern still glowed in her grip, but it was weaker and dimmer.
"No," Amara whispered, forcing herself to breathe as her fingers dug into the armrests.
The Malice turned toward Maya, recognizing weakness. She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. The lantern flickering in her grip.
Through the comm, her breath came in short, panicked gasps as It loomed over her like a predator over wounded prey.
Before it could deliver the killing blow, Yelena jumped onto Dante’s guitar, using the instrument itself as a platform.
He understood immediately, instinct born from years of coordinated battles together, and swung with his full strength towards the creature.
She launched from the guitar like a missile, twisting midair with both blades extended. Then raked them down the Malice’s spine in a precise X-cut that carved through its shadow-flesh.
Black ichor hissed where the blades landed and the malice shrieked in pain, body unravelling only to reknit in an instant.
"It regenerates too fast," Ethan said quietly from behind Amara.
The Malice, enraged beyond reason now, slammed both fists into the ground, sending out a shockwave so strong, it flattened anything present and tossed the fighters aside.
Only Dante remained standing, somehow keeping his footing through sheer stubbornness or luck or both.
He spat blood, reset his stance. "That all you got?" A pick materialized in his grip and he dragged it across the strings, building sound that rolled through the streets.
The Malice lunged at him directly, recognizing him as the last standing threat.
Dante didn’t retreat. Instead, he rode the soundwaves he’d created, using them to accelerate himself forward into the charge.
Then he swung his guitar one-handed like a warhammer, meeting the creature’s claw mid-attack.
CLANG!
The impact cracked the ground under his boots. The chord he struck simultaneously detonated, blasting outward in a wall of compressed sound that was visible as rippling distortions in the air.
BOOM!
The creature skidded backward, chunks of its form breaking apart but still somehow holding shape and regenerating.
"I do not get paid enough for this." Yelena’s voice came through, and she was already moving before the creature could turn to face her.
Her body became a blur as she zoomed past Dante and delivered a side kick that sent the Malice skidding back twenty feet.
Then with a swing from tempester, she sliced through the air, and the wind responded.
A tempest roared to life around it, trapping the creature in a spiraling cyclone that picked up debris and turned it into additional weapons.
The Malice thrashed and shrieked as the winds tore at its form, each movement carving away more of its substance. But even as pieces were torn off, more darkness flowed back together, regenerating with maddening persistence.
The cyclone, however, was doing what it was meant to do. Buy Maya time.
Maya staggered to her feet, blood running down her chin in a dark stream. Her vision swam...
Amara could see it in the way she wavered...
But she tightened her grip on her lantern and raised it high with trembling arms.
Golden light erupted from the weapon in a pillar that pierced the night sky, visible for miles. The glow hardened, condensed, and transformed into multiple golden chains that lashed across the street with the sound of ringing bells.
They wrapped around the monster’s limbs with binding force even as the creature staggered, rearing back with another shriek that shattered what few windows remained intact.
"Hold it steady!" Yelena barked, both of them working to contain it as she maintained the cyclone.
The chains strained as cracks spread through the luminous links. "I don’t think I can keep this up much longer!"
The darkness malice screamed to get free, a sound so primal and terrible, it made glass cry and sent rats fleeing from sewers three hundred miles away.
But Maya planted her feet with grim determination, swinging her weapon wide as light poured outward in torrents.
Not chains this time, but something far more ambitious. The light solidified into a massive megaphone of pure gold with a glowing rim that towered over her small form.
"Dante!" she shouted, her voice barely audible over the creature’s rage and the howling winds.
Dante understood immediately. He slung his axe forward, planting his pick against the strings. But he didn’t strum. Instead, he closed his eyes, and his expression went distant, focused on something beyond sight.
The wail of sirens? Snuffed. The thunder above? Muffled. Even the howling of the malice was cut short, jaws snapping open in silence.
In the space of a heartbeat, the entire city was strangled quiet, as though someone had pressed mute on Tokyo.
From the watch room, Hiro muttered in awe: "What the hell is he doing?"
"He’s gathering it," Amara whispered, understanding clicking into place with clarity.
Dante’s fingers clenched as every vibration, every whisper of sound, every shred of noise was absorbed into his strings.
His guitar trembled under the stored violence of a thousand conversations, car engines, footsteps, and heartbeats across Tokyo, all compressed into potential energy that made the air around him crackle.
Exhaling slowly, he whispered, "Two thousand decibels."
He struck, with sparks flying from the strings and three bars on his neck glowing bright orange.
The sound that was unleashed wasn’t heard so much as felt. A force that nearly tore reality open in a flood of compressed sonic energy.
But instead of scattering wildly in all directions, Maya’s megaphone construct flared brilliantly, channeling the blast into one focused, blinding stream of pure destructive force.
The beam roared forward as a spear of vibrating light and thunder that slammed directly into the malice, creating an explosion that lit up Tokyo like a second sun had been born inside the crater.
The shockwave rippled outward, and even through the screens, Amara felt the visceral impact of what she was witnessing.
KABOOOM—!!
The creature was picked up off the ground and driven back through the street, fracturing concrete across the ground.
Its body writhed in silence even as it disintegrated, torn apart molecule by molecule and thought by thought under the assault.
The Malice’s scream cut off mid-note, replaced by eerie silence, and by the time the blast fizzled out, nothing remained but a smoking trench and dust where the monster had been.
Then, finally, nothing. Just rubble, destruction, and three Awakeners standing in a crater that glowed with residual light.
Maya lowered her almost destroyed construct that was barely able to amplify and channel that level of energy, her chest heaving.
Dante spun his pick once around his fingers with casual flair before tucking it away as a satisfied grin spread across his face. "Guess we’ll call that one Spotlight Solo, get it?"
She shot him a look, half exhausted, half annoyed. "You’re impossible."
"Threat neutralized," Maya said into her comm, breathing harder than when they’d started but otherwise showing remarkable composure for someonewho just went through what Amara observed on screen.
"Malice destroyed. Beginning cleanup," Yelena added.
"Confirmed," came the Director’s voice through their earpieces. "Well done, Unit 11-B. Extraction in ten minutes. Secure the area."
Dante slumped slightly, his guitar still humming with residual energy. "That was a workout. Anyone else feeling like a drink?"
"We’re on duty," Yelena said, but there was no reprimand in her tone.
"Exactly. Duty is thirsty work." He grinned, already surveying the destruction for secondary threats.
Maya raised her lantern one final time, and the light constructs shifted to something gentler.
Golden illumination spread across the crater, repairing and knitting broken stone back together, stabilizing damaged structures, and creating safe paths for emergency responders to enter.
"That’s new," Dante observed, watching the reconstruction with interest. "When’d you learn that trick?"
"Last week. Figured if I’m going to break things, I should probably learn to fix them too." Maya smiled, but there was exhaustion in her eyes that the others could see. "Besides, Tokyo’s been through enough. Least we can do is leave it better than we found it."
The extraction aircraft descended into the crater, its lights adding to the illumination Maya had created. The side door opened, and a medical team disembarked to check them for injuries.
"Clean operation," one of the medics said, scanning Yelena with instruments that beeped approvingly. "No corruption, no shadow infection, all vitals normal. You three truly make it look easy."
"It wasn’t," Yelena said flatly, brandishing her blades before they dematerialized in twin flashes of light.
***
[Watch Room - Institute Level 7]
Amara sat frozen in her seat, hands still gripping the armrests hard. She’d watched the entire operation from beginning to end.
It was twenty-three minutes of combat that had felt like hours, every second packed with enough violence and skill and raw power to make her previous understanding of "Awakener combat" seem laughably inadequate.
"Wow," Sophia said quietly, her usual sarcasm completely absent.
She passed her half-full popcorn bucket to Raj, who took it without looking away from the screens where Unit 11-B was boarding the extraction craft.
His eyes were still fixed on the feed as he started eating mechanically, not even tasting it.
"How can you guys eat right now?" Hiro asked, his voice going higher than normal.
"How can you not?" Sophia countered, grabbing another handful and chalking it into her mouth.
Amara finally released the armrests, flexing her fingers to restore circulation. "That was..."
"Something," Ethan finished.
Raj reached into the bucket and realized it was empty. Then he asked, "you think we can handle something like that right now?"
"Don’t make me laugh," Ethan responded.
The screens went dark, leaving them sitting in a dark room that felt different now.
"Get some rest," the Director said, already heading toward the exit. "You’re going to need it."
They sat there in silence for a moment before Hiro finally stood up. "Anyone wanna go somewhere less dark?"
"Agreed!" The rest all said in unison as they stood up and left the watch room.
