The Manticore Ascension: A Short Story in the Arena Mode Universe Read Online Free PDF Page A

more than explain the situation – he wanted to show me. He escorted me down a series of corridors and into a control center that was considerably more modern-looking than the rest of the castle; gleaming metal walls, a steel floor, and screens projecting from the ceiling that flickered and rotated through the dimly lit room. They displayed video feeds of both the castle interior and the snow–capped mountains that surrounded it.
    I stepped towards a screen that monitored the exterior of the castle.  The familiar vista was stunning. It was the same view I’d spent hours gazing at as a child; the peak of Hvannadalshnúku r   that I’d dreamed of climbing and exploring, and soaring overhead like a bird. I was struck with a pang of nostalgia until the camera panned to the foot of the range, revealing a much different landscape than I remembered; low–rise buildings, one piled atop another, packed into a densely populated urban sprawl. Rusted metal was buried beneath a fresh snowfall, and people milled about in thick jackets, pulling carts, tending to cattle and repairing their decrepit homes.
    “This is where we monitor the kingdom,” Dawson explained. As he spoke he reached out and pressed his fingertips into the projections, dragging and dropping various windows into different positions. “The entire island of Iceland is protected by two main safeguards: an EMP and a CDU. The electro–magnetic pulse keeps everything mechanical away – aircraft, boats, even missile strikes. Anything gets within thirty kilometers of the kingdom and it crashes into the ocean. And of course the cerebral dampening units kept the superhumans away...until now.”
    When the fiery woman appeared in the throne room it was only minutes after I’d arrived. Ten, maybe fifteen. “How did she know?” I asked, studying the screens.
    “That our shields went down?” He motioned towards a floating red power bar that was now depleted, like the interface of a video game. “They monitor everything . They knew the moment we lost our shields, and sent the fiery girl right over. I guess she’s the only one with the ability to teleport, or I’m sure there would’ve been more with her. The rest won’t be far behind if we can’t get these shields back up.”
    “How did this all start?”
    “Superhumans versus the rest of us?” Dawson gestured in the air and the room darkened completely, expanding a screen that encircled us. “It started before I was born. After Sergei Taktarov won Arena Mode he had billions of dollars at his disposal, and used it all to fuel a movement. It started as class warfare – rich against the poor. It made sense since there were so many poor people, and they already hated the upper class anyway. Russia and most of Europe fell to revolutions, and then North America followed. Before long almost every country was lawless, and without a government...well, it left a vacuum. Anarchy. Most of this happened before my brother and I were born, but as you can see, we’re still seeing the effects.”
    News footage from across the globe flashed by in a series of cascading screens. Every window told the story of a different nation, but the events taking place were eerily similar: chaos. Riots, lootings, and widespread violence overwhelming the streets. The timestamps were from 2042, just one year after Arena Mode. It was in the midst of Taktarov’s revolution.
    Then the timeline skipped forward to 2047, and the news footage was reporting a very different story. The streets, once littered with carnage, were now pristine. Shimmering new buildings dotted the skylines of each major city, and superhumans soared overhead. They weren’t protecting the populace (as I first suspected when I saw the footage) – they were patrolling. The only visible humans were working construction jobs, toiling away on roads and bridges, or erecting massive statues of their powerful new leaders. In some cities major landmarks had actually been torn down