Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
The footsteps grew louder, clanking against the metal surface Nickel ran across. Two large poles confronted Nickel, staggering his run. He turned around, watching the two Death Riders clamber clunkily over the winding surface. Dust rose in a flickering wave over the land below and behind, where Rishi was fighting the rest of the Death Riders.
Nickel whirled around, ducking between the poles and running past their intersection. He found himself on a new platform, hurtling to a stop, nearly falling forward from his momentum but wobbling backward on his feet to steady himself. He was bordered by a crooked edge with large gaps and spaces, irregular and appearing difficult to walk on. Large, crooked, blade-like protrusions stuck out at the ends of the border, protruding outward toward the inner parts of the platform, up in the air, and at various angles between them. Nickel felt that if he moved too far, he would impale himself on any of these susurrated protrusions.
But the clambering of the Death Riders behind him, alongside their jangling armor, propelled him to act. He quickly darted a few feet to the nearest protruding edge, bringing his tied fists down to cut the ropes binding him. He sawed quickly, finding that the rope withered into many loose fibers upon contact in four strokes.
The Death Riders clambered onto the platform just as Nickel’s fists were freed. The blade-like protrusion on the roof fell apart, crashing to the ground. Nickel jerked his feet forward, finding himself facing a Death Rider on the platform, followed by another.
The spear in the Death Rider’s hand came down, but fear and Thraíha instincts took over. Nickel ducked and slid to the side, pulling down on the shaft of the spear before the Death Rider could raise it. As the second Death Rider came down with a fist to strike, Nickel grabbed at the fallen cone on the ground and swung it at his leg. The Death Rider’s knees buckled, and he screamed, reaching for his knee.
Nickel ducked again as the first Death Rider’s grip on his spear propelled downward toward him. Nickel scrambled back a few steps. As the spear came swinging again, he sidestepped, remembering his training from the Thraíha. He darted right and let the Death Rider swing down, then stepped left, grabbing the spear and thrusting the rear end toward his attacker.
The Death Rider swatted at Nickel with his arm, careening into Nickel’s cheek, but Nickel was ready, slipping under the Death Rider’s legs, the nimble movements of Thraíha hunting patterns returning to him.
He never got to use them on a hunt—not in the way the Thraíha had intended. He did get to use them in a hunt, but this time, he was the one being hunted.
Nickel used the opportunity of the Death Rider’s imbalance and vertigo to scramble forward, disappearing behind them once again. He darted off the platform, lurching to steer clear of the bordering protrusions. He ran down, his chest cramping with exertion and stress, despite the endless supply of adrenaline coursing through him like a wheezer.
Nickel dashed madly, searching for a place to hide. He had to run first—run before the Thraíha could come to his aid. Except there were no Thraíha to come to his aid.
The Death Riders’ footsteps soon crunched the ground behind him anyway. Nickel turned around to see the Death Rider he had befuddled now surging ahead, gaining ground on him. And somehow, even the Death Rider Nickel had wounded was trailing behind, limping slightly but advancing in heavy, aggressive stomps—a boar of the canyons, galloping after Nickel, practically charging like a warhorse despite his gaping injury.
Nickel gasped and turned forward again, the painful burning in his legs suddenly coming into focus as his demise became apparent.
Still, he ran, despite the growing awareness of his stitching muscles and burning body, wanting to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. He would run as far as he could, as long as he could, to slow his demise for as long as he could.
Charred walls rose around him, siphoning into a structure that caved inward, dark and grotesque. This place was nothing like the Thraíha settlement at the abandoned nuclear power plant—expansive, its skeletal features eroded by generations of care, adornment, and spiritual attention to the land.
This place, the Death Riders’ hideout, was a grotesque conflagration of metal and steel, twisted—not just as the remnant of a nuclear fallout, but stitched together into a hideous architecture, a filthy and corrosive conglomeration of scavenged metal objects, fused into a den of horrors.
As Nickel ran deeper and deeper into the concave of the walls, deeper into a corner, he felt that this place was designed to horrify him, to corrode his soul.
As he ran, he almost didn’t notice the loud barrage of dust and rock crashing against the land outside.
The alarmed cries of fallen men were a distant din, muffled and saturated into the winds whistling through the canyons of Atalanta—ever present, a fundamental feature of the world.
“We’ve got you now,” rasped the Death Rider immediately behind Nickel.
Nickel wanted to keep running, but his body collapsed against the walls, sending him down to the ground.
A loud crack erupted from far off, rumbling through the earth.
Nickel just barely saw the Death Rider behind him whirl around in surprise before Nickel collapsed inward, slumping against the corner. He felt the corroded bumps and rough surfaces of the metal scrape against his skin.
“It’s him!” hissed one of the Death Riders, nearly whispering.
Nickel couldn’t see him through his hands covering his face, through his head buried in his lap.
He curled into a ball, wrapping his arms around his legs, shivering.
He wanted to stave off the pain, brace for the blows that were sure to come, the spikes tearing into his flesh bit by bit. By curling up, he hoped they would be quick, that they would disappear, or that the exterior of his body would bear the brunt of the pain.
The blows didn’t come—at least not as quickly as Nickel had anticipated.
“No, it isn’t!” barked a Death Rider from behind.
Footsteps moved away from Nickel.
“Don’t let the boy get away!” the voice commanded after a pause, now farther from Nickel.
Nickel opened his eyes a crack, lifting his head just barely above his knees.
The howling wind grew louder, but it sounded strange—unlike the normal winds of the canyons, long and eternal across the depths.
It roared like an ocean wave, rushing down toward the recess of metal Nickel had been cornered in.
Nickel lifted his head higher.
A cloud of dust and rock surged toward him and the Death Riders, trailing through the halls of twisted metal like a phantom of the canyons. Tiny cyclones spun outward from a wave of dust and rock that rumbled behind the structure, billowing into the channels of twisted metal Nickel and his pursuers had run into.
Suddenly, the light shifted, and a gaping darkness emerged from the sky.
The sun glowed a bright white, its normal color fading, revealing the cosmos behind—just like the last time Nickel had seen Rishi channel the elements of the atmosphere before the Thraíha guardsmen.
Before the Death Riders could react, the trails of dust and rock shot out like torpedoes, wrapping around them, flinging them back through the metal channels they had come through, slamming them against the surfaces. They yelped and screamed in pain and horror before the trails funneled them out of the metal architecture entirely.
Nickel slowly stood, his wide eyes fixed on the scene before him.
He stood still at the corner where he had been curled up.
As he slowly walked forward, he saw the wave of dust and rock settling, dissipating.
And under the dimming canvas of the black sky and white sun, as the fog rose to fill the air, stood the silhouette of Rishi, slowly walking toward him, his beard and robes flowing.
G.R. Nanda 