There are things you can't ignore and move past. Forget with time. You can't fight people's battles for them, you can't always be a saving grace, but sometimes the battles are there because of you, what you did or who you are. And then, you don't fight because of your nature. Then you fight because they came after your own.
Rave's his own now, because of this if not before it, and Sophie before her. This is his fault, Hobbes knows that, accepts responsibility. He also knows he's playing into a trap.
But what else can you do? Sometimes you have to be predictable. There's just nothing else you can do.
The shuttle is a half a mile away in a clearing. He'd ridden the motorcycle until now, the machine designed to be silent, deadly. Once, he'd ridden it in Ranger raids. Now...
He killed the engine outside the oil refinery. He wasn't thinking, there was no thought. Just anger, deep, banked, but fierce. How dare he? How dare Pinocchio act as if he had any right to vengeance? After everything in the world which he had
( ... )
His touching doesn't just set off storms, it hurts. Her body hurts, her arms hurt, her mouth hurts. Hard to see, hard to think, and she cries. She hasn't cried since Medicorp. Not since she got away and the drugs wore off and the pain, the pain, the pain came in pounding surges through her brain. She learned to deal with it then, and when the neural net healed in place, she could cope
( ... )
He doesn't need to see the flash of movement or the yellow heat-glow to know that he's here. He Knows. Scents it in the air like an animal. His nostrils flare.
The little thing next to him makes a tiny, shuddering sound and for a blinding instant all he can feel is disgust. Weeks ago he was lying under the stars with Neil, and the fiction they built around themselves was something that he had actually allowed himself to believe. And it had been good. Too good.
So this is what's under the surface. Maybe it's for the best that he stops lying to himself.
His gun is pleasantly heavy in his hand. His other snakes out, close to the girl, pauses.
"Gonna take that tape off," he hisses. "When I do, you better scream. You want a chance of living through this night, you scream your fucking lungs out."
He's chosen the location carefully. No one will hear her. No one but who he wants to.
There's no plan, not since the beginning at Sophie's funeral when he'd sworn an oath to himself. Selfish, probably. Not what she'd wanted. But it was something in an empty future, and then it had been enough.
There's no plan now, but at least there's a worthy purpose. Some times you play into a trap because it's the only thing you can do. Hope that dumb luck is enough. Hope that if it isn't, then it's quick and that the girl gets away. You hope, you hope...
"Rave," he called, back still against the boiler, calling over his shoulder into the yard. His gun was drawn, cocked, ready. He took a deep breath. from what he knew from Mike's rap sheets, if the man was close enough to hear him, he'd have already seen him bleeding across the infared. Already fucked, already waist deep.
"If you can hear me, I want you to know it's okay. You're gonna be alright, Rave. It's Tom. I'm here to help you." He grinned in the darkness, unseen.
Jokes. She likes jokes. Tom knows her favorite one...he even laughs, although he doesn't get it. She'd like to laugh, but she's too preoccupied with the figure of a Naga looming over her, ready to devour her with his cold grin and glowing eyes.
He says scream, and when the tape tears away from her skin, she has no other option. Pain, pain, pain, flashes of light, stiff muscles, shaking, and screaming screaming screaming as she jerks back, banging into the wall.
She's not here. She's not this. Force overload, find control. The sound and pain and fear cascade through her brain until it's overloaded. Shut down. Reboot.
Rave takes a breath and looks at the man. Not a Naga. Just a man. She presses harder against the wall behind her, staring at him with wild eyes. Reboot. Wiped clean. Options are few.
Remember, she hears again, a fading signal dying in her cortex. Remember what? Remember pain? Remember starving? Remember the man with the gun.
Memories like that make her cry out, primal, terrified screaming until she's hoarse.
A few more seconds of that and he slams his hand over her mouth, breaking his own rule for the moment. Too much and Hobbes will be able to track them by the sound. Probably he already has a basic idea, but the echoes here are strange and the walls still ring with her screams even after he slaps the tape across her mouth again.
"Shut up," he hisses. "Shut up and don't you fucking move." He has to turn his attention away from her, and he knows that's a risk, but in the next few seconds he'll get his clear shot, if he's going to get one at all.
If he really wanted to make things easier on himself he'd kill her now. But no. No. He wants Hobbes to stay alive for a few crucial seconds after he shoots him. He wants Hobbes to see him spray his little girlfriend's scrambled brains all over the concrete.
And it goes through him, through reason, through plans, through the need for vengeance that had been better than air. It goes down to the part of his brain that had been afraid of predators, the part that said run, and the part that said fight.
Sometimes, anger is enough. More than enough. He hears the scream, feels it, and he knows her rules about touching, and he wonders if Pinocchio is so fucked up as to touch her, to do more than touch her, hold her down and -
Sometimes, you play into a trap because you just can't help it any moreHe turns from his hiding place, no though, gun raised, and charged forward, his whole body one huge, enraged scream. He charges across the open space, and throws himself violently into the next perceived space of safety. He thinks he's under them, now. The floors of the old refinery go up for stories. There's a cut bleeding over his eye, clouding his vision. He thinks he got it when he dove
( ... )
He wants her quiet, but she can't. The tape on her mouth again is bad enough, but it's the lingering sensation of his big, rough hand against her skin, the smell of sweat and gun and dirt. It slithers around just beneath her skin, it blooms in her face behind her nose. She can see the black-yellow-brown patterns the scent creates. Inside there's no smells. No touching. Nothing that makes her flesh crawl around on her skeleton. Inside she's complete. Here, she's just meat.
But he;s not looking and she's rebooting and rebooting, thoughts and feelings sparking together and burning around and through her brain.
It's dark and alarms blare. Confusion all over. Her virus, her baby, it's doing its worst. Taking down Medicorp from the inside out. She's already been wiped. She's no one. She's nowhere. Doors open, men run, guns locked and loaded. One little girl, running through dark halls out into the dark night. One little girl, running barefoot away from one death and into another. One little girl, runningRave stops whimpering. She stops
( ... )
There. There. His nerves feel like they've got voltage running through them, tingling, sparking at the ends, even in his right leg. He's alive, that fact highlighted by how close he is to making two people not alive anymore.
You feel life most intensely when you're removing it from someone else.
The world closes around him like a tunnel. He edges out from behind a beam, knowing that he's still safe, still in shadow. Hobbes isn't even close to him. But he's close enough. There's a shot there. If everything adjusts itself a tiny little bit there's a shot, low down on his spine. Take out his legs. Get him flat on his back. Make him watch the bitch die. Make him understand why it's happening. This is what happens when you fuck with strangers. They fuck you right back.
He licks his lips. He can already taste graphite. Aim. Aim. Nothing else.
Fear makes you an animal. Anger, too. But where anger makes you a predator, it makes you reckless, unpredictable. Fear is colder, more primal. Fear makes you quiet, careful. It can paralyze you. It can kill you. It can save your life, too.
Hobbes is afraid. He thinks there's a good chance he's going to die, tonight. But he knows, knows that that much will only be after every inch he can do for Rave. If he can do that much, if he can get her out, then so be it. Bring it on. He's lived too long wanting nothing but this man's penance. There are places to move on from here.
Fear is powerful, but when you move through it, beyond, it gets colder, deeper. This is what happens when the hunted has nothing else left in life to lose.
Hobbes raised his gun and squeezed of a single round, aiming blindly up through the twisting metal floors where he guessed Pinocchio might be. He's not close enough to do help nor harm, but that's not what matters. What matters is how fucking loud it is. The noise echoes for miles, ringing
( ... )
Sneak. Sneak. Little mouse sneaks around the corner, little mouse runs when the viper strikes. The ringing of the shot is more than a sound. It's everything breaking free. It's her lobes shutting off. Too much, too much, overload, fade to black. It's the viper strike, the hiss and thud, the ringing in little mouse's ears
( ... )
He should know this by now. He should fucking know this. You let one side down just for a second and they all fall. One second of weakness and the universe slaps you like the bitch you are. Three seconds after she starts to run he realizes that she's running and that's enough time for her to get well out of reach.
He should kill her now. He should take the shot on Hobbes while he has it. She was nothing, she was bait, she's not even human, and whether she dies here or gets away should be of no consequence at all to him. She's not his prey and it's stupid to make her so.
But he's angry, so incredibly fucking angry with the shot still ringing in his ears. He's planned this, planned it well, it was supposed to work for him because nothing else has in his whole fucking life, and she's ruining it and he wants to drag her back by the hair and make her do it right.Rage floods his brain. Cripples it. For an instant the red in his right eye bleeds over to his left and all he can see is a crimson sea with moving shadows of yellow,
( ... )
And it all breaks through, like a lead weight through tissue paper. You push and you push and finally you break through and you realize that every plan, every justification is gone like a flash in the pan. All you have left is instinct, all that's left is the dark behind the eyes.
Good girl he thinks gratefully, eyes closed. He hears her running, hears her hit the ground. And he knows that Pinocchio is following because, well. Sometimes you can count on someone to play into a trap.
He stands and sees the world go by frame by frame. He feels like he's moving very slow. There's a terrified streak of limbs that crosses the open lot, Rave. Running for her life. And then he lifted his gun just as Pinocchio burst into view, going after her, too fast. She'd never get away...
"Pinocchio." Gun raised, eyes wide open. The names comes out of him like a scream. He squeezes off a round placidly, aiming for his chest.
Viper bite and her arm is hot. Too bad she's racing the wind and its fangs don't stick. Racing the wind, sands shifting over sands, dark sky, pounding feet
( ... )
He hears his name. He hears the bitch's screaming. He doesn't hear the shot. His legs are carrying him forward with the heedlessness that comes when the higher brain shuts down and all that's left is the reptile mind, the part that wants to kill and eat and fuck. She's in the open. The both are. Can pick them both off, just like he wanted to; they're barely even moving
( ... )
Down but not dead, dammit, the shot went wide. Somewhere, he can hear Rave's muffled screaming, and a part of him is worried, scrambling fear and regret not unlike the kind that had dogged him on the long journey here, from that letter. She's an innocent in all this. She shouldn't be here, not after everything else she's been through
( ... )
Rave's his own now, because of this if not before it, and Sophie before her. This is his fault, Hobbes knows that, accepts responsibility. He also knows he's playing into a trap.
But what else can you do? Sometimes you have to be predictable. There's just nothing else you can do.
The shuttle is a half a mile away in a clearing. He'd ridden the motorcycle until now, the machine designed to be silent, deadly. Once, he'd ridden it in Ranger raids. Now...
He killed the engine outside the oil refinery. He wasn't thinking, there was no thought. Just anger, deep, banked, but fierce. How dare he? How dare Pinocchio act as if he had any right to vengeance? After everything in the world which he had ( ... )
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The little thing next to him makes a tiny, shuddering sound and for a blinding instant all he can feel is disgust. Weeks ago he was lying under the stars with Neil, and the fiction they built around themselves was something that he had actually allowed himself to believe. And it had been good. Too good.
So this is what's under the surface. Maybe it's for the best that he stops lying to himself.
His gun is pleasantly heavy in his hand. His other snakes out, close to the girl, pauses.
"Gonna take that tape off," he hisses. "When I do, you better scream. You want a chance of living through this night, you scream your fucking lungs out."
He's chosen the location carefully. No one will hear her. No one but who he wants to.
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There's no plan now, but at least there's a worthy purpose. Some times you play into a trap because it's the only thing you can do. Hope that dumb luck is enough. Hope that if it isn't, then it's quick and that the girl gets away. You hope, you hope...
"Rave," he called, back still against the boiler, calling over his shoulder into the yard. His gun was drawn, cocked, ready. He took a deep breath. from what he knew from Mike's rap sheets, if the man was close enough to hear him, he'd have already seen him bleeding across the infared. Already fucked, already waist deep.
"If you can hear me, I want you to know it's okay. You're gonna be alright, Rave. It's Tom. I'm here to help you." He grinned in the darkness, unseen.
"Remember what the node said to the construct?"
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He says scream, and when the tape tears away from her skin, she has no other option. Pain, pain, pain, flashes of light, stiff muscles, shaking, and screaming screaming screaming as she jerks back, banging into the wall.
She's not here. She's not this. Force overload, find control. The sound and pain and fear cascade through her brain until it's overloaded. Shut down. Reboot.
Rave takes a breath and looks at the man. Not a Naga. Just a man. She presses harder against the wall behind her, staring at him with wild eyes. Reboot. Wiped clean. Options are few.
Remember, she hears again, a fading signal dying in her cortex. Remember what? Remember pain? Remember starving? Remember the man with the gun.
Memories like that make her cry out, primal, terrified screaming until she's hoarse.
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"Shut up," he hisses. "Shut up and don't you fucking move." He has to turn his attention away from her, and he knows that's a risk, but in the next few seconds he'll get his clear shot, if he's going to get one at all.
If he really wanted to make things easier on himself he'd kill her now. But no. No. He wants Hobbes to stay alive for a few crucial seconds after he shoots him. He wants Hobbes to see him spray his little girlfriend's scrambled brains all over the concrete.
He's past wanting to kill. He wants to hurt.
And he isn't even sure why.
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Sometimes, anger is enough. More than enough. He hears the scream, feels it, and he knows her rules about touching, and he wonders if Pinocchio is so fucked up as to touch her, to do more than touch her, hold her down and -
Sometimes, you play into a trap because you just can't help it any moreHe turns from his hiding place, no though, gun raised, and charged forward, his whole body one huge, enraged scream. He charges across the open space, and throws himself violently into the next perceived space of safety. He thinks he's under them, now. The floors of the old refinery go up for stories. There's a cut bleeding over his eye, clouding his vision. He thinks he got it when he dove ( ... )
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But he;s not looking and she's rebooting and rebooting, thoughts and feelings sparking together and burning around and through her brain.
It's dark and alarms blare. Confusion all over. Her virus, her baby, it's doing its worst. Taking down Medicorp from the inside out. She's already been wiped. She's no one. She's nowhere. Doors open, men run, guns locked and loaded. One little girl, running through dark halls out into the dark night. One little girl, running barefoot away from one death and into another. One little girl, runningRave stops whimpering. She stops ( ... )
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You feel life most intensely when you're removing it from someone else.
The world closes around him like a tunnel. He edges out from behind a beam, knowing that he's still safe, still in shadow. Hobbes isn't even close to him. But he's close enough. There's a shot there. If everything adjusts itself a tiny little bit there's a shot, low down on his spine. Take out his legs. Get him flat on his back. Make him watch the bitch die. Make him understand why it's happening. This is what happens when you fuck with strangers. They fuck you right back.
He licks his lips. He can already taste graphite. Aim. Aim. Nothing else.
Nothing.
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Hobbes is afraid. He thinks there's a good chance he's going to die, tonight. But he knows, knows that that much will only be after every inch he can do for Rave. If he can do that much, if he can get her out, then so be it. Bring it on. He's lived too long wanting nothing but this man's penance. There are places to move on from here.
Fear is powerful, but when you move through it, beyond, it gets colder, deeper. This is what happens when the hunted has nothing else left in life to lose.
Hobbes raised his gun and squeezed of a single round, aiming blindly up through the twisting metal floors where he guessed Pinocchio might be. He's not close enough to do help nor harm, but that's not what matters. What matters is how fucking loud it is. The noise echoes for miles, ringing ( ... )
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He should know this by now. He should fucking know this. You let one side down just for a second and they all fall. One second of weakness and the universe slaps you like the bitch you are. Three seconds after she starts to run he realizes that she's running and that's enough time for her to get well out of reach.
He should kill her now. He should take the shot on Hobbes while he has it. She was nothing, she was bait, she's not even human, and whether she dies here or gets away should be of no consequence at all to him. She's not his prey and it's stupid to make her so.
But he's angry, so incredibly fucking angry with the shot still ringing in his ears. He's planned this, planned it well, it was supposed to work for him because nothing else has in his whole fucking life, and she's ruining it and he wants to drag her back by the hair and make her do it right.Rage floods his brain. Cripples it. For an instant the red in his right eye bleeds over to his left and all he can see is a crimson sea with moving shadows of yellow, ( ... )
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Good girl he thinks gratefully, eyes closed. He hears her running, hears her hit the ground. And he knows that Pinocchio is following because, well. Sometimes you can count on someone to play into a trap.
He stands and sees the world go by frame by frame. He feels like he's moving very slow. There's a terrified streak of limbs that crosses the open lot, Rave. Running for her life. And then he lifted his gun just as Pinocchio burst into view, going after her, too fast. She'd never get away...
"Pinocchio." Gun raised, eyes wide open. The names comes out of him like a scream. He squeezes off a round placidly, aiming for his chest.
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