"I want to see some realistic reactions from characters having synthesis forced on them, to having Reapers and Husks being domesticated and having to see the monstrous things daily. I don't want the brainwashed characters we see in the epilogue, I want to see the reactions of the people who have stood with our Shepards for the last five years, I want to see theiir horror at finding out their bodies have been violated without their consent, and then I want to see how they take having to live every day along side the enemy that slaughtered many of their loved ones.
I want to see someone who became a husk facing the reality of living in that body, knowing (and possibly remembering) they killed innocent people, that they can never return to who they once were.
Most of all I want to see the reaction of Shepard's love interest, who is horrified to find out Shepard thought it was worth sacrificing his/her own life to do something so monstrous to everyone. "
With Eyes Wide Closed [1/9]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 01:55:45 UTC
Part I: Zekiel
“-can hear me. Team five is down, I repeat, team five is down. The payload is intact.”
There’s something in front of his eyes; yes, a tenuous, evanescent thing, and he tries to brush it away. But his arm feels too heavy.
“-command. I repeat, team five is down. No other survivors confirmed. I repeat-“
There’s definitely something there, just out of focus. His eyelids are heavy, too. And when he manages to crank them open, there’s nothing to greet him but the view of cracked lattiplex and a grey, tumultuous sky.
“Belay that. I have a signal. One survivor confirmed. I repeat-“
It looks like it’s about to rain. Spirits, he’s thirsty.
“-respond. If anyone can hear me, please respond. Command?”
He’s supposed to answer, but he can’t get his mouth to work just yet. Nor the rest of his body, come to think of it.
He waits for the next burst of static, drawing shallow, rasping breaths. It doesn’t come. How did all this dust get inside his helmet? Must be a busted filter. Dust everywhere. All over his tongue, inside his nostrils, inside his throat. Inside his damn brain, too. He blinks rapidly, trying to clean his eyeballs.
An orange screen pops up, entirely too close for comfort. Right. Accelerometers.
“Vent,” he croaks. “Three cycles.”
A flurry of neon-red warnings fills the screen. His corpse is fucking fried.
There’s the voice again. “Operative, you alive?”
“Yes.” For some definition of alive.
“Can you move?”
“Head.”
There’s a lull in the static. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Thirty.
And then: “Try moving your right hand. I’ve got visual.”
He clenches his teeth, preparing for the pain. It comes as the deep, resounding kind, marching through his marrow with the unforgiving pulse of war drums. Wrist to elbow to shoulder to neck, every step smashing into his nerve cords with a steel boot.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Now breathe. In, out. Easy. Dammit, his weave must be burned into his plates for it to hurt that much.
“Your right’s fine. Try moving your left.”
They repeat the process with both feet. Then knees, elbows, shoulders. Somewhere in the middle, his suit gives him a shot of medigel. He can’t feel the needles, but the effect is immediate. He manages to raise his hand to his face. It’s a mess of shattered ceramic between bits of half-melted weave.
“How’re you holding?” he whispers, in between dry coughs.
“I’m fine. Was just out for a bit.” Pause. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Neither did I.”
“Desperate times.”
He imagines a friendly, gentle smile. “The mission…”
“We’re in too deep.”
“How deep?”
“At least two kilometres in. Can’t evac.”
He gropes around with his other hand, finding a slab of concrete right next to his head. Missed it by three fingers when he fell. It works as a makeshift pillow. “Command?”
“I don’t know.” A sigh. “Gone, probably. Guess they couldn’t stop it.”
He shudders at the memory. Blunt tentacles pounding concrete into dust. Ignoring them, ignoring the insignificant-
“Can you stand?”
“Need time.”
A throaty noise of assent. “I think we can make it. How long do you need?”
I never want to get up again. “Few minutes.”
“Take your time. That was quite a blast there.”
Breathing’s a bit better, but there’s the dust, clouding, clogging his thoughts. “What blast?”
With Eyes Wide Closed [2/9]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:06:40 UTC
Silence ensues. The suit gives him a second shot, but he’s running on diminishing returns. After a few attempts, he manages to prop himself up on his good elbow.
The wasteland is still the same. The broken horizon, skyscrapers rising like jagged teeth, the endless wash of grey, grey everywhere, dotted with the harsh orange of ravenous flames. Ashes and embers falling from the sky. The Reapers are tall and obscenely smooth silhouettes, perfectly still. No, that one’s lifting off. He almost smiles. Then remembers the state of the fleets.
Corvus must be behind him, but he can’t turn around like this. He can’t turn from the bodies, either. Eta’s distinctive black-and-violet armour. And another body, too tall to be anyone but the taciturn private whose name he never learned.
“So far.” So far to go, so far to have come.
“Eight kilometres. The target hasn’t moved.”
“Too f-“
“Get down!”
He sees it too. A red dot on his scanner, converging on their location.
--
When he was eight years old, they’d kick him in the back of the knees and rub his forehead into the black earth in the garden south of the schoolyard. Scrawny, no-good freak. Garbage. Traitor. He eventually figured it out. Waiting made the best of a bad situation. They had short attention spans. Wait. Breathe in the compost. They’ll move on.
Twelve years later, he lies in a field of ruins and waits.
The abomination is somewhere to his right, treading a zigzag path through the rubble. A marauder. Has to be. The rest are too dumb for search patterns. Corvus said his rifle and his ankle are broken, so he’s retreating behind the rubble for now. He said he’d throw a grenade if anything happens.
There! The marauder climbs over a toppled wall, just at the edge of his vision. It’s heading for the overturned rover, nothing more than a burning, crumpled wreck - at least at the front end. Dammit. Ven, bless his spirit.
It moves for the bodies next. Bends down, a thorough examination. His breathing grows more erratic the more he tries to control it. His heart is kicking into overdrive. He can hear the rush of blood in his ears while the black claws of terror stab a path up his stomach and gizzard and throat. It’s turning the corpses. And then, it comes for him.
Get away.
It’s reaching for his neck, yes, these things know to go for the vulnerable spots, and he stops breathing entirely, freezing out of complete and overwhelming fear.
Get away from me!
It twists his head, stares into his opaque helmet. It’s sure ugly from this close; too many eyes, tucked in sockets and sprouting from its brow, even its crest. Exposed muscle, fibres twisted with metal, collarbones coated with steel and protruding from its chest. He fights the urge to gag.
Away, away, away, away!
And it’s done. Satisfied that he’s dead, it loosens its grip. His helmet hits the concrete, pointed end first. The shock is like a spike being driven into his brain, and he bites down hard enough to taste blood.
Five minutes of agony before he dares to speak, even in the privacy of his helmet. “Gone?”
“Gone.” Rubble being shifted. Corvus is coming. “We need to move.”
“Yeah.”
He drags himself back up, leaning on his good arm. Before he tests out his legs, though, Corvus is by his side, a length of what looks like seatbelt in his hand.
“The rover’s gone,” Corvus says as he secures the useless arm across his chest with the seatbelt. “I’ll have to deliver it on foot. You can come for the first leg. That building over there looks defensible. If you-“
He grabs his arm. “Corvus.”
A swallow and, he imagines, a twitch of the mandible. “Operative.” A beat. “Zekiel.”
“I’m coming.”
“Can you hold a pistol?”
“I’ll manage.” In truth, his body is sore and half of his brain is numb. Not to mention the feeling of choking in the dust, dulling his senses and quickening his breath. “Somehow.”
With Eyes Wide Closed [3/9]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:12:38 UTC
“Here. I think it’s functional.” Corvus presses a Striker into his hand, closing his fingers around it. Then, he moves behind Zekiel and, with a grunt of effort, lifts him to his feet. He’s limp at first, but soon his toes manage to find purchase, kicking aside the loose rubble to reveal solid paved slabs. Corvus lets go, and he’s left there swaying, stars popping into his vision, the weight of the pistol threatening to topple him.
“I’ll be fine,” he mutters as Corvus moves to support him. He takes a tentative step forward. Good, his knees don’t give in. Corvus stops, watching instead. He takes another step.
--
Soon, though, he’s having trouble putting one foot in front of the other. It’s all a blur. Everything’s an indistinguishable shade of grey. Even the fires - they pass quite a few burning storefronts on their way down the ruined boulevard - he barely catches the flickering of the fires, or the violet of the descending night. Or feel the tiredness of his own body, the way his armour rubs against raw flesh, the burns covering his right arm. There’s a presence in the air itself, bearing down on his mind. This is the end of everything.
He waves his arm around, as if that could brush the shroud away. “Water.”
“Haven’t got any.”
He looks at the sky resentfully. Still no rain, though all the signs are there. Full of Reaper nanotech or not, he’ll rip off his helmet and have his fill.
“Zekiel,” Corvus continues, concern showing through. “Command hadn’t found any fresh water in two weeks. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember.” Corvus is a few steps out front, pulling the cart. Good thing they still have the sturdy metal thing, with the torso-sized payload strapped snugly inside. It turned out Corvus’ ankle wasn’t broken, but he’s limping heavily. “Just thirsty. Wish it would rain.”
A hoarse laugh crackles into life over the radio. “After Oma Ker, I never thought I’d want to see rain again.”
“You’re from…”
“Sarlik,” he responds, the name coloured by his lilting accent. “City of Storms.”
“Southeast Territories here.”
“Ah.” The cart tumbles over a few potholes. Corvus kneels to inspect the payload, then shrugs and carries on.
“Been to Sarlik once. The Awakening fountain…”
“A lot of water, I know.” Corvus chuckles. “I barely remember it.”
“There were streetside stands,” he mumbles. “Roasted meat, pastries with glazed fruit…”
“Let me guess. You’re hungry.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve some bars with me. We can eat when we drag our asses back to the second line.”
A few more deep, retching coughs. “Is there a shit-ton of dust in your mouth, too?”
“Yes.” Now that he mentions it, it’s getting hard to breathe again. “Rest for a bit?”
“No. The sooner we blow it, the sooner we go home.”
Home. He remembers seeing the last of the reports trickling into the Indomitable’s channels. The last of the orbital scans before the occuli swarmed in. Does he still have a home?
“I don’t remember anything about the place,” Corvus continues. “Only that it smelled better than this.”
“That’s reason enough.”
The radio is silent for the next few minutes, save for Corvus’ laboured breathing. Zekiel is picturing Oma Ker in his head. It comes to him like a vision: a beautiful, deep-blue orb, with a thin, natural ring of rock and two mineral-rich moons. Three expansive continents, surrounded by boundless ocean…
Just as he’s about to picture his hometown, his left foot gets tangled with his right and he falls, face-first, onto the ground. His arm, pinned between his torso and the unforgiving concrete, immediately sears his remaining nerve ends with so much pain the his vision blackens for a second before exploding into a blue haze, piercing the shroud -
And Corvus is there again, helping him up. The dullness of his senses becomes a blessing when he re-tightens the belt.
“Careful,” Corvus mutters. The comforting tones roll off his subharmonics like fat drops of dew from morning grass. “Road’s really bad here.”
With Eyes Wide Closed [4/9]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:17:48 UTC
“Sorry. Got carried away.”
“Thinking about home?”
Zekiel nods. Corvus sighs and strokes his armoured cheek - an unusual gesture, but Zekiel relishes it, leans into the gentle touch. “I have a feeling…”
“Shh.” He returns to the cart and its precious load. “We need to keep going.”
--
Eight kilometres. Then six, then five, then four more, then three more, then two-and-a-half more, then one more. The skyscrapers grow denser, and the path between them more treacherous. There are pits in the road, easily twenty metres across and just as deep. Reaper clawprints. Occasionally, there’s water pooling in the depths, coloured a turbid green-brown and rippling in the windless night.
The rubble’s a lot harder to negotiate. Twisted steel girders are everywhere, as are overturned cars and sheets of fallen glass. He has to hold on to Corvus sometimes, skirting the edges of craters or climbing over waist-high chunks of debris. It’s always a struggle to get the cart around. He’s lost count of how many times they had to circle back because the way was too narrow or too steep.
Twice, enemy signals appear on their scanners. The first time, the red dot wanders away. The second time, it lingers for a while. Zekiel finds himself clutching his pistol, willing the monster to disappear. The night is as dark as it is quiet, lit only by fires and the glowing of the Reapers on the horizon. The sight is strangely majestic.
“It’s gone,” Corvus says, peering over the roof of the skycar. “Lax around here. They must have sent everything at Command.”
Three near-misses are still too many, but he says nothing. They’re close now. Very close.
Corvus agrees. “Should be able to see it behind that building.” He stands up with a grunt, leaning on the cart. “We have to be careful.”
Indeed, the building is the only thing between them and the thing - a Destroyer, more than a hundred metres tall, the spread of its tentacle-claws spanning an entire block. It’s not directly facing them, thank goodness. There’s a Hades Cannon mounted on its broad backside.
“We can’t get close,” he whispers. The Destroyer is astride the ruins of a tower; empty space all around, no cover. “Not without being seen.”
“It should be gathering the indoctrinated somewhere.”
“I thought that ruse didn’t work after the first few times.”
“Yeah, but there’s the weak spot under its belly.” A thoughtful harrumph. “We can sneak around the back. See that bit of concrete with the V-shaped pattern? We can get there.”
He frowns. “And then what?”
“And then we run for it.”
Zekiel laughs, a dry, gravelly sound even to his own ears. “Run for it.”
“Best as we can.”
“We’ll get crushed. Or roasted.”
“It’s huge and clumsy. Quickly in, quickly out; no problem for us.”
“I guess.” He pauses. “I don’t like it.” Just like he doesn’t like the oppressive atmosphere, closing in from all sides. Smothering him in it. Drowning him in it. Again, he says nothing.
With Eyes Wide Closed [5/9]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:18:46 UTC
It’s a relatively undamaged intersection. Well-lit, too. By the Reaper. There’s cover, but very little of it: three charred skycars and half of a bus, stained dark with mud and blood. Zekiel has to close his eyes. A sudden surge of sorrow washes away the dust-or becomes one with it, making his mind into a quagmire. There’s a curtain before his eyes upon which the scene is painted, and it’s rippling, undulating-
“I’ll go first.” Corvus taps him on the shoulder. “Kiel?”
“I’ll keep an eye on the Destroyer.”
Fortune’s on their side. The cart’s rubber wheel bounces over stray pebbles and shards of glass, but doesn’t make a sound. Corvus is safe for now, staying as low as his tall frame allows, the top of his helmet just even with the roof of the car.
“Shall I follow?” He glances around. No better way across, and the gap’s pretty small.
Corvus glances towards the Reaper and holds up his hand. “No. It’s turning.”
Indeed, the shadows on the ground are shifting with it.
He gestures for Zekiel to wait again, then dashes for the next car as quickly as his foot allows. Not so lucky this time; the cart’s weight cracks a large sheet of glass just before Corvus is able to get into cover. The radio is filled with the sound of his deep, hoarse breathing. The shadows are no longer shifting.
“I’m coming”, Zekiel says.
“Negative.” Corvus points to the last car. “Wait until I get there and give you a signal.”
The distance is shorter this time, and his footsteps even more rapid than before. The Reaper is moving again; he can see the shadows elongate and darken. Is it getting closer? He finds his hand trembling of its own accord. Does it know? He bats at the shroud. Almost. It almost gives way.
But it’s his turn. He needs to get going.
After the first two steps out, Corvus’ head snap towards him. A sharp intake of breath, and he’s gesturing madly for Zekiel to turn back right now, turn, run. There’s sound, too, streaming from the radio, but it coalesces into an unmanageable cacophony in his ears. Like the shroud made solid. The light is the brightest to the east. He looks at its source as he turns.
With Eyes Wide Closed [6/9]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:25:37 UTC
Part II: Corvus
When they first met, four weeks ago, under Oren’s command, he thought that Zekiel belonged back in boot camp. Quiet, diffident, obeying nonsensical orders at the drop of a hat - those were not the traits you needed to survive this war.
He put up a mean barrier back there, though. Corvus owes him one. Which is why he’s screaming into the mic for Zekiel to turn back.
But he’s not responding. He’s frozen there, in the full glare of the Reaper’s spotlight, pistol clattering to his feet.
“Operative! If you can hear me, retreat! Retreat! Retreat!” He waves his arm in vain. “Retreat!”
He breaks down into a fit of coughing. When his eyes focus again, Zekiel hasn’t moved one bit. And then he shifts, slowly, to face the Reaper proper.
“Zekiel, listen to me! Listen to me! Go back now! Get cover!”
The Reaper’s not firing, either. It’s probably doing something to the kid’s head, not even giving him the chance to scream. It’s been trying to get to Corvus, too. That dust, that hint of darkness at the edges of his vision throughout their long trek - the fucking marauders searching for them -
Zekiel raises his good arm, and begins to unfasten his helmet.
“No.”
A seal is jammed, and he’s trying to get it open with his good hand, tugging at it in sporadic jerks.
“No!”
He half-expects to see a many-eyed monstrosity underneath, but it’s just Zekiel, with his rounded mandibles and two fringe-blades flared upwards. He drops the helmet on top of his pistol. And - oh, now he’s listening, now he’s sparing an explanation for Corvus-
“Come on,” Zekiel whispers, “it’s safe.”
It’s no longer Zekiel.
There are strange, glowing patterns burned into his dark plates, like molten green copper. They’re everywhere, over his browplates, his nose, even peeking from the crevices beneath his fringe. And the familiar yellow eyes are gone, replaced with cold, lifeless, green lights - dear Goddess. Is that how you turn into a marauder?
Suppressing bone-deep shudders, he aims for the thing’s head, aims straight and true. If Zekiel’s still in there, a clean death is the best he can give him.
The thing throws up a barrier just in time, and stumbles back, trailing lines of blue-violet energy. “Corvus,” it croaks. “Corvus, what are you doing?”
He gets off two more shots. The first misses, the second glances off of the fading barrier. The thing is scrambling backwards - it trips over a crack and lands on its burned side and screams, the sound amplified a thousandfold in his earpiece, rattling his brain inside his skull. It tries to get back up. Fails, and kicks itself along the ground with its feet.
That’s his chance. Corvus launches himself at it, biting back the pain in his foot, one arm swaying to ward off the smothering shroud, roiling in confusion. Its barriers can’t protect against his entire body, landing on its waist, winding it, possibly re-breaking its right arm. It screams again, tries to push him off, or failing that, push his gun away. He’s not having it. He rams its free hand into the concrete with his knee and jams the barrel of his pistol snug against its chin. The night ripples around him.
Fucking Reaper.
“Goodbye, brother.”
And would you look at that. The thing is sobbing. The thing is legitimately sobbing.
“Kiel?” I need to kill it now, kill it now, now before he’s completely gone. Pull it pull it pull it -
“Corvus.”
By the Goddess. If not for those eyes he might even fall for that disarming look with the mandibles spread and the lips half-open; there’s the green stuff inside its mouth, too, all over its cheeks and tongue. And he’s suddenly aware that he’s sitting between its legs, nice, slender legs warm to the touch when he caresses-
“Spirits,” it chokes out, “what’s wrong with me?”
It’s looking at its reflection. It’s looking at its reflection on my visor. He’s still in there, he’s still alive!
He brushes that last thought away. “The Reaper did something to you. I don’t know what it did, but I can’t let you go.” He softens his voice. “You know that, right?”
With Eyes Wide Closed [7/never trust the word count]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:31:17 UTC
Zekiel shakes his head. “No, no, no. I just talked to them, they didn’t do anything! They didn’t do anything, I swe-“
He thrusts his pistol further into the soft underside of its jaw. It gags, an awful, wretched sound. “You’re indoctrinated. ‘Talk’ to it? We can’t ‘talk’ to it. We blow it sky-high, remember?”
“I’m not indoc-“ Zekiel coughs violently, heaving, struggling to arc his torso under Corvus’ weight like he used to do in the damp, dark privacy of Corvus’ cot. There are flecks of blood around his mouth and chin. “I’m not indoctrinated. Corvus, please. You have to believe me.”
“I’m sorry.”
When he opens his eyes again, Zekiel is very much alive, green eyes wide open and moist with tears. There’s a fresh pit in the concrete, centimetres beside his head.
--
Even a block away, he can’t shake the feeling from his head. Can’t seem to make the right decisions, the smart decisions.
He couldn’t have gone back for the bomb. That was true. The Reaper would have destroyed him.
But he shouldn’t have done this either.
Zekiel’s moaning, feverish, on the line between unconscious and frightfully aware. Calling for water when he knows there isn’t any. Out of morbid curiosity, Corvus stripped him of everything but the bits that were fused to his body, and the sight was a horrendous one. Lines. Everywhere, from the tip of his crest to his laminal plates to the flesh beneath his talons, flushing green in regular intervals, in time with his shallow breathing. Running smooth even where the skin was raw, burning cobalt. He took a combat knife to Zekiel’s bad palm, and, bating his breath, carved out a good chunk of flesh to find patterns just as intricate beneath the surface.
He’s never seen a case like this before. Too bad the channel to Command is so much dead air. If the Reapers can do this with just a glance…
No. There was a green wave. He hums, deep in thought, undisturbed by the reign of silence outside the balcony. Yes, that could be it. Zekiel’s armour was breached, so the nanotech must’ve taken hold. His stomach does a few flip-flops. Goddess. Command. The hundreds of people at command. Being blasted to oblivion by a Reaper dreadnought would have been a merciful death.
He’s interrupted by the sound of Zekiel tugging at his bonds. He’s struggling properly now, trying to squirm his wrists through the soaked seatbelt. Surprising for him to wake so soon; but then again, Reaper tech is some potent stuff.
“You’re with me, Kiel.”
He twists around, a wild set to his mandibles. “You sure…no water in your canteen…”
“No.” He glances at the empty street below; toppled streetlights and planters with their guts spilled out onto the ground. “There’s no clean water around here. There hasn’t been for a fucking month. Stop asking.”
Zekiel seems to deflate, his bloody hands hanging limp from the bit of exposed rebar above his head. Then, his slightly dazed eyes fix on the sniper rifle in Corvus’ arms. “Corvus. The war…is over.”
“Are you happy now?”
“What?”
“Was it nice when it told you to give yourself up? Was it nice when it fucked with your brain and you didn’t have to think for yourself anymore? You sure look too damn happy.”
“No! I mean, they didn’t…” He looks like he’s about to cry again - no, he’s never really stopped. The tears carved out clean paths over the coat of dust on his face.
It’s hurting him, he realises. It’s torturing him and breaking him and it’s my own damn fault for not having a damn quad.
The tones of comfort are alien, but he lets them saturate his voice. “What did it do?”
“They said the… they said the cycles will end… they said they’re free…”
“Free?” He narrows his eyes.
“Yeah.” Zekiel’s face is filthy, but his expression grows peaceful, as if reminiscing. “Free.”
With Eyes Wide Closed [8/never trust the word count]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:37:05 UTC
“I don’t know what the hell you’re saying, but it doesn’t sound like freedom to me.” He lowers his pistol - at this rate, they’re screwed either way - and walks over. He kneels by Zekiel’s side and reaches for his hands, and they’re eager to clutch his own even with fingers slipping in a rush of fresh blood. “Look at what it did to you. Look at what it did out there! Look at what it’s still doing! Can’t you see it?”
Zekiel frowns, his eyeballs shuddering beneath the lids. “Everything’s changed. For better or for worse.”
On second thought, maybe that brackish water from the pits would come in handy right now. He’s infected and delirious. What’s the worst that can happen?
No, I’m not falling for that again. You bastards. You fucking bastards. He grits his teeth. Still a chance.
“Listen carefully, Kiel. Fight it. Fight it for as long as you can. I’m going to go kill that fucker. And then I’ll come back for you.”
“Don’t!” Electric green eyes snap open. ”It’ll leave us alone! It’ll help-“
“Listen to yourself!”
Zekiel lets go of his hand like it’s made of white-hot iron. He curls up his legs and tries to push himself into the corner, tries to be as small as possible. His elbows tremble, even the one that’s burned beyond recognition.
It’s afraid of him. It knows it can’t win.
Corvus takes calming breaths. “Rest. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Wait.”
He waits, one knee off the ground.
“You’ve changed too. Don’t you feel it?”
He considers for a second, avoiding Zekiel’s upturned eyes. “Only the Reaper trying to get me. And don’t worry, I won’t let it.”
“You have to believe me. Something happened when we were out. Something affecting us all.”
“Yeah. It’s called indoctrination. I don’t have time for--”
“Just take off your gloves and look, Corvus.”
The world is rippling again. Diluting Zekiel’s voice and distributing it over all his senses; his vision wavers with it, his nose twitches, his fingers tremble at the knots in the torn seatbelt. His knee lowers once more. But no, it’s only because he’s so tired. And sick and thirsty and lacking sleep.
“Take off my gloves.” He laughs, hollow even to his own ears. “So what? You’re saying that we’re all alike now? That we’re both marauders?”
Zekiel is looking at him. Beckoning him. Compelling him to believe with nothing but a watery gaze and the might of a Reaper’s will.
He shouldn’t give in. He shouldn’t. But he glances outside the balcony again, and the jagged horizon becomes the teeth behind disfigured lips and yeah, they’re all fucked anyway. The fire consumes. Command is gone. The fleets are gone. Ven is gone, Eta is gone, Asirik is gone. Aise is gone. Zekiel’s mind - and body - are lost to him forever. He pulls off a bloodstained glove.
--
Well, fuck.
The training vids are ingrained in his mind. Going into battle? Don’t take off your helmet. Evacuating civilians? Don’t take off your helmet. Undercover? Change your filters and don’t take off your helmet. Deep in Reaper territory with nothing but an antimatter bomb and a half-marauder? Don’t take off your damn helmet.
He takes it off and looks at his reflection on the mirrored visor. A pale, worn face, red paint, bright fucking green eyeballs.
His fingers fall loose, and the helmet rolls out of his hands and ends up nestled against Zekiel’s naked waist. He watches it wobble and time seems to slow as it does because the shroud shifts like sand and distends like skin, forcing his mind to travel that much further. Eventually he makes it back to his hand, his bony, calloused hand with Reaper blueprints stenciled on. Enthralled, he peels off his other glove. The sight is much the same.
The shroud is bulging, pregnant with exigency; he can see it and hear it and smell and almost touch it. His marks - marks - are thrumming with light and they want him to touch it. The presence wraps itself around the balcony frame like so much rotten flesh and it’s swelling, a sinuous wall of maggots opening into an enormous, dripping, speaking maw. This is the beginning of everything.
With Eyes Wide Closed [9/10]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:42:04 UTC
He hurls his glove at the banister. The shroud retracts in the span of a blink. There’s a sharp crack from the concrete, and the steady thump thump of the blood in his ears.
He snatches the nearest thing - the helmet - and holds it close. Zekiel’s looking at him. Not smug or afraid, no; with more sadness than anything else.
“Shut up,” he whispers. “Just shut up. I’m going before I lose my mind.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. You stay here until I come back.”
“Then I might as well be dead,” he cries, sharp notes reverberating in Corvus’ ears. Oh, yes, dead. He still has a pistol with a full clip and half a mind to reach for it. “Don’t throw your life away. The war is over. The war is over for good…”
“Fine,” he spits, bitterness seeping from his subharmonics. “Then what do you suppose we do? Celebrate?”
Zekiel unfurls his knees. A drop of blood drips down the end of the rebar and lands in his eye; he blinks it away.
Even with talons bared, the belt is damp and slippery and it takes much too long to undo the knots and unwrap the cloth. He catches Zekiel’s wrists before they can fall and lays his arms out neatly beside him. Zekiel would have none of it. He grabs on to Corvus’ hand without a heartbeat’s hesitation. The open wound is scabbing at the edges, filled with rust and dirt down the centre. He uses his tongue to clean some of it. Good thing he can still muster up enough moisture to spit.
Zekiel’s wincing, silent save for a few small squeaks.
“Sorry,” he gives it one last lick, “no gel.”
“Thank you.”
He sits down with a heavy sigh, his armour suddenly an unbearable burden on his limbs. “So how much time do you think we’ve got?”
Zekiel edges closer, tucking his mandibles and pushing with his good arm. “Long as we want. War is over.”
He shakes his head, bemused. You sad thing. What did you do? What did it do to you?
But what comes out of his mouth is: “I just never thought it would end - never thought we’d end like this.”
“How’d you think it would end?”
He reaches beneath Zekiel’s arms and pulls him into a sitting position, putting himself between Zekiel’s back and the crumbling wall. “Well,” he says, “I’d like the victory feast, for starters. Roasted meat, you know, and pastries topped with glazed fruits. And a nice, cool glass of Airijah tea on the side. Stick some fancy garnish on top.”
Zekiel coughs. “Beside the fountain?”
“No.” He’s tired and he leans into the crook of Zekiel’s neck and yes, beneath all that dust and sweat and Reaper tech he smells as sweet as before. “Somewhere private. Maybe a tent, maybe a … a home.”
“Home,” Zekiel rumbles; he feels the tremors through the hand supporting his keel. The patterns of green lightning quicken their pulse and he has to close his eyes for a moment. If only he can unsee it, if only he can undo it.
“Too much to ask?”
Zekiel chuckles, and coughs again, clutching his neck. “I’ll settle just for the tea.”
“You sure about that?” He rubs Zekiel’s mandible with his mouth - warm, smooth, melting with the copper paths - and nips it.
“No.” Zekiel leans back against his shoulder. “Can’t be sure about anything anymore.” A pause, a quiet breath. “I’m sorry.”
And as Zekiel falls silent, Corvus thinks about the bomb. He thinks about the detonator, lost in the blast, and the on-site backup, with its two levels of passcodes and twelve seconds of countdown. He thinks about the yield and the blast radius. He thinks about the men and women who made it, who delivered it to the resistance, who died on the way to hurling it against a Reaper.
He thinks about how much it weighs, and how the monstrosity in his arms weighs about the same.
With Eyes Wide Closed [10/10]
anonymous
July 12 2012, 02:44:05 UTC
It’s raining for the first time in a month, and Zekiel’s not here to see it.
Corvus is examining his radio. Nothing broken, as far as he can tell, and he was the back-up tech. Still no word from Command, or from the other teams. They must be out of range; the Reaper’s not jamming. Guess they’ll have to haul their sorry asses back to base after the mission if they want to find out what the heck is going on.
The bomb is still there, judging by a cautionary ping in its general direction. He has a pistol with two clips and a sniper rifle with one. Those should get him to the Reaper. Maybe even back.
And if they can’t?
The power’s running too low for his omni. He fiddles with the feed controls. The adjustments are accompanied by large, bold print: WARNING. SHIELDS COMPROMISED.
You know the drill. Save the last shot.
The chest piece he’s laid out to collect water is three-quarters full. He takes a sip. Not bad for acid rain. Grimacing at the aftertaste, he walks back indoors.
Filled primarily for the bolded part of:
"I want to see some realistic reactions from characters having synthesis forced on them, to having Reapers and Husks being domesticated and having to see the monstrous things daily. I don't want the brainwashed characters we see in the epilogue, I want to see the reactions of the people who have stood with our Shepards for the last five years, I want to see theiir horror at finding out their bodies have been violated without their consent, and then I want to see how they take having to live every day along side the enemy that slaughtered many of their loved ones.
I want to see someone who became a husk facing the reality of living in that body, knowing (and possibly remembering) they killed innocent people, that they can never return to who they once were.
Most of all I want to see the reaction of Shepard's love interest, who is horrified to find out Shepard thought it was worth sacrificing his/her own life to do something so monstrous to everyone. "
Also, this fill contains elements of turian slash (http://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/4611.html?thread=16830979#t16830979) and war fluff (http://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/4611.html?thread=16969219#t16969219).
Anon is indebted to S for editing.
Reply
“-can hear me. Team five is down, I repeat, team five is down. The payload is intact.”
There’s something in front of his eyes; yes, a tenuous, evanescent thing, and he tries to brush it away. But his arm feels too heavy.
“-command. I repeat, team five is down. No other survivors confirmed. I repeat-“
There’s definitely something there, just out of focus. His eyelids are heavy, too. And when he manages to crank them open, there’s nothing to greet him but the view of cracked lattiplex and a grey, tumultuous sky.
“Belay that. I have a signal. One survivor confirmed. I repeat-“
It looks like it’s about to rain. Spirits, he’s thirsty.
“-respond. If anyone can hear me, please respond. Command?”
He’s supposed to answer, but he can’t get his mouth to work just yet. Nor the rest of his body, come to think of it.
He waits for the next burst of static, drawing shallow, rasping breaths. It doesn’t come. How did all this dust get inside his helmet? Must be a busted filter. Dust everywhere. All over his tongue, inside his nostrils, inside his throat. Inside his damn brain, too. He blinks rapidly, trying to clean his eyeballs.
An orange screen pops up, entirely too close for comfort. Right. Accelerometers.
“Vent,” he croaks. “Three cycles.”
A flurry of neon-red warnings fills the screen. His corpse is fucking fried.
There’s the voice again. “Operative, you alive?”
“Yes.” For some definition of alive.
“Can you move?”
“Head.”
There’s a lull in the static. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Thirty.
And then: “Try moving your right hand. I’ve got visual.”
He clenches his teeth, preparing for the pain. It comes as the deep, resounding kind, marching through his marrow with the unforgiving pulse of war drums. Wrist to elbow to shoulder to neck, every step smashing into his nerve cords with a steel boot.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Now breathe. In, out. Easy. Dammit, his weave must be burned into his plates for it to hurt that much.
“Your right’s fine. Try moving your left.”
They repeat the process with both feet. Then knees, elbows, shoulders. Somewhere in the middle, his suit gives him a shot of medigel. He can’t feel the needles, but the effect is immediate. He manages to raise his hand to his face. It’s a mess of shattered ceramic between bits of half-melted weave.
“How’re you holding?” he whispers, in between dry coughs.
“I’m fine. Was just out for a bit.” Pause. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Neither did I.”
“Desperate times.”
He imagines a friendly, gentle smile. “The mission…”
“We’re in too deep.”
“How deep?”
“At least two kilometres in. Can’t evac.”
He gropes around with his other hand, finding a slab of concrete right next to his head. Missed it by three fingers when he fell. It works as a makeshift pillow. “Command?”
“I don’t know.” A sigh. “Gone, probably. Guess they couldn’t stop it.”
He shudders at the memory. Blunt tentacles pounding concrete into dust. Ignoring them, ignoring the insignificant-
“Can you stand?”
“Need time.”
A throaty noise of assent. “I think we can make it. How long do you need?”
I never want to get up again. “Few minutes.”
“Take your time. That was quite a blast there.”
Breathing’s a bit better, but there’s the dust, clouding, clogging his thoughts. “What blast?”
“The green thing. Saw it before I passed out.”
“The green thing?”
“That wasn’t you?”
“Don’t think.”
“Fuck.”
Reply
The wasteland is still the same. The broken horizon, skyscrapers rising like jagged teeth, the endless wash of grey, grey everywhere, dotted with the harsh orange of ravenous flames. Ashes and embers falling from the sky. The Reapers are tall and obscenely smooth silhouettes, perfectly still. No, that one’s lifting off. He almost smiles. Then remembers the state of the fleets.
Corvus must be behind him, but he can’t turn around like this. He can’t turn from the bodies, either. Eta’s distinctive black-and-violet armour. And another body, too tall to be anyone but the taciturn private whose name he never learned.
“So far.” So far to go, so far to have come.
“Eight kilometres. The target hasn’t moved.”
“Too f-“
“Get down!”
He sees it too. A red dot on his scanner, converging on their location.
--
When he was eight years old, they’d kick him in the back of the knees and rub his forehead into the black earth in the garden south of the schoolyard. Scrawny, no-good freak. Garbage. Traitor. He eventually figured it out. Waiting made the best of a bad situation. They had short attention spans. Wait. Breathe in the compost. They’ll move on.
Twelve years later, he lies in a field of ruins and waits.
The abomination is somewhere to his right, treading a zigzag path through the rubble. A marauder. Has to be. The rest are too dumb for search patterns. Corvus said his rifle and his ankle are broken, so he’s retreating behind the rubble for now. He said he’d throw a grenade if anything happens.
There! The marauder climbs over a toppled wall, just at the edge of his vision. It’s heading for the overturned rover, nothing more than a burning, crumpled wreck - at least at the front end. Dammit. Ven, bless his spirit.
It moves for the bodies next. Bends down, a thorough examination. His breathing grows more erratic the more he tries to control it. His heart is kicking into overdrive. He can hear the rush of blood in his ears while the black claws of terror stab a path up his stomach and gizzard and throat. It’s turning the corpses. And then, it comes for him.
Get away.
It’s reaching for his neck, yes, these things know to go for the vulnerable spots, and he stops breathing entirely, freezing out of complete and overwhelming fear.
Get away from me!
It twists his head, stares into his opaque helmet. It’s sure ugly from this close; too many eyes, tucked in sockets and sprouting from its brow, even its crest. Exposed muscle, fibres twisted with metal, collarbones coated with steel and protruding from its chest. He fights the urge to gag.
Away, away, away, away!
And it’s done. Satisfied that he’s dead, it loosens its grip. His helmet hits the concrete, pointed end first. The shock is like a spike being driven into his brain, and he bites down hard enough to taste blood.
Five minutes of agony before he dares to speak, even in the privacy of his helmet. “Gone?”
“Gone.” Rubble being shifted. Corvus is coming. “We need to move.”
“Yeah.”
He drags himself back up, leaning on his good arm. Before he tests out his legs, though, Corvus is by his side, a length of what looks like seatbelt in his hand.
“The rover’s gone,” Corvus says as he secures the useless arm across his chest with the seatbelt. “I’ll have to deliver it on foot. You can come for the first leg. That building over there looks defensible. If you-“
He grabs his arm. “Corvus.”
A swallow and, he imagines, a twitch of the mandible. “Operative.” A beat. “Zekiel.”
“I’m coming.”
“Can you hold a pistol?”
“I’ll manage.” In truth, his body is sore and half of his brain is numb. Not to mention the feeling of choking in the dust, dulling his senses and quickening his breath. “Somehow.”
Reply
“I’ll be fine,” he mutters as Corvus moves to support him. He takes a tentative step forward. Good, his knees don’t give in. Corvus stops, watching instead. He takes another step.
--
Soon, though, he’s having trouble putting one foot in front of the other. It’s all a blur. Everything’s an indistinguishable shade of grey. Even the fires - they pass quite a few burning storefronts on their way down the ruined boulevard - he barely catches the flickering of the fires, or the violet of the descending night. Or feel the tiredness of his own body, the way his armour rubs against raw flesh, the burns covering his right arm. There’s a presence in the air itself, bearing down on his mind. This is the end of everything.
He waves his arm around, as if that could brush the shroud away. “Water.”
“Haven’t got any.”
He looks at the sky resentfully. Still no rain, though all the signs are there. Full of Reaper nanotech or not, he’ll rip off his helmet and have his fill.
“Zekiel,” Corvus continues, concern showing through. “Command hadn’t found any fresh water in two weeks. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember.” Corvus is a few steps out front, pulling the cart. Good thing they still have the sturdy metal thing, with the torso-sized payload strapped snugly inside. It turned out Corvus’ ankle wasn’t broken, but he’s limping heavily. “Just thirsty. Wish it would rain.”
A hoarse laugh crackles into life over the radio. “After Oma Ker, I never thought I’d want to see rain again.”
“You’re from…”
“Sarlik,” he responds, the name coloured by his lilting accent. “City of Storms.”
“Southeast Territories here.”
“Ah.” The cart tumbles over a few potholes. Corvus kneels to inspect the payload, then shrugs and carries on.
“Been to Sarlik once. The Awakening fountain…”
“A lot of water, I know.” Corvus chuckles. “I barely remember it.”
“There were streetside stands,” he mumbles. “Roasted meat, pastries with glazed fruit…”
“Let me guess. You’re hungry.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve some bars with me. We can eat when we drag our asses back to the second line.”
“After outrunning the bomb.”
“That’s the spirit.” Corvus coughs, suddenly, violently, doubled over. “Goddess. Fuck.”
“What is it?”
A few more deep, retching coughs. “Is there a shit-ton of dust in your mouth, too?”
“Yes.” Now that he mentions it, it’s getting hard to breathe again. “Rest for a bit?”
“No. The sooner we blow it, the sooner we go home.”
Home. He remembers seeing the last of the reports trickling into the Indomitable’s channels. The last of the orbital scans before the occuli swarmed in. Does he still have a home?
“I don’t remember anything about the place,” Corvus continues. “Only that it smelled better than this.”
“That’s reason enough.”
The radio is silent for the next few minutes, save for Corvus’ laboured breathing. Zekiel is picturing Oma Ker in his head. It comes to him like a vision: a beautiful, deep-blue orb, with a thin, natural ring of rock and two mineral-rich moons. Three expansive continents, surrounded by boundless ocean…
Just as he’s about to picture his hometown, his left foot gets tangled with his right and he falls, face-first, onto the ground. His arm, pinned between his torso and the unforgiving concrete, immediately sears his remaining nerve ends with so much pain the his vision blackens for a second before exploding into a blue haze, piercing the shroud -
And Corvus is there again, helping him up. The dullness of his senses becomes a blessing when he re-tightens the belt.
“Careful,” Corvus mutters. The comforting tones roll off his subharmonics like fat drops of dew from morning grass. “Road’s really bad here.”
Reply
“Thinking about home?”
Zekiel nods. Corvus sighs and strokes his armoured cheek - an unusual gesture, but Zekiel relishes it, leans into the gentle touch. “I have a feeling…”
“Shh.” He returns to the cart and its precious load. “We need to keep going.”
--
Eight kilometres. Then six, then five, then four more, then three more, then two-and-a-half more, then one more. The skyscrapers grow denser, and the path between them more treacherous. There are pits in the road, easily twenty metres across and just as deep. Reaper clawprints. Occasionally, there’s water pooling in the depths, coloured a turbid green-brown and rippling in the windless night.
The rubble’s a lot harder to negotiate. Twisted steel girders are everywhere, as are overturned cars and sheets of fallen glass. He has to hold on to Corvus sometimes, skirting the edges of craters or climbing over waist-high chunks of debris. It’s always a struggle to get the cart around. He’s lost count of how many times they had to circle back because the way was too narrow or too steep.
Twice, enemy signals appear on their scanners. The first time, the red dot wanders away. The second time, it lingers for a while. Zekiel finds himself clutching his pistol, willing the monster to disappear. The night is as dark as it is quiet, lit only by fires and the glowing of the Reapers on the horizon. The sight is strangely majestic.
“It’s gone,” Corvus says, peering over the roof of the skycar. “Lax around here. They must have sent everything at Command.”
Three near-misses are still too many, but he says nothing. They’re close now. Very close.
Corvus agrees. “Should be able to see it behind that building.” He stands up with a grunt, leaning on the cart. “We have to be careful.”
Indeed, the building is the only thing between them and the thing - a Destroyer, more than a hundred metres tall, the spread of its tentacle-claws spanning an entire block. It’s not directly facing them, thank goodness. There’s a Hades Cannon mounted on its broad backside.
“We can’t get close,” he whispers. The Destroyer is astride the ruins of a tower; empty space all around, no cover. “Not without being seen.”
“It should be gathering the indoctrinated somewhere.”
“I thought that ruse didn’t work after the first few times.”
“Yeah, but there’s the weak spot under its belly.” A thoughtful harrumph. “We can sneak around the back. See that bit of concrete with the V-shaped pattern? We can get there.”
He frowns. “And then what?”
“And then we run for it.”
Zekiel laughs, a dry, gravelly sound even to his own ears. “Run for it.”
“Best as we can.”
“We’ll get crushed. Or roasted.”
“It’s huge and clumsy. Quickly in, quickly out; no problem for us.”
“I guess.” He pauses. “I don’t like it.” Just like he doesn’t like the oppressive atmosphere, closing in from all sides. Smothering him in it. Drowning him in it. Again, he says nothing.
“Too dangerous for you, Operative?”
“Too uncertain.”
“Come on. Let’s cross this road first.”
Reply
“I’ll go first.” Corvus taps him on the shoulder. “Kiel?”
“I’ll keep an eye on the Destroyer.”
Fortune’s on their side. The cart’s rubber wheel bounces over stray pebbles and shards of glass, but doesn’t make a sound. Corvus is safe for now, staying as low as his tall frame allows, the top of his helmet just even with the roof of the car.
“Shall I follow?” He glances around. No better way across, and the gap’s pretty small.
Corvus glances towards the Reaper and holds up his hand. “No. It’s turning.”
Indeed, the shadows on the ground are shifting with it.
He gestures for Zekiel to wait again, then dashes for the next car as quickly as his foot allows. Not so lucky this time; the cart’s weight cracks a large sheet of glass just before Corvus is able to get into cover. The radio is filled with the sound of his deep, hoarse breathing. The shadows are no longer shifting.
“I’m coming”, Zekiel says.
“Negative.” Corvus points to the last car. “Wait until I get there and give you a signal.”
The distance is shorter this time, and his footsteps even more rapid than before. The Reaper is moving again; he can see the shadows elongate and darken. Is it getting closer? He finds his hand trembling of its own accord. Does it know? He bats at the shroud. Almost. It almost gives way.
But it’s his turn. He needs to get going.
After the first two steps out, Corvus’ head snap towards him. A sharp intake of breath, and he’s gesturing madly for Zekiel to turn back right now, turn, run. There’s sound, too, streaming from the radio, but it coalesces into an unmanageable cacophony in his ears. Like the shroud made solid. The light is the brightest to the east. He looks at its source as he turns.
The Reaper is looking back.
Reply
When they first met, four weeks ago, under Oren’s command, he thought that Zekiel belonged back in boot camp. Quiet, diffident, obeying nonsensical orders at the drop of a hat - those were not the traits you needed to survive this war.
He put up a mean barrier back there, though. Corvus owes him one. Which is why he’s screaming into the mic for Zekiel to turn back.
But he’s not responding. He’s frozen there, in the full glare of the Reaper’s spotlight, pistol clattering to his feet.
“Operative! If you can hear me, retreat! Retreat! Retreat!” He waves his arm in vain. “Retreat!”
He breaks down into a fit of coughing. When his eyes focus again, Zekiel hasn’t moved one bit. And then he shifts, slowly, to face the Reaper proper.
“Zekiel, listen to me! Listen to me! Go back now! Get cover!”
The Reaper’s not firing, either. It’s probably doing something to the kid’s head, not even giving him the chance to scream. It’s been trying to get to Corvus, too. That dust, that hint of darkness at the edges of his vision throughout their long trek - the fucking marauders searching for them -
Zekiel raises his good arm, and begins to unfasten his helmet.
“No.”
A seal is jammed, and he’s trying to get it open with his good hand, tugging at it in sporadic jerks.
“No!”
He half-expects to see a many-eyed monstrosity underneath, but it’s just Zekiel, with his rounded mandibles and two fringe-blades flared upwards. He drops the helmet on top of his pistol. And - oh, now he’s listening, now he’s sparing an explanation for Corvus-
“Come on,” Zekiel whispers, “it’s safe.”
It’s no longer Zekiel.
There are strange, glowing patterns burned into his dark plates, like molten green copper. They’re everywhere, over his browplates, his nose, even peeking from the crevices beneath his fringe. And the familiar yellow eyes are gone, replaced with cold, lifeless, green lights - dear Goddess. Is that how you turn into a marauder?
Suppressing bone-deep shudders, he aims for the thing’s head, aims straight and true. If Zekiel’s still in there, a clean death is the best he can give him.
The thing throws up a barrier just in time, and stumbles back, trailing lines of blue-violet energy. “Corvus,” it croaks. “Corvus, what are you doing?”
He gets off two more shots. The first misses, the second glances off of the fading barrier. The thing is scrambling backwards - it trips over a crack and lands on its burned side and screams, the sound amplified a thousandfold in his earpiece, rattling his brain inside his skull. It tries to get back up. Fails, and kicks itself along the ground with its feet.
That’s his chance. Corvus launches himself at it, biting back the pain in his foot, one arm swaying to ward off the smothering shroud, roiling in confusion. Its barriers can’t protect against his entire body, landing on its waist, winding it, possibly re-breaking its right arm. It screams again, tries to push him off, or failing that, push his gun away. He’s not having it. He rams its free hand into the concrete with his knee and jams the barrel of his pistol snug against its chin. The night ripples around him.
Fucking Reaper.
“Goodbye, brother.”
And would you look at that. The thing is sobbing. The thing is legitimately sobbing.
“Kiel?” I need to kill it now, kill it now, now before he’s completely gone. Pull it pull it pull it -
“Corvus.”
By the Goddess. If not for those eyes he might even fall for that disarming look with the mandibles spread and the lips half-open; there’s the green stuff inside its mouth, too, all over its cheeks and tongue. And he’s suddenly aware that he’s sitting between its legs, nice, slender legs warm to the touch when he caresses-
“Spirits,” it chokes out, “what’s wrong with me?”
It’s looking at its reflection. It’s looking at its reflection on my visor. He’s still in there, he’s still alive!
He brushes that last thought away. “The Reaper did something to you. I don’t know what it did, but I can’t let you go.” He softens his voice. “You know that, right?”
Reply
He thrusts his pistol further into the soft underside of its jaw. It gags, an awful, wretched sound. “You’re indoctrinated. ‘Talk’ to it? We can’t ‘talk’ to it. We blow it sky-high, remember?”
“I’m not indoc-“ Zekiel coughs violently, heaving, struggling to arc his torso under Corvus’ weight like he used to do in the damp, dark privacy of Corvus’ cot. There are flecks of blood around his mouth and chin. “I’m not indoctrinated. Corvus, please. You have to believe me.”
“I’m sorry.”
When he opens his eyes again, Zekiel is very much alive, green eyes wide open and moist with tears. There’s a fresh pit in the concrete, centimetres beside his head.
--
Even a block away, he can’t shake the feeling from his head. Can’t seem to make the right decisions, the smart decisions.
He couldn’t have gone back for the bomb. That was true. The Reaper would have destroyed him.
But he shouldn’t have done this either.
Zekiel’s moaning, feverish, on the line between unconscious and frightfully aware. Calling for water when he knows there isn’t any. Out of morbid curiosity, Corvus stripped him of everything but the bits that were fused to his body, and the sight was a horrendous one. Lines. Everywhere, from the tip of his crest to his laminal plates to the flesh beneath his talons, flushing green in regular intervals, in time with his shallow breathing. Running smooth even where the skin was raw, burning cobalt. He took a combat knife to Zekiel’s bad palm, and, bating his breath, carved out a good chunk of flesh to find patterns just as intricate beneath the surface.
He’s never seen a case like this before. Too bad the channel to Command is so much dead air. If the Reapers can do this with just a glance…
No. There was a green wave. He hums, deep in thought, undisturbed by the reign of silence outside the balcony. Yes, that could be it. Zekiel’s armour was breached, so the nanotech must’ve taken hold. His stomach does a few flip-flops. Goddess. Command. The hundreds of people at command. Being blasted to oblivion by a Reaper dreadnought would have been a merciful death.
He’s interrupted by the sound of Zekiel tugging at his bonds. He’s struggling properly now, trying to squirm his wrists through the soaked seatbelt. Surprising for him to wake so soon; but then again, Reaper tech is some potent stuff.
“You’re with me, Kiel.”
He twists around, a wild set to his mandibles. “You sure…no water in your canteen…”
“No.” He glances at the empty street below; toppled streetlights and planters with their guts spilled out onto the ground. “There’s no clean water around here. There hasn’t been for a fucking month. Stop asking.”
Zekiel seems to deflate, his bloody hands hanging limp from the bit of exposed rebar above his head. Then, his slightly dazed eyes fix on the sniper rifle in Corvus’ arms.
“Corvus. The war…is over.”
“Are you happy now?”
“What?”
“Was it nice when it told you to give yourself up? Was it nice when it fucked with your brain and you didn’t have to think for yourself anymore? You sure look too damn happy.”
“No! I mean, they didn’t…” He looks like he’s about to cry again - no, he’s never really stopped. The tears carved out clean paths over the coat of dust on his face.
It’s hurting him, he realises. It’s torturing him and breaking him and it’s my own damn fault for not having a damn quad.
The tones of comfort are alien, but he lets them saturate his voice. “What did it do?”
“They said the… they said the cycles will end… they said they’re free…”
“Free?” He narrows his eyes.
“Yeah.” Zekiel’s face is filthy, but his expression grows peaceful, as if reminiscing. “Free.”
Reply
Zekiel frowns, his eyeballs shuddering beneath the lids. “Everything’s changed. For better or for worse.”
On second thought, maybe that brackish water from the pits would come in handy right now. He’s infected and delirious. What’s the worst that can happen?
No, I’m not falling for that again. You bastards. You fucking bastards. He grits his teeth. Still a chance.
“Listen carefully, Kiel. Fight it. Fight it for as long as you can. I’m going to go kill that fucker. And then I’ll come back for you.”
“Don’t!” Electric green eyes snap open. ”It’ll leave us alone! It’ll help-“
“Listen to yourself!”
Zekiel lets go of his hand like it’s made of white-hot iron. He curls up his legs and tries to push himself into the corner, tries to be as small as possible. His elbows tremble, even the one that’s burned beyond recognition.
It’s afraid of him. It knows it can’t win.
Corvus takes calming breaths. “Rest. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Wait.”
He waits, one knee off the ground.
“You’ve changed too. Don’t you feel it?”
He considers for a second, avoiding Zekiel’s upturned eyes. “Only the Reaper trying to get me. And don’t worry, I won’t let it.”
“You have to believe me. Something happened when we were out. Something affecting us all.”
“Yeah. It’s called indoctrination. I don’t have time for--”
“Just take off your gloves and look, Corvus.”
The world is rippling again. Diluting Zekiel’s voice and distributing it over all his senses; his vision wavers with it, his nose twitches, his fingers tremble at the knots in the torn seatbelt. His knee lowers once more. But no, it’s only because he’s so tired. And sick and thirsty and lacking sleep.
“Take off my gloves.” He laughs, hollow even to his own ears. “So what? You’re saying that we’re all alike now? That we’re both marauders?”
Zekiel is looking at him. Beckoning him. Compelling him to believe with nothing but a watery gaze and the might of a Reaper’s will.
He shouldn’t give in. He shouldn’t. But he glances outside the balcony again, and the jagged horizon becomes the teeth behind disfigured lips and yeah, they’re all fucked anyway. The fire consumes. Command is gone. The fleets are gone. Ven is gone, Eta is gone, Asirik is gone. Aise is gone. Zekiel’s mind - and body - are lost to him forever.
He pulls off a bloodstained glove.
--
Well, fuck.
The training vids are ingrained in his mind. Going into battle? Don’t take off your helmet. Evacuating civilians? Don’t take off your helmet. Undercover? Change your filters and don’t take off your helmet. Deep in Reaper territory with nothing but an antimatter bomb and a half-marauder? Don’t take off your damn helmet.
He takes it off and looks at his reflection on the mirrored visor. A pale, worn face, red paint, bright fucking green eyeballs.
His fingers fall loose, and the helmet rolls out of his hands and ends up nestled against Zekiel’s naked waist. He watches it wobble and time seems to slow as it does because the shroud shifts like sand and distends like skin, forcing his mind to travel that much further. Eventually he makes it back to his hand, his bony, calloused hand with Reaper blueprints stenciled on. Enthralled, he peels off his other glove. The sight is much the same.
The shroud is bulging, pregnant with exigency; he can see it and hear it and smell and almost touch it. His marks - marks - are thrumming with light and they want him to touch it. The presence wraps itself around the balcony frame like so much rotten flesh and it’s swelling, a sinuous wall of maggots opening into an enormous, dripping, speaking maw. This is the beginning of everything.
Reply
He snatches the nearest thing - the helmet - and holds it close. Zekiel’s looking at him. Not smug or afraid, no; with more sadness than anything else.
“Shut up,” he whispers. “Just shut up. I’m going before I lose my mind.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. You stay here until I come back.”
“Then I might as well be dead,” he cries, sharp notes reverberating in Corvus’ ears. Oh, yes, dead. He still has a pistol with a full clip and half a mind to reach for it. “Don’t throw your life away. The war is over. The war is over for good…”
“Fine,” he spits, bitterness seeping from his subharmonics. “Then what do you suppose we do? Celebrate?”
Zekiel unfurls his knees. A drop of blood drips down the end of the rebar and lands in his eye; he blinks it away.
Even with talons bared, the belt is damp and slippery and it takes much too long to undo the knots and unwrap the cloth. He catches Zekiel’s wrists before they can fall and lays his arms out neatly beside him. Zekiel would have none of it. He grabs on to Corvus’ hand without a heartbeat’s hesitation. The open wound is scabbing at the edges, filled with rust and dirt down the centre. He uses his tongue to clean some of it. Good thing he can still muster up enough moisture to spit.
Zekiel’s wincing, silent save for a few small squeaks.
“Sorry,” he gives it one last lick, “no gel.”
“Thank you.”
He sits down with a heavy sigh, his armour suddenly an unbearable burden on his limbs. “So how much time do you think we’ve got?”
Zekiel edges closer, tucking his mandibles and pushing with his good arm. “Long as we want. War is over.”
He shakes his head, bemused. You sad thing. What did you do? What did it do to you?
But what comes out of his mouth is: “I just never thought it would end - never thought we’d end like this.”
“How’d you think it would end?”
He reaches beneath Zekiel’s arms and pulls him into a sitting position, putting himself between Zekiel’s back and the crumbling wall. “Well,” he says, “I’d like the victory feast, for starters. Roasted meat, you know, and pastries topped with glazed fruits. And a nice, cool glass of Airijah tea on the side. Stick some fancy garnish on top.”
Zekiel coughs. “Beside the fountain?”
“No.” He’s tired and he leans into the crook of Zekiel’s neck and yes, beneath all that dust and sweat and Reaper tech he smells as sweet as before. “Somewhere private. Maybe a tent, maybe a … a home.”
“Home,” Zekiel rumbles; he feels the tremors through the hand supporting his keel. The patterns of green lightning quicken their pulse and he has to close his eyes for a moment. If only he can unsee it, if only he can undo it.
“Too much to ask?”
Zekiel chuckles, and coughs again, clutching his neck. “I’ll settle just for the tea.”
“You sure about that?” He rubs Zekiel’s mandible with his mouth - warm, smooth, melting with the copper paths - and nips it.
“No.” Zekiel leans back against his shoulder. “Can’t be sure about anything anymore.” A pause, a quiet breath. “I’m sorry.”
And as Zekiel falls silent, Corvus thinks about the bomb. He thinks about the detonator, lost in the blast, and the on-site backup, with its two levels of passcodes and twelve seconds of countdown. He thinks about the yield and the blast radius. He thinks about the men and women who made it, who delivered it to the resistance, who died on the way to hurling it against a Reaper.
He thinks about how much it weighs, and how the monstrosity in his arms weighs about the same.
--
Reply
Corvus is examining his radio. Nothing broken, as far as he can tell, and he was the back-up tech. Still no word from Command, or from the other teams. They must be out of range; the Reaper’s not jamming. Guess they’ll have to haul their sorry asses back to base after the mission if they want to find out what the heck is going on.
The bomb is still there, judging by a cautionary ping in its general direction. He has a pistol with two clips and a sniper rifle with one. Those should get him to the Reaper. Maybe even back.
And if they can’t?
The power’s running too low for his omni. He fiddles with the feed controls. The adjustments are accompanied by large, bold print: WARNING. SHIELDS COMPROMISED.
You know the drill. Save the last shot.
The chest piece he’s laid out to collect water is three-quarters full. He takes a sip. Not bad for acid rain. Grimacing at the aftertaste, he walks back indoors.
“Wake up,” he says.
Reply
Tremendously done.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment