The graveyard
-Carolina-
It had been six months.
She wondered if he would be proud. He was always the one to tell her not to lose her head. He told her to keep her cool. Then she would yell, and he would take the abuse and make a joke. Then everything would be fine. She knew he would have been against her killing the director but…
When she heard he had been killed. She just…
"York"
She dropped to her knees on his grave and placed new flowers on it. Like she did every Monday. York liked Mondays. She could never understand, no one understood. But York liked Mondays. They asked him about it once in a pelican on the way to a mission and he simply smiled and said "everyone hates Mondays, I don't want Monday to feel left out." No one else could understand the explanation, but Carolina understood.
Before York she was always hiding in the corner. She was good but she was hated by all the freelancers for her temper and solitary nature. Until York got bored of her act and pulled her into a better light. All of a sudden she found she was earning respect from her men through York and she could lead them on missions.
She stood up and heard a voice behind her.
"Hey Carolina" The speaker put stress on every single letter and made it sound distorted and perverted. She really didn't feel like talking to him right now though.
She spun on her heels and punched for his face. But to her surprise her hand was swatted to the side and a hand was place on her throat. The hand exerted slight pressure and then fell away.
"You haven't been keeping up with your training"
"And you are still training every day?"
"I miss the old days sometimes"
She looked the dark skinned man up and down. He was bald now, his eyes were bright and he was built, broad shouldered and in a suit. This was not the same Tucker she had met at Valhalla.
"You still miss him."
Tucker was one of the few people she had told. Aside from Wash and Epsilon.
"No. Not at all. He was a soldier on the run; I knew it would happen eventually."
"You don't miss him"
"No"
"Even though you dug his grave yourself"
"Yes"
"And come on his favourite day of the week every week to lay flowers"
"I'm fine"
"And you haven't done any training in six months"
"Since when were you so good at arguing."
"Since you gave me delta"
"How is he?"
"That's why I came to see you"
"We have a problem"
"A big one"
-Tucker-
It was Sarges idea. After what happened he took leadership over the remaining red and blue forces and had them assembled at Valhalla. Now all he needed were the soldiers most key to the director's downfall.
Tucker checked his list.
He had done Grif, (who had not responded well. And refused to come). Simmons, (he said he would come when he could but he needed to help Wash, adjust). And Caboose. Caboose agreed when he found out that he could see Church again.
Now all he had to do was see Carolina.
He had saved that for last.
It wasn't that he didn't want to see her but he knew where she would be and he didn't have time to wait for tomorrow. So he went to the graveyard. To speak to Carolina.
It was a quiet day in Valhalla, they were doing nothing, and Wash was running training exercises. Caboose was learning the alphabet and Tucker was looking for a new rock.
Then the shouting began. Lopez came out firing at a blue clad figure that was running and performing the most acrobatic of feats. Sarge was seen flying through the air on a grave lift and landed right in front of her. (And yes it was a girl. Tucker knew. Tucker always knew). She spun around and kicked Lopez's DMR out of his hands. But Sarge simply fired his shotgun and her shoulder was caught by the spray of bullets. Her armour flashed and the shields absorbed the blow but at such close range she was thrown forward onto her face. Sarge placed a foot on her back and radioed on the blue team open channel. "Hey fellas. You won't believe what found us!" His voice was urgent. Tucker was walking. Yes walking. Why. Cause fuck running. Wash however was running, he reached the place where Sarge and the reds where subduing the unknown soldier when Tucker saw him drop his gun and almost faint. From how he was standing Tucker guessed that Wash would be wetting the bed again. This time though he would get Caboose to clean the mess.
-Wash-
"Carolina, what the hell are you doing here! This is what!"
"Nice to see you too wash. Now get these idiots to let me go"
"But how did the reds, manage to capture you!"
"Maine. He took my armour abilities and A.I. It's been much harder ever since."
He saw Tucker arriving. "Well nice of you to join us Private Tucker"
"Yeah well I was on my way. You know. Running and then I saw this leaf. And it was there. Like it was a leaf and it was just there! Doing nothing"
"What are you talking about?"
"Stalling for time so that you stop caring about punishing me"
Carolina looked at Tucker. "That sounds familiar"
"You still haven't answered my question Carolina" wash said pointedly. "What. Are you doing here?"
"I've got revenge on my mind and I need all of your help to do it."
-Carolina-
She agreed to go with him. She didn't know why. But she did. He led her to his car and she got in. They drove to the airport; she looked at the shops and the houses. Everything looked so normal. So, non-warn torn. They reached the airport and got out. She followed Tucker to the nearest Pelican, it had no pilot.
"Um. Who is flying?"
"I am."
Tucker, as it turned out, was only a learner pilot and so it took them a very long and bumpy ride to get to Valhalla. Where Sarge made his new base of operations.
When she saw the canyon it looked different to when she last saw it. It was repaired. Mostly. You could barely tell that there had been a massive battle six months ago in that very canyon. There was something else about it though. Like the fact that it was full of armed soldiers wearing red and blue armour... But, there were less, much less then she remembered. They had tents everywhere. But of course the red and blue bases where deserted. An honour to those who had died in defence of those two very buildings. This place had a lot of bad memories. They landed next to three other pelicans. They were missing quite a few ships as well.
But they did have tanks. That was new.
"As you can see, we've got the bug guns now. Bowchikabow" Tucker smiled at her and she gave him a look of indifference. Very few people could actually get Carolina to smile. Tucker was one of them, but was not getting any today. The other one…
"Ahh, Tucker good to see you again."
The booming gruff voice which, despite being almost 70 years old, blasted the entire canyon came from behind them.
"Hey Sarge, watsup!"
"Hey, where are the rest of my men. You probably killed them to try and get a promotion. You no good lousy BLUE!"
"Hey, Sarge." Carolina interjected. "How can you expect to help lead the combined forces of red and blue if you still hate the blues? And. If tucker wanted to kill people to gain rank why didn't he kill me? Seeing as I'm third in command."
"I would like to rectify some of those statement and answer the rest. Firstly, I don't help lead them. I do lead them. Secondly, the blues are evils, third Tucker wouldn't kill you, and finally you're second in command."
"I'm gonna need a few explanations"
"Right this way"
They headed of into the command tent. There were some chairs placed around the room and they took their seats. There were several empty seats. For the guys who were supposed to come.
"Alright Tucker where are the rest?"
Tucker gave his explanation and then they listened to Sarge rant and shout about the evil blues and lazy stupid Grif and Washington needing to get over himself."
"Lopez! Get in here!"
Lopez arrived and sat at his chair. Sarge sat down. Still furious.
"Okay. Said Tucker. Maybe I should explain, until Sarge calms down."
"You do that"
-Tucker-
"Alright then. Tell me what you remember from our last ahh meeting."
Tucker looked at Carolina expectantly.
"Well" she answered. "We gathered up the red and blue forces. All the soldiers left behind after freelancer. They all wanted revenge on the director. And so all of a sudden. We had an army. Then we freed epsilon from the memory unit and he implanted in me. So I could access my armour abilities again. Then we prepared to draw the director out and Church had the idea of how to do just that. He figured it out. He used his memories to unlock the other A.I. fragments and they were released. Then he tried to complete the task but… it failed. We used the A.I. to draw the director and his forces out anyway. Then we fought them and we won. The Meta showed up, we beat him back too. The end."
"Not quite." Tucker replied
"What do you mean? Not quite"
"Church has sort of left us now. He became the bad guy."
"What? That makes no sense"
"He lost his mind when he did it."
"Wait you mean he found a way?"
"It just happened by accident a few weeks ago. He absorbed the A.I. fragments and it worked."
"He rebuilt the Alpha"
-Carolina-
"The director has been screwing with our lives since we started with the project"
"Trying to find him is suicide."
The reds, blues and two freelancers were in the blue base. She explained the situation to them, they had they're doubts, some argued, she was met with resistance but they gave up on arguing her. But for the last half an hour it had just been Wash and Carolina yelling at each other.
"After the fall of freelancer he pulled all his soldiers including former freelancers out from the military for his own private militia"
"And so we fight our way past them. We've been trained for years on how to do this. Grow some fucking balls Agent Washington!"
"You haven't changed a bit since freelancer"
"That had better be a compliment"
"No, it's not" wash said this in such a matter of fact voice Carolina almost took a step back. No one ever spoke back to her. No one ever insulted her. "You were so confident of your abilities, you over estimated yourself. You almost got us killed a few times! Why, just why are you so arrogant!"
"Arrogant?" Carolina's voice dropped low. It was steady.
"arrogant." She repeated. This time it was a statement.
-Wash-
Back during training he spent most of his time training with Maine. He had been punched with some of the large freelancer's most powerful blows.
When Carolina hit him he wished he was getting beat up by Maine again.
God it hurt. Her fist caught him in the jaw. He flew back and smashed against the wall. His head collided with the side and everything went black.
-Tucker-
It was the first time he didn't want to make a comment about a hot woman.
And Carolina was as hot as they came. But he saw what she did to Wash and he was scared and impressed. He was never truly impressed by Tex and never this scared. No Tex when she was mad was actually quite comical, but Carolina. He did not want to mess with her.
"Well" He spoke up. "I'm no fan of the director or the freelancers, I mean because of them I had to deal with C.T. And of course Wash doesn't like the plan. So I'm in.
-Carolina-
"Wait, wait." She was completely amassed.
"We tried to rebuild the alpha, it was impossible it didn't work."
"Well". Tucker replied "he came out of the base one day. In his robotic body and we tried to speak to him. Usual routine, say hi. But he just stared at us. The body fell down and the A.I. was just standing in its place, but I wasn't like, the cobalt that it usually was. No it was pure sapphire. I tried to ask Delta but then realised he wasn't in my head anymore. Then these pictures and memories started flashing in my head. But they formed words. He spoke through the memories."
Carolina followed every word he said. What he described was monstrous.
"He just repeated, I am the alpha, I have returned. And then he went berserk. He possessed a soldier and started killing things, we gunned down the soldier. Our own man and then he just possessed another, and another the vehicles went crazy and started working by themselves and the drove over us. The tanks blew us to pieces. We called for a retreat. Luckily Church got bored cause he just left. Haven't seen him since"
Carolina was amassed. First off, Church was a horrible shot, how the hell was he able to kill people. The second. "Why did he go crazy?"
"I have godly idea!" Sarge bellowed in his usual angry voice, he would have made a good Omega.
"He had his own room and no one was allowed to wake him up. And Caboose was on the other side of the world." Tucker explained.
"And exactly what is our plan." She looked both of them in the eyes, even though they were on opposite ends of the room.
"Our plan" tucker began
"OUR PLAN IS TO GET AND ARMY AND KILL THAT DIRTY BLUE BASTARD ONCE AND FOR ALL!" Sarge hadn't changed a bit.
"We are going to do this by" tucker paused "being desecrate. Are doing know where he is so we've pulled as many people from our old team as we can."
Carolina looked around; aide from herself there was Sarge, Tucker and Lopez.
"There are four of us."
"Yes well we expected more people to remember the good old days but that does not gonna happen. So…"
"We work with what we got"
-Tucker-
Carolina could always kick his ass. He remembered back when he had first asked her to teach him. She had a greed and was impatient with his slow learning. Now she hadn't kept up with her training in six months, so she was out of shape and not the fighter she used to be. So, while Sarge was getting they're forces ready and trying to find the alpha, it would be his job to train her.
She launched a kick at his face but it was slow and he swatted it away, she lost her balanced and he took the opportunity to move in and sink his fist into her side, just below the ribs. She clashed with the ground and the fight was over in seconds.
"Fuck. I out of practice."
"That's what I'm here for. Now I want three laps around the canyon." Then the part he really enjoyed "MOVE!"
He watched her run laps around the canyon and couldn't help admiring her. She was gorgeous, he remembered Sister, and turned away from Carolina. Wiping a tear from his eye.
They continued in this pattern for about two weeks. They would wake up early and go for a run around the canyon. Then it was weapons training, vehicle training and hand to hand combat. Tucker was always looking to improve himself these days but Carolina was just flying ahead. Back to her old ways. She beat him in their races, had better aim, kicked his ass a few times, but she still didn't have the killer instinct she used to. When he looked into her eyes they were so soft, so fragile. He remembered how hard they used to be. (Bowchikabowow) he thought.
It was night, and Tucker was out on a hill looking into the sea. He hated this place; he didn't know why he stayed. He had promised that he would…
"Tucker"
He turned around, almost pissing himself. It was Carolina. She was wearing her fatigues, like always. Her long red hair hadn't been cut in a while and had grown all the way down to her lower spine, just above the hips. He hadn't noticed it before, he then remembered he was looking a little lower than her back when he saw her.
"Nice hair"
"Thanks, but I think I should cut it"
"No, it looks beautiful"
"something's are more important than how I look, my hair keeps getting in the way, plus when I finally get my armour the hair won't fit in the helmet."
"Why did you let it go long?"
"After York, I… I guess I just stopped looking after myself."
"Oh right sorry… so um what are you doing up this late?"
"I couldn't sleep"
"Really, Carolina doesn't have trouble sleeping"
"She does now" Carolina replied scathingly. "I came to tell you, I'm ready"
"Ready"
"Yes, we've been on our asses doing all this training, and we are no closer to finding Church. Put me in the field"
"I... uh... what"
"Don't start with me now Tucker; I've been kicking your ass for the last five days now. I want in!"
(Bowchikabowwow) he thought
"Look it's not just the fighting, it"
"IT'S WHAT!" she turned towards him and glared at him, but as he suspected it was a soft glare
He stood up and looked her in the eye. And for the first time ever Carolina backed down.
"Just, just forget it" she stormed off.
"OW, SON OF A BITCH"
A painful shout brought Tucker out his sleepy dreams; he looked down and saw a red trooper on his back. Two others attacked the first assailant and they were quickly repelled and beaten down. Sarge came sprinting out at the person and attacked the assailant himself. His fist went straight for the persons face; the person grabbed his wrist and threw him to the ground. He jumped up and his fists and feet were sent in a flurry against his opponent. All of which were repelled effortlessly. Sarge took single blow to the chest and he crumpled to the ground.
Tucker had been observing this coolly. Carolina, her hair cut back to its original length and in a ponytail, walked away from the four downed reds.
She glared at him so hard he stopped in his tacks and almost fainted with fear.
"They were hitting on me so I returned the favour."
Carolina was back.
-Carolina-
They spent about half an hour in the command tent, it wasn't hard to put they're plan together. They had narrowed Church's location to three places.
Blood gulch
The mother of invention
Snowbound
They were to separate into three groups. One lead by Carolina one by tucker and one by Sarge.
She knew the Mother of invention the best so she would lead that party. Tucker would head to snow bound and Sarge to blood gulch.
She walked slowly to her pelican. The soldiers under her command were taking terrified steps back. They had all seen her display earlier and it appeared that they didn't want to cross her. She stepped into the pelican and an arm grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. It was Tucker.
"Sarge wanted me to remind you that after arrival at your destination you need to update your status on the common channel every half hour. We have no idea of what is going on here. So we are not going to go into this blind and without backup."
She looked at him, then turned away and got back into her ship. Her soldiers were already in there. "Pilot!" she called. "Let's get going" she turned around and watched the ground as it got further and further away. She put her helmet on and addressed her team.
-Sarge-
Sarge was disappointed in Tucker. Most times he was a fairly decent leader and as a fight was invaluable to him. But now with Carolina back, Tucker was acting like a love struck puppy. The idiot had been putting off they're attacks on Church's possible locations for two weeks because he was worried for her safety. He was also furious that Tucker had her sent to the mother of invention. A ship they knew was deserted; she should be going to blood gulch. They knew for a fact there was a huge enemy presence in the area and they needed their best fighters in the fray. "God dammit Tucker. Come on Lopez, let's saddle up!" Lopez grunted in Spanish and Sarge smiled that the complement that he was certain Lopez's Spanish could be loosely translated into.
He grabbed his shotgun and walked towards his own pelican. Aright boys this is the plan" he bellowed at his men. "The first to drop ships, not carrying any vehicles will land at red base; we fan out and hold a position. I want demo teams in grifs old room to blow it to pieces and snipers moving up onto the cliff sides. Once that position is established the other pelicans will drop in with the tanks and warthogs"
"Excuse me sir!"
Sarge looked at the young private.
"Yes what is it blue?"
"I don't think those cars look like warthogs"
Sarge couldn't believe what he was hearing
"I think it looks like a puma sir"
-Tucker-
He stared at Carolinas departing pelican.
"Excuse me sir"
He turned around and saw a big boobed blond private looking at him. He sighed, there was once a time when he would have hit on her but… ah what the hell
"Hey baby, I am your commanding officer. My name is tucker"
"Sir if you weren't my commanding officer"
"It's ok girl, don't let rank come between us"
"Thank you sir" she kicked him in the nuts and walked away
Recovery one and number one
Wash
Wash woke up and sat up slowly. His head had never hurt that much, "god so this is what hangover are like" he had never gotten very drunk before, he was the "good boy" of the freelancer program and as such had never gone out to a party with the others, Maine, north York. They would always come back drunk as hell, and had good stories to tell, if they got someone's number, a blowjob in the bar, Maine would often come back with a thong in his hand grinning triumphantly. But not him, not agent Washington. Because even though he wouldn't get laid for his first year and a half in freelancer his test scores were higher than theirs on those days. He didn't know how they managed to out rank him, but they did. He hated them; he hated each and every one of them.
Wash got up slowly and walked out to the briefing room. There he saw Caboose in the corner huddled in fear, tucker was leaning over a table with a black eye Sarge had a bandage over his head, Grif and Simmons were unconscious and Carolina was explaining the mission to them with a superior smirk on her face.
He didn't want to know what happened. "Okay fine lina, I'm in"
Carolina
Tucker was a relatively nice person. Not really he was a massive asshole. And when she told him about the death of Kakiana Grif had died he tried to kill her. He pulled out a gun and she had to remove it from him. Then when he refused to give up she punched him in the face. What surprised her was that she got up again. Despite the fact that he took a blow just as strong as the one that floored wash he still got up again. She was impressed.
Now they were discussing the mission. They needed to find church, they had to kill church. And the best way to do that was to free epsilon.
"Okay so do you understand the plan now Sarge?"
"What was phase one again?"
"Get in the cars and drive out of the canyon"
"Oh right. What about after that?"
"Drive to the UNSC storage base"
"And after that"
Carolina faceplamed herself. "Then we fight through the base and free epsilon."
"And wh..."
Luckily for Sarge Wash walked in at that he became the object of her anger, she glared at him.
"Agent Washington"
"Agent Carolina"
"Dickhead"
"Don't hurt me"
She smiled; wash was a wimp among the freelancers, even every way. She remembered one of the nights when they went out to the bar. She smiled and remembered when she let York take Jell-O shots off her stomach. Maine was really jealous. And it pissed the hell out of Wash.
Tucker
He stared at the table. Looking over the plans, or at least that's what he was pretending to do, the reflective table gave him a perfect view of Carolina. God she was beautiful, not sexy in the way that the others girls he had seen were. Not the way that sister…he stopped thinking for a second. He couldn't think bout her, no, he couldn't.
"Alright" Carolinas sharp voice woke him from his day dream. "We are leaving the canyon in the morning. Rest up, patch up your wounds. We will not be delayed"
Wash
He watched them take their orders and walk out of the base; he had been trying to get them to do what he said since they had returned to the base. He had single handily held the reds off from their base on multiple occasion but he couldn't do it on his own. But Carolina arrived, beat them all senseless, took command and no on dared disagree. He saw the others leave, and Carolina was still there.
"David"
Her use of his real name stunned him.
"You were in the recovery force right?"
"Yes I was"
He had been dreading this, as she had gone off the grid she probably wouldn't know the truth. He knew that she wanted to know if he had taken care of him. She wanted to know if York was dead.
"Have, you seen," her voice broke
"He's dead Carolyn. He's dead"
Hallucinations
Tucker
The pelicans were flying steady, six heavy armoured transports falling through the air without ever actually crashing. Then it came into view, snowbound. The last time he had been there the Meta was beating the holy shit out of them and it took a warthog being pushed off a cliff to stop it. That wasn't the only difference, the pelican he was in had a pilot that wasn't shit this time.
As he thought this the pelican landed smoothly and the warthogs and tanks were detached, the soldiers barrelled out without much of a clue what they would do, Tucker just told them to stay with the tanks and try not to die.
They took their positions and looked around. Nothing. The area was covered in snow and the old freelancer facility was still there but otherwise, nothing.
"Alright! Spread out and set up a perimeter. I need a warthog"
Three soldiers jumped out of the jeep they had occupied and he climbed into the driver seat, and took off cautiously towards the base.
He pulled up outside the base and got out. He checked his ammo and went to the door. It was still busted from when Tex broke in. He smiled at the thought and stepped through the doorway…silence…he took a step forward….and leapt to the side narrowly avoiding a bullet aimed at his head.
"Jesus Christ!"
He rolled behind a wall and spun out of cover firing on his assailant. A person in brown armour ran towards him. He stepped out and emptied his clip into the person's body. And the body disappeared.
"Shit a hologram"
A foot founds it way into his back and he fell to the floor.
"Wanna explain what you're doing here Lav?"
He hated it when she called him that. He stood up and stared at the pistol aimed at his face, at the brown masked evil bitch named Illinois.
"What the hell are you doing here Ill?"
The last time he had seen her she was escaping the mother of invention with an arm missing and no eyebrows. He looked her up and down now and saw that she was still scary as hell, still gorgeous and had a robot arm, and still
"I see your eyebrows never grew back"
She glared at him
"What are you doing here?" he repeated his question
"I" she put heavy stress on the word, he knew that she didn't expect him to come out of this alive.
"Will be delivering your head to the alpha and he will reward me with the power and soldiers I deserve. Finally I will have my own command"
Tucker sighed, this was so sad. He turned around slowly and started walking away from her.
"Hey where do you think you going?"
She walked right up to him and stuck her gun in his back, as she did it he stamped with a heel on her ankle and pivoted on his heels and slapped the gun away and elbowed her in the nose. The gun fell to the floor and he kicked it away. He pulled out his pistol and pointed it at her head, but she was already rolling out the way of his bullet and she took cover and pulled out her own side arm, a smg, and began firing in his general direction. He leapt to the side and returned fire with the handgun. But very soon it ran out of ammo. He knew hers would as well but she was probably advancing on him now. He knew what to do; Delta had told him that the energy shield would never work without an AI. So he did the one thing he knew could save him.
"This is Private Tucker broadcasting on an open channel"
A flash of pain seared through his body. It wasn't a bullet it wasn't a knife. It was worse.
Memories flooded through him like a tsunami. Words and pictures and feelings and emotions from his past were thrown on him at once and they began to form words. Each word invoking a different emotion. He was going to through up, it was maddening.
MY NAME IS ALPHA. AND I AM HERE TO KILL YOU PRIVATE TUCKER!
He knew Church would take over any second so he had to act fast. He rolled out and activated the energy shield. The strength generated by the alpha pushed the shield out making it bigger than it was supposed to be. It slammed into Illinois and threw her into a wall. She recovered quickly and ran at him with her combat knife drawn, desperate for blood. He pulled himself together for one more second and sidestepped the knife as it arched towards his head, he grabbed Illinois shoulders and spun her face first into a wall and as she began to fall back he rammed his sword up and into her.
Before he passed out he was able to get in at least one last. "Bowchikabowwow"
NOW DIE!
Then everything went black.
And the blood poured out
Carolina
Three pelicans docked with the ruined carcass of the mother of invention. The hanger was ruined and falling to pieces. She stepped out of her pelican cautiously. She put a foot on the ground, and froze. A minute went past, two minutes. She would have remained there longer but a rather stupid Private tripped over his own feet and fell out of the ship and onto the floor. The ship held, she sighed, put her helmet on and jumped to the ground.
She looked around and began barking orders
"I want this done quickly so we can get out of here and go help the others!"
The soldiers all climbed out and stood at attention.
"Three teams sweeping the north side of the ship and three teams on the south. Two of you come with me and the rest stay here and hold the hanger."
They followed their orders straight away, not out of a standard discipline but out of fear of the red headed bitch in light blue.
She ignored them and walked out of the hanger and into the main corridor. She turned and walked towards the south. The two soldiers behind her were whispering, probably about her, she paid no attention, focused on getting to the elevator.
When eventually they reached it they could see it was very broken. "Stay here" she didn't look at her men but she was sure they were relieved. She sighed and sent a powerful kick at the elevator door and it buckled. She frowned and kicked it again. The door fell away and down the shaft. She stepped into the door way and jumped onto the opposite wall and began scaling the elevator shaft.
She eventually reached the top and kicked away from the wall and slammed into the mostly broken door of the shaft, the door gave way and she hit the floor on the other side. She looked up and saw the bridge before her. To her left was the leader board, now broken and shattered. She could still see one of the names on it blinking.
3: York
The sight of York's name troubled her. It shouldn't but it did. She stood up and walked towards the viewing platform. The director could often be seen standing there staring into space. He would just stand there and stare, unmoving. She walked slowly towards it. And she stared out to the desert around it. Nothing but sand.
A hand was placed on her shoulder. She spun around and struck out at her opponent a perfect strike, faster than anything she had ever done before. Her fist collided with her assailants face, she saw the person wearing a domed helmet, like the one Maine used to wear, but this wasn't Maine. She watched as the glass on the man's visor cracked and he fell backwards.
But he wasn't alone.
The solider standing behind the first assailant raised his gun and pointed it at Carolina.
And fired.
The bullet struck her in the gut, her armour doing nothing to stop it tearing through her flesh and making a bloody mess of her insides.
She gasped.
And everything stopped
She fell to her knees
Everything flashed before her
She felt sick
She was going to vomit
Oh the pain
Everything spun around her
She couldn't think
She saw York's face
His broken eye
And tucker
His caring smile
His soft kisses
The day he told her he loved her
Her mind snapped back to the present when she heard the sound of a single gunshot, she could recognise it as a sniper round from a heavily modified weapon. She knew who it belonged to but… he should be dead, Tex killed him and the reds and blues killed him. Tucker shot him in the head once. Then she remembered what he had done.
He had taken everything from her.
She fell to the floor and was able to see one more thing before her vision faded. Her assailant falling to the floor with a sniper round in his head, and a white boot stepping over him without any caring or compassion for the man he just executed. She closed her eyes just wishing it would all end.
And the blood poured out