Those Who Lived Through Today
Part 4 in the Tomorrow Series
"James!" Maya commanded "We must go. This is our last chance!"
"This is the last chance I have to be with Jessi!" James yelled at her, fat tears mixing with the dirt on the concrete.
Jessi's naked body stirred beside him.
"James...go...there is no point staying here," she hissed.
She closed her eyes.
"James!" Maya screamed.
The scream shook James's heart. He'd never heard Maya raise her voice. It was something that sounded so unnatural, so out of place and wrong.
The door to the room of dying Members flew open.
There were four Team Rocket Members armed with handguns staring at him.
James drew his weapon, aiming it at the one on the left.
A shot sounded near him.
He whipped his neck around. The stray bullet had hit a body behind him, blood draining from its chest.
"Run James. Keep moving." Maya intoned, rushing towards the Members.
They split into groups of two, going after James and Maya in separate duos.
James found it hard to remember much else as he fought...he wasn't thinking necessarily. It was just instinct at work.
He knew that a lot of dead and dying bodies got ripped up. He knew Maya had killed three of the four men...he knew he had shot one...
But as he dropped to Jessi's side he was aware of nothing.
Maya strode over to them and knelt down too. "So this your friend," she said softly.
James nodded.
Jessi's eyes remained closed.
Maya smiled. "She's pretty,"
James gave her a funny look.
"I see what it is that you see in her, James," Maya said, gazing intensely at Jessi's relaxed face.
"See...in her?" James gasped "Huh...I...I don't know what...you mean..."
"Why you wanted to save her." Maya uttered bitterly. She fingered the trigger of her gun...then she raised it.
"Maya! No!" James shrieked.
But Maya wasn't going to kill Jessi. She raised the Uzi to her head...the barrel aligned with her right temple.
"Maya! No!" A sharper, harsher voice commanded in rage.
Maya's eyes widened in fright. An inaudible word passed through her lips.
James gawped at the new presence in the room.
It was Giovanni.
He was unarmed, looking seedier and shadier than ever in a red tailored suit.
James bent down and kissed Jessi's forehead, his lip getting scratched by the roughness of the scab. "This is for you, Jessi," he whispered.
"Foolish attachment," Maya cursed.
James felt ashamed...though why he didn't know...he just didn't like the idea of Maya thinking he was foolish and weak.
"Ah, James," Giovanni greeted with a menacing nod "I'm sorry I didn't get around to seeing you in the office the other day. Cassidy sends her love."
James shivered.
"And Maya," Giovanni addressed with false care. He was impervious to the death around him as he made his way to her.
He snatched the gun from her hands.
"You were going to kill yourself? How would that ever help your dear friends Jessi and James?" Giovanni turned to look at Jessi "Jessi," he snarled "You look lovely dear."
He kicked her in the ribs.
"Hey!" James yelled, his legs shaking "Leave Jessi alone!"
Giovanni tilted his head to get a good look at James. Then he kicked Jessi again. She groaned. "What exactly do you propose to do about it?" Giovanni snarled.
James flashed a look at Maya. She was as unemotional as ever. Jessi was possibly dead.
James may have been in a room full of people.
But he was alone.
For the first time he looked into himself for the answer, and he found it.
He slumped.
"Has young Maya introduced herself to you yet?" Giovanni asked snidely, baring his teeth in a false smile "I must say Maya, I thought that you were to shun all acts of attachment, and dare it be said, love,"
James shivered. He had no idea what was going on...
"But then again, Maya," Giovanni smiled "You are only human."
Maya straightened herself up, her face tight.
"What's happening?" James whispered.
"Maya?" Giovanni prompted.
Maya was silent.
Giovanni whipped forward and snatched the Uzi from her, holding it to her temple. "Tell him," Giovanni snarled.
"I was supposed to shun all acts of attachment and love," Maya spoke, slowly, unflinchingly "A wish that Giovanni has always had, you never desired to be a Crime Boss. It was the foolish love you had for your mother," Maya spat "That landed you in the position that you did not want."
James nodded, wrapping his bare arms around his waist.
Giovanni looked intensely more hateful, his trigger-finger trembling.
"But I did not. First I felt guilt, then attachment..." Maya breathed, now losing all confidence she had within her "Perhaps even as I lay beside you, love."
Tears again streamed down James's face...this was the first true confession of love he had ever witnessed. But...why didn't he...love her? James bit his lip, things were building up to a ridiculously high level...they'd crash to the ground any minute...
"Why did you feel guilty?" Giovanni demanded in a menacing hiss.
"I," Maya said softly "Am the disease. I'm sorry James. I wanted revenge, and then, you wanted to see Jessi once more before she died."
"Wha? Maya, please, what are you talking about?" James sobbed.
"My DNA is the disease. The anti-human strand, a backwards step, clotting blood, weakening skin, organs and bone." Maya spoke "And I am living with the guilt of a hundred deaths."
James's felt weak at knees...such pressure was unimaginable in his life.
"A guilt that I no longer have to live with," Maya snapped "Shoot me!"
James stepped forward, instinctively slapping a hand onto Giovanni's arm. "No Maya! You're strong...don't...do it!"
Giovanni shrugged James's light presence off of him. And then he shot Maya.
A thousand thoughts smashed through James's skull as he dropped to the floor. Everybody who was strong in his life was dead. His friends. Jessi, Meowth...Maya...the first person to really love him.
"Oh shit..." he whispered, his shoulders convulsing, his tired body wracked with painful sobs.
"James..." a hoarse whisper beckoned his attention "I love you..."
And then Jessi lay still, blood leaking from Maya's fatal wounds extending all the way to her body.
There was nobody left.
James was this time, truly alone.
He rose to his feet.
He raised the Desert Eagle.
And shot Giovanni in the head.
People always said that James the weak one, Jessibelle, his father, Cassidy and Butch, Giovanni, Maya...even Jessi and Meowth. But he was the strong one as he emerged from the darkness of the Rocket building.
The pain of the deaths tangled and deformed his mind and heart, but he had finally found the strength to live up to his words.
Even if no one had ever seen it.
Nobody ever saw him again either, perhaps he died, perhaps not. There was nobody left to care.
Without Giovanni, Team Rocket crumbled, fading away completely.
And without James, the world lived on, his inner courage dying before finding its message with the people.
Had it all been in vain? Or was the revenge he took just? Was it truly revenge, if Maya was the virus? All James asks is that you think it over. Things never just end, there is speculation long after the flesh has corroded.
THE END