He hit the steel fire door with the force of a charging bull, and as it slammed shut it threw the three cross fusers backwards onto the stairwell landing. As they rose to their feet, the room beyond echoed with a series of volcanic booms, holes appearing in the door as gunfire punched through it in quick succession, forcing them to draw back into the previous stairwell for cover. As the shots subsided, Ben's voice called out from the other side. "You can't go this way, keep to the stairwell."
"Ben?" Meiru called in surprise, running to the door. She pushed on it, but it would only budge a few inches before hitting something, refusing to move. "Ben, are you ok?"
"There's a gunner virus in here, if you open that door he'll blast you apart." Ben strained to keep his voice level, "just keep going."
"Some of us are cross fused," Enzan placed a hand on the door, "we'll give you backup, and we'll all get out together."
"JUST GO!" Ben's voice cracked in desperation. Enzan glanced down, noticing a trickle of red as it oozed from under the door. He grabbed the others and started down the stairs, ignoring them as they tried to go check on their friend. On the other side of the ruined door, Ben lay slumped against it, blood flowing from the numerous holes the gunner had created. With nowhere to go after hitting the door, he'd stood there, taking the hail of fire into his body. Now, as his systems began to fail, he could only bow his head and wait for death.
The gunner hummed softly, preparing to fire again. Irritated, Ben brought his arm up; "Slot five, Crush Cannon battlechip, activate." The air around his hand shimmered, and a powerful blast of energy exploded from his palm, disintegrating the virus and blasting a massive hole through the outside wall of the building. Suddenly his arm started hissing and sparking, then finally exploding as the hardware fused. As the smoke cleared, Ben looked down at the sparking stump. "Wow, I guess American technology really is shoddy," he laughed bitterly.
Sighing in exhaustion, he reached into his ruined jacket, slipping a folded picture from his inside pocket; Meiru, smiling and laughing. She'd been too busy with Lan and Dekao to notice when he snapped the picture; it had only been his second day in her class, but he had already known how strongly he felt for her. But, all things considered, it was better to have ended this way. "Atleast . . . atleast I got to save your life. That counts for something, right?" he asked the picture, not expecting an answer.
Floors above, Ben dimly registered the shuddering boom that signified the fifteenth floor's implosion. The building was coming down, but atleast she was safe. Alone in the shattered hallway, he stopped fighting his heart and let his emotions go, crushing the photograph in his fist as crystal tears flowing down his bloody cheeks in hot rivulets. An eternity passed until the wounds stopped bleeding, his heart grinding to a halt due to a lack of blood to circulate; his tears stopped soon afterward.
He floated in an empty void, unseeing, unfeeling, aware of nothing but the swiftly dying thrum of his heart as it drew toward its inexorable stop. Once the soft pulse stopped, he opened his icy eyes to the void, staring into the whiteness as it began to engulf him. The haze touched his metal fingertips, and as he watched, the prosthesis instantly started to rot away into rust, a fate he imagined befell his artificial leg as well. Wherever the mist touched his flesh, it grew cold, and a numbness flooded his body. He was dissolving, losing himself into death.
"No . . ." he struggled weakly in the void, images panning through his eyes. "No . . . I am not ready . . ." He could feel himself slipping away, his memories fading away. He could no longer remember his mother's face. "No! Somebody . . . somebody help me!" Faces kept vanishing, and with each one, his voice grew weaker, more willowy, as if it were fading with the rest of him. "It cannot end this way!" Younger faces were disappearing now; who was the fat kid in class? He swore he should remember him, with his stupid haircut. "I want to live!" All that was left was the red-haired angel, her eyes smiling on him. He clung to the memory, gave up every memory, every scrap of being, to hang onto the sweet sound of her name as it fell from his lips for the last time. " . . . Meiru . . ."
Oblivion licked at his face, an alien, feathery touch that caressed his flesh like some living thing, before slowly beginning to recede. Nothingness lapped at the last bits of Benjamin Bradt, like waves on a sandy beach, and slowly he began to feel again. Something was there, and as it came nearer he tried valiantly to scream. His voice was mute in the oppressive void; his eyes would have bulged in their sockets if he'd had them.
It was pain; that first thing that returned to him. As if his flesh had been replaced with fire, and his nerves cursed with immortality, all of his existence was a searing agony that blinded his fear with suffering. Existence began to explode around him, the sudden howl of his agonized scream drowned out by the oppressive cadence of reality as it hammered him with crashing waves of force; metrical blasts of sound smashed repeatedly against him as he fell, slamming into a hard, cold surface that offered him no respite against the onslaught. His eyes rolled in his head as they were bombarded with rapid explosions of light. Someone kicked him in the ribs and he groaned, rolling away. The pain began to subside, although the war against his senses continued. The world outside of his battered senses stopped existing, a dull noise building in his ears, culminating in one harmonious proclamation:
EVERYBODY'S FREE . . .
His eyes flew open as the music exploded around him, the sounds becoming distinct as his eyes adjusted to the light. He was in a rave, with sweaty bodies dancing around where he lay, prone on the floor. Someone tripped over him again, stomping on his ribs, and he groaned as he rose to his feet. People danced around him, oblivious to his presence, gyrating in ecstatic celebration of life. He felt like screaming himself, both shocked and elated to find himself alive, although he wasn't sure why; everything in his mind was blurry and disjointed, hard to recall, but for some reason he was sure he was supposed to be dead. Someone plowed into him, their bottle of water splashing in his face, and he irritatedly shoved them away as he started for the edge of the dance floor. He grabbed the railing and leaned on it as he ascended the stairs, feeling weak from whatever ordeal had brought him there, and staggered out of the rave.
As he opened the warehouse doors the night rushed to embrace him, the salty sea air blowing his unkempt hair back, the cool breeze kissing his face. The signs around him were in English, something else that shocked him, as he felt that he was supposed to be somewhere else. "It's so confusing," Ben groaned into his hands as he rubbed his bleary eyes, "What the hell happened to me?" Beneath the black leather gloves, his metal prosthetic was hard and cool, and he removed the glove and pressed the steel palm to his sweaty face. He walked across the nearby street and leaned against the railing, staring out into the green waters of the Pacific Ocean, a great orange bridge dominating the water before him. "Oh my God, that's the Golden Gate Bridge?!" He gaped in surprise, "I'm in California! How did I?" He stepped back, staring in surprise at the skyline of his home town.
"What the hell is going on?" A loud honking hit his ears, and as he turned, he saw a city bus hurtling down on him. Behind the windshield, the driver stared in horror at the young man he was hurtling towards, his mouth open in a muffled scream. His legs refused to move, and as he stared mutely at the steel missile coming towards him, he inwardly screamed in terror. God Dammit, I'm going to die again!