Denouement
Diego laid Caduceus down on a bench in the garden after checking that all of the other aliens were in the house. .05 used a garment he had snatched from the ship to use it to pillow Caduceus' head on the stone bench as Diego placed her facedown, so as not to put pressure on her back. He'd asked Diego to cut the pitiful remainder of her wings while she was unconscious.
"Caduceus, we're going in to kill the Director, okay?" .05 whispered to her as Diego sprinted off to the mansion.
Her eyes opened, and in one lucid moment, she said, "I'm really sorry, .05... for everything."
"It's all right," he whispered.
Her eyes dilated as his words finally registered in her brain. "No—the Director is powerful—something you could never conquer-"
She slipped off into a faint again.
.05 swallowed.
He got up, and then ran off towards the mansion, revolver in hand.
He did not look back.
.
.
.
He found the others crouching near a pile of alien bodies at the foot of the staircase. "Are we clear?" .05 whispered, and Space nodded.
"Where could the Director have gone?" Space muttered.
"It said something about 'Hargreeves' laboratory' right? Could it be the 'off limits' room on the third floor?" They all looked at Vanya as she spoke, and one by one nodded.
"That's the most logical place he could be in. " Space led the way to the stairs.
"Vanya, stay here," .05 heard Diego say.
"I won't," she said adamantly. "I'm done with standing by and waiting and worrying while you go and fight monsters. Just like in the old days." She said the last sentence in a whisper. The others were already mounting the stairs.
"Vanya, just stay here," .05 muttered. The two looked at him, both wearing looks of surprise. She nodded, and Diego and .05 went up the stairs together. "Thanks," Diego muttered.
"I know," .05 said in reply.
.
.
.
The third floor was the most mysterious of the floors in the manor. It was where Hargreeves lurked when he wasn't in his study, behind that 'off-limits' door. Even after he died, not one of his adopted children ventured there, certain that nothing their father ever did would amount to anything. But there they were, stepping lightly in front of the door.
They all looked at each other. There were clanking noises from inside. Then they all burst in.
The place was full of the Tall Green Men, and they looked surprised to see the Umbrella Academy there. .05 saw a big device on a platform high above them, and also saw the Director sitting there in its chair, helpless without appendages.
For the first five minutes, they had the upper hand. Space was punching aliens into pulp, Allison was dealing damage with her Rumoring, .05 was firing his gun with deadly accuracy. Even Séance, who wasn't as full of drugs as he usually was, caused heavy damage. Kraken was used to these situations, and disposed of the approaching aliens with his knife. And the alien crowds grew thinner...
That was the first five minutes. The Director turned the tables on them.
It affected Allison first. "I heard a rumor that those kind of weapons are useless on humans!" The weapons the aliens were brandishing didn't change, but-
And then there was the screaming pain in her head. She screamed, once, twice, thrice- and then Space was beside her. She hadn't noticed that she was curled up in pain on the floor, but then, the pain was too great that she was past noticing things like that.
"What is it-" Space started, then felt a stab of pain in his brain. He also fell to the floor, writhing in pain. Images flashed in his brain-
It was Séance next, screaming out swear words, then just screamed when his brain couldn't form coherent words anymore. Diego fell, too, not even trying to suppress his screams—the pain was too great.
But it was .05 that was most affected. He felt the agonizing pain, too—it was like flames, knives, ice, any torture imaginable was being applied to his brain. He fainted.
Through the haze of pain, he saw them. People he'd killed. Blood stained their clothes, contrasting horribly with a woman's pristine white gown, horribly dyeing a man's skin red. .05 felt the emotion—it was fear. He screamed as the people approached him, whispering malevolently...
From the platform high above, the Director's brain seemed to grin triumphantly.
.
.
.
Vanya started up the stairs, ice coursing through her veins. The screams sounded animal, but a moment ago she could have sworn it was human.
"Vanya, wait-!"
It was Caduceus. Her back was still tied with the bandage, but the bleeding had stopped, Vanya noted.
"Caduceus! How can you be up?" Vanya looked up as screams still tore the air.
"Genetically modified... can heal quickly... though I'm not fully healed yet... The Director's torturing them... let's hurry..."
They rushed up the stairs, Caduceus stumbling a little as pain tore through her back. On the second floor, Vanya silently picked a revolver up. This should be useful...
They had reached the forbidden door. Vanya reached for the knob as more agonized screams (if that was even possible) ripped the air.
"We won't be affected by the Director's brain, Vanya-" Caduceus kicked the door open, and they rain in to find total carnage everywhere.
The room was massive, resembling a space station.
"Diego!" Vanya rushed to Kraken, who was screaming out with his eyes open, thrashing on the floor. "God, what is it, Caduceus?"
"The Director's aiming at the most sensitive parts of the brain- .05!"
.05 was moving on the floor, screaming words out. "Don't—don't come near me! I'm not sorry for what I've done—Aah!" His cheeks were wet with tears. Caduceus instinctively moved toward him.
"Don't! Don't come near!" His eyes were wild, and he was foaming at the mouth. "You—I didn't kill you-"
"Jesus," Vanya whispered, seeing all her siblings laid out on the floor, screaming their throats hoarse.
".05." Caduceus crouched over his writhing form. She kept repeating the name, and touched his cheek.
"Aah! Aaaaaaahhh!" The pain was as white-hot, but as Caduceus' fingertips touched his cheek, the people faded, their voices faltered, the blood stopped trying to drown him.
".05," Caduceus whispered, leaning down and hugging him. He struggled weakly, still screaming.
"I...didn't..."
Caduceus' cheeks were wet by now, too. "It's me," she whispered, and his sub-conscious heard her, and drowned out the dead people's clamor in his mind. He felt her against him, smelled her hair.
"Caduceus," he said, his eyes trying to focus on her.
"Yeah," she whispered. "I love you," she said.
The pain ebbed, went back, waxed, waned... then he could feel no more. The melee of emotions left him. There was only love for this girl who had saved him.
Her eyes widened. "You're okay," she murmured. She had never seen anyone recover from the Director's hold on his mind that quick. "I have to kill the Director, " she said quietly.
"No... just... I..." .05 breathed deeply, eyes closed, panting from the exhaustion the Director's mind attacks had left him.
She understood what he was trying to say without reading his mind.
"I do, too." He lost consciousness, and she laid him gently on the ground. She approached the Kraken and pressed a hand to his forehead, and his screams stopped abruptly, falling asleep in Vanya's arms. She went around doing this, and finally the room was quiet. The two absorbed the tranquility.
But it was promptly shattered by the Director.
"Well, well. A little heroine now, eh?" It said, appearing on the platform. "Too late. The end of the human race is coming near—in seven minutes and counting, to be exact.
Ah. You have brought the useless Hargreeves girl, but not so useless... she's the White Violin, isn't she?" Vanya clenched her fists, stiffening at the mention of the name she was given when she became an instrument of disaster.
"But now, she truly is useless. But who knows? I may make the White Violin streak come out...and then she will be the powerful being you were supposed to be, Caduceus."
She felt white-hot anger course through her, and, surprising even herself with her speed, she bounded up stairs to the Director's chair on the platform.
"You—I could kill you any moment now," Caduceus said, breathing deeply.
"Ah, yes... your back hurts, does it not? You worthless piece of flesh. You threw away your wings, your training, everything...just for one person."
"Training?" Caduceus laughed bitterly.
"Yes, training. You were the best test-tube baby we have ever had with human technology. You were the perfect killing machine. An angel of destruction. Bones of the hardest, lightest metals, ligaments and muscles stronger than even a Gattox's, and even a mutant-evolved brain. Wings to enable you to fly. And you waste all these for just one person. One person, Caduceus! I could rule the world, and you can have anything you ever wanted."
Caduceus trembled. "I..."
"Yes... there is that flame, but I see your lust to make everything right, to show those people who ridiculed you, treated you as a freak that you can make them do anything you want, that they were wrong about you... Ah, yes... get rid of that hesitation in your heart... feelings and emotions are hindrances to the great plan I have for this little world of yours."
Caduceus listened with glazed eyes, but an image flashed into her mind. Her eyes were empty, devoid of any emotion. Close... The Director could feel her doubts ebbing away.
And then...
"You bastard,"she whispered. She rushed at it, kicking it. A small crack appeared on a glass box in its 'torso'.
She felt a white-hot needle of pain worming its way into her brain, but she continued punching it, kicking it. A glass box burst open, spilling its contents over her.
"You are a cold-blooded killer, Caduceus. I can put a chip in, and all your hesitations will vanish."
"Never," she forced out through gritted teeth as the needle made its way through her brain, slowly, excruciatingly. And then she felt an arm grow limp.
"I believe I have hurt the nerve connecting arm to brain?" The Director's gruesome brain seemed to smile at her with a macabre light. She punched towards it with her left arm, the one that was functioning. The box held, and the Director probed her brain with another needle, this one piercingly cold.
"This one will disable you legs... the next would disable you other arm... different other organs... that impudent backbone of yours, that spine... the last one would be your stupid human heart!"
Caduceus kicked at the box. A tiny crack appeared.
"At least... I have a heart, you bastard... a heart to love and to care and to feel! Not just the literal heart, like what you have in that box!"
The Director screamed, an inhuman, animal-like scream. "I will sever your heart piece from piece!" Caduceus felt a stab of pain at her heart and fell down, choking, trying to find air...
"One minute," the Director seemed to grin. Caduceus tried to reach towards a big switch on the device...
A shot cracked through the air. Fluids burst through the box as it shattered, leaving the brain stranded in the box, a bullet embedded deep into its center.
"Five seconds and counting," a voice from the device said. Caduceus reached up, gasping, and threw the switch. In a dream-like haze, she saw Vanya near her, holding a revolver. She retched, and threw up. When she had finished, she saw the blood was seeping out of the bandage again, and saw she had torn her back open when she kicked and punched against the Director.
"You saved me," she whispered. Vanya shook her head.
"It was more you than me," she said. "Your back!"
Caduceus shook, unable to move from her kneeling position.
"I will never be trusted here again," she said, closing her eyes and breathing in.
Vanya listened silently, putting down the revolver slowly, laying it carefully on the floor.
"You saved us," she said. "They'll surely-"
"They will not. And it was a horror I brought myself. This would never have happened if he didn't get the codes for working this.
Vanya nodded, knowing it was true.
"Vanya, I'll go away. Tell them I died. It's much simpler that way."
Vanya looked startled. "You aren't saying goodbye to... to .05?"
Caduceus' eyes softened a little at the mention of the name, but she was dead-set on leaving this place where she had almost caused the destruction of the human race.
"I have to do this. I don't want to be hated by people again. I know... I know your siblings are good at holding grudges.
Vanya cast her eyes down. "That's for sure," she muttered.
"Thank you for everything," Caduceus said, blinking back tears. "I'll just write a note to .05. Please tell him I managed to write it in my last breath.
Vanya nodded, but a thought came into her mind.
"What about your body?"
Caduceus shrugged. "Tell them I requested a closed coffin. I'm sorry about the expense, but... I have no desire to be embroiled in the media you Hargreeves are used to."
Vanya was a bit startled at the change of her tone, almost dead. "You're not okay, are you?" she asked quietly.
"I...no." She tried to move her right arm, but it was rendered useless. Nerves in her brain still felt like they were burning. "I've got to go, Vanya. I'll just write the note and then I'm gone."
Vanya nodded again, accepting the fact that she really was set on going away. "Where are you going?"
"I don't know. But one thing I do know is that I will save children from having the same fate as mine was supposed to be."
"Okay."
Caduceus had finished the note she had made from dipping a feather (which she had found in her pocket) in the small pool of her blood on the floor. It was sloppily written, for she was used to her right hand, and the 'mutant-evolved' mind she had hadn't gotten much schooling, and spelled most of the words wrong. It didn't matter. It might even make him think she was dying when she wrote the note then. She thrust the note towards Vanya.
"What about your back?"
"I heal fast," Caduceus said.
"No... just take this money so you can have it fixed up. Okay?"
Caduceus looked at the green bills in her hand. "Okay."
She was almost out the door when she turned back to look at .05 lying faceup on the floor. She breathed deeply.
Then she was gone.
Vanya wiped tears from her eyes.