Chapter 14 – Last Dance
Amélie sat quietly at her kitchen table. She knew that whatever Vishkar (or, assuming they weren't lying, not-Vishkar; one of her nightmares mentioned Talon) had done to her would compel a murder when Gérard arrived home. She yearned to call the police, send a message to Overwatch, anything to let somebody know that she was about to do something terrible. But her body refused to obey.
The small ball that Amélie Lacroix became in her own mind watched fearfully as Gérard stepped from his IFV. The package from "Birdclaw Corporation" had been completely hidden; he'd never see it coming. She winced, expecting to find a scope in front of her eye, a perfect shot lined up on an unsuspecting agent as he walked to his own front door.
Her hands prepared the same practiced recipe that she'd made hundreds of times. The table set itself at speed.
"How was the meeting? Boring as usual?"
Something seemed different about Amélie. Her poise, her voice, she was more herself than she'd been for weeks. She no longer gave off the impression of a statue just going through the motions.
I want him to remember me. The real me…
It took almost every ounce of her energy to inject humanity into the automaton her torturers turned her into. Gérard noticed, however. The dour fear of divorce left his face, taking years off his aged expressions. As the hours ticked by, her unseen agony increased.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh, it's just those insurance company paper-pushers. They gave me the run-around, as you'd expect."
Run. Run away and never return. RUN!
Gérard decided to turn in early, which made perfect sense considering he got home late and his whole day consisted of listening to people confuse volume for validity in the ongoing debate over what to do about the "monkeys on the moon." He didn't even ask why she wasn't coming to bed yet.
Her hands wrapped themselves around the rifle she'd assembled earlier in the day as she retrieved it from a cabinet, snapped it back together, and prepared to do as commanded. One shot, one kill. She started up the stairs.
NO.
If she couldn't stop the inevitable, she could at least try to influence how it happened. Slowly, agonizingly, Amélie forced the weapon down. Her nerves were on fire, her whole body felt like it had been filled with razors. Only now, at the end, could she summon the willpower to make things happen her way.
Instead, a glowing yellow needle adorned her right hand.
I can only hope this makes it a quiet, peaceful murder…
The rifle appeared in her left hand again, as if summoned by some sorcery. She couldn't seem to overwhelm whatever commanded her to carry it, though her right hand did not treasonously drop the poison, or whatever it was, that she'd picked up.
Gérard awoke to two things. Amélie must have come to bed as her nightstand's light clicked on. What didn't make sense was cold steel along his back. He turned over, and his heart stopped.
Amélie. But not the beautiful woman he'd married—instead, a face so twisted with anguish that it hurt his soul to see it even cast only in dim light. Her right hand held some kind of injector, oversized and nasty-looking. Only then did the worst possible outcome of why she'd been so odd strike him. Her left draped over his prone body, preventing escape. He never saw the monster rifle she held, but he recognized the steel of a weapon's touch from his years in Overwatch Military Operations.
He closed his eyes, accepting the end.
Gérard instead felt twin sources of dampness on his forehead. One he recognized as his wife's lips, the other… He didn't hear the words she mouthed as the needle pricked his skin.
Then his nerves caught fire. He rose from the bed and bellowed in agony like a wounded animal, muffling a borderline-comical "beep" that emitted from Talon's toxic tool after it was emptied into his bloodstream. Half a second later, Gérard Lacroix's conscious life ended as a bullet tore through his skull at point-blank range.
She couldn't scream or wipe away the tears that formed as she'd done the deed. She tried, oh she tried so hard to turn the weapon on herself. Her muscles were aflame, her joints froze. Her finger pulled the trigger again and again, hoping to at least cause a scene that would bring police or Overwatch running. Instead, her efforts were rewarded with a persistent click-click-click.
Amélie Lacroix summoned every last bit of mental fortitude she could muster. Twisting herself away into the darkness, she relieved herself of seeing her husband's blood on her clothing as she worked her way toward the roof. A fall from two stories would not kill, but maybe she could make herself useless to her new masters. Maybe, if she crippled her body, they'd release her from this hell.
The all-consuming fire no longer bothered her as she forced her feet in front of each other. It also distracted her thoughts from a low hum above.
Wordlessly, she plunged off the roof of her own house, endeavoring to twist herself into landing neck/headfirst.
Something even sharper than that which punished her rebellion seared Amélie's consciousness, but it wasn't the release of death or the satisfying impact of cobblestone. Instead, four burning stars now resided in her back.
The black-clad stealth aircraft she'd missed before hauled her in.
"Subject retrieved via grappling hook. Mission accomplished, target is eliminated."