Business as usual.
That's what Suzaku told himself whenever he faltered, whenever he turned, feeling Aurora at his shoulder, and finding himself devastatingly alone. He just had to keep moving forward, business as usual.
Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth.
At the moment, his greatest challenge was the clock merrily ticking away on his desk. Suzaku glared at the thing, his paperwork left scattered and half done across his blotter, a pen still held in his hand, primed but forgotten, his attention consumed by the clock.
It was stupid, he sternly told himself. But he hated that clock.
It was a supremely innocuous piece of desk decoration, a handsome silver and mother-of-pearl piece. Suzaku had first noticed it two days ago as he'd plowed through some of the back log of security reports awaiting his perusal and seal. He was vaguely thinking to himself that he missed the music from Ireland, something to keep his brain moving through the deep crevasses of silence as he churned out the leaves of a massive bureaucratic tree. And then Suzaku had noticed it. The tiny, clean clicks of a desk clock.
He didn't remember it being there. That was, in and of itself, disturbing. Had someone taken it upon themselves to deposit the thing upon Suzaku's desk without his permission? He was certain he'd never chosen or asked for it, and the possible impingement upon his privacy sent a chilly trickle down his spine.
Even worse, had he become so compromised, so blitzed out in his desperate attempt to take a sledgehammer to his memory and mind, that he never noticed the clock clicking on his work desk? He couldn't have known, but the frown that crossed Suzaku's face at the thought was fierce enough to send the most hardened soldiers cringing and flinching.
The worst implication of the clock, of course, was that it wasn't his clock. Now that thought sent him flinching. He'd relinquished the pocket watch to Aurora, he reminded himself, as he well should have. It was something that belonged there, to the one who had known the Suzaku he'd been in Ireland. That handsome creation of brass and glass and gears, holding the measured steps of the universe in its small casing, had no place here, in his life as Zero. And, foolishly, sentimentally, he'd wanted to leave something of himself behind for her – the sacrifice felt meaningful, even if he couldn't quite explain why.
In the end, he had nothing to mark the time now. Not until he'd noticed the clock on his desk. Which Suzaku furiously resolved to throw against the nearest wall as hard as he could every other hour or so, but always talked himself out of it.
So stupid. He was still debating with himself regarding the fate of a desk clock.
With a deep, frustrated breath, Suzaku yanked his attention from the clock, leaving it where it sat for now, focusing instead on the expansive list of challenges and missions and documents that demanded his, and only his, attention. So, much as he'd done before, he plunged himself into the work, knowing with hard-fought experience that it was the only thing that would offer him even a modicum of distraction.
Justice was being frustratingly vague about his progress; if he didn't know that was how the spymaster always worked at the beginning of a mission, Suzaku would have been ferociously suspicious. But from prior experience, he knew that the councilor was an adamant proponent of assembling a web of informants that was both as sturdy and as sensitive as a spider's. That was a process they both knew took time. Still, the forced inaction nearly rubbed him raw.
Nunnally and Tritus were growing closer in each other's confidences with each passing day. Seeing them together elicited a tugging, clenching sensation in Suzaku's chest that took him days to identify, as it was a myriad of feelings as dense and complex as a Gordian knot.
Part of it, unattractively, was jealousy, he finally admitted. For a long time, he and Nunnally had clung to each other in the aftermath of Lelouch's revolution, isolated from so many others by the depth of their damning knowledge. But now, she appeared intent on moving on, moving forward. Without him, it would seem. It was another strange new landscape he was having to learn to traverse even as it shifted around him.
The jealousy and fear were a part of him Suzaku reviled, and one he tried to systematically strangle. But like the rest of himself, unfortunately, it proved to be disconcertingly hardy and difficult to kill.
A different part of his reaction, the biggest and boldest aspect of the emotions, bristled with protective instinct. His pack may have been sliced down to a single person, but the wolf in him raised its hackles, threatened by an unknown element trespassing on his territory. It was hardly flattering or fair to either Nunnally or Tritus, but that was what growled in the corner of his head when he saw them side by side heading down a hallway, or when he walked into Nunnally's office to find the young knight relaxed in a chair in front of her desk, an ankle hooked on his knee, laughing at something Nunnally had said with that twinkle in her eyes.
What pulsed brightest, though, was the sensation of bittersweet pride, a kind of aching nostalgia for the days when she'd been a tiny, spindly bundle of limbs, light and fragile as a porcelain doll when he'd carried her on his back through carnage and chaos. That delicate child was irrevocably growing older, old enough to not only rule an empire, but rule herself. It made Suzaku immeasurably proud, even as it gently broke his heart.
In the end, it was Schneizel who offered him the distraction he so badly needed.
The prince had been working on the creeping crisis of human trafficking, especially in the forgotten, fraught nations caught between the might of the EU and the Chinese Federation. Those displaced by war without the means to assimilate into their titanic neighbors were easy targets, drawn in by the promise of documents and work and a new chance in the Empire itself.
Schneizel settled himself down in one of the wingback chairs in front of Zero's desk and gracefully switched the dossier from one hand to the other, reaching up to brush his perfect waves of flaxen hair back from where they fell over his brow.
Aurora had been right. The bone structure like a Valkyrie was a trait she shared with Cornelia. But it couldn't be denied that in Schneizel, sitting there with a calm confidence that should have been arrogance – but somehow wasn't, or was so genial he could convince people not to mind – the ghost of his half-sister was strikingly apparent.
Blinking furiously, Suzaku realigned his thoughts; this meeting demanded his unfettered attention. Schneizel rarely called a conference with him; rarer still since the botched attempt on Zero's life. If he didn't know the prince better, Suzaku would have assumed it was guilt. But he'd known Schneizel long enough to understand that the man was incapable of that particular emotion.
In fact, since the instatement of his Geass command, the prince's emotions were superficial at best. That spidery mind had been brutally bridled, leaving little room for him to swing the weapons of his charm and strategy to their full, mighty extent. Perhaps it was because both of them had the blood of millions on their hands, but Suzaku couldn't help but pity the automaton Schneizel had become.
Of course, just because he guardedly pitied the man didn't mean he wasn't extraordinarily aware of just how much of a threat Schneizel posed, and how much worse it would have been had he been left to his own devices without Lelouch's intervention. And after the dissolution of his own Geass command… Suzaku was aggressively aware that Schneizel could never be allowed any measure of freedom should his leash dissolve to tatters.
It was moments like these that he hated Lelouch.
Not the way Suzaku hated him for Euphie, or the Geass command, or just about anything related to the Rebellion and its crushing results.
No, it was the indulgent, wondering hatred one had for an impossibly genius friend. Because it just never ended. Even as his bones turned to ash in the ground, Lelouch kept proving that he was always right; that he was always one step ahead; that he would always win.
Frankly, it was exhausting, but the realist in Suzaku was grateful for it.
Because if something outside of Lelouch's expansive web of magic and control removed Schneizel's muzzle, someone, something, had to put him down like a mad dog. Suzaku had told Aurora once that Lelouch had created contingencies for everything; it wasn't an exaggeration. In a black binder thick as a dictionary the Demon Emperor had given Suzaku during one of their last Requiem brainstorms, there was a whole chapter devoted to Schneizel, and the last ten pages strictly focused on his extermination should he become out of control. It was currently secreted away in a biometrically locked safe coded only to Nunnally in the same vault that housed the crown jewels.
Gazing at the prince sitting across the desk from him, Suzaku was a little surprised to find that he didn't want Schneizel assassinated because the presence of Zero either evaporated or was no longer enough to hold him back. Because it would be such a bloody waste, and Suzaku was desperately tired of wasted life. Those he loved and his own were more than enough.
"I've received some interesting information, Lord Zero." Suzaku rocked back in his chair, lacing his fingers in a replica of the original Zero's famous gesture – Lelouch had spent a solid month hounding Suzaku to learn his mannerisms and phrases, enough to satisfy curiosity. They had always been close in height, and musculature could be covered by the cloak, but the visible aspect of Zero was his theatricality, something that didn't come naturally to Suzaku. Besides, Lelouch had assured him, the public didn't know if any of the Zeros were the same as the first that had claimed responsibility for Clovis's death. The world didn't care about originality; they cared about a show. Still, though, even after all this time, the seam where Suzaku ended and Zero began felt rough and ragged in his mind. Maybe that was simply due to the number of times he passed over it.
"To attract your attention, Prince Schneizel, it must be intriguing, indeed. Please, continue."
Schneizel's intelligence proved, unsurprisingly, perfectly accurate. Standing in his new Zero combat uniform – a project he had charged Lloyd with not long after Nunnally's coronation, never truly believing that he would use it – Suzaku listened as the captains of the two tactical units assigned to this particular mission argued over the best method of taking control of the warehouses in question. Suzaku kept his silence, carefully perusing the layout through a set of night-vision binoculars.
According to what Schneizel had discovered, this particular series of warehouses were acting as a depot – drugs, weapons, and people were shuttled from this hub throughout Aurelius, and subsequently throughout the Empire. Taking this warehouse could not only cripple the trade, but expose more of its roots. Roots that Schneizel was eager to attack, following through to their bitter, bloody ends.
As was only appropriate for such an asset, it was heavily guarded – from this single angle alone, Suzaku could count a dozen men, armed with semi-automatic machine guns and clustered together in pairs or wandering lone guards. When he lowered the goggles, Suzaku could make out the pinpricks of crimson revealing the cherries of lazily smoked cigarettes, bloody stars against the dark blanket of the buildings.
Frowning as his brain took up the strategic calculation of lives lost versus objectives achieved with the rusty skill of a professional musician taking up an instrument they haven't played in a long time, Suzaku cued in to the argument that still cycled behind him. Bevin and Wilson were very different men – Bevin was a twenty-year career man, only a handful of years away from retirement with hundreds of operations under his belt. Wilson was young enough to be Bevin's son; his fresh-faced appearance, however, belied a mind clever as a cobra, and determinedly ambitious.
Concerned about the size and spread of the warehouses and the potential number of men guarding it, Havens had assigned two units to this particular operation; he didn't protest when Suzaku volunteered to oversee it. It was far from his first position of command, but Suzaku was a different man now. He pondered this as he listened to the two men each trying to establish the validity their preferred tactics.
Bevin was a traditionalist – he was an avid chess player, and set great store in the value of man power. Bolstered by a second unit, Bevin was adamant that the men could sweep through guards that, if they were trained at all, were poorly trained at best. Suzaku found it almost amusing that Bevin had apparently forgotten his presence, regardless of that fact that Lord Zero had technically been given field command.
Maybe it was the outfit, he mused. Still very much a man of the battlefield when Nunnally had taken the throne, Suzaku had commissioned Lloyd to create a uniform that was influenced by the image of Zero, but suited for combat. Gone were the cape and purple trousers; gone were the cravat and tailed coat. Instead, Lloyd had prepared a carbon fiber body suit reinforced with plating as strong as Knightmare armor and as light as Kevlar – the suit covered every inch of Suzaku's skin from cheeks to toes, his core, elbows, knees, and the defensive flats of his limbs given the most protection. For the sake of camouflage, the fiber was black, the plates dark gray, although both possessed a faint metallic shine. The comm link on his left wrist quietly blinked with a tiny purple light, the only gold the small emblem on his right shoulder. It was, of course, the crest of his queen. The mask, now sleek, nearly indestructible, and linked to the suit with an advanced biorhythm monitoring system, would look vaguely familiar to someone used to gazing at the dark purple plate of Zero's suggestion of a face.
He had to admit, though – the pervasive smell of newness was odd. Suzaku's usual mask seemed as normal to him as his own skin after so much time spent in it. This new suit wasn't too far removed from the armor he'd worn in the past, but the crisp scent of polymer and plastic rife in every breath was a tiny thorn at the base of Suzaku's neck.
Whatever he was wearing, Wilson was perfectly aware of who Zero was and why he was there, and yet continued to advocate his own ideal strategy without asking for command input; one that struck at the heart of the supply source, sending the rats either running or scrambling to defend, now at a disadvantage with the Britannian teams all but sitting on their most valuable assets. While on the surface it seemed the most ideal way to secure victory here, the side effects were apparent, and unacceptable.
It was the most dramatic way to secure the warehouses, certainly, and would be a coup for the commander that achieved it. However, that particular strategy completely ignored the most devastating part of this mission – one of the warehouses housed a shipment of children, war orphans waiting to be sold into sex slavery, drug running, or worse. They knew which warehouse stored the guns and drugs, but not the children – boxes were to expected in warehouses, children less so, meaning they were more carefully guarded and hidden. If they didn't secure them first, the guards would assuredly kill the children once it became clear that the facility had been breached.
It was the only point of agreement between the two men, unnerving Suzaku; time and men couldn't be wasted trying to find the children first. The operation could roll up and disappear in a matter of hours – it had in the past, prompting Schneizel's intense focus and determination to pin them down here and now. If they didn't get it right this time, it was difficult to say when they'd have another chance without months of continuing collateral damage.
Again, Suzaku glanced over his shoulder at the arguing commanders, then back through the binocs at the scattering of guards. In his head, a cacophony of voices not his own argued, bandying the pros and cons of his fledgling idea back and forth. Finally, a whisper silenced them, soft and sweet in his ear and flavored with the brogue she could shed and affect so easily.
You can do this. If anyone could pull this off, it would be you. And that means you must.
Straightening slowly, Suzaku didn't bother looking at the commanders or the men they led again before slipping silently from the room unnoticed.
This far from the docks, light was a fitful, fickle thing. More than half the overheads were broken, and most within the outbuildings were left extinguished, creating murky pools of dark that Suzaku slid through with reemerging effortlessness. As he eased around a corner and silently climbed a ladder to the roof of one of the outbuildings, he assessed his weapons. A sizable combat knife was strapped to his right thigh, and he had two small throwing blades tucked into the plating on his forearms. Asking for a gun would have drawn attention, and he preferred to stave that off until it was necessary. Suzaku wasn't terribly concerned about the lack of a gun, however. It would be all too easy to acquire one.
From the shadowed edge of the building, he counted the guards in the immediate area. Two to the south, and three clustered around a partially open doorway leading into one of the smaller personnel buildings some twenty yards away from the first pair. The light inside marked it as occupied, but the noise and shadows suggested no more than seven people inside. Quiet was ideal, but the reality of his plan meant that would likely dissolve rapidly. Quick, however, wasn't an option. It was a good thing that quick was something he was adept at.
Suzaku crept back to the hulk of ventilation units, standing and slowing his breathing, invisible in the thick ink of night and shadow.
This was stupid, prideful folly.
He was desperately out of the game, coming back from devastating injury.
A solo mission that didn't thread a nearly impossible needle of odds was doomed to fail.
Suzaku was entirely too aware of these facts, and yet, here he stood, ready to bodily throw himself into combat. There was a part of his brain aware that this could result in his death, but Suzaku found himself surprised that he considered the concept with the sort of detached acknowledgement one usually harbored towards the inevitable death of the sun and earth. It was an eventuality, but not worthy of immediate concern.
Ordering his brain into strong, hard lines gone soft with neglect, Suzaku ran through his mission parameters. Objective: secure the safety of the children. The fighting and agitation of the guards would surely draw the attention of Bevin and Wilson; he was confident enough in their skill and experience to handle the drugs and the guns. Suzaku knew that while it was unusual, a lone man could secure a group of hostages against significant numbers with the right position, weapons, and experience. He was aiming for the first, could gain the second along the way, and had earned the third long ago.
As he cycled through options and routes, he was surprised to unearth anger roiling inside him, magma pressing at the back of his throat. Suzaku tamped it down within reason, all too aware of the value and burden that kind of rage could pose. He recognized that when he thought of the exploited children huddled in one of those warehouses, he imagined what Aurora and Kendra had looked like when they'd been that alone and afraid, that vulnerable and young. The mental image was enough to send a violent fury flooding through Suzaku that would help no one and just end up bringing about his eventual, and, at this point, useless, demise much sooner.
With careful precision, he leashed his emotions – if there was one thing Suzaku could do, it was drop into the cool, quiet space where fighting was nature, where motion cycled simultaneously with thought. It was almost meditative, if it wasn't completely reliant on destruction. Usually, it was silent here, calm and dry. But he hadn't tread this ground since Lelouch's death, and things had changed. Suzaku huffed a breath through his nose, almost smiling at himself – yeah, that was saying it lightly.
A beat grew out of the silence in his head, thick and primal. He hadn't known it back then; Suzaku had heard the song for the first time this summer. And God, it felt good to get his teeth into a mission, to feel like the pounding of his heart had a purpose beyond maintaining his miserable existence. Slowly, measuring his stride, he stepped forward, a countdown beginning in his head. Marking the distance to the southern edge of the roof, Suzaku slowly drew a deep breath, closing his eyes for one last, long final moment. Then, flicking them open as the timer in his brain clicked to zero, he sprinted towards the ledge, and leapt.
His mind spun forward even as time slowed, as it was wont to do while sailing through the air. It had been a long time since he'd executed a side aerial off of a second story roof, but his body, so long uncooperative, responded with easy alacrity, a machine left to rust joyfully brought back to purpose. Suzaku had twisted as soon as he'd pushed off, sharply flinging out his hands and sending the two blades burying into flesh, one hitting the bigger of the two guards in the jugular while the other dug into his thigh. The shock of it was enough to buy Suzaku time as he landed and rolled up to his feet, the jarring of his bones warning that he was still unaccustomed, and perhaps unprepared, for this sort of ordeal – rust wasn't so easily shaken off, not when it had sunk into the bones.
Time, however, wasn't a luxury he could afford to worry about. He freed the combat knife from its sheath as he moved forward with lethal swiftness, ducking behind the other guard who hadn't yet recovered from gaping at his comrade's slumped form. Reaching around and grasping the man's chin, Suzaku jammed the knife into the side of his neck, severing the spinal cord with a backwards jerk, not even reacting to the brutal scrape of bone against blade. As the body began to drop, he locked his shoulder and yanked, utilizing the draw of gravity to help him pull his blade free, already turning his head to check the placement of the next three guards. Suzaku had just cut down two men, and he felt nothing but cold, clear purpose. As always, he depended on that callous capacity for violence, even as it had always frightened him.
Pausing for just a breath to make sure they weren't yet running his way, Suzaku readjusted the hold on his knife, making certain the blood wouldn't cause his grip to slip. A quick scan at the carnage revealed a pistol at the second guard's waist – the magazine proved to be full when ejected. Quietly pushing the clip back into place and deliberately clicking the safety off while switching the knife to his left hand, Suzaku pressed his back against the building, peering around the corner with the least possible exposure as his chest heaved in sharply controlled movements, his heart beating fast, but strong and steady. His brain was still clear, still clicking through the obstacles ahead.
Knife fighting was close and messy, but as soon as he pulled the trigger, he was on a clock, the difficulty increasing exponentially every minute. And somehow, he had to deal with the three guards, ideally without alerting the half dozen inside. He could sit, mull it over for a second. Then again, that wasn't his style – at least, that wasn't the style that had once made him legendary. Suzaku took a bracing breath, then slipped around into the eastern alley.
He moved as quietly as possible through the shadows, experience and his suit turning Suzaku all but invisible, his brain taking in the planks, oil drums, and other debris he passed. It was an old habit, cataloging possible cover and weapons. The three guards were clustered together, apparently watching something on one of their phones – extraordinarily non-threatening, except for the semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Once he was close enough, Suzaku did not hesitate; he rammed the knife butt just above the closest guard's ear, the satisfactory crunch and sudden boneless drop proving that the man's temporal plate had shattered on impact. These men, however, may have been caught off guard, but they weren't shocked into paralysis like the first.
"Hey! We've got some asshole out here who-" The man's words ended in a gurgle when Suzaku lunged from the shadows and plunged his knife into the soft palate of his lower jaw, pivoting and twisting practically into the arms of the man he'd just killed to avoid the muzzle of the rifle that swung his way, using the corpse he'd just created as a meat shield. The brutal tattoo of gunfire cut through the night like a chainsaw, and a part of his mind he had once known so well became seeped in red.
No point in holding back now.
Dropping to one knee as the body fell, he planted three bullets in a tight cluster mid-chest of the remaining guard outside, rolling clear as the man's death grip kept the trigger of his gun down, his collapse sending the bullets in a wide spray that pumped into the building behind Suzaku. He heard a short scream inside, and a glint of metal to his left caught his attention even as they began to stampede out. Pulling the pin, Suzaku wasted only a moment to shoot the one about to bellow into a radio in the head before giving his find a soft toss and diving for cover behind a trio of oil drums.
Sliding behind the mess of planks and roofing to his left, he winced as gunfire cut close, shrapnel raining down on him like hot fists. Then the flash grenade went off. It didn't have any firepower, but even behind the protective plate of his mask, Suzaku knew to squeeze his eyes shut and angle his face away. Once the sun-like burst had receded, he dropped the guards where they screamed without leaving the cover of detritus. That countdown began again in his head, and he ran to grab what he could.
The radio had survived the gunshot that had killed its carrier, and Suzaku exchanged his pistol for one with a full clip and a waist holster he clipped to his belt. He generally didn't care for AK knock-offs, but it could do a lot of damage, and was a big enough weapon to be versatile. While he was at it, he snagged the extra clip one of the men had tucked into a jacket pocket. The enterprising guard who had carried the flash grenade had two more spilling out from his jacket, blood marring the labels. Tucking them into loops on the suit's utility belt at his hip, Suzaku sheathed the still-dripping knife and swung a rifle's strap over his shoulder, jogging north until he found another ladder to the roofs.
Climbing it one handed, he crouched in the shadows as soon as he cleared the edge, plugging the radio into his mask and hooking it on his belt, adjusting the volume so Suzaku could keep apprised of the traffickers' movements without deafening himself to his surroundings. Slowly slipping to the western edge of the building, he watched as a group of half a dozen men ran to the carnage he'd left behind, the first panicked questions bouncing over the radio. Deciding that distracting six was better than fighting them, Suzaku crept to the southern edge of the roof, pulled one of the flash grenade's pins, and heaved it as hard as he could. It bounced once off a roof three buildings over, then detonated as it tumbled into the alley.
Four ran; two stayed. Betting that these particular pawns were likely done moving on the board until the game intensified, Suzaku slunk back down the ladder, slipping away through the dark, retrieving his knife as he aimed for the cluster of warehouses at the center of the complex.
As he moved with powerful stealth towards his target, Suzaku silently dispatched two others, brutal knife blows that took their voices as quickly as it took their lives. The third, however, proved to be a challenge.
Ex-military, if Suzaku had to guess, unlike the other undisciplined gangsters he'd dispatched already. Broad and burly, with arms like tree trunks and a cap of close-cut, thinning hair. This man, impossibly, heard him coming, and threw up a block that had the shock reverberating back up Suzaku's arm to rattle his chest. Rocked back onto his rear foot, he only spared a moment to gasp a thin breath into stunned lungs before launching forward again, that countdown flashing through Suzaku's brain again in blinking red numbers.
His blade, however, sliced through empty air, hard hands descending on his wrist and shoulder and sending him flying in a skilled defensive throw. Landing flat on his back hard, Suzaku's brain went stunningly white as his entire system screamed that it was suddenly depleted of all oxygen. The knife was still in his hand, his fist instinctively clenching upon impact, but the pistol was gone, likely sent tumbling to some dark shadow in the alley. His vision returned in time to see the man loom over him, the muzzle of his rifle aimed at Suzaku's face, his expression obscured by the flickering light above.
For a long, terrible moment, Suzaku couldn't move.
Instinct, though, was a hard thing to silence. It had him rolling to the side a breath before the man pulled the trigger, sending the bullet plunging into the hard ground where Suzaku's skull had just been, the suppressed report sounding more akin to the slamming of a door. Enough of his systems had resumed operation for Suzaku to manage a fairly balanced kick-up back to his feet, sweeping out with a leg that took the man's feet out from under him, sending him collapsing hard to the ground and his rifle skittering out of reach.
But just as he swung the strap over his head and balanced the weight of the stolen rifle in his hand, stepping closer to mimic the execution shot he himself had just nearly suffered, Suzaku was forced to dodge back, avoiding the glinting metallic swipe of the knife the man produced from an ankle sheath. Breathless surprise had receded enough for Suzaku to feel the oncoming tide of crimson rage overtaking his brain. Exhaling hard, he wrestled for control with sweaty hands. His grip slipped, though, when his opponent plunged his knife into Suzaku's thigh.
Well, he tried. At the risk of inviting an egotistical display of monstrous proportions, Suzaku would have to thank Lloyd. The armor plating deflected the blade, and the carbon fiber repulsed enough of the momentum so that instead of sinking past flesh and slamming into bone, the blade cut through a few layers of muscle on the outer side of his right thigh, just above the knee. The bright splash of pain tightened the rings of Suzaku's scattered focus, and fury closed a hot hold over his throat, shattering the careful cages he'd wrought around his bloodlust.
The man had found his feet, the knife out, glinting evilly in the sporadic light, and waiting for Suzaku to foolishly rush close and strike, light enough on his feet to be anything but an easy target. Enraged and cognizant of time slipping through his bloodied hands, Suzaku found no reason not to oblige his opponent. Knowing that in the time it would take him to raise the rifle and sight it, the man could be on top of him with his knife between Suzaku's ribs, he decided to toss the cumbersome weapon aside. Freed and furious, Suzaku lunged forward, a quick dodge and twist locking the hilts of their blades together. Now it was strength against strength, will against will, the only sounds the rasp of feet against the ground, the screeching grate of clashing steel, and the harsh pants of men fighting for their lives. Suzaku felt a sort of gritty triumph leak through the searing anger; he never lost these kinds of fights.
But just when he locked his shoulder against the weight of the onslaught in a practiced shift of weight, Suzaku's eyes flew wide when he felt the killing, damning give of something, somewhere in his left shoulder and arm. It wasn't particularly painful, but it was more terrifying even than staring down the barrel of a rifle inches from his face. What had once been a thirst for action tempered by the need for speed became a frenzy. Because he had to end this now.
A swift sweep of his eyes gave him what he needed. Suzaku could see in the shadowed suggestion of the man's craggy face that he was surprised by the sudden ferocity Suzaku unleashed; angling away from his compromised side, then suddenly allowing the man's weight to surge past him, he struck out with a brutal kick that had the man's knee crunching in and a thin cry scraping past his lips. Having sent him down onto his shattered knee, Suzaku grasped the man's head in both hands, slamming his knee against the side of his opponent's skull. Again, he acknowledged that this was no street thug.
Instead of toppling over like a felled tree, the man caught himself on his free hand, stunned and barely conscious. Still, though, he managed an instinctive slash, wide and wild, but enough to send Suzaku back from the distance where he could best inflict damage. Dismay, colored by expletives he knew but rarely used, surged through him when he saw that he'd sent the man to the ground within reach of Suzaku's discarded rifle, and that he was blindly reaching for it, fingers inches from the butt, at this very moment.
What happened next, happened very quickly, even in that odd, Technicolor slow-motion of combat. Suzaku dove away, reaching for what he'd seen earlier when his shoulder had failed. He rolled up to a knee, sighting in time to see that his opponent had grasped his rifle and, despite what was undoubtedly wavering and refracting vision, had his weapon aimed directly at Suzaku.
It came down to a question of who had his finger pressed against the trigger already. Holding the pistol that he'd lost upon being slammed into the ground, Suzaku – always fast, always first, always unfailing fierce – felt the gun kick in his hands, his opponent finally falling permanently to the ground, the bullet drilling through the man's eye to pierce his brain.
Limply lowering his weapon, Suzaku just panted for a moment, his brain scrambling to reconstruct the lines that would allow him to finish the mission, incinerated when the rage had overtaken him. Even though parts of Suzaku now screamed and shook; perhaps he was no longer the warrior he'd always believed he was. But he didn't have the luxury of time for a meltdown, or even battling through the drop that followed a deadly fight. Pushing himself to his feet, suddenly viscerally reminded of the rather sizable cut on his leg, Suzaku limped over, holstering his pistol and retrieving the knife he'd dropped when he'd lunged for that last-ditch effort at victory.
He left the rifle where it was, gripped in his dead opponent's hand. It seemed… rude to take it. Besides, blood had soaked into the strap by now, and he didn't want to breathe in the copper consequences of his actions for the rest of the evening. There would be plenty of time for self-flagellation after he had saved the children, or died trying. Hadn't so far, so it wasn't all in vain yet.
Instead, he took the man's lost weapon, finding it to be the same model as the one gripped in the hand of a cooling corpse, conveniently requiring the same ammunition as he'd already acquired with the other gun. Ejecting the magazine proved that it was equally full. Suzaku had just straightened, checking his pistol clip and calculating the risk of searching for any ammunition on the body, when he cued in to the squawks over the radio, hearing the pound of feet approaching, no doubt drawn by his gunshot.
Slapping the magazine home, Suzaku turned and ran. It was easy to ignore the tear and burn of the injury on his leg; therapeutic, familiar almost. He dodged through the rat maze of buildings and warehouses, taking full advantage of the suppressor on the rifle to down three guards with neat, well-trained double-taps without breaking stride, hopefully avoiding drawing much attention until it was too late. His path may have appeared random to anyone tracking him, but Suzaku's perusal of the compound from the impromptu base earlier hadn't just been to get a general number of opponents; he'd been mapping the lay of the land, pairing what he could see through the dark with the schematics provided reluctantly by the shell shipping company that owned the complex.
Pausing at a deserted branch in his path, Suzaku backed against a wall and angling behind a pile of crates, allowing himself a second to catch his breath and see to the slice on his leg. It was bleeding cleanly but not heavily enough to cause real concern. The last thing he wanted, however, was to be leaving behind a blood trail. Cecille had thoughtfully stocked the items in his sleek utility belt, and he found what he was looking for in the third pouch. The vacuum-sealed combat gauze was easy to layer, then trim to size, immediately adhering to the wound once it touched the blood and began to coagulate. For good measure, Suzaku wound a compression dressing over it, conveniently black to avoid disrupting his camouflage.
Allowing the gauze a moment to do its work, Suzaku tipped his head back against the wall, and considered.
He was painfully aware that he had a limited window to clear the enclosing gauntlet. Success depended on his ability to break through the line surrounding the warehouses before guards converged on his location like white blood cells attacking a foreign body. Which only emphasized the importance of choosing the right warehouse and choosing it on the first try. For that, he needed intel, and he wasn't going to get it just standing here. Straightening, Suzaku took off, resuming his fast, winding path through the outbuildings.
Experience had taught Suzaku that to break through the more organized, cohesive line guarding the core warehouses, he'd either have to punch through or pick away at an opening until the gap widened enough for him to slip through. Common sense dictated the latter, but never in his entire career had Suzaku ever harbored delusions that he was a sniper. He had the skills for it, but nowhere near the required temperament or patience.
Punching it was – he was better at it, anyway.
There was a cluster of five men near the head of one of the arteries leading into the center of the complex, dominated by the trio of larger warehouses looming just up ahead. Suzaku would have to dispatch them before they could call for help or alert any of the other groups of guards protecting other avenues in. Easy enough.
The men had no idea what hit them.
A combat knife flew out of the dark, burying itself to the hilt in one of the guard's throat. There was so much power behind the throw that it knocked the man back and carried him to the ground. Suzaku had experienced nightmares like this; something dark and deadly surging out of the shadows at impossible speed, cutting men down with blank-eyed viciousness.
Now, Suzaku was the nightmare.
Having sacrificed his knife on that first quick kill and his pistol only carrying the one clip of ammo, Suzaku opted for the rifle. He downed two men before they could rally.
But the remainder rallied hard. One returned fire and forced Suzaku behind a stack of palettes, poor cover though it was. It distracted him enough to allow the other, whose rifle had misfired and he'd initially dismissed, to attack from behind, charging and ramming Suzaku face-first against the wall, pinning him there.
The rifle was knocked from his hands, wedged between his belly and the wall, still attached to the strap around his shoulder which began cutting into him like a fabric knife. The man who had him pinned, a big bloke who had to weigh about twice as much as Suzaku, grasped the back of his head and slammed his skull against the wall.
Again, Lloyd proved the obnoxious behavior to be worth the genius behind it. Suzaku blinked, but the mask had superbly absorbed and dispersed the shock, leaving him unharmed and without the otherwise inevitable concussion. No doubt expecting him to be stunned, the man at his back recoiled slightly, about to repeat the attack. That slight cessation of weight was all Suzaku needed – he managed to worm his hand across his body, unholster his pistol, and, aiming it backwards, pull the trigger. The man never even saw the gun that killed him.
Pushing off the wall and pivoting now that he was freed, Suzaku immediately ducked into a crouch, a quick burst of bullets cutting into the wall where he'd just stood. He wasted no time, moving before the last man of the group had a chance to lower his weapon. Cutting around the debris and swiftly clambering atop a shipping container, Suzaku pumped four bullets into the man, sending him crashing like a stringless puppet to the ground.
A humorless smile made a suggestion of itself around his mouth – maybe Suzaku was something of a sniper, after all, since he made that last kill from a distance on the high ground.
Leaping back down to the ground, Suzaku assessed the situation, wincing a little at the pulse of pain in his leg on the landing. Glancing down as he retrieved the knife he'd thrown and then taking off into the dark, he was satisfied to see that the field dressing was holding. As he slipped closer to the target of the evening's mission, Suzaku dismissed the impulse to just wage war on the warehouses. That was Bevin and Wilson's territory – Suzaku had to stick to his objective if he wanted to see it completed. And he needed to see it completed.
Suzaku assumed that the commotion he'd caused would draw the commanders' attention and prompt them to act – the absence of Lord Zero be damned. No such alerts of a raid could be heard over the radio, but perhaps their men were moving as quickly as Suzaku. Too fast for the warning signal to outpace them. One could only hope.
Regardless, Suzaku adjusted his trajectory towards an innocuous little building huddled at the flank of the hulking warehouses. Having spent his fair share of time staking out docks and storage areas, Suzaku knew what an administrative building looked like.
Sticking to the shadows and avoiding the well-lit areas where larger groups of men smoked and chatted, Suzaku cast a calculating gaze out over them as he slipped past unseen. Despite a mien of inaction, the general atmosphere of lazy relaxation was being overtaken by a tension, carried on whispers and the restless adjustment of hands on gun grips. No one had sounded the alarm of an infiltration, but the knowledge that something was wrong had begun to move inexorably through the compound.
His time was growing short, fast.
Trading his rifle for his pistol, Suzaku decided to use the admin building's back door – easier to interrogate when he claimed the advantage early, and kept it.
He shouldn't have been surprised that this bookkeeper was no bespectacled clerk. What nearly had Suzaku stumbling and dropping his weapon was the fact that it was a woman sitting at the desk stacked high with papers and forms. She had shoulders like a brick-layer, mousy hair drawn back in a severe tail, and her nose was crooked, having healed poorly from a harsh break.
But the way she unmistakably reached under the desk for a weapon broke Suzaku out of his shocked stasis, sending him surging forward to press the muzzle of the gun firmly against the base of her skull, only relaxing the pressure barely when she slowly raised both hands to shoulder height.
"Where are the children?" Suzaku demanded, his throat rough at the thought of interrogating a woman. Aurora would have told him that there was a very thin line between chivalry and chauvinism, but old habits could be nigh immortal. That, and the last time he'd tried to force information out of a female, he'd crossed a line that shamed him and Kallen had cracked a molar in righteous vengeance. Not exactly an experience he wanted to repeat. Still, though… He'd come too far to falter now.
"What children? Ain't no kids around here," she snarled back, and Suzaku released a hard, impatient breath through his nose. It made his stomach roll, but he snaked a hand forward, jerking her head back to force her look up at Suzaku looming over her with a hard yank on her hair.
"I'm not a cop – I've hacked my way through nearly twenty of your men, and if I have my way, I'm far from done. What makes you think I'd embark on this little campaign if I didn't know exactly what I was looking for?" Her eyes flickered slightly, and Suzaku ruthlessly pushed his advantage.
"Now unless you'd like to be another tally on my already very full scorecard, I suggest you answer. My. Question." Suzaku mused that it was always an interesting experience to watch the blood literally drain from someone's face.
"They-They're not in any of the warehouses." Every muscle in Suzaku's body went astonishingly tense – it was all he could do to stave off the flex of his trigger finger. His brain began a panicked freefall into worse and worse scenarios. So absorbed in these snowballing possibilities, Suzaku almost missed it when the woman continued speaking.
"They're in the old brick storehouse, behind the big warehouses." Suzaku remembered scanning over information about the place when he'd read Schneizel's research on the location. Older than the complex itself, the storehouse was a relic harking back to when Aurelius was one of the premier grain and corn distribution centers of the Empire. It was cool, modestly sized, and solid as a nuclear bunker. However, its smaller size and poorly angled loading bays had seen it fall out of regular use.
It was also slightly removed, so if the fighting escalated in the main warehouses, the children weren't inherently in the line of fire. The location still posed a myriad of problems, but it turned out to be better news than Suzaku had been hoping for.
"How many are guarding them?" he pushed.
"At this time of night? Probably only two – one of them has the key to the kids' room, since it's always kept locked." As she had decided to see reason and be helpful, Suzaku decided to spare the woman the potential TBI – instead of pistol whipping her, he reached around, quick as a viper, and locked her in an expert sleeper hold. Her struggles were nothing to sneeze at, but she might as well have been trying to dislodge rock with her scrabbling hands.
As she began to wilt, Suzaku almost had the urge to advise a different line of work, but chose to say nothing as she slipped into unconsciousness. Gagging, binding, and depositing the woman in one of the closets packed with paper, staples, and envelopes was simple, quick work.
Leaving the way he'd come in, closing the bathroom door to delay any questions or alarm about the bookkeeper's disappearance, Suzaku paused to listen to the radio in the undisturbed shadows at the back of the building. There were no screaming reports that the cops had shown up, but word of the carnage Suzaku had left scattered behind him was beginning to spread. They hadn't yet found the five he'd just tangled with – the operation still didn't know how close he was to its heart. But as check-ins and tallies began to trickle in, he knew that advantage wouldn't last long.
Interestingly, no contact came from the warehouses or the storehouse. Those areas remained conspicuously silent. He couldn't yet be sure if it was cause for alarm or an advantage.
Before rushing off towards the storehouse, Suzaku took stock. His leg was still bleeding, but sluggishly. Noticing that the compression bandage was soaked through, he wound a second compression bandage over it, gritting his teeth briefly against the bite of pain.
As he finished, Suzaku noticed something; the comm link on his left hand no longer blinked its tiny purple light. Bringing it into the light, he could see that it was crushed, likely when he'd been slammed into the wall. It didn't respond when he tried to activate it, and he became piercingly aware that he was unable to give Bevin and Wilson a sit rep, or even let them know where the children were located. Britannian military comms ran on encoded frequencies, ensuring that they couldn't be accessed by any old radio, even if you knew what to dial into. His lone wolf antics again stood to cost him dearly – Suzaku was truly alone.
But it didn't matter. Ignoring the potentially catastrophic consequences of his broken comm, Suzaku turned his attention to his weapons.
His rifle's clip was nearly empty, but he had another to reload it with, unlike the pistol. Deciding to stay with the larger gun and depend on its heft and weight before its bullets, Suzaku pulled in an uncooperative breath, feeling the terrible pressure of the encroaching goal on a mission. The closer it got, the more brutal consequences, and higher likelihood, of screwing it up.
As he crept towards the storehouse, Suzaku opted to circle around the building instead of charging through the huge loading bay doors in the front, or even the obvious door for personnel, lit by a single bulb that flickered intermittently. The only overhead light was what spilled over from the main courtyard, or the alleys of shipping containers and outbuildings to the east.
Assessing the windows, he suspected that the guards, and the children, were likely on the second floor, towards the rear. From the spill of light and sound, though, he couldn't pinpoint them any more accurately. Vaguely wishing for infrared goggles, Suzaku surveyed the rear of the building. Just because stranger things could happen, he tried the knob on the back door, unsurprised when it held fast.
Kicking the door in would be anything but a challenge, but Suzaku couldn't afford to sacrifice the element of surprise – he didn't dare give the guards time to retaliate against the children, or turn them into hostages. Taking a step back, Suzaku tilted his head in contemplation as he took in the rear façade. Just as frustration began to well, an errant thought shot through Suzaku's head – he was thinking like a soldier. How would a spy deal with this? More honestly, how would Aurora gain access?
His first true smile in days tilted across Suzaku's mouth, and, finally noticing the spidering of cracks in the top right corner of his mask's view, no doubt from impacting the wall, Suzaku reached up, bringing up the holographic menu and disabling the voice masker. Everyone knew Zero's voice – those who would recognize Suzaku Kururugi's anymore were precious few.
Standing to the side of the door with his back against the wall, Suzaku took a breath, then banged his elbow against the door twice, as if his hands were full.
"Yo! I got subs from Fizzoli's! One of you dickheads wanted a meatball, right?" From the second floor, he heard a muffled response.
"What?" This time, Suzaku lightly kicked the bottom of the door a few times.
"Fucking open the door, you jackasses! I've still got a shit ton to take over to the warehouses, and I've only got so many hands!" That did the trick. Suzaku could hear the clatter of feet down stairs, then grumbling as the door was unlocked and yanked open.
"Jesus, don't get your panties-" The man couldn't finish his insult, not when Suzaku rammed the butt of his rifle against his face. A wet splutter and burble sounded, the man too blinded by the broken nose to see Suzaku streak around him, taking a firm grip of the side of his head and his chin, and pulling so hard and fast that the guard's neck snapped with a moist crack.
Catching the body before it tumbled to the floor, Suzaku dragged it quietly over to the corner, his eyes plastered to the open mezzanine that looked out over the narrow back lobby. Behind the clouded glass of the enclosed office, he could see a shadow of movement. Tossing a tarp over the body, Suzaku loudly trotted up the stairs, affecting the gait of a man returning from an errand, eager for a meal.
Swinging open the door like he belonged there, Suzaku watched a series of emotions flicker on the older man's face when he turned and found not a compatriot bearing food, but an intruder armed and already closing in. Ultimately, he snatched the gun resting on the table, raising and sighting it with appreciable speed.
His dodge from the guard's shot came comparatively slow, and the hot sting of a graze on his right bicep brought the poisonous wrath surging back. Not only was Suzaku apparently getting old and slow, but the bastard was shooting in the room he assumed was next to the children's. It was careless, and callous.
Fueled by that righteous rage, Suzaku snatched the man's extended hand, simultaneously disarming him and breaking his wrist with a hard outward wrench. Pushing the advantage of his momentum, Suzaku took him down with a leg trip, following the man to the ground. His hand was still locked in Suzaku's grip, his shoulder forced back, the torque on his joints beyond their natural design, immobilizing the guard face down. Before he had an opportunity to buck against the weight, struggle, or scream, Suzaku jammed one of his knives into the back of the man's neck at the base of the skull, destroying his brain stem and incidentally drawing Suzaku's attention to the glitter of a silver chain around his neck. Retrieving the knife with a hard pull, he slid the chain free, finding a small, blood-splattered copper key at the base of the chain's curve.
It made sense. The more senior of the two would have sent the junior on an errand. Would have stayed closer to the imprisoned children. Would have been trusted with the key to their room. Would have reacted faster with a weapon, displaying a cruel disregard for the wellbeing of children that was only attained through bloody experience.
Snapping the chain with a flick of his wrist, Suzaku stood as he pulled the key free, then dragged the man behind the desk, out of sight from the three doors that occupied the far wall. One had the emblem for a bathroom on the door, the other sported a handle that didn't lock, likely a closet.
That left the thick gray door in the middle.
Setting aside his rifle and holstering his pistol, Suzaku assessed his appearance for the first time since he'd begun. The outer right side of his lower leg was stained with blood, but it simply looked black against his suit's fiber. In much the same way, the bandage on his leg looked like an innocuous strap. Winding a length of the final compression bandage around the graze on his upper arm, a thought occurred to Suzaku just as he stepped towards the door.
Turning away and snatching a paper towel from the roll lying on its side on the desk, he swiped it over his mask and hands. It came away heavy with wet and red.
Balling it up and tossing the paper towel into a waste basket next to the desk, currently hiding the corpse Suzaku had created, he turned again towards the gray door, and strode towards his objective. Sliding the key into the lock and pulling in a deep breath, he tried to prepare himself for whatever he could find. Finally, Suzaku turned the knob with the key, and gently opened the door.
There were twenty bunk beds in the small concrete room starkly lit by three bare light bulbs, and owlishly peering at Suzaku from every single bed were children. They gazed at him with an expression he'd seen before; in the camps, in the ghettos. In the mirror. These children had seen and survived things. Things that had irrevocably changed them. Silently and softly, Suzaku's heart, already tattered and cracked and bruised, broke for them.
Slowly and cautiously stepping into the room, he closed the door behind him, struggling for a sense of balance and focus that had deserted him. They were small, pale little creatures, eyes shadowed and their clothes threadbare and all but colorless. Suzaku moved instinctively when he saw the shimmer of fear in their eyes, not considering the implications beyond alleviating the weight of emotion that had to be constantly crushing them. Reaching up, he removed his mask.
Suzaku had enough wherewithal to leave his face guard as it was, shielding the lower half of his face. But he wanted to make sure they could see his eyes; see that he was human, that he meant them no harm, that he was here to help.
"Do any of you speak Standard?" he tried, pitching his voice low and gentle. From what he'd been told, these children were from small, remote countries struggling with poverty and war, and likely only spoke their local languages – if they couldn't understand Suzaku, it would be a terrifying stretch of time for them until they were retrieved by Bevin and Wilson's troops. None answered, just staring at Suzaku mutely, tiny little kits watching a predator in their midst, frozen in instinctive response. Just when he feared he couldn't explain what was about to happen, and what they should do to keep themselves safe, a girl raised her hand as she slid off her bunk to her feet, taking a few steps forward on legs that shook.
Her hair was a thick, tangled fall of black, her eyes so dark brown he couldn't discern the irises from pupils, and so large they dominated her doll-like face. If Suzaku had to guess, he'd put her at about ten years old, but three years in either direction wouldn't have surprised him. She was a tiny little thing, but her eyes seemed impossibly wise, even as she struggled against the terror that racketed along her frame. Her white t-shirt was thin from many washes, her brown pants too short, showing several inches of her ankles. Her feet were bare, and looked very cold.
Suzaku approached and knelt down onto a knee in front of her, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible, knowing that the children could see and understand the implication of the weapons he still wore.
"What's your name?" he murmured, making no move to touch her or invade her space any further. She gazed at him with eyes ancient and wise as a saint's, taking her time answering his question.
"Galina," she finally whispered.
"That's pretty," he acknowledged, sensing her distrust at his reluctance to give her his name in turn. "Galina, I'm here to keep you safe. Soldiers are coming, Britannian soldiers. They're going to take you away from here, somewhere you'll be taken care of and away from these bad men. Until they get here, I'm going to guard the door."
"Like the dragon at the gate?" she asked, her voice still delicately soft but somehow managing to test his intent.
"Something like that," he agreed with a nod, swallowing the dry chuckle at the odd irony of Galina's choice of comparison. "I'm going to lock the door behind me," he continued, "and slip the key under the door. Until you hear me call your name, I don't want any of you to unlock the door, not for any reason. And…" Suzaku swallowed, desperately reluctant to give these orders, but knowing he had to do everything possible to keep them safe. "When you hear gunshots, I want all of you to get under the beds and cover your ears. It could go on for a long time, but please, please, don't come out until it stops."
Galina eventually nodded, and Suzaku stood, replacing his mask and turning towards the door. Just when he extended his hand to the knob, she called out to him.
"Wait!" Turning back, he paused, forcing himself to be patient despite the sense of a ticking clock in his head – for some bizarre reason, it sounded like the clock on his desk that he hated so much. She trotted closer, peering up at Suzaku with eyes fractionally less guarded.
"The gold mark – are you a knight?" He'd completely forgotten about the symbol on the point of his shoulder, remembering now the tiny golden crowned unicorn that was the crest of his queen.
"I was. If I can keep all of you safe, maybe… maybe I can be again." Galina seemed to be satisfied with this answer, retreating and murmuring in a soft, lyrical language heavy with consonants to the other children. Opening the door and locking it with the key, Suzaku glanced over his shoulder one last time, begging any divinity that would listen that he wouldn't fail these children.
Stepping back out into the office, he pulled the door closed, crouching down and sliding the key under the door. Now he just had to make sure this door wasn't opened again until the Britannian troops arrived. Simple enough.
But it got complicated fast; the radio chatter started getting thick with alarm, until finally, someone with an unquestionably authoritative voice demanded that they find the intruder. They were to secure the assets first, then start searching the complex in waves.
At best, Suzaku had minutes.
A quick search of the office after retrieving his rifle yielded only the guard's pistol, its clip left sloppily half full. Setting the weapon on the shelf of a bookcase by the door, Suzaku was just debating going down to the ground floor and searching the body of the other guard when the downstairs door opened. Dropping to his knee, Suzaku felled the first guard before he made it two feet into the lobby. For a moment, his lungs felt achingly empty with the knowledge that there was no going back from this moment, this choice. As if he would have ever considered retreating now, he thought, settling a little more comfortably into his position at the door as his resolve hardened into black diamond.
Two more died practically in the doorway before the men outside grasped what was going on and where it was coming from. Suzaku ducked back behind the doorframe, waiting out the burst of gunfire that rattled the metal mezzanine and shattered one of the windows with an explosion of glass as he carefully listened for the stamp of feet on the metal staircase. Nothing yet, but that was sure to change.
From his elevated angle, Suzaku could control the choke point of the rear door. But when they flooded in from the front of the building, that fatal funnel would have to become the top of the stairs, the next place where he had a clear line of sight. Much too close for comfort.
There was no denying that the gambit had shifted from one of acceleration to attrition. Suzaku had to hold them off until Bevin and Wilson arrived – if he fell, the children would be forfeit. And that was unacceptable.
Dropping another man emptied his rifle's magazine – Suzaku didn't need to hear the dry click to know that he had to press the magazine release. Sweeping the clip free with a new one from his belt then clicking it in place, he reached under the gun to rack it before snugging it back to his shoulder, all within three seconds. Suzaku's old drill sergeant would have been proud of the seamless reload, especially considering it had been years since he'd held a weapon. There were some things that the muscles and mind never forgot, no matter how hard they tried.
The obvious change in tactics came, and Suzaku risked a glance to see the men pour into the lobby through the door directly below him. Returning to his position in the doorway, Suzaku waited until he heard the first steps on the staircase before he pulled the pin on the last flash grenade and lobbed it down to the first floor.
He averted his face, waiting until the screams began before standing and approaching the railing, downing eight men before turning and shooting the two that began to crest the stairs. Their bodies would be convenient obstacles at further attempts to gain the stairs.
Suzaku retreated to his position just in time for the rest of the windows to explode, shards flying through the air glittering like stars, pinging against the ground with almost musical tones. He ignored the bee stings of slicing glass, shooting the two men who were rushing the staircase, diving to the other side of the door to get an improved sight angle of the top of the stairs at the metallic thunder of footsteps. Grimacing when the bullet buried itself into a charging man's arm, sending him stumbling back down several steps, instead of the chest shot he'd aimed for, Suzaku held his position instead of breaking cover to secure a sure kill. Despite the fact that he could hear the man still alive, and still quite close.
He shot a man who frantically ran through the back door, then another who sprinted towards the staircase. Wood exploded next to Suzaku's left ear, a bullet missing his head by spare inches and obliterating a square foot of the doorframe. Not even Lloyd's superior design was bulletproof, and he felt his blood turn arctic even as memories of battles past began to flicker behind his eyes.
Whipping right instantly, Suzaku cut down the man he hadn't killed, destroying first his legs, then his chest. The man's collapse was a miniature three-part saga of death, but Suzaku only heard the separate clangs; he had already turned to drive two men back from their advance through the back door, killing one and maiming the other.
That dry click of an empty magazine didn't surprise him, but Suzaku's jaw hardened like granite as he lost his most effective long-range weapon, tossing the gun aside as he drew his holstered pistol. Even in the hands of a master, a pistol was not necessarily suited to this kind of combat. But, desperate times, he mentally acknowledged as he launched to his feet, leaned over the railing, and razed the half dozen men who had been about to storm the stairs.
By now, the lower floor looked more like an abattoir than a grainery. Suzaku had always considered it crass to keep track of kills on a mission, but the number of dead men downstairs was… significant.
Still, it wasn't enough. They kept coming, and they likely would until a greater force stopped them. Suzaku could admit that while the carnage was impressive, he could not be that force. As he returned to the doorway, casually kicking the grenade that had been tossed onto the mezzanine back over the edge, Suzaku took a step back and turned a shoulder to the blast, watching the stairs with a laser-like focus even as a fireball bloomed. Sure enough, a trio had hoped to use the distraction of the grenade to take the stairs.
Killing them emptied his pistol.
Snatching the last gun from the now pulverized bookcase, Suzaku knew with crushing clarity that there were nine rounds left in this pistol, and no word of any assault except the traffickers' against the storehouse over the radio. Nonetheless, Suzaku stayed the course – a man tried to worm his way into the far corner, away from the two entry points, to gain a clear line of fire to Suzaku. He died long before he could sight his gun.
A pack of four tried to pin him down with alternating bursts of fire, and they succeeded – for thirty seconds. Suzaku quickly keyed into their pattern, and dropped them all during a breathless break in their rhythm.
A chance glance at one of the outside windows revealed a man aiming a rifle, likely at the top of a ladder. Suzaku dove out of the way just before his doorway position became shredded with bullets. He moved to one of the blown-out windows, a well-placed round sending the man flying backwards out of sight, his rifle falling more than a story to the concrete floor below with a clatter.
Three bullets left.
A stunning, traitorous thought fluttered through Suzaku's head on silky black butterfly wings.
He was going to die here – why not just do it himself?
Glass crunched under his feet as he crouched and trembled, staring at the pistol in his hand. Suzaku had wanted just this, a hero's death, for so long. Now that he was facing it, the looming failure bright and bloody on his horizon, it seemed terribly foolish. When they finally got their hands on him, they'd tear him apart. It would be cleaner, certainly quicker, to just do the deed himself. And the most mind-boggling part of it was that he could.
But when was Suzaku going to stop behaving like a child, willingly blind to consequences? Yes, he could have what years of his life had been dedicated towards, right here, right now. The people he cared for were all beyond his reach, in so many ways, and he was so tired of being alone. All of it – the agony, the memories, the despair and debts and duty – would finally be over.
Yet the moment he'd slipped away from his position of command, a position he had volunteered for, Suzaku had set himself on a course that, when he succeeded, would tie the childrens' lives to his. It would take very little mental and moral wrangling to argue that if Suzaku killed himself, then he effectively killed the children.
That did what he never could have managed on his own; back straight, Suzaku turned, aimed, and shot the man, square in the forehead, who had climbed the stairs, lured by his brief period of inactivity.
At this moment, it wasn't a question of whether Suzaku wanted to live; he had to live. For as long as he could, no matter what it took. If he had to cut his way through the onslaught with a single fucking knife, drenched in blood and held together by strings and resolve, then so be it.
He could do it. If anyone could, it was Suzaku. And that meant he must.
Over the echo of his gunshot as he dropped a man who had slipped on blood during his dash to the cover of crates, he heard it. Suzaku had all but grown up on the battlefield, and needed very little time to recognize the cadence and brand of gunfire particular to a group. And the clean, wicked rattle of the shooting he could just make out was slightly different from the AK's the traffickers favored.
No, this was the triple bursts of Britannian standard issue carbines. As the radio all but exploded with exclamations about cops and guns and cut-off screams, Suzaku, still holding his pistol at the ready, stationed in the corner of the middle window, reached up and disconnected the radio from his mask. Once it was untethered, he tossed it aside, relief flooding him in a monstrous, numbing wave when troops in a uniform he perfectly recognized swiftly inundated the lower floor of the storehouse, immediately and mercilessly gaining control.
Standing slowly, mightily focusing on holstering his pistol and walking a straight, controlled path, Suzaku emerged from the decimated office, raising open hands to shoulder-level, snagging several soldiers' attention and marking himself as non-threatening should they still be a little battle-heated.
Satisfied that the shouts and hurried conversations into comms at his beckoning gesture meant someone of reasonable authority would be coming up to talk to him, Suzaku turned and strode across the office to the gray door, switching the voice masker back on as he went. Noticing the peppering of bullet holes along the walls, he fiercely prayed that the storehouse's sturdy structure, and boatloads of luck, meant he wouldn't find any casualties inside.
Firmly and slowly, he knocked three times on the door.
"Galina? It's the knight. It's safe to open the door now." Seconds crept past, and Suzaku slowly squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the different voice didn't frighten her, reluctant to answer the question whether he could live with this evening if there were dead children inside.
Then he heard the rasp of a key, the door cautiously cracking open an inch, a dark eye peering through the gap. Crouching down, Suzaku waited, hands loose and posture unassuming. Finally, she widened the door a foot, gazing at him with a deeply adult expression.
"Your voice is different," she stated quietly, almost accusatory.
"I know. It's something I have to do for my job." Galina accepted this with a nod after a moment, apparently sensing the truth in his answer.
"Is it over?" she murmured, and it took everything Suzaku had not to reach out to her, to stroke and soothe and comfort a wound wrought too deep to heal that way.
"The fighting is over," he confirmed carefully, still blocking the doorway, even as he heard heavy steps tramping up the stairs. After surviving a firefight where that sound signaled trouble, it took a moment for Suzaku to relax the programmed tension that raced through him. As he wrangled his instincts under control, he took a moment to glance behind Galina, seeing that many of the children were still extracting themselves out from under the beds, the rest huddled on the floor. Suzaku could hear quiet sobbing.
"We need to make sure it's safe before we move everyone, though. Can you all be patient for a little longer?" She considered, then nodded. Quietly releasing a sigh of relief, not moving even though he heard footsteps grinding over glass behind him and saw the way Galina's eyes flickered over his shoulder, Suzaku continued.
"Is anybody in there hurt?" Galina's hair shifted in a dark curtain as she shook her head. A hard, cold rock in Suzaku's gut finally dissolved.
"OK, good. Do you want the door open or shut?"
"Open is fine," she murmured, even as she shrunk away, a shadow falling over them as someone approached.
Standing and pivoting on his heel, Suzaku planted himself in front of the door opening, surprised to see both Bevin and Wilson, each flanked by a soldier.
"Lord Zero, what…?" Bevin began, trailing off as he looked around the remains of the room, clearly flabbergasted by what he'd seen. Wilson looked equally shocked, but his eyes were also calculating, moving over Suzaku as if he was trying to see down to bone and nerve. Or perhaps simply beneath the mask.
"The children are safe. When are Social Services arriving?" he demanded, unwilling to linger on the subject of just how many men he'd killed, and how he had managed it. Suzaku had begun the night worried first and foremost about the children; that was how he intended to end it, as well.
"They're already here," Wilson answered, his sideways glance catching the feet sticking out from behind the desk. When he looked back as Suzaku, a thick, dark brow was arched.
"When you disappeared, we figured there was a good chance you'd taken it upon yourself to secure the kids." Suzaku was fully aware that was a very diplomatic way to describe his actions – had he been any one else, Wilson would have torn him verbally to tiny, wriggling shreds, as well he should have. Suzaku appreciated the military dynamic of discipline and accountability, even if he had been exempt from it for a very long time.
"As such, it seemed a good idea to be prepared," Bevin continued. Suzaku nodded, relieved that there wouldn't be a significant wait time.
"And medical services?" he prompted.
"Ready and waiting," Bevin replied.
"As we thought, the guards were hardly a threat. A few minor injuries, so there's plenty of personnel to look after the kids." Suzaku nodded, his brain suddenly filled with explicit, scarring visions of the lower floor.
"I think it best we escort the children out individually, and… limit their exposure to what happened below." Bevin nodded quickly, a look of fierce agreement flickering across his face – if Suzaku remembered correctly, the man had children. Two daughters, he believed.
"We'll get blankets from the EMT's," Wilson decided, turning and nodding at the two soldiers who had entered with them, the pair leaving with alacrity at the implied command. When he turned back, Suzaku held out the pistol and holster, ready to be rid of it now that its purpose had been served. He didn't have the answers to enough important questions to keep a gun with a single bullet around himself for any length of time.
Wilson took the weapon, studying it for a moment before glancing up at Suzaku from under his brows.
"May I?" Suzaku shrugged at the request. Wilson ejected the clip, studying it before passing it over to Bevin. The older man's brows shot up when he saw the lone cartridge left in the magazine, his eyes flicking away to the two discarded weapons on the floor. Before either man had a chance to ask anything further, several soldiers returned, arms piled with blue blankets borrowed from the ambulances.
It was Bevin who turned to the soldiers and asked them to check with the rest of the units – they needed men who were comfortable with children to help escort the kids down to the ambulances and Social Services. One man handed off his blankets to spread the word, clearly discomfited by the idea of traumatized children. Suzaku didn't blame him in the slightest.
Turning and crouching back down, he relayed the plan to Galina, who had been sitting on the bottom bunk closest to the door, hopping up and trotting over when Suzaku faced them again. She nodded, then turned to explain it in her native language to the rest of the children.
Just as he prepared to stand and finally back away, he felt the tiniest pressure on his knee, right below the black bandage.
"Are you hurt?" Galina whispered. He smiled softly, even though she couldn't see it.
"It's just a scratch – don't worry about it," he whispered back. She gazed at him solemnly for a moment, and Suzaku wondered if this is what drowning had felt like when a faint sheen of tears glazed Galina's eyes, her bottom lip trembling briefly before she fiercely firmed her mouth.
"Will you take me away from here? Please?" She didn't so much say the words as breathe them, and if she'd requested for Suzaku to rip open his chest and hand her his beating heart, he would have gladly done it. As it was, throat thick and breath locked somewhere deep inside, Suzaku simply nodded, and held out his arms. She crept into them like a fragile cub.
Gathering her close and standing, he tucked Galina's head below his chin, one of her arms hooked around his neck, her other hand splayed over where his heart bled. Suzaku battled memories as a soldier unwrapped one of the blankets, draping it over the girl and tucking it in so nothing was visible beyond her blue cocoon. Her chilled, delicate frame reminded him searingly of Nunnally, and it took genuine focus and will to walk out of the office for the last time, straight and balanced, once the soldier nodded that the pair of them were ready.
If he hadn't had the child cradled trustingly in his arms, Suzaku had no idea how he would have managed the journey winding through his handiwork. As it was, he focused blindly on the fact that he had to get Galina through this quickly but carefully. A small part of his brain registered that he passed at least three quarters of both units heading towards the upstairs office – if nothing else, the children should be out of that hideous place quickly.
They just had to be carefully escorted through the hell Suzaku had created first. Cautiously stepping over and around bodies, nudging dropped firearms out of the path least stained by puddles of blood, he wondered if this was his punishment. Being forced to confront the brutal, immediate aftermath of what he had done. But unlike the F.L.E.I.J.A crater, there was no Geass command to hide behind. Every single time Suzaku had pulled the trigger or wielded his knife tonight, it had been with full knowledge of the reality and cost of his actions, completely aware of exactly what he was doing, and what it meant.
When it came to monsters, it would seem that Suzaku was in a category all his own.
As he was spiraling in guilt and self-loathing, though, he eventually became aware of the faint sensation of damp on his collarbone. It took a few steps to work out that Galina was crying. She hadn't made a sound or so much as twitched. Moved beyond his scope, still struggling to find his own emotional ground, Suzaku just tipped his head slightly, and rested what amounted to the line of his jaw gingerly against her head. He felt her fingers clench slightly on the back of his neck as she pressed her face harder against him, and Suzaku felt almost… forgiven.
Finally, he walked outside and saw the spiraling swirl of emergency lights splashed against the buildings' walls, and a trio of ambulances came into view as he rounded a corner, flanked by several black town cars. Once he was absolutely certain there was no visible sign of the fighting that had occurred, he gently freed Galina's head and face from the blanket, and he could see the way she took a deep, surprised breath of the cool night air. Surreptitiously, she used the blanket to scrub her face free of tears, and Suzaku said absolutely nothing about it. Instead, he tried to explain what was about to happen.
"The EMT's will make sure you're OK. You might go to the hospital. If you do, it's just to be safe. After that, the people with Social Services will help you find a place to stay, and someone to take care of you." She tilted her head to gaze up at him, and Suzaku desperately tried to ignore the subtle plea in her eyes to let her stay with him.
"You'll be alright," he whispered instead. "You're smart, and tough, and very brave, Galina. You'll take this chance, and make a good life out of it. Can you do that for me?" She sniffed, then nodded. Suzaku slowly rubbed his hand over her back, feeling the tiny, sharp ridges of her vertebrae, and the way she pulled in a deep breath, then straightened her shoulders.
The EMT's began to hustle forward, stuttering to a halt when they made the connection, no doubt recognizing the shape of his mask. Suzaku just kept walking past them, only stopping once he'd reached the back of the ambulance, harsh white light spilling out of the vehicle. Sitting Galina on the back step, clamping his jaw at the way his heart lurched when she clung slightly at his neck, Suzaku crouched down, straightening and tucking the blanket around her again.
"Remember what I said. Smart, tough, and very brave. You're a knight now, too." Very gently, he tapped his index finger first to one of her shoulders, then the other, and something like pride glittered in her dark eyes. Galina nodded, a smile flirting across her face like fairy wings; there, then gone. Carefully and slowly, Suzaku took one of her hands, and softly squeezed. When she squeezed back, Suzaku made himself simply nod, then let go.
Standing and facing the EMT's in their emergency vests and several social workers in low, sensible heels, all with that patent expression of brittle exhaustion having been woken up at three in the morning, Suzaku used this moment when he had their full breathless attention.
"I expect that Galina, and all of the children, will receive only the best care, tonight and for the foreseeable future. I will be taking a personal interest to see to it that happens." They all hurriedly nodded in understanding, so, making a note to keep an eye on the childrens' cases, Suzaku stepped to the side, allowing the medical personnel to see to their task. Just then, the train of soldiers carrying children, led by Bevin, appeared around the corner, and the area surrounding the ambulances suddenly became a hive of activity.
Glancing at Galina one last time, satisfied to see her answering an EMT's questions with regal calm, Suzaku turned and walked away, grinding his teeth against a limp. A breeze shifted, and maybe it was just his brain finally starting the tortuous grind of processing tonight, but Suzaku suddenly became aware that his mask no longer smelled new; it smelled like blood. He'd just rounded the next corner when Bevin and Wilson called after him, jogging to catch up.
"Lord Zero!" Briefly clenching a fist, Suzaku turned around, waiting for the men to approach.
"Are you certain you don't need medical attention?" Wilson asked. His leg would probably need stitches, his whole body was a patchwork of cuts and burns and bruises, and Suzaku wanted nothing in the world more desperately right now than to sleep.
"I'm fine," he said instead. The men exchanged a short glance, their disbelief writ large.
"Lord Zero-" Suzaku interrupted Bevin before he could continue, affecting Zero's smooth, confident tone.
"Don't worry, captains. I was simply here in a supervisory capacity. Credit will go to the field commanders – you two – and the prince for spearheading the operation." Wilson frowned.
"That's not-"
"You should be proud," Suzaku interjected. "A human trafficking center all but annihilated, all the children retrieved unhurt. I can only imagine the drugs and weapons found in the warehouses. Your men did truly excellent work tonight. A victory Britannia – and her Empress – can be proud of."
"But sir, what you did tonight…" Bevin said, his more traditional personality lending to a reluctance to question what was technically nobility.
"What are you doing working in the palace, when you have that kind of ability?" Wilson demanded with a burst of words, no compunction putting a fine point on it. "What we saw was the work of a spec ops unit, not a single man. How the hell did you manage it?" Suzaku gave them the only answer he could.
"Simple, gentlemen. It was just another miracle." With that, he turned, and walked away.
They didn't follow.
As he retreated to the entry gate alone, a limp emerging despite his best efforts, Suzaku's hand crept to his left shoulder. There, the shadow of the woman he'd left behind walked beside him, the one whose unwavering faith in Suzaku had sent him on this mission and had been with him, whether he'd known it or not, every step of the way.
The original version of this a/n was a rambling treatise on recent events, inspirations, thoughts, and plans for the future. It's all still valid if you're curious. However, personal loss and grief derailed everything. But needless to say, writing when you're broken-hearted is a place I am, sadly, familiar with. I come back to this world when the creatures I love die, once I can bring myself to feel enough to write again.
If you want to thank anyone for this chapter – hell, this story – getting pulled out of my destroyed limbo, thank MarkCornell. The man has become Phoenix's godfather.
Hope you like it.
Love, Tango
