Chapter Seventeen

It was only a faint shuffle, but being hyper alert meant she caught it anyway, not totally decided on what it was. Feet on the metal outside? Whatever it was, it gave Wraith pause. If it was feet, she'd been flanked, and she was far enough from Pathfinder that she would have to be careful. She hunched, cocking her Eva at the door and listening, waiting, for the movement to resume.

"Wraith?" the voice in her ear spoke.

She clenched her teeth in irritation when the call was repeated.

He could be covering up the sound of someone encroaching on her cover, but she didn't dare even hiss a warning. For if she could hear someone, they were sure to hear her if they were paying attention. The biggest fault of many who failed to reach into the Elite roster, in Wraith's opinion, was that they underestimated. Better to assume better from your opponents and be proven superior, than to assume superiority and get caught short.

"Wraith? You're falling behind. There's a squad up-"

Whatever was said next was lost to her as the sound of a door opening made her dodge. Shotgun pellets littered the wall behind her as she slid low and rolled, rising to her knees and returning fire. The door swung shut, an effective shield, and Wraith turned away, threading into the space between worlds just in case.

The cold fire licked up her spine, still aching from earlier, but she was phasing back out before it could take proper hold. She threw open the narrower door in front of her, leaping for the bannister to save time on the stairs, and hauling herself onto the roof. A shot clipped her shoulder and knocked her balance, and she fell from the roof edge in surprise.

Another.

Shit.

Her squad had moved further up, leaving her this last building to loot before joining them. She debated for a split second, before deciding it wasn't worth it and turning tail. The edge of the next ring wasn't far. It'd move in to a spot just down the open metal bridge, relayed to herself and Mirage in advance by Pathfinder. Though it wasn't ideal to run outwards, putting even more distance between her and her squad at this late stage, she took the chance.

"We have a problem." she finally spoke, zigzagging down the steep bridge to Hydro, "There's a team between us, and I have to get out."

"Shit."

"I'll set up a zipline." came Pathfinder's instant reply, "Follow the ring wall and I shall meet you."

Wraith danced between the assault rifle shots chasing her down, taking a hit in the small of her back. While her shields held, the force of the impact jarred her entire body, and sent her legs fumbling for purchase.

"Setting up a zipline." came confirmation seconds later.

"Roger." she barked, no air spare for much else, and swung her path sharply to the left.

It wasn't until she saw the yellow rope fast approaching that she was sure that her pursuer had given up. Her lungs ached from the prolonged sprint, but she threw her arm up for the waiting handle and let it drag her closer to her team. She landed on the high peak beside the robot, and found the energy to smile as he greeted her.

"Thanks, Pathfinder."

"Happy to help, friend!"

Not two feet from the pole of the zipline, was another gleaming beetle black, and a yellow rope descending steeply into Repulsor. She gave Pathfinder an appraising glance as he gestured towards it for her to go first.

"Nice work."

His screen lit sunny and yellow as her feet left the rock, and he followed her.

No sooner had they landed, however, but things took a turn. Gunfire cracked hard and sharp below their feet.

"Incoming!" Mirage yelled, just as Wraith's toes touched down, and she threw her hands out for balance as the explosion shook the tall building.

They weren't ready for this fight, exposed on the rooftop and without line of sight. Fucking idiot-

"What the fuck?" she called out, pulling her shotgun into her hands as she watched their third race from the building doors.

"Mirage-"

And there, before her eyes, he shattered into sparks of blue light.

Get down!

"Sniper on the bridge!"

Wraith dropped the fasted way she could; right off the front of the rooftop, exposed. The Kraber hit her collarbone on her way down and she landed on her side, momentarily losing the ability to breathe.

"Wraith!"

Get up!

She flinched and curled on instinct.

"You are out of cover, friend!"

The second shot splintered what was left of her shields and tore a hole into her shoulder, the inches from her heart there but for the grace of the Voices. Her blood was hot, burning her cheek and almost blinding her. She flexed a palm and sliced open the air, still feeling the path of the third shot as it veered around her. Her left side went numb.

The Void crackled and lapped her skin, sinking deep claws into what little energy she had left, but she forced herself to her feet. There was gunfire inside. Mirage was yelling, and Pathfinder's Havoc was singing loudly, the Turbocharger she'd found him refining the hum. At least he'd swung inside, somehow. She had to get somewhere else. Out of this sandwich. She stumbled, slowed by the pain from phasing and the screaming hole in her shoulder, but she didn't dare drop her hold incase she was still in that Kraber's crosshairs.

This was a shit place to be, she briefly thought, as she threw herself around the corner of the building, the ledge narrow at her toes. She let go of the Void and gulped in the cooler air, clawing for the zip on her backpack.

She was separated from her team. Momentary cover to recoup wasn't much of an advantage if she couldn't keep them alive too.

The needle sank into her skin and she willed it to empty faster, tossing it and reaching for another as she listened to the chaos.

"Healing!" she hollered, dropping another syringe for a shield canister, filling her Blue tier all in one go, "On my way!"

"I am down!"

She threw the pack onto her back and lifted her Eva. She spun the corner with it raised and she rushed inside, slamming her back against the wall to take in what was happening. As her shoulders made contact with the doorframe, her PDA pinged.

Pathfinder was out.

The huge room was filled with snowy smoke, gunfire smattering. Lots of it blind, she bet, raising her gun to make use of the heat-function on the sights. She fired when the flash of red appeared, hearing someone yell out.

Third team will be here soon.

Lifeline. She pumped another shell into the barrel and fired again. The light ting of a shield cracking. She raised it again.

Suddenly, there was fire at her feet.

Wraith cursed, leaping over it to rush for the staircase as her skin squealed and blistered, and something solid was deflected by her shields, landing behind her.

Grenade!

Wraith was blown forward, hitting her face against the metal railing and yelping as she barrel rolled away, further against the wall, her ears ringing as her vision swam.

It's over.

Wraith barely had time to look her in the eye as the soldier cocked her rifle and took the shot.

Clean, right through her heart.

~.~

Wraith woke in the MedBay, disoriented and gasping as though she'd swam from the bottom of the sea. Her ears were assaulted by the noise in the room and nausea rose in her gut fast enough that she barely had time to turn her head and weakly try to rise.

The entire room was a flurry of movement and sound, a variety of prods. She felt drunk and weak.

Arms pushed her firmly down, and it took all the power she had to fight back the urge to push back. She gritted her teeth, forcing herself into her own head. Forcing herself backward, into the shadows, into the safety as her body screamed in a hundred different agonies and the Voices hollered about the Facility, devolving into vicious, feral howls.

"You're doing great, Wraith! Hang in there, love."

Wraith clung to the sound amidst the smog of others, and counted her breaths.

Not the Facility.
Not the Facility.

The MedBay, the MedBay. She was in the MedBay.

She passed out again and woke several times, and by the time it was over she was exhausted and so full of pain meds she could barely open her eyes.

They'd lost. She hadn't lost in…. in too long. She'd won almost everything since her beginning. She fought, she won. It was what she did. Things should have been different.

Things could have been different.

If she'd been there sooner for that fight. If Pathfinder hadn't had to come for her. If Mirage hadn't started a fight with a full team on his own.

The Voices drew quiet now they were assured of where she was, and Wraith brooded, the darkness in her head growing sharp edges as what pieces she had of that final fight slotted together in her head. They had that. They had that ground and if he'd waited just seconds more...

A whisper, from another place, breathed to her.

There are others.

Wraith heaved a sigh to release some energy, the biggest movement she could manage. She couldn't help hating to feel so paralysed, hating to feel so trapped. She hadn't died in more than a year. She'd forgotten the agony. She didn't think she had, had thought she'd kept it fresh in her mind but she'd forgotten its extent, how her very cells screamed as they were torn apart and reassembled. The pain brightened the shadows in her mind every time her muscles twitched, making the rolling in her gut an endless trigger.

What others?

There were others.

What others?

Other paths.

Other pasts? What happened there?

You survived, this time.

Wraith was swelled by the dark when it came for her again, her lungs like heavy lead under the unsettling chill the whisper brought with it.

From the earliest moments that she could remember, patchy and fuzzy and filled with violence as they were, Wraith had heeded the Voices. They'd gotten her out, they'd kept her alive, and they'd kept her safe.

She'd ignored them today. Wilfully, blinded by that cold dread of repeating days when she'd seen her squadmate bleeding out, a hole in his abdomen. An uncanny portrait of the Legend they'd lost only three weeks prior. Maybe it had been a warning from another time. Maybe the Voices had been right. Maybe she should have left him. Maybe she hadn't been ready. Whichever way she looked at it, it left an acrid taste in her mouth and a frightening buzz in her gut. She'd have to keep an eye on that.