Port Farrall
Present Day
"There is a chain that connects all events, Dom. Our lives are all links in it. One day, at one moment, you will look back at the events in your life, and Carlos', and Marcus', and Maria's, and you will see that the chain could only ever have been made one way. You will see and understand the purpose of your life and death, and you will have perfect clarity and peace."
- Tai Kaliso speaking to Dominic Santiago after the imprisonment of Marcus Fenix.
The screaming and crying increased in frequency and volume until it - combined with the gunfire - reached a deafening level. Baird and I bolted towards the center of the city while others ran away from the danger. The crowd of mindless, motionless civilians that I had waded through before now became a frenzied, frantic, tidal wave that pushed and heaved at us so we had to fight for every step we took. The panic was palpable; fear tainted the air thick enough to taste in the back of one's throat. Even though the civvies were far enough away from the danger, they understood as well as any Gear what was happening.
The grubs were back.
It was supposed to be over. The grubs were supposed to have drowned in their tunnels. That belief had lulled all of us into a false sense of security; of course there would be stragglers. There would have been grubs above ground, in higher tunnels, in areas the water wouldn't reach them. We should have almost been expecting this. Or, at the very least, I should have expected this. But I hadn't. I'd become so wrapped up in my own issues and drama that I'd forgotten the danger we were all still in. And now people were dying.
The center of the city - where food and supplies were distributed - was always a busy place. Of course, of course, the grubs would attack there. I was close enough to see the individual flashes of gunfire and feel the heat from the battle, but I couldn't identify where the grubs were. There were too many civilians running around in panic. We were now running against a tide of civvies heading in all directions, some people clutching the grab bags they'd been so thoroughly drilled to snatch and run when disaster struck. It was a blind flight; they could have been running straight into more grubs but I had no way or knowing or stopping them.
Finally, we broke through to where the battle was taking place. There was a couple dozen drones spraying the food center while a Berserker went on a killing rampage. The mindless bitch flailed her muscular arms around in a deadly frenzy. Berserkers were savage beasts, even by grub standards. The only thing that stopped them from killing everything in sight - including fellow grubs - were their riders. The rider's reins whipped uselessly in the air along with the jockey's dead body, held in place by the stirrups that had become his grave. She'd probably led them here - tracked the human scent left by the mass migration away from Jacinto. She'd sniffed out the same humans that were now clumped together - some alive, some not - by the entrances of the building. People were either rushing to get away from the building or to get into the building, searching for a sense of safety that would never exist. The confusion just led to a disjointed clump of death.
Cover was scarce. Usually, in urban warfare, there were burned out cars to hide behind, collapsed buildings or walls, or even alleyways to duck down and flank the enemy. All of that had been cleared away to make room for people - people who now lay dead in the streets. Trying hard - very, very hard - not to think about it, I ducked behind a small mound of dead bodies and used the corpses as cover. I noticed they were still warm as I balanced my lancer on the chest of a middle-age woman and fired at the locusts.
I resorted to instinct and reflex during the fight. Fighting - and killing, for that matter - was easy; it was everything else that was so damn difficult. A ring of gears surrounded the food center, drawing the grub's fire away from the civilians and toward ourselves. It didn't matter, however. The civilians were still caught in the cross-fire. When the fighting was done, how many COG bullets would we pull out of our own people? How many would die by the hands of their so-called heroes?
The Berserker was still flailing wildly in the streets. Driven purely by blind rage, I watched as she killed a grub with a single blow to the head and then continued beating his lifeless body into a bloody pulp on the ground. Standard rounds wouldn't penetrate her thick hide; only a Centaur round could do that. I was sure that there was one on its way, but I had no idea when it would arrive. The streets were still overly-congested with the fleeing civilians and gears trying to get people to safety - whatever that meant. It wouldn't exactly be an easy journey for a wide-set Centaur to reach the center of the camp.
"Baird!" a familiar voice hollered over the cacophony of battle. The shout echoed next to me, but fainter, more mechanical and through a gear's earpiece. With a jolt I realized that Baird had stuck next to me throughout the battle, using the same mound of corpses as protection. I had been focused on the grubs; not the soldier next to me. Baird and I both turned toward the original shout and saw Dom sprinting towards out position. He had almost made it - almost cleared the meters of exposed ground - but the Berserker scented him at the last second.
The Berserker turned and focused on him.
Oh...shit...
She opened her mouth and let forth a raucous roar of blood-lust and fury. Her fists - already stained a deep red from the blood of the fallen - fell towards the ground as she positioned herself in a mockery sprinter's form. Even at a distance, I could see her muscles tense and bind as she prepared to launch herself forward at her new victim. Her blind eyes settled on my father as she began to charge.
"Run!" I shrieked as I jumped to my feet and prepared to follow my own advice. I wasn't fast enough, however, couldn't move fast enough. There was no way I could reach him before the Berserker; the only thing I could do was watch him die.
Dom followed my advice, but in the precisely wrong way. His dark eyes glinted with rage as he charged the Berserker. He fuckin' charged the Berserker. I knew first-hand the kind of shit that went through one's mind during battle - knew the anger, and rage, and straight up fury that drove men to heroic acts. But that's the thing about heroes - they're all dead. They die doing the exact stupid stunts my father was pulling, because when the adrenalin starts pumping the mind clicks off. I knew that - I was guilty of it as well. Instinct and reflex take over and you never once stop to think that what you're doing could kill you. You don't think, because thinking is hard. Dying is easy.
Even though I knew I was too late - knew that I could never reach him in time - I vaulted over the clump of bodies at my feet and prepared to sprint forward. I never got the chance, however. Baird grabbed the back of my jacket just as a Centaur came rolling through on my left. The giant tank took up the rest of the street and would have struck and killed me if Baird hadn't reached out and grabbed me. The huge tires rolled past so close that I could smell them; could taste the heady rubbery smell that caught on the back of my throat. I could hear the missile launcher click on top of the Centaur as it prepared to fire, but it was too late. The Berserker was still charging; my father was still going to die.
The pin dropped; the shell ejected; the missile was launched. Burning gunfire propelled the five-pound bullet towards the Berserker and my father. Hot, burning residue rained down on me and Baird, making the world feel much too hot and too cold all at the same time. The blast deafened me to the world as if the volume had been turned all the way down on a radio. All that was left was a high-pitched ringing in my ears and a bloodless, numb feeling in my chest that let me know my father was dead.
I'm not quite sure what happened next. One moment Dom was there, in the path of the projectile, and the next second he was not. The Berserker went down as the missile struck her in the chest, but she wasn't dead. The Centaur rolled forward to finish her and the rest of the grubs off and Baird released his hold on me. With all the adrenalin in my system, the world looked wrong. It was blurry and over-focused all at the same time. I had trained myself to look only at grey, mottled skin during a firefight, so it took a moment for me to recognize the familiar form of Dom lying sprawled out on the ground where Marcus had tackled him.
Marcus had saved him when I could not. At the last second, Marcus had tackled Dom around the waist and dragged him out of danger. That was his job. Something very close to relief joined the adrenalin in my veins as it pumped around in my system. It was over. The grubs were dead, the Berserker was dead, and Dom was alive - despite his best efforts to be otherwise. The past couple of seconds had felt like hours.
"Are you fucking insane?!" That was Marcus, yelling at Dom. The answer was yes - of course he was - but that was okay. So was the rest of the human populace. Marcus sank back on his knees and watched with a slightly frantic gaze as Dom picked himself up off the ground. Marcus grabbed his shoulder tightly as if he was going to try and shake some sense into him. "Dom, don't do this. You're going to get through it. There's no point in beating these assholes if you throw your life away."
"Sorry man," Dom answered in a voice that was trying hard to sound normal, but wasn't quite there. "I just get mad."
And that was that. My world had almost ended - again - because he had gotten pissed off for a split-second. He was pissed off and wanted to die because he couldn't rescue Maria in time. Apparently, his life was meaningless without Maria in it - even incognito Maria. I know that's what had been going through his mind, because I had been there. I had once wanted to throw my life away because I was meaningless. I hadn't saved the one thing that mattered to me in the whole world, so I wanted to die. I deserved to die. And that feeling never quite goes away, either. You just find a way of living with it.
More emotions piled onto my already over-loaded adrenal system, so I just blanked the whole thing. I went numb, so I wouldn't have to feel any of it. No guilt, no anger, no regret, no confusion, no nothing. Numbness was better than hurting.
Ignoring the fact that my father had just tried his damness to commit suicide, I turned away from where Marcus was helping him to his feet. I could feel Marcus' eyes on my back but I wasn't going to deal with it. Not now. Preferably not ever. If Sam had been here I would have snuck off into some deep, dark pit with her by my side and buried my head into her warm fur. Her soft side would hide any tears that might have fallen, and her scent could have erased the smell of burnt flesh and gunpowder that felt permanently etched into my sinuses. She was the best therapist the world over. Maybe I could get Dom a dog, and I wouldn't have to worry about him offing himself in the next battle.
Baird was talking into his comm unit with his head turned away from everyone to hear well. I caught the name 'Cole' with some light jargon following it, so I assumed he was alive as well. That was good. My eye caught sight of the Centaur's bloody tire tracks and I remembered how Baird had pulled me out of death's grip. I waited until he finished his conversation before speaking up.
"I supposed I should thank you for not letting me become road-kill."
His blue eyes - much warmer and more interesting than Marcus' - caught my gaze. He thought my 'thank you' over for a second, probably wondering if I was being sincere, before rolling his neck. "Yeah, well...the blowback would have hit my armor. I have better things to do tonight than wash squished Bri out of my plates."
Normally his graphic response would have made me grimace, but I didn't care. Numb, remember? Completely numb. Too late I realized he was probably expecting a response to that. I didn't really care, however. Standing in the middle of the mid-day massacre, social norms took a backseat. My ears still rang slightly with that high-pitched, irritating tone, but now the silence hummed just as loud. There was no more gunfire, no explosions, no screaming. The battle had ended, along with so many lives. The streets ran red with blood as the arduous task of clearing the dead began. The civilians who had fled at the beginning of the fight came slowly trickling back to search through the dead and the dying for those capable of being saved.
I could feel Baird's eyes on me, but I couldn't meet his gaze. Unwillingly, my eyes went back to the mound of corpses used as cover by me and Baird. I hadn't taken the time to look - actually look - at the faces and identities of the bodies before. I should never have looked. The middle-age woman who had served as a stable rest for my lancer looked all too familiar. Swallowing down a deep-seated feeling of dread, I brushed back her blood-stained blonde hair out of her face.
It was the woman from earlier today; the one who accused me of being nothing more than a Stranded thief.
No... I thought with regret as I stared down at her corpse. When I had talked to her earlier - fought with her, more like - her expression had been twisted into an angry scowl. Now her face was etched with terror. Her last moments had been filled with fear and chaos. Nobody deserved to die like that, not even self-righteous bitches.
"Friend of yours?" Baird asked me.
Not answering, I knelt beside her and closed her fear-stricken dead eyes. My hands came back stained with her blood - still warm. Had she still been alive as I balanced my lancer atop her chest? Could I have helped her? Would I have even noticed if she had been breathing?
"I've got to go," I finally said. I couldn't stay here; here in this city of death and destruction and fear. I would break down. I tried to hold onto that numb feeling in my chest, but the atmosphere and emotions of everyone surrounding me was slowly poisoning me.
"What?"
"I've got to go," I repeated. I finally met his gaze. "This place is filled with pain, and anger, and pressure...and disloyalty. I'm good on all that." My blood-soaked grip slipped on my lancer as I tried to explain it to Baird. I couldn't stay here; I just couldn't. "I just...I've got to get away from here."
"Where will you go?" Baird asked me. To his credit, he didn't ask me to explain. He just got it. I stared around me at the destruction, and the people working to replace it with order. I could stick around and help pull bodies out of the rubble - both Human and Locust - but honestly, something like that would break my heart all over again. It took me a second, but I finally came up with an idea that allowed me to run away, without letting everyone know I was actually running away.
"You know," I said in a voice that didn't quite sound like me, "I think I'll go hunting."
Author's Note: I'm so sorry this took forever. I've been dealing with some stuff like graduating (Yay!) and the death of someone close to me (not so yay…) and writing took a back seat. I haven't given up on this story, however! It's just…taking longer than I expected to get chapters out.
I know; I said this would be the Dom & Bri chapter, but I liked ending it there. The next chapter is almost done, so I'll probably have it out in a day or two. Promise!
Leave a review if you please telling me what you think! I hope you like this chapter, long-awaited as it is. Like I said, the next one will be out soon!
