Nameless: The Soaring Heights

Author: Keren Ziv
Disclaimer
: I don't own DA
Rating
: PG, because it's not G
Category
: It isn't any shipper story
Author's Note
: This is the third in a series

I liked heights. Mountaintops, trees, building roofs, it didn't matter what I was on, as long as it was up in the air and above the people. I think the first time I could remember climbing up to a spot was when I was about three. I could have been younger, I could have been older, but the point is that I climbed a shelf and lay, my body strung out, on my back and just was. I didn't need to work on anything and I didn't have anybody yelling at me. I think that with the serenity I found that day, I also found my first love.

That was more than fifteen years ago, my first high place, and I had many high places now that nobody knew about. They were my secret spots; places I went to unwind when I was feeling down and out; they were spots for me to be happy in, because I could not show happiness in any other place.

I think that They knew it. I got a lot of assignments for me to travel to someplace with mountain ranges or cliffs or bridges near. I suppose I should have been thankful to them that they were granting me this small kindness. However, back then, I'm not at all sure that I knew how to be really thankful.

I got an assignment to go to California and, well, remove a businessman from his own lofty perch in the technology world. He had been working on something or the other that would give most of California electricity cheaper and let them have some relief from the government monopoly that had been made. Not that I cared very much.

It was a uncomplicated mission. It was trouble-free from the start. The man was drunk when I arrived, so stripping him down to his bright red briefs and tie was no problem. I walked him up to the top floor of his apartment building and let him admire the view of the city of Sacramento for a few minutes before gently prodding him over the ledge.

I was supposed to drive immediately back to the base in Washington State after I was finished with my mission. However, I had some extra time left over and I decided to take a small coastal excursion and see how the sea looks from a high perch on a cliff.

I stopped in a small town on the Oregon coast called Devil's Something-Or-The-Other. It was rather dingy looking, with buildings that seemed not to have been washed since the Pulse, but I wasn't there to see the buildings. I had seen some signs on the high way, boasting of their wonderful beaches and the houses you could rent that overlooked the sea from a cliff. It didn't matter that the signs looked to be twenty years old, because I didn't want to rent a summerhouse. I just wanted to be high above the sands.

I stopped my car in the parking lot as the signs directed me to. I saw that there seemed to be two sets of stairs, one leading up and one leading down, at the end of the lot. I walked slowly to them, smelling the air laced with salt. I went up the stairs quickly, jogging up them in my haste to see the sights. The stairs went upwards for a long while, several times stopping at a landing before continuing it's ascent.

Whatever houses had been there beforehand were no longer on the narrow stretch of land that I saw when I reached the landing. It was no matter to me, however, because I could see, just out beyond.

To be able to fly, I mused, and see these things without somebody searching for me to send me on to lunch or exercises. Just to be able to view the land below me without worry. I stepped forward, trying to take in the entire view.

There were rocks almost directly underneath the crumbling edge that was there. They looked thin and rather fragile. For half a second, I figured on testing them, but I decided against it. I could see something over the end of the rocks, though, and I scanned it a bit for a while before I was able to identify it. It was a house, or what was left of it. It had been dashed to pieces. So that was where the summer houses on the cliffs had gone.

I back up for a moment, suddenly breathless. I looked down on the sand and the waters and saw the reflection of the sun on them. It was almost dizzying up here. I went forward once more, determined to catch every drop of the view. I heard something move in the woods.

I made a move to turn and inspect the source of the noise. Without warning, the ground beneath me slipped away and for a frantic second I was flying downwards in a horrifying tumble. I reached out and frantically grabbed at whatever I was soaring past. Just barely, I managed to catch hold of the rocks.

I just needed to take hold with my other hand and then pull myself up. I glanced down below me and saw the houses that had fallen. I became paralyzed with fear. I closed my eyes, willing the images to flee my mind, but they were there all the same, haunting me. I needed to get the picture of the house out of my mind.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I reached my hand and tried to grab the edge of the stone. I could feel the centuries pass for each inch it rose. I just barely managed to touch my fingertips to it before the thought of the house entered my mind and I dropped it. As soon as my flesh touched the stone, I knew that I wouldn't be able to pull myself it. It wasn't a matter of ability. I wouldn't, mentally, be able to do it. I was ashamed of myself at that moment.

I heard something crinkle from above. My mind flashed to my bag and the communication devices that I had up there. I silently cursed myself for ever stopping here to view the sea from above. It would be the death of me. I had gotten weak, though, and perhaps I deserved it. I would be a second-rate soldier. As I thought of my bag up above me, it suddenly came to me that I hadn't brought my bag from the car.

Whose communication device had made that noise? I kept as quiet as I possibly could, straining to hear whatever was being said. At first, I heard nothing, and began to fear that I had imagined the entire thing. However, I finally heard a voice.

"I lost visual. Subject disappeared over the cliff's end. Permission to conduct a retrieval of remains, sir." The voice was filled lilt, yet it had a commanding tone to it. "I wont allow any more X-5s to become rogue, sir."

She had been following me because I was an X-5? I waited while she walked closer and closer to the end of the dirt, waited while I knew she would see me and call that in. She reached the edge and I had the sudden desire to hide myself. I had no way to be able to do it, though, so I kept still, my eyes on her.

I knew why she had been following me when she looked over. She was an X-5 herself. However . . . she hadn't been in 445's group when he had ordered them to leave. I had been caught almost immediately and returned to the barracks. I hadn't fought them in the least.

Yet they still didn't trust me. Ironic. I followed orders that night, from my CO. When I was told to stop by our keepers, I stopped. I had been reindoctorated, had been placed in a new group of X-5s, had followed any and all orders they had given me, and they still didn't trust me.

The girl blinked once, then twice. I saw her lips move in a silent curse word, then I saw her move a black box to her mouth.

"Subject is alive. Am going to get and return to home."

She was getting out ropes and tethers. I knew that she would soon lower herself down towards me and secure me, before scrambling back up the crumbling dirt and hauling me back in. What would I be going back to? I would be going back to a place that didn't trust me, a place that sent others to follow me after I completed my missions.

"I think you were mistaken about something," I said quietly. It is the first time I've spoken to her and I think she looked slightly surprised that I had the audacity to speak to her as she was preparing to save my six. I noticed how sturdily built she seemed to be: she was tall and her shoulders were well formed. She had short, chin-length hair that framed a face that betrayed nothing about her. She would blend into a crowd someday soon and sneak into a residential neighborhood and then into a house before finally removing her gun and killing an old Admiral because he had taken to speaking of an old project called Manticore or something-or-the-other. "You aren't going to be able to get me up there."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?" she said. "I didn't notice anything to prevent me from helping you. What exactly is the problem?"

"I'm not going back to your home," I said quietly. I noticed how her lips twitched in amusement when I made this statement. I kept speaking. "I don't think I like it very much." I brought my body up doubled under me, my knees to my chin. I looked up at the sky and remembered all the times I had wished I could fly up into the heights and just observe from there and not be bothered.

Carefully, I let go of the rocks and plant life which I was holding and pushed off with my feet against the hard stone and caking dirt.

I was going home.