A/N: Sorry that took a little longer than the past few chapters have taken. I went on vacation, though, so I haven't been able to put it up until today. I wrote the bulk of it on the plane, actually, heh.
Anyway, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has reviewed, both in this story and in my others. You guys always make my day...partly it gives me the motivation to keep writing, and partly it gives me the motivation to keep watching the show, because I know I'm not the only one sticking it out to the end. My passion has basically been all but completely revived the past few episodes, anyway...it's a shame it took them until the last few episodes to pull out the big guns, though...
But, anywho.
*******
----Present time----
185, 190, 195...he didn't know why he was still paying such close attention to their speed. They were out of the city, on back roads, and the sooner this was through the better. For some reason, though, he couldn't help feeling nervous...puh, imagine that. An X-5 afraid of going a little too fast. He grinned and shook the feeling away.
"We should try to come around and meet them head on," he suggested, straining his voice to be heard over the hum of the engine. She shook her head and he sank away.
"No," she shouted back, "you said it yourself: there's not enough time for that."
On some level he knew that she was right, but pride was his favorite vice and as usual he let it overtake him. He wanted to be right; she had gotten the upperhand one too many times today and he was sick of it.
"This is going to rely completely on luck, isn't it?" he inquired gruffly.
By now, she knew him well enough to know she had already beaten him and that he simply couldn't admit to it. More importantly, she had learned just where and how hard to strike back. "I thought you didn't believe in luck," she replied, infusing her tone with irony. To her delight, he said nothing further and she shifted up once again.
*******
She tilted her head to watch the car speed by, only the second that had passed in the nearly four hours that they'd been here. Weakly she considered pulling herself to her feet and rushing out into the road to stop the car and plead for help, but nothing was more apparent than the fact that such an action was futile at this point. She had lost enough blood both to appear pale to her companion and to feel slightly dizzy when attempting to rise, and even if she did have the energy to go for help it was doubtful anyone would be willing to respond. They'd ask too many questions, anyway.
She sighed, leaning back against the tree and thinking about whether she was ready to die. Light was fading to black and the final destination was close on the horizon so she supposed she should set to make her peace, then surprised herself at the detached calm with which she was now able to confront death. Her instincts rebelled against the imminent, of course, but what is to be must be, and with that she assured herself that she was ready. On that front she didn't really mind the change she had undergone during this experience; it made the present far easier with which to deal.
She looked across to Logan, who was staring thoughtfully up into the trees, seemingly trying to come to terms as she had just done. Maybe if it had been another place, another time, if the approaching outcome had come from less intense circumstances, the empathy would have overridden the curiosity. But she had nothing to lose, and if he had cause to get angry at such a time that was his problem. A best friend had been lost and she felt she had the right to know.
"Hey Logan," she called. He snapped to attention and she took a deep breath. "I know it's prolly hard, but what went down wit' you an' Max?"
As always there was the anger, the familiar burning in the pit of his stomach and the tight locking of every muscle that existed in his body. Biting remarks filtered through his brain; she had no right to pry, no right to enter his private world, no right to ask him to relive only the second most painful event of his life. But then, that event had led to a painful encounter for Cindy as well, hadn't it? He tightened his eyelids and took a moment to steady himself, then decided he owed it to her and that, at this point, he hadn't anything to lose.
"We ran into each other at the Space Needle," he started, pausing briefly and resolving to spare his friend the truth about Max's survival. "She...she said she had to leave because we'd all be better off that way, and I could see right through her. I knew it was bull, and I got afraid and thought that if I said just theright thing that I'd be able to make her stay. Well, we got into a fight and...I said something I probably shouldn't have said. It wasn't fair." He wanted to believe that it would be enough to stop there, but Cindy raised her eyebrows in anticipation and the action of repeating the words suddenly gained significant weight. "I...um...she called me an asshole, and...I said something along the lines of, 'you didn't think that during our celebration, or were you still in heat then.' And...and she pushed past me and then she was gone." He hung his head in shame and expected hatred, or at least anger, but for a moment he was greeted only with silence and when he looked up slightly he saw friendly concern and sympathy more than disapproval.
Not that she wasn't at least slightly mad at him; he was certainly right when he'd characterized his words as being something that shouldn't have been said. She understood, though, and Max hadn't exactly been in the right, either. It also wouldn't help either of them to develop bad blood right now; what was needed was companionship, so she hid her less dignified emotions behind her handy brand-new outer shell.
"Well, guess that's Max...standin' face to face wit' happiness straight up an' she'd rather be an idiot and go all lonesome." It was an attempt at making light of the situation and a fairly bad one at that, but it got him to smile anyway and they slipped into a quiet that was just a little less uneasy.
*******
It was beyond her how a common civilian and a supposedly crippled computer nerd could have caused so much damage. The bodies strewn across the road were riddledwith bullets, except for one which had been shot directly in the back of the head, and the trees lining the sides of the street proudly displayed the scars they'd gathered in the crossfire. Quickly suck things were pushed aside, though, left for the rightfully inferior hands of the clean-up crew, with a select few assigned to chase away the nosy passers-by who had stopped at the site and were presently idling in morbid fascination.
Brin, meanwhile, moved around the van, whose crumpled hood was surrounded by a ring of smoke and whose windshield was now lying in inconsistent shards around the front of the vehicle. Against a tree there leaned the survivor, noticably trying to retain consciousness and tainted by a streak of dried blood which ran from his forehead to his chin. His eyes lit up at his superior's approach, and he went to stand straight and at attention but fell back against the tree when he was hit with a bout of nausea.
"Forgive me, ma'am," he mumbled. She tilted her head, studying him, before putting on an air of understanding.
"It's all right, soldier. I am well aware of your condition."
He nodded in gratitude and managed a weak salute to show his respect and wish to remain faithful to duty. She smiled and shook her head at the pitiful display, then hardened again, partially out of a desire to have a little fun with him and partially to verify information. In accordance with the orders she'd received, there could be only one outcome to this confrontation, but the rush of having proved her loyalty was fresh and she was in the mood for game.
"Regardless, I AM awaiting your report," she stated gruffly. He looked to her in confusion and disbelief, and without thinking, unprofessionally ran a shaky hand through his bloody, tousled hair, having freed it long ago from his helmet.
"I...delivered it to the director..."
"And NOW you are to deliver it to me," she barked. "Do you have a problem with this?"
"N...no ma'am," he stuttered, visibly intimidated. "As I was coming around this bend, the prisoners somehow managed to free themselves and subsequently revolted. I turned briefly to assess the situation, and during those few seconds the vehicel went off the road and I was unable to maintain control. I was knocked unconscious as a result of the ensuing impact, and when I came to, everyone else was dead and the escapees were commandeering the second van. I tried to shoot them but was unable and decided instead to disable the vehicle by shooting out the tires."
"And you tried as hard as was possible in consideration of all conditions present?" she asked. Obvious question, but this was all in fun.
"Yes ma'am, of course," he replied with a series of lathargic nods. His eyes rolled back at that point and she almost expected him to drop, but then he shook his head and placed a hand firmly behind him against the tree to steady himself. He finally managed to stand up completely straight without feeling the urge to technicolor yawn, and, chest heaving erratically, he looked to the X-5 and pleaded non-verbally for sympathy though deep down he knew he would receive none.
"Very well," Brin huffed after a rather long interlude of silence. She moved her hand to rest on the handle of her gun and his nerves tightened violently, his stomach knotting from forces beyond the physical and liquid fear traversing through his body. "Before we again depart, I have been instructed to deliver the following message." Faster than he could tell, than he could process the import of her words, the gun had been raised and aimed and the survivors became solely Logan and Original Cindy. A fresh smear travelled down between his eyes, over his nose and down onto the top of his vest, moving at the speed of his body, which slid protestfully down the tree upon which he had been leaning and left in its wake a trail of red. His killer reacted with all the emotion of a rock and replaced her gun quickly and robotically, like the machine she had moved one step closer to becoming.
"The director thinks you should have tried harder," she stated coldly before turning on her heels and ordering the X-5s to again move out.
*******
"Gettin cold...think we should up and start a fire?" Cindy asked, shivering and wrapped her arms around her for warmth. What worried her, though, was that Logan looked perfectly comfortable in the temperature department...which meant the chill sweeping over her likely was the result of dangerous amounts of blood loss.
Logan cocked his head to the side and clicked his tongue, stuffing hands into empty pockets to illustrate the point he was about to make. "Got any matches?"
She smiled softly. "Good point." She thought of primitively rubbing sticks together and her smile widened, enough to infect Logan and bring the mood of the occasion another two shades lighter. This was actually rather nice; here they were on the brink of death, but perfectly content and more accepting of their fate than they had been for anything else in their lives. Logan could no longer find reason to complain about the situation, and after all that he had experienced today he was all but numb to his own insecurities and sense of of physical inferiority. The thought of Max still hurt him, but now he managed to focus on the good and what time they had been able to share together. Cindy, on the other hand, now knew more about dealing with an absence of choice than she had probably ever wanted to, and knowing that there likely was nothing that they on their own could do to prevent what was in store for them actually had begun to be more a source of comfort than anything else. Death wasn't so bad, afterall; in death there would be no more pain, no more hiding. And all they had to do was drifty away, sleep and fall into everlasting peace.
She leaned back against the tree and stared blankly off beyond Logan, seeing everything but not really seeing it at all and slowly letting her eyelids fall into place. Serenity washed over her and for an instant the welcoming strains of a deep sleep began to tug at her being, but then her eyes snapped wide and sharp alertness replaced the calm. There was no fear; she was simply aware, aware with every fiber that what she had just seen was not only more than an illusion but something unnatural and threatening.
"Did you see that?" she whispered, even as she knew he couldn't have since it had happened behind him.
Logan lifted his shoulders and shook his head. "See what?"
"Somethin' moved."
His brow creased and he followed her gaze, craning his neck to peer around his tree, toward the road. It happened again; a flash, a whisper, a wind out of nowhere that didn't make any reasonable amount of sense. Familiarity triggered knowledge somewhere in the back of his overworked mind, but he couldn't quite make the connection.
"They send more out to finish the job?" Cindy asked. The flatness of her tone surprised him but he ignored it.
"Couldn't be...people don't move that fast," he replied. She sighed impatiently.
"Well, there's SOMETHIN' there...an' look," she said, pointing further down the road, "way over where the van is. Ain't that a hummer?"
He followed the gesture and nodded slowly, still trying to overcome the mental blockage that had formed. It was the feeling of wanting to use a specific word, knowing what the word means and even how it sounds but for some reason being unable to form it. "Yeah, but..." And then suddenly it clicked and he was again experiencing the crippling rush of fear; death would not come now, not without pain, and maybe not without sacrificing countless other lives and his body stiffened in barely concealed panic.
Cindy immediately picked up on his change in demeanor and suddenly dying in the woods in the middle of nowhere didn't seem so wonderful. "...what?" she whispered, chemicals beginning to slowly erode the numbness. He chuckled awkwardly, nervously, adjusted his glasses to give his hands something to do and found it increasingly difficult to breathe properly.
"If I didn't know any better," he began, "I'd say we were being surrounded by..."
And then there were four more flashes, simultaneously, breaking out from all around and surrounding them in speed beyond motion. He watched helplessly as a blur pushed Cindy's head hard into the tree, knocking her out, and briefly neglected his body's need for oxygen when he felt the cold of a gun press to his temple.
"...X-5s," he finished breathlessly, taking in from the corner of his eye the face of a young man, probably in his very early 20s.
The man smirked and pressed closer, sucking in an amused breath. "Very perceptive of ya, Eyes."
Anyway, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has reviewed, both in this story and in my others. You guys always make my day...partly it gives me the motivation to keep writing, and partly it gives me the motivation to keep watching the show, because I know I'm not the only one sticking it out to the end. My passion has basically been all but completely revived the past few episodes, anyway...it's a shame it took them until the last few episodes to pull out the big guns, though...
But, anywho.
*******
----Present time----
185, 190, 195...he didn't know why he was still paying such close attention to their speed. They were out of the city, on back roads, and the sooner this was through the better. For some reason, though, he couldn't help feeling nervous...puh, imagine that. An X-5 afraid of going a little too fast. He grinned and shook the feeling away.
"We should try to come around and meet them head on," he suggested, straining his voice to be heard over the hum of the engine. She shook her head and he sank away.
"No," she shouted back, "you said it yourself: there's not enough time for that."
On some level he knew that she was right, but pride was his favorite vice and as usual he let it overtake him. He wanted to be right; she had gotten the upperhand one too many times today and he was sick of it.
"This is going to rely completely on luck, isn't it?" he inquired gruffly.
By now, she knew him well enough to know she had already beaten him and that he simply couldn't admit to it. More importantly, she had learned just where and how hard to strike back. "I thought you didn't believe in luck," she replied, infusing her tone with irony. To her delight, he said nothing further and she shifted up once again.
*******
She tilted her head to watch the car speed by, only the second that had passed in the nearly four hours that they'd been here. Weakly she considered pulling herself to her feet and rushing out into the road to stop the car and plead for help, but nothing was more apparent than the fact that such an action was futile at this point. She had lost enough blood both to appear pale to her companion and to feel slightly dizzy when attempting to rise, and even if she did have the energy to go for help it was doubtful anyone would be willing to respond. They'd ask too many questions, anyway.
She sighed, leaning back against the tree and thinking about whether she was ready to die. Light was fading to black and the final destination was close on the horizon so she supposed she should set to make her peace, then surprised herself at the detached calm with which she was now able to confront death. Her instincts rebelled against the imminent, of course, but what is to be must be, and with that she assured herself that she was ready. On that front she didn't really mind the change she had undergone during this experience; it made the present far easier with which to deal.
She looked across to Logan, who was staring thoughtfully up into the trees, seemingly trying to come to terms as she had just done. Maybe if it had been another place, another time, if the approaching outcome had come from less intense circumstances, the empathy would have overridden the curiosity. But she had nothing to lose, and if he had cause to get angry at such a time that was his problem. A best friend had been lost and she felt she had the right to know.
"Hey Logan," she called. He snapped to attention and she took a deep breath. "I know it's prolly hard, but what went down wit' you an' Max?"
As always there was the anger, the familiar burning in the pit of his stomach and the tight locking of every muscle that existed in his body. Biting remarks filtered through his brain; she had no right to pry, no right to enter his private world, no right to ask him to relive only the second most painful event of his life. But then, that event had led to a painful encounter for Cindy as well, hadn't it? He tightened his eyelids and took a moment to steady himself, then decided he owed it to her and that, at this point, he hadn't anything to lose.
"We ran into each other at the Space Needle," he started, pausing briefly and resolving to spare his friend the truth about Max's survival. "She...she said she had to leave because we'd all be better off that way, and I could see right through her. I knew it was bull, and I got afraid and thought that if I said just theright thing that I'd be able to make her stay. Well, we got into a fight and...I said something I probably shouldn't have said. It wasn't fair." He wanted to believe that it would be enough to stop there, but Cindy raised her eyebrows in anticipation and the action of repeating the words suddenly gained significant weight. "I...um...she called me an asshole, and...I said something along the lines of, 'you didn't think that during our celebration, or were you still in heat then.' And...and she pushed past me and then she was gone." He hung his head in shame and expected hatred, or at least anger, but for a moment he was greeted only with silence and when he looked up slightly he saw friendly concern and sympathy more than disapproval.
Not that she wasn't at least slightly mad at him; he was certainly right when he'd characterized his words as being something that shouldn't have been said. She understood, though, and Max hadn't exactly been in the right, either. It also wouldn't help either of them to develop bad blood right now; what was needed was companionship, so she hid her less dignified emotions behind her handy brand-new outer shell.
"Well, guess that's Max...standin' face to face wit' happiness straight up an' she'd rather be an idiot and go all lonesome." It was an attempt at making light of the situation and a fairly bad one at that, but it got him to smile anyway and they slipped into a quiet that was just a little less uneasy.
*******
It was beyond her how a common civilian and a supposedly crippled computer nerd could have caused so much damage. The bodies strewn across the road were riddledwith bullets, except for one which had been shot directly in the back of the head, and the trees lining the sides of the street proudly displayed the scars they'd gathered in the crossfire. Quickly suck things were pushed aside, though, left for the rightfully inferior hands of the clean-up crew, with a select few assigned to chase away the nosy passers-by who had stopped at the site and were presently idling in morbid fascination.
Brin, meanwhile, moved around the van, whose crumpled hood was surrounded by a ring of smoke and whose windshield was now lying in inconsistent shards around the front of the vehicle. Against a tree there leaned the survivor, noticably trying to retain consciousness and tainted by a streak of dried blood which ran from his forehead to his chin. His eyes lit up at his superior's approach, and he went to stand straight and at attention but fell back against the tree when he was hit with a bout of nausea.
"Forgive me, ma'am," he mumbled. She tilted her head, studying him, before putting on an air of understanding.
"It's all right, soldier. I am well aware of your condition."
He nodded in gratitude and managed a weak salute to show his respect and wish to remain faithful to duty. She smiled and shook her head at the pitiful display, then hardened again, partially out of a desire to have a little fun with him and partially to verify information. In accordance with the orders she'd received, there could be only one outcome to this confrontation, but the rush of having proved her loyalty was fresh and she was in the mood for game.
"Regardless, I AM awaiting your report," she stated gruffly. He looked to her in confusion and disbelief, and without thinking, unprofessionally ran a shaky hand through his bloody, tousled hair, having freed it long ago from his helmet.
"I...delivered it to the director..."
"And NOW you are to deliver it to me," she barked. "Do you have a problem with this?"
"N...no ma'am," he stuttered, visibly intimidated. "As I was coming around this bend, the prisoners somehow managed to free themselves and subsequently revolted. I turned briefly to assess the situation, and during those few seconds the vehicel went off the road and I was unable to maintain control. I was knocked unconscious as a result of the ensuing impact, and when I came to, everyone else was dead and the escapees were commandeering the second van. I tried to shoot them but was unable and decided instead to disable the vehicle by shooting out the tires."
"And you tried as hard as was possible in consideration of all conditions present?" she asked. Obvious question, but this was all in fun.
"Yes ma'am, of course," he replied with a series of lathargic nods. His eyes rolled back at that point and she almost expected him to drop, but then he shook his head and placed a hand firmly behind him against the tree to steady himself. He finally managed to stand up completely straight without feeling the urge to technicolor yawn, and, chest heaving erratically, he looked to the X-5 and pleaded non-verbally for sympathy though deep down he knew he would receive none.
"Very well," Brin huffed after a rather long interlude of silence. She moved her hand to rest on the handle of her gun and his nerves tightened violently, his stomach knotting from forces beyond the physical and liquid fear traversing through his body. "Before we again depart, I have been instructed to deliver the following message." Faster than he could tell, than he could process the import of her words, the gun had been raised and aimed and the survivors became solely Logan and Original Cindy. A fresh smear travelled down between his eyes, over his nose and down onto the top of his vest, moving at the speed of his body, which slid protestfully down the tree upon which he had been leaning and left in its wake a trail of red. His killer reacted with all the emotion of a rock and replaced her gun quickly and robotically, like the machine she had moved one step closer to becoming.
"The director thinks you should have tried harder," she stated coldly before turning on her heels and ordering the X-5s to again move out.
*******
"Gettin cold...think we should up and start a fire?" Cindy asked, shivering and wrapped her arms around her for warmth. What worried her, though, was that Logan looked perfectly comfortable in the temperature department...which meant the chill sweeping over her likely was the result of dangerous amounts of blood loss.
Logan cocked his head to the side and clicked his tongue, stuffing hands into empty pockets to illustrate the point he was about to make. "Got any matches?"
She smiled softly. "Good point." She thought of primitively rubbing sticks together and her smile widened, enough to infect Logan and bring the mood of the occasion another two shades lighter. This was actually rather nice; here they were on the brink of death, but perfectly content and more accepting of their fate than they had been for anything else in their lives. Logan could no longer find reason to complain about the situation, and after all that he had experienced today he was all but numb to his own insecurities and sense of of physical inferiority. The thought of Max still hurt him, but now he managed to focus on the good and what time they had been able to share together. Cindy, on the other hand, now knew more about dealing with an absence of choice than she had probably ever wanted to, and knowing that there likely was nothing that they on their own could do to prevent what was in store for them actually had begun to be more a source of comfort than anything else. Death wasn't so bad, afterall; in death there would be no more pain, no more hiding. And all they had to do was drifty away, sleep and fall into everlasting peace.
She leaned back against the tree and stared blankly off beyond Logan, seeing everything but not really seeing it at all and slowly letting her eyelids fall into place. Serenity washed over her and for an instant the welcoming strains of a deep sleep began to tug at her being, but then her eyes snapped wide and sharp alertness replaced the calm. There was no fear; she was simply aware, aware with every fiber that what she had just seen was not only more than an illusion but something unnatural and threatening.
"Did you see that?" she whispered, even as she knew he couldn't have since it had happened behind him.
Logan lifted his shoulders and shook his head. "See what?"
"Somethin' moved."
His brow creased and he followed her gaze, craning his neck to peer around his tree, toward the road. It happened again; a flash, a whisper, a wind out of nowhere that didn't make any reasonable amount of sense. Familiarity triggered knowledge somewhere in the back of his overworked mind, but he couldn't quite make the connection.
"They send more out to finish the job?" Cindy asked. The flatness of her tone surprised him but he ignored it.
"Couldn't be...people don't move that fast," he replied. She sighed impatiently.
"Well, there's SOMETHIN' there...an' look," she said, pointing further down the road, "way over where the van is. Ain't that a hummer?"
He followed the gesture and nodded slowly, still trying to overcome the mental blockage that had formed. It was the feeling of wanting to use a specific word, knowing what the word means and even how it sounds but for some reason being unable to form it. "Yeah, but..." And then suddenly it clicked and he was again experiencing the crippling rush of fear; death would not come now, not without pain, and maybe not without sacrificing countless other lives and his body stiffened in barely concealed panic.
Cindy immediately picked up on his change in demeanor and suddenly dying in the woods in the middle of nowhere didn't seem so wonderful. "...what?" she whispered, chemicals beginning to slowly erode the numbness. He chuckled awkwardly, nervously, adjusted his glasses to give his hands something to do and found it increasingly difficult to breathe properly.
"If I didn't know any better," he began, "I'd say we were being surrounded by..."
And then there were four more flashes, simultaneously, breaking out from all around and surrounding them in speed beyond motion. He watched helplessly as a blur pushed Cindy's head hard into the tree, knocking her out, and briefly neglected his body's need for oxygen when he felt the cold of a gun press to his temple.
"...X-5s," he finished breathlessly, taking in from the corner of his eye the face of a young man, probably in his very early 20s.
The man smirked and pressed closer, sucking in an amused breath. "Very perceptive of ya, Eyes."