A/N: Well everyone, this is it. The final two chapters. I'm done. DONE. Such a good feeling...this is the most ambitious project I've ever actually completed, and I'm damn proud of myself right now, lol.
Anyway, I know that nothing can match chapter 22. But I tried. Dammit, I tried.
*******
He found himself actually beginning to enjoy the scenery. He had always liked the woods and despite the fact that they were speeding so quickly that it had all become a blur, it struck him as being rather pretty, though he chastised himself for the thought. He should have been keeping fresh and alert but instead he was drifting off into nowhere, which is probably why Max's sudden turn off the road took him by such surprise.
They bounced noisily and recklessly into the woods, narrowly missing trees and working hard to keep their balance as they struck various holes and fallen limbs. Finally, in a small clearing, she fully shifted down and skid to rest in a half circle, spraying mud and leaves off to the left. The engine purred a moment later before falling silent, and then Zack was going out of his mind with confused rage.
"What the hell was that for?" he whispered harshly. "You could have crashed and gotten us killed pulling a stunt like that!"
"Yeah, well, I'd rather risk that than whoever's in that hummer up ahead!" she bit back as she moved to conceal the bike in a small thicket. His forehead crinkled and over his tongue spread the bitter taste of crow.
"What hummer?" he inquired incredulously.
"You didn't see it?" asked she with the same amount of disbelief. He shook his head shamefully, and in response she rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand, yanking him impatiently back toward the road. She hunched over cautiously at its edge, making her way with slow, decisive movements, in position to intercept readily the unexpected, as she had been taught and as had become as automatic as instinct. He fell into step behind her, and together they crouched behind a large tree and she tilted her chin in presentation down the road toward the offending vehicle. She assumed he was nodding in verification from the way his breath rose and fell on the back of her neck.
"And look," he breathed a few seconds later, "off to the side a little bit."
She followed his instructions and a few feet into the woods found a van that would have looked rather innocuous had it not been riddled with bullets and stained here and there with a substance that could only be identified as blood. Her pupils consumed her eyes and there was no one in either vehicle or around them, though the inside of the van was decorated with even more spots and streaks of red. A lump formed in her throat and clarity began to fade, emotion commanding control of her body and senses. Might they have tried to escape and faced death as the penalty? Or had they made a bit of progress, and now were being hunted as little more than fresh meat in the endless, unfriendly expanse of forest? She tried to hope for the best but the best wasn't something that she had ever had the priviledge of experiencing, so such came with far greater difficulty than it should have.
Still, she was with Zack and, though she'd made some progress on the front of cracking his shell, she felt the need to appear detached, collected, and, above all, strong.
"I think they're in the woods," she stated simply, her voice devoid of emotion or inflection.
"Yeah," he replied with the same amount of enthusiasm, "let's go."
*******
"494, put your weapon away."
He blinked, unsure whether he'd heard her correctly. She placed her hand on her hip and glared at him, understandably irritated with this affront to the rules. He knew mission parameters, and even if he didn't, she was his superior and he therefore was required to obey whatever instruction she gave. Perhaps he felt he could go against her because of her surefire demotion on the return home...well, such a reason wasn't good enough for her. No reason was, because Manticore didn't tolerate insubordinance so it was her duty to stamp it out, as well. This was going on his report, most definitely.
"In case you weren't paying close enough attention during the briefing, I'll remind you that we need him ALIVE," she said acidly. "Now I'll ask you again; put your gun away."
Sudden inspiration hit Logan and the notion of sacrifice filled him; the information they would pull out of him if they kept him breathing was not worth the ability. He shook his head, afraid to speak but desperate to communicate his disagreement with the orders that had been given. Despite the will to die for the good of others that had overtaken him in the past few hours, though, a part of him certainly felt relieved when his attacked sighed in defeate and began to pull the gun away.
"All right, all right," he said, right before two new blurs burst onto the scene. Briefly Logan flushed with increased anxiety, but then a male was attacking the female who had knocked out Cindy and he found himself confused instead. The mystery man moved like Zack...but Zack was dead, wasn't he? And even if he wasn't, he certainly didn't have black hair...
He hadn't the opportunity to process the situation, though; 494 reacted to the ambush by knocking the recaptured prisoner unconscious for "safe keeping," then pointed his peace instinctually at his fast approaching attacker. She swiftly kicked it from his grasp, sending it into the possession of Logan's feet before swinging herself around to retain her balance and taking aim at his head. He fell back, avoiding the blow and pushing himself into position under her, hooking his foot in the crook of her knee and sending her collapsing backwards then climbing on top of her and planting his hands firmly on her elbows. There was little struggle, little effort; they were both too busy meeting each other's eyes with confusion, hers laced with heart-wrenching sorrow.
"Ben?" she choked meakly.
"453?" he asked in the same instant. The hair was a different color, but damn...
She shook her head, the sadness fading as realization dawned. This was no time to fall prey to sentiment, anyway.
"452," she mumbled in reply.
"Never knew a Ben," he returned with a click of his tongue. She pushed the painful resemblance to the background then and her knee came up and made contact with his chest, flipping him over her head when he refused to relinquish his hold on her arms. She sprang to her feet and turned to finish him off, confident and flush with the familiar thrill of fighting. He came at her furious, legs and feet flying almost faster than she could hope to keep up, her nose and her lip releasing fluid in protest and bruises forming quickly on her thighs and upper arms. She managed to keepr her own and hold him off for a minute or so, but then a shot rang out and there was cold and she searched frantically for Zack, relief coursing through her upon discovering that it was he who held the gun and that he had shot an unknown female. Another was coming up behind him, though, and Max opened her mouth to shout a warning but then 494's foot was thrust into her stomach and she stumbled backward into Brin's waiting arms.
"Repeat of the roof, little sister," she whispered menacingly, employing a strong chokehold that Max struggled futilely to break. 494 smiled cockily and bounced on the balls of his feet with all the excitement of a champion prize fighter, hands tightening in anticipation. She tried to slip her legs back to trip her captor, tried to turn, anything to avoid the defeat that was surely on its way, what with the boy rushing forcefully toward her, likely without regard for Brin. And the sky was red and black now, the air slipping in and out with hardly the room of a pinprick and the heart that wasn't hers pulsing with desperation and banging against her ribcage, the reverberations filling everything. She thought of Logan, and Original Cindy, who lay unconscious a few steps away...bastards couldn't just take the man she loved, they had to take the only human woman for whom she'd risk her life as well. She thought of how it was her fault, being stupid again and denying them and how even now she was going to fail them. She thought of her dream...and then she thought of the eyes burning through her at present, so like those of her dearly departed brother and yet so different, and of what she could make out beyond the haze in their reflection. There was she, turning red from the poor circulation in Brin's tightly wrapped arms, and then behind them both there was a large tree, maybe seven feet back. It was a long shot, but she couldn't fail them again...never again.
The last energy she thought she'd ever have propelled her backwards, slamming Brin hard into the tree and filling 494's face with an unexpected mix of surprise and awe. She ignored him for the moment, though, and focused on finally freeing herself from the hold, then elbowing her elder sharply in the neck. Brin fell off to the side, shaking herself to regain orientation, and Max ran up the tree to flip over a still-approaching would-be killer who slammed face first into the bark when max deftly kicked him between the shoulder blades.
Zack, meanwhile, seemed to be having quite a bit of difficulty holding off the gril with whom he was presently fighting, and now they stood smashed together, the gun with which he'd shot the other high above them and jointly held. She found the trigger and quickly wasted the round before Zack could get a leg up and knee her in the stomach. She recovered quickly, though, using her body's reaction to the blow as an advantage; she fell onto her hands and lifted her body over her head, capturing Zack's neck between her ankles, locking into position and he had only time to assess the fact that his neck was likely about to be snapped, that this was it, that he didn't deserve his position...and then he was free and he couldn't comprehend how that could be, and he looked down and there was Max, having swept the girl's arms out from under her. He could tell that the following action was unwanted, considered needless, but Max came through despite feelings of some kind of morality because otherwise they might very well be as good as dead, and she bent over the girl and snapped her neck as effortlessly as she had with Ben. Above there was a grunt of exertion and Zack exchanged movements with 494, the whoosh of unnaturally quick limbs and the light pounding of knuckles and knees and feet on flesh and bone filling the air around her as she looked upon her kill and to Logan, who lay motionless nearby but whose eyes fluttered as he attempted and began to awaken. It frightned her sometimes, how into it she seemed to get, how in the midst it often became somewhat difficult to convince herself that she was more than just a soldier and a fighter. The dream she'd had came to her again and she wanted to cry from the guilt...the guilt of choosing wrong, the guilt of pushing both him and Cindy away, the guilt of having just taken a life and of being who she was. She shouldn't let down her guard and she knew it but sometimes it was so damn hard she didn't know why she kept on.
"Max!" Zack suddenly yelled in apparent warning. She looked up and saw him still in combat with 494, but it was too late for her to see Brin before she was kicked in the head and trying to figure out what had just happened. She pushed herself onto her knees and shook her head, spitting out the blood that had collected in her mouth, and then she was in that infamous chokehold again, only this time Brin was kneeling on Max's calves to keep her in place and securing a gun to the younger girl's temple.
"Shit," Zack grumbled. Love and desperation sparked haste and he backhanded 494 then dropped his leg on the man's back, bringing him to the ground. He kneeled over him, knees on arms and feet spreading legs enough to render them useless, one hand in the back of the neck and the other gripping hair and pulling the head upward in painful opposition to the immobile throat. Brin's eyes widened at the turn of events and Zack grinned sadistically.
"Put the gun down, or he dies," Zack ordered, pulling 494's head back a little further to demonstrate the seriousness of his claim. Part of him rebelled with disgust at the thought; after all, this was obviously a twin of Ben both from outward appearances and from the nature of the barcode which he had just read. But common sense told him rightfully that it WASN'T Ben, and that even if it was, Ben had gone psycho and needed to be executed for the good of himself, the rogues, and the general public, so therefore it was okay. It needed to be done, plain and simple.
Brin hesitated a moment, those old feelings of sibling and human sympathy bubbling through her. She didn't want him to die; partially of course because then she'd have to explain to Renfro the deaths of all three of her charges, and she wasn't exactly up for an extension of the punishment she surely already faced. Moreso, though, she couldn't stand to see killed someone who looked like Ben, even if it truly wasn't Ben, and she couldn't stand it simply because he was a living entity and some part of her recognized murder as being ethically wrong. It passed quickly, though, as any feelings of moral responsibility faded, faded as they had done before she'd shot the poor soldier with the severe concussion, before she'd turned in Lydecker, before she'd come on this mission. She tightened her grip on Max and the most important thing was ridding the world of these stupid, dangerous traitors.
"Go ahead," she challenged. "He doesn't matter. All that matters is getting Eyes Only back to Manticore." She ignored the pleading in 494's eyes, the same pleading that Zack found washing over Max's face. His ability to stay calm was slipping away, justifiably. The options were thin, and... He fixed his eyes beyond Brin, speed painstaking but he picked up on what was going on and he filled with hope, smiling brightly with renewed confidence and drawing disbelief from both girls.
"You're bluffing," he said bravely. "You'd be the only survivor if you let him die. It would all be on your shoulders, it would all be your fault. You know the penalty for that kind of operational mishandling as well as I do and I don't think you wanna have to face it."
Brin cringed at how close that had gotten to the truth but remained composed. Vaguely it registered that he must be stalling for some reason, and that she should stop wasting time and finish the job. But it didn't seem right. Something felt wrong and for the moment she could only hold a gasping and deathly frightened Max in wait for some abstract sign that now was the time. "I'm already facing reprimand for failing to keep 452 in line," she said after a short pause, resolving to avoid using the names they'd created for each other. "What do I have to lose?"
In that instant, 494 saw what Zack had seen and the beginnings of a warning slipped past his lips before Zack slammed his head hard into the ground. Max met her brother's gaze, flailing and once again positive that this was the end, confused and unable to understand his silent message, the assurance in his eyes and the sense of loss that was rapidly filling those of 494. Brin couldn't ignore any longer how she felt and how off this all seemed, and she turned to follow the gaze of her fellow X-5s only seconds before the bullet erupted from the gun and everything fell silent and solemn and yet another dead body fell heavily into limpness. Max's heart stopped, forgot its duty, her eyes falling shut...and then there was air, and her lungs expanded and she shifted in confusion under Brin's dead body, which slumped haphazardly over her back. She looked again to Zackand he fell away in relief from the now dead X5-494, whose neck had been snapped, and pushed the uncomfortable weight off of her, trying to make sense of what had just happened and finding only the opposite. That is, until she turned slowly around to face the man who really was her savior; it occurred tha she shouldn't ever have doubted that fact. He sat leaning on his elbow, the gun still raised with shaking arms, his glasses lopsided and his eyes and face heavy with the effects of recently regained consciousness. Her chest heaved and tears at last broke free, of relief and remorse and everything.
He gratefully accepted her hug, confused as to why she had dyed her hair and gotten colored contacts but considering such things to be unimportant. There were no words between them; there didn't need to be, all the emotion was drifting in open spaces and consuming them and driving their embrace to one that could cause some very real damage to his fragile norm body, but he didn't care. He had her again, she had come back to save him for whatever reason and maybe if she could learn to forgive him, he could learn to forgive himself. And she thought of the unshatterable glass and swelled with the knowledge of somehow having shattered it, gripping him with the fervor of one who wishes to meld completely with another and thought that since he had forgive her, someday, however far that might be, she could wake with the happiness of having finally forgiven herself.
Anyway, I know that nothing can match chapter 22. But I tried. Dammit, I tried.
*******
He found himself actually beginning to enjoy the scenery. He had always liked the woods and despite the fact that they were speeding so quickly that it had all become a blur, it struck him as being rather pretty, though he chastised himself for the thought. He should have been keeping fresh and alert but instead he was drifting off into nowhere, which is probably why Max's sudden turn off the road took him by such surprise.
They bounced noisily and recklessly into the woods, narrowly missing trees and working hard to keep their balance as they struck various holes and fallen limbs. Finally, in a small clearing, she fully shifted down and skid to rest in a half circle, spraying mud and leaves off to the left. The engine purred a moment later before falling silent, and then Zack was going out of his mind with confused rage.
"What the hell was that for?" he whispered harshly. "You could have crashed and gotten us killed pulling a stunt like that!"
"Yeah, well, I'd rather risk that than whoever's in that hummer up ahead!" she bit back as she moved to conceal the bike in a small thicket. His forehead crinkled and over his tongue spread the bitter taste of crow.
"What hummer?" he inquired incredulously.
"You didn't see it?" asked she with the same amount of disbelief. He shook his head shamefully, and in response she rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand, yanking him impatiently back toward the road. She hunched over cautiously at its edge, making her way with slow, decisive movements, in position to intercept readily the unexpected, as she had been taught and as had become as automatic as instinct. He fell into step behind her, and together they crouched behind a large tree and she tilted her chin in presentation down the road toward the offending vehicle. She assumed he was nodding in verification from the way his breath rose and fell on the back of her neck.
"And look," he breathed a few seconds later, "off to the side a little bit."
She followed his instructions and a few feet into the woods found a van that would have looked rather innocuous had it not been riddled with bullets and stained here and there with a substance that could only be identified as blood. Her pupils consumed her eyes and there was no one in either vehicle or around them, though the inside of the van was decorated with even more spots and streaks of red. A lump formed in her throat and clarity began to fade, emotion commanding control of her body and senses. Might they have tried to escape and faced death as the penalty? Or had they made a bit of progress, and now were being hunted as little more than fresh meat in the endless, unfriendly expanse of forest? She tried to hope for the best but the best wasn't something that she had ever had the priviledge of experiencing, so such came with far greater difficulty than it should have.
Still, she was with Zack and, though she'd made some progress on the front of cracking his shell, she felt the need to appear detached, collected, and, above all, strong.
"I think they're in the woods," she stated simply, her voice devoid of emotion or inflection.
"Yeah," he replied with the same amount of enthusiasm, "let's go."
*******
"494, put your weapon away."
He blinked, unsure whether he'd heard her correctly. She placed her hand on her hip and glared at him, understandably irritated with this affront to the rules. He knew mission parameters, and even if he didn't, she was his superior and he therefore was required to obey whatever instruction she gave. Perhaps he felt he could go against her because of her surefire demotion on the return home...well, such a reason wasn't good enough for her. No reason was, because Manticore didn't tolerate insubordinance so it was her duty to stamp it out, as well. This was going on his report, most definitely.
"In case you weren't paying close enough attention during the briefing, I'll remind you that we need him ALIVE," she said acidly. "Now I'll ask you again; put your gun away."
Sudden inspiration hit Logan and the notion of sacrifice filled him; the information they would pull out of him if they kept him breathing was not worth the ability. He shook his head, afraid to speak but desperate to communicate his disagreement with the orders that had been given. Despite the will to die for the good of others that had overtaken him in the past few hours, though, a part of him certainly felt relieved when his attacked sighed in defeate and began to pull the gun away.
"All right, all right," he said, right before two new blurs burst onto the scene. Briefly Logan flushed with increased anxiety, but then a male was attacking the female who had knocked out Cindy and he found himself confused instead. The mystery man moved like Zack...but Zack was dead, wasn't he? And even if he wasn't, he certainly didn't have black hair...
He hadn't the opportunity to process the situation, though; 494 reacted to the ambush by knocking the recaptured prisoner unconscious for "safe keeping," then pointed his peace instinctually at his fast approaching attacker. She swiftly kicked it from his grasp, sending it into the possession of Logan's feet before swinging herself around to retain her balance and taking aim at his head. He fell back, avoiding the blow and pushing himself into position under her, hooking his foot in the crook of her knee and sending her collapsing backwards then climbing on top of her and planting his hands firmly on her elbows. There was little struggle, little effort; they were both too busy meeting each other's eyes with confusion, hers laced with heart-wrenching sorrow.
"Ben?" she choked meakly.
"453?" he asked in the same instant. The hair was a different color, but damn...
She shook her head, the sadness fading as realization dawned. This was no time to fall prey to sentiment, anyway.
"452," she mumbled in reply.
"Never knew a Ben," he returned with a click of his tongue. She pushed the painful resemblance to the background then and her knee came up and made contact with his chest, flipping him over her head when he refused to relinquish his hold on her arms. She sprang to her feet and turned to finish him off, confident and flush with the familiar thrill of fighting. He came at her furious, legs and feet flying almost faster than she could hope to keep up, her nose and her lip releasing fluid in protest and bruises forming quickly on her thighs and upper arms. She managed to keepr her own and hold him off for a minute or so, but then a shot rang out and there was cold and she searched frantically for Zack, relief coursing through her upon discovering that it was he who held the gun and that he had shot an unknown female. Another was coming up behind him, though, and Max opened her mouth to shout a warning but then 494's foot was thrust into her stomach and she stumbled backward into Brin's waiting arms.
"Repeat of the roof, little sister," she whispered menacingly, employing a strong chokehold that Max struggled futilely to break. 494 smiled cockily and bounced on the balls of his feet with all the excitement of a champion prize fighter, hands tightening in anticipation. She tried to slip her legs back to trip her captor, tried to turn, anything to avoid the defeat that was surely on its way, what with the boy rushing forcefully toward her, likely without regard for Brin. And the sky was red and black now, the air slipping in and out with hardly the room of a pinprick and the heart that wasn't hers pulsing with desperation and banging against her ribcage, the reverberations filling everything. She thought of Logan, and Original Cindy, who lay unconscious a few steps away...bastards couldn't just take the man she loved, they had to take the only human woman for whom she'd risk her life as well. She thought of how it was her fault, being stupid again and denying them and how even now she was going to fail them. She thought of her dream...and then she thought of the eyes burning through her at present, so like those of her dearly departed brother and yet so different, and of what she could make out beyond the haze in their reflection. There was she, turning red from the poor circulation in Brin's tightly wrapped arms, and then behind them both there was a large tree, maybe seven feet back. It was a long shot, but she couldn't fail them again...never again.
The last energy she thought she'd ever have propelled her backwards, slamming Brin hard into the tree and filling 494's face with an unexpected mix of surprise and awe. She ignored him for the moment, though, and focused on finally freeing herself from the hold, then elbowing her elder sharply in the neck. Brin fell off to the side, shaking herself to regain orientation, and Max ran up the tree to flip over a still-approaching would-be killer who slammed face first into the bark when max deftly kicked him between the shoulder blades.
Zack, meanwhile, seemed to be having quite a bit of difficulty holding off the gril with whom he was presently fighting, and now they stood smashed together, the gun with which he'd shot the other high above them and jointly held. She found the trigger and quickly wasted the round before Zack could get a leg up and knee her in the stomach. She recovered quickly, though, using her body's reaction to the blow as an advantage; she fell onto her hands and lifted her body over her head, capturing Zack's neck between her ankles, locking into position and he had only time to assess the fact that his neck was likely about to be snapped, that this was it, that he didn't deserve his position...and then he was free and he couldn't comprehend how that could be, and he looked down and there was Max, having swept the girl's arms out from under her. He could tell that the following action was unwanted, considered needless, but Max came through despite feelings of some kind of morality because otherwise they might very well be as good as dead, and she bent over the girl and snapped her neck as effortlessly as she had with Ben. Above there was a grunt of exertion and Zack exchanged movements with 494, the whoosh of unnaturally quick limbs and the light pounding of knuckles and knees and feet on flesh and bone filling the air around her as she looked upon her kill and to Logan, who lay motionless nearby but whose eyes fluttered as he attempted and began to awaken. It frightned her sometimes, how into it she seemed to get, how in the midst it often became somewhat difficult to convince herself that she was more than just a soldier and a fighter. The dream she'd had came to her again and she wanted to cry from the guilt...the guilt of choosing wrong, the guilt of pushing both him and Cindy away, the guilt of having just taken a life and of being who she was. She shouldn't let down her guard and she knew it but sometimes it was so damn hard she didn't know why she kept on.
"Max!" Zack suddenly yelled in apparent warning. She looked up and saw him still in combat with 494, but it was too late for her to see Brin before she was kicked in the head and trying to figure out what had just happened. She pushed herself onto her knees and shook her head, spitting out the blood that had collected in her mouth, and then she was in that infamous chokehold again, only this time Brin was kneeling on Max's calves to keep her in place and securing a gun to the younger girl's temple.
"Shit," Zack grumbled. Love and desperation sparked haste and he backhanded 494 then dropped his leg on the man's back, bringing him to the ground. He kneeled over him, knees on arms and feet spreading legs enough to render them useless, one hand in the back of the neck and the other gripping hair and pulling the head upward in painful opposition to the immobile throat. Brin's eyes widened at the turn of events and Zack grinned sadistically.
"Put the gun down, or he dies," Zack ordered, pulling 494's head back a little further to demonstrate the seriousness of his claim. Part of him rebelled with disgust at the thought; after all, this was obviously a twin of Ben both from outward appearances and from the nature of the barcode which he had just read. But common sense told him rightfully that it WASN'T Ben, and that even if it was, Ben had gone psycho and needed to be executed for the good of himself, the rogues, and the general public, so therefore it was okay. It needed to be done, plain and simple.
Brin hesitated a moment, those old feelings of sibling and human sympathy bubbling through her. She didn't want him to die; partially of course because then she'd have to explain to Renfro the deaths of all three of her charges, and she wasn't exactly up for an extension of the punishment she surely already faced. Moreso, though, she couldn't stand to see killed someone who looked like Ben, even if it truly wasn't Ben, and she couldn't stand it simply because he was a living entity and some part of her recognized murder as being ethically wrong. It passed quickly, though, as any feelings of moral responsibility faded, faded as they had done before she'd shot the poor soldier with the severe concussion, before she'd turned in Lydecker, before she'd come on this mission. She tightened her grip on Max and the most important thing was ridding the world of these stupid, dangerous traitors.
"Go ahead," she challenged. "He doesn't matter. All that matters is getting Eyes Only back to Manticore." She ignored the pleading in 494's eyes, the same pleading that Zack found washing over Max's face. His ability to stay calm was slipping away, justifiably. The options were thin, and... He fixed his eyes beyond Brin, speed painstaking but he picked up on what was going on and he filled with hope, smiling brightly with renewed confidence and drawing disbelief from both girls.
"You're bluffing," he said bravely. "You'd be the only survivor if you let him die. It would all be on your shoulders, it would all be your fault. You know the penalty for that kind of operational mishandling as well as I do and I don't think you wanna have to face it."
Brin cringed at how close that had gotten to the truth but remained composed. Vaguely it registered that he must be stalling for some reason, and that she should stop wasting time and finish the job. But it didn't seem right. Something felt wrong and for the moment she could only hold a gasping and deathly frightened Max in wait for some abstract sign that now was the time. "I'm already facing reprimand for failing to keep 452 in line," she said after a short pause, resolving to avoid using the names they'd created for each other. "What do I have to lose?"
In that instant, 494 saw what Zack had seen and the beginnings of a warning slipped past his lips before Zack slammed his head hard into the ground. Max met her brother's gaze, flailing and once again positive that this was the end, confused and unable to understand his silent message, the assurance in his eyes and the sense of loss that was rapidly filling those of 494. Brin couldn't ignore any longer how she felt and how off this all seemed, and she turned to follow the gaze of her fellow X-5s only seconds before the bullet erupted from the gun and everything fell silent and solemn and yet another dead body fell heavily into limpness. Max's heart stopped, forgot its duty, her eyes falling shut...and then there was air, and her lungs expanded and she shifted in confusion under Brin's dead body, which slumped haphazardly over her back. She looked again to Zackand he fell away in relief from the now dead X5-494, whose neck had been snapped, and pushed the uncomfortable weight off of her, trying to make sense of what had just happened and finding only the opposite. That is, until she turned slowly around to face the man who really was her savior; it occurred tha she shouldn't ever have doubted that fact. He sat leaning on his elbow, the gun still raised with shaking arms, his glasses lopsided and his eyes and face heavy with the effects of recently regained consciousness. Her chest heaved and tears at last broke free, of relief and remorse and everything.
He gratefully accepted her hug, confused as to why she had dyed her hair and gotten colored contacts but considering such things to be unimportant. There were no words between them; there didn't need to be, all the emotion was drifting in open spaces and consuming them and driving their embrace to one that could cause some very real damage to his fragile norm body, but he didn't care. He had her again, she had come back to save him for whatever reason and maybe if she could learn to forgive him, he could learn to forgive himself. And she thought of the unshatterable glass and swelled with the knowledge of somehow having shattered it, gripping him with the fervor of one who wishes to meld completely with another and thought that since he had forgive her, someday, however far that might be, she could wake with the happiness of having finally forgiven herself.