The last time.
The last moment.
Not for me though.
Because after all of this, I'll still have to continue on.
God, how do I breathe again.
My throat burns.
My chest aches.
Not from metal, from him.
What do you do, or say,
How do you pull yourself up from the floor.
It's the hardest thing.
The hardest thing to be left behind.
}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{
I watched him fight from the floor. His body the perfect creation, even when fighting against opponents I couldn't see. I dropped my head back to the floor.
We'd left, my siblings and I, before we had learned this rite. Nerves jangled themselves, up and down my spine. It was uncertainty that made me shake. What would happen when he reached twelve? Would he disappear in a ring of light, grow ten feet tall like pop-eye on spinach?
I wanted to shake Biggs, slap him, anything to halt the death knell of his counting; but just like this whole damn situation, the end was upon us like lightening.
"Twelve, state your designation." The world exploded in light. Ah I thought dumbly, so he did disappear in lights.
I felt fragments of plaster and prickles of shattered glass dust the skin of my legs. Saw Cindy's eyes inches from my own, as she rose from where she had crouched to cover my body with her own.
"You three, fan out and cover the front, I'll take point behind you. Let one through the line every forty five seconds, and I will dispatch them in a concentrated flow. Watch each other for signs of trouble; the x-6 is in the middle so I can keep a closer eye on him. You three, guard over the wounded and the baby. Also, one of you try to patch that girl up."
His voice was cold. Not with the chill of death as Ben's had been. This voice was just as likely to kill, but would not waste the time to make it unnecessarily painful.
Cindy jostled my elbow slightly as she bent to look at my wound. "It looks like a clean shot through. Seems to've stopped bleed'n. I let you sit up, if you a good boo and take it slow." I nod slowly, and she moves to support me as she shifts my back against a wall.
"Here they come. The fifteen that White had had with him before, and six that must have been in the factory." Cece sounds as frightened as I feel.
I can see only the back of Alec's head and a sliver of his tanned face from where I am sitting. He nods once as he processes this new information, but the strict posture of his body veers not an inch.
Like a tidal wave they are on us. They really weren't attractive. Maybe that was it, the source of the potency of their fury. I had never seen a transgenic that wasn't supermodel material. Okay that wasn't strictly true, better to say that I had never seen an "X" that wasn't gorgeous. Really all this time, White had been self-conscious of his wrinkles and lack of physical charm.
I really had concentration problems. Anything to prevent myself from focusing on the carnage that had to be taking place in front of me.
"Look Boo, its working." Cindy shook me out of my internal reverie. Half afraid, my head inches up til I can see again.
A pile of six familiars lay behind Alec. They were shortly joined by a seventh of their kind, unconscious or maybe dead. Nineteen more beasts, then the cherry on top.
Spin kick, uppercut to the head. The front line of defenders was doing admirably well. Holding their own for the few minutes until they could shove their opponent back for Alec to dispatch.
The pile of familiars had more than doubled to fifteen, when disaster struck. One of the familiars in the pile behind Alec, a particularly beefy looking female, who had only been pretending unconsciousness. In his distraction, she slid up behind him.
I watch in sick horror as she kicks straight across at his arm, and shudder as I hear bone crunch.
His left foot swings out, and her beefy blond head snaps up as it meets with his toes. It was somehow wrong though; her neck lay at an unnatural angle as she slumped to the ground. She wouldn't be bothering Alec or any of my kind again.
Still, we're sunk now. Our ace in the hole is incapacitated, his arm has to be broken.
In morbid fascination, I watch as he clubs the next opponent with the same injured appendage. Not even a token wince escapes his lips. It is as though he is so far removed from feeling, that not even such excruciating pain can touch him.
I should be cheering, we haven't lost now. I want to scream, and cry tears of blood. He is gone, I know now that he has to be. Even a trained transgenic couldn't take that kind of pain and stay on his feet.
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one. Twenty one bodies sprawl across the once painfully neat floor of Jam Pony Messenger service.
We all waited in a veritable hush, we knew what was coming.
494 nodded to Biggs, CeCe, and the boy. Attempting to look unhurried, they backed towards the walls forming a semicircle around their champion.
They stood face to face, beast to beast. White's inhuman snarl of rage fazed Alec not at all.
"So 494, it pathetically comes down to this. A filthy animal defending a pack of its little friends. You can't save them or your little bitch of a girlfriend you know. Their blood will flow over your hands."
494 stared dispassionately back at him.
"What know witty comeback. Come on asshole beg for their lives. I might just be a nice guy and satisfy myself with killing you and your little slut. The rest of them can just go in a cage."
494 began to circle its prey, still the same blankly calculating look on its face.
"What cat got your." The prey never finished, words died like a dry river on its tongue. Blood poured forth red from White's lips. He saw neither the glock that 494 had concealed behind his back, waiting for the perfect moment; nor the swift, blurred motion with which he aimed and fired it.
The prey made a last, aborted pawing motion at the ragged whole through its throat before collapsing in a pile of blood and sinew on the floor.
}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{
I watched him fight from the floor. His body the perfect creation, even when fighting against opponents I couldn't see. I dropped my head back to the floor.
We'd left, my siblings and I, before we had learned this rite. Nerves jangled themselves, up and down my spine. It was uncertainty that made me shake. What would happen when he reached twelve? Would he disappear in a ring of light, grow ten feet tall like pop-eye on spinach?
I wanted to shake Biggs, slap him, anything to halt the death knell of his counting; but just like this whole damn situation, the end was upon us like lightening.
"Twelve, state your designation." The world exploded in light. Ah I thought dumbly, so he did disappear in lights.
I felt fragments of plaster and prickles of shattered glass dust the skin of my legs. Saw Cindy's eyes inches from my own, as she rose from where she had crouched to cover my body with her own.
"You three, fan out and cover the front, I'll take point behind you. Let one through the line every forty five seconds, and I will dispatch them in a concentrated flow. Watch each other for signs of trouble; the x-6 is in the middle so I can keep a closer eye on him. You three, guard over the wounded and the baby. Also, one of you try to patch that girl up."
His voice was cold. Not with the chill of death as Ben's had been. This voice was just as likely to kill, but would not waste the time to make it unnecessarily painful.
Cindy jostled my elbow slightly as she bent to look at my wound. "It looks like a clean shot through. Seems to've stopped bleed'n. I let you sit up, if you a good boo and take it slow." I nod slowly, and she moves to support me as she shifts my back against a wall.
"Here they come. The fifteen that White had had with him before, and six that must have been in the factory." Cece sounds as frightened as I feel.
I can see only the back of Alec's head and a sliver of his tanned face from where I am sitting. He nods once as he processes this new information, but the strict posture of his body veers not an inch.
Like a tidal wave they are on us. They really weren't attractive. Maybe that was it, the source of the potency of their fury. I had never seen a transgenic that wasn't supermodel material. Okay that wasn't strictly true, better to say that I had never seen an "X" that wasn't gorgeous. Really all this time, White had been self-conscious of his wrinkles and lack of physical charm.
I really had concentration problems. Anything to prevent myself from focusing on the carnage that had to be taking place in front of me.
"Look Boo, its working." Cindy shook me out of my internal reverie. Half afraid, my head inches up til I can see again.
A pile of six familiars lay behind Alec. They were shortly joined by a seventh of their kind, unconscious or maybe dead. Nineteen more beasts, then the cherry on top.
Spin kick, uppercut to the head. The front line of defenders was doing admirably well. Holding their own for the few minutes until they could shove their opponent back for Alec to dispatch.
The pile of familiars had more than doubled to fifteen, when disaster struck. One of the familiars in the pile behind Alec, a particularly beefy looking female, who had only been pretending unconsciousness. In his distraction, she slid up behind him.
I watch in sick horror as she kicks straight across at his arm, and shudder as I hear bone crunch.
His left foot swings out, and her beefy blond head snaps up as it meets with his toes. It was somehow wrong though; her neck lay at an unnatural angle as she slumped to the ground. She wouldn't be bothering Alec or any of my kind again.
Still, we're sunk now. Our ace in the hole is incapacitated, his arm has to be broken.
In morbid fascination, I watch as he clubs the next opponent with the same injured appendage. Not even a token wince escapes his lips. It is as though he is so far removed from feeling, that not even such excruciating pain can touch him.
I should be cheering, we haven't lost now. I want to scream, and cry tears of blood. He is gone, I know now that he has to be. Even a trained transgenic couldn't take that kind of pain and stay on his feet.
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one. Twenty one bodies sprawl across the once painfully neat floor of Jam Pony Messenger service.
We all waited in a veritable hush, we knew what was coming.
494 nodded to Biggs, CeCe, and the boy. Attempting to look unhurried, they backed towards the walls forming a semicircle around their champion.
They stood face to face, beast to beast. White's inhuman snarl of rage fazed Alec not at all.
"So 494, it pathetically comes down to this. A filthy animal defending a pack of its little friends. You can't save them or your little bitch of a girlfriend you know. Their blood will flow over your hands."
494 stared dispassionately back at him.
"What know witty comeback. Come on asshole beg for their lives. I might just be a nice guy and satisfy myself with killing you and your little slut. The rest of them can just go in a cage."
494 began to circle its prey, still the same blankly calculating look on its face.
"What cat got your." The prey never finished, words died like a dry river on its tongue. Blood poured forth red from White's lips. He saw neither the glock that 494 had concealed behind his back, waiting for the perfect moment; nor the swift, blurred motion with which he aimed and fired it.
The prey made a last, aborted pawing motion at the ragged whole through its throat before collapsing in a pile of blood and sinew on the floor.