Okay people, this is the second to last chapter. Consider this a reflection of me not knowing nearly enough about ion gated channels this morning on my final this morning. The good news? I only have three finals left and my mood is already taking a turn for the better. There might be happy kissing and snuggles for ya in the next chapter.
To answer some questions. The prequel to this story, Lost in the Grey, can be reached by clicking on my penname SilverRain. MM, I'm really sorry about doing this, but it will be a plot point in the next sequel.
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People are running, I can feel them around me, off in the periphery. Background details blurring like water on paint, totally unimportant, still hard to ignore, like snow on a blacked out tv screen. Familiars retreating, now that the poison is spilt over, their cause is finished.
A pressure rests on my left side, the bulk of a body lying partially on top of mine. It isn't a good thing, not her body lying on mine, too heavy, too hard. Something warm and sticky oozes onto my stomach and left arm. Pain lances out like little shards of glass from multiple points on my body. One dull ache thuds from my thigh, hurts like a bitch, but its nothing compared to explosions coming from the left side of my abdomen. The shooting pains radiate through my stomach, and end in a thick lump which lifts my back off the ground. Sound filters through the haziness, people standing over me maybe, someone panicking.
"Please, please just get it out."
"No Max, don't touch him yet. This is going to be tricky the hilt is lying beneath both of them."
"We can't just leave them like that!"
"First we need to see what kind of damage the knife did. Here help me lift his shoulder, just a little." Some of the pressure on my chest eases up. "Okay we have to tilt them on their sides. Take Alec's shoulder, I've got Biggs, we need to move them both at once so that the blade doesn't shift. Ready? One, two, three."
"Dgaaaahhhhh!" Oh shit, oh shit that hurt. An exceptionally unmanly screech burst from my mouth. Her hands are touching me, smoothing over my face, and holding my shoulders still.
"Shit, I think we need to do this right away. Joshua, take my place on this side and hold them as still as you can. CeCe can you give me a hand pulling this out?" CeCe's breath draws in rapidly and a small sob chokes out behind me."
"I don't think she can do it Kate. Let Dix do it instead."
Dagger, in the back, I remembered it now. Catching the poison, Biggs helping me save the day. Lots of pain and then the ground crashing into my face. Now they had to pull the knife out. I get that sick feeling in my stomach, the one that precedes an incident of extreme and unavoidable pain.
"You have to try to relax Alec, if you clench your muscles when I pull the knife out it'll cause more tissue damage."
"Okay Dix…" Numbness passes over me and the world tilts ninety degrees to the left.
Floating, falling, smacking into the ground softly and bouncing back a bit as though I've hit something soft like a mattress. Reaching out my hands to either side and feeling my surroundings before I open my eyes, just like they'd taught me. Something damp under me, grass I think because I can faintly smell chlorophyll and wildflowers on the wind. Slowly pop my eyes open, sunlight glares in them blinding me for a moment.
He's standing over me with a smirk on his lips, holding out his hand as though to haul me off the ground. I reach out my hand and let my buddy yank me to my feet. My eyebrows crease in confusion as I take in the scene around me.
We're standing in the middle of Manticore's training green. But it looks as I remembered it from the distant years ago, before they'd put a firing range in the north corner, or the new x-7 barracks, and long before Maxie had blown the whole thing to kingdom come. Soldiers surround us on all sides, split off in pairs sparring, and not a single one has turned to acknowledge our sudden appearance.
"If it's all the same to you Biggs I haven't got a lot of fond memories of this place. I'm sure we could find a nicer place for a hallucination."
"We aren't hallucinating my friend."
"Then what the hell are we doing back in hell?"
"No Alec, you aren't looking hard enough." Damn it, since when is Biggs so cryptic, he's starting to sound like Sandeman. Okay, so here's me looking closer. Transgenics sparring, mostly x-6's judging by their ages. A few sergeants and human guards scattered around keeping an eye on them. I creep up to the nearest pair of girls and inspect them more closely as they continue to fight on oblivious to my presence.
A shock of recognition passes through me as I peer at them. The rail thin blond on the left had been a squad mate of mine for a few years back around 2012, her designation was 476 I think, and I'd swear that I'd seen her take a bullet to the stomach a half dozen years ago in Tehran. Her sparring mate looked familiar to, but I couldn't place her.
A sudden commotion across the green drew my attention. Pushing unheeded through the throngs of other soldiers, I made my way over to a small group of x-5s staring clustered in a circle and staring concentratedly at the ground.
In the center of the mob lay a very young version of the man that now stood at my side. Biggs rested on the ground in front of me, his body curled up in pain, small involuntary tears and shudders passing over his face.
I remember this moment. It had been a crisp, clear October morning, the first one that I had seen since being locked in psy-ops for six months. The air had never felt fresher on my face, it had obliterated even my childish worries that my fellow soldiers would no longer trust me. My fear that they would hate me because I wore the face of one of the traitors, that they would mistrust me because Manticore feared that I carried some genetic predisposition towards abandoning my duty and fleeing into the outside world.
I'd walked outside into the damp and chilly air, and breathed a deep fill of it. Then the air had been suddenly rent by a sharp shriek of pain. All of the
x-5's had been out in the field running through training exercises. A young Biggs had slipped in the grass during a simple maneuver and his body had twisted directly into the path of his partner's oncoming fist. He'd taken the full force of the punch between his fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae and through the wonders of transgenic strength the backbone was dislocated but the nerve cord was not severed.
All of them had just stood there in a circle staring at the boy writhing on the ground in pain, wondering if they should help him, wondering if they'd be punished for it, thinking that the boy would probably be taken away by the guards and like so many of their family, he would simply disappear. I'd pushed through the crowd, and knelt by his side. I'd been my unit's medic back before the escape, and my psychological programming, and the skills had stayed with me.
The x-5's had looked on uncertainly, and even the guards had stopped their advance and simply watched, as I reached down and took his shoulders and hips in my hands. In one sickening crack I'd reset his spine. We'd overheard a doctor saying afterwards that if I hadn't acted so quickly he might have been permanently damaged. Manticore didn't deal in damaged goods and we both knew only my rapid actions had saved him from termination.
I hadn't been reprimanded for my actions, though of course Manticore never thanked me. What I didn't count on was the gratitude of my new friend. With Biggs's help I had slowly won back the trust of my fellow soldiers. I can't even begin to think what might have happened had I not saved Biggs on that day. Trying to make it through Manticore without someone watching my back. All those times that I'd saved his ass, and the many other situations on which he'd saved mine.
I knew why he's showing it to me now
Life isn't fair. When you don't ever have the chance of a childhood, when you kill your first man at the age of seven, when your first love dies in your arms, you know this for a fact.
Still there's always an odd kind of symmetry to inner workings of the world.
My life had started again on that day when we first met.
On that day I'd saved his life.
Now things had come full circle for us.
There isn't any need for words now, just one long look at each other in acknowledgement of the years and the memories.
"Tell her that I loved her." I smile at him and squeeze his shoulder.
The sun glows brighter until it gently brushes away the brilliant blue of the sky.
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Sobs rent the indelible quiet of the chamber.
"I've lost his pulse. I'm sorry."
