Chapter 6
MEMORY
Six months prior...
The desert was more like a wasteland made of holograms than a natural one. There was an eerie silence that made the desert seem more than dead. The wind still blew, and there was wildlife of sorts, but the darkly beautiful desert was more of a twisted maze than anything natural through the constant sandstorms. There wasn't a bit of life within the desert that wasn't twisted by Darwinism. The dead and living alike were held by it. Any animals still living here were twisted to vicious bloodthirsty monsters. Avalon Hill had the same effect on humans. It was just slightly more subtle. Fate, duty, and honor could easily twist the living to its desires.
Death was no escape from the evil that stained every bolt and every bulkhead of the ship like filth and blood that refused to wash off. Souls that died in this desert shared the same fate as those who died in duty to the Corporations. Incomplete Death. Living Death... Dishonored Death...... A fate worse than death.
The wind calmed in the area at the very edge of the devastated facility. sand particles drifted around like tiny faeries in a faerie ring. The sand was slowly spreading into the clearing. The stench of summoned evil was still strong here, and it perturbed the dead still resting here. They retreated from the presence of evil. The physical presence was gone now, however. Only the residue of a resurrection was left like invisible smog in the air.
The presence of a wakening wasn't the only thing in the area. It was covered with the scars of battle. There were footprints all over, and the occasional smeared imprint of oil and booster char where someone had been knocked down. Rock faces showed the fresh slashes of blades from when the battle wandered to the edge of the area. Several boulders were charred black with the burns of lightning strikes that no storm had caused.
Only one living person remained in the deserted area, crouched on the ground amid the sand and glass. He was reeling from psychological blows that cut all the way to his very soul. His tormentor was gone now, but the encounter haunted him still. This place was hell-bent on twisting and confusing him every step of the way.
It was a long time before he sat up.
As well, it was still clear in his mind; a Kisaragi soldier opened the hatch to the Dalriadan, threw Raven into the sand, and blasted off with the rest of his team members.
It was amazing timing. If he allowed Raven to stay in the cockpit ten seconds longer and he could have seen the corpse's face twitch.
In all his years, Raven Cross had never felt as strange as he did now. A soft breeze caressed the sand, sending a small shiver through the young rivets and dunes. The brief chill tickled Raven's sweat-streaked face, the only small comfort he had. A pathetic thing to be grateful for, a bit of wind on his face. The gentle whisper of quivering sand made it seem the desert was trembling with him. His labored breathing was so loud he barely heard the gentle rustle of dry sand against dry sand, but it reached him faintly. His own thoughts were near incomprehensible, mangled to half-mad delusions as his body screamed pain.
The shock of agony had driven him into the sand long ago. Perhaps it just seemed long. Two minutes is an excruciatingly long time when you spent it with something impaled into your rib cage. Amazing that no one noticed his screams in the terrible minutes when the pain was fresh. Now he was biting back every cry that welled up in his throat. Mostly. Choking moans did not count as screams. He'd expected someone to come, a friend to help him or an enemy to shoot him quickly. Neither came, more a curse than a mixed blessing. He'd be grateful for either.
Tiny shards of glass fell from his hands as he raised them from the sandy ground. Only now did he let his hands press against his chest; let them gingerly explore the source of his agony. Become slick and stained until his sense of touch was numbed under red liquid. Discover the shaft protruding just above to the split in his rib cage.
Energy shaft.... Not unlike an arrow. A damn MT generator energy shaft. The thin shaft quivered in his flesh as if it were writhing by its own will.
That was enough to send him into a new panic. He desperately tore back the crimson cloth around the arrow, barely able to keep his trembling, blood-stained hands from jostling it. Keeping his hands steady took much of his energy and concentration. He didn't dare touch the pole. A millimeter left or right was all it would take to drive it into his heart if it was not there already, or jostle it and mangle his flesh further, or impale his lungs, or--
No, calm, stay calm....
He didn't manage real calm so much as pushing back the bare edge of panic. He envied those people who could simply push pain aside like it didn't matter in the least, like it were just some minor little annoyance. Trying to ignore this kind of pain was a miserable failure. Calm? Ha. His throat was raw from unrestrained screams in the moments after he fell; they still clawed madly for release.
When he looked closely at the rod, suppressing another screaming fit was the extent of his calm. The shaft was sticking in at a slight angle just off center. Too far to the side to hit his heart, thank God. That was no reassurance. Every breath burned with fresh agony at the effort of moving his chest. He couldn't imagine it being any worse without being planted dead in his heart.
Calm, calm, calm-
Warm blood was blooming dark red on his shirt, slowly spreading away from the arrow. Pain spread through his chest like a cancer with every struggling breath.
Calm, CALM, God, stay-!!
His breathing quickened. The arrow moved in protest. God, was it scraping against the bone-?!
Every thought of staying calm shattered.
A wild urge to yank the arrow out rose in him, and he didn't fight it. God, he wanted it OUT of his body! Any pain was worth it, any THING was, so long as it took away the arrow sticking out of his chest--!
Foolish. A stupid, foolish action and he knew it. Of course he knew. He'd seen men bleed to death after yanking out knives in a blind panic, not realizing it kept the blood IN as long as it stayed put. He knew, but was as far from caring as one can get. One hand tightened around the shaft near the embedded, jagged end, the other tried to pull back the flesh and torn cloth. He clenched his jaw tight, lest he end up screaming or biting his tongue. Oh God this was going to hurt, this was going to hurt so much....
No, concentrate. Don't think. Don't think. Best not to think, just yank the thing out quickly and be done with it. Don't think, don't think, don't think, don't think-
There was a wet sound of tearing flesh and suddenly blood was gushing over his hands like water from a fountain.
He did scream, twice as loud as before. To hell with calm, this bloody HURT!! Oh God oh God, it hurt so much!! Ripping, tearing, screaming, bloody, terrible, mind-numbing AGONY!!!
He slumped forward, almost bent double, still gripping the evil pole by the middle. It was all he could do not to collapse face-first into the filthy sand and. Worst of all, the shaft didn't budge. For all the pain he'd just inflicted on himself, it hasn't moved one damned INCH. It seemed to settle in deeper if anything, burrowing its way further into his body like a parasite latching into its host. Wires. Wires... The damned shaft had WIRES! A dozen tiny, serrated daggers locked into his body with no intention of releasing their hold.
He pulled it again in sheer horror and desperation. It earned him another agonized cry that send crimson liquid splattering over his uniform. Not all of it came from his chest. Blood was invading his mouth now, a gushing fountain with no end that barely gave him a pause to breathe. That made him release the pole to cover his mouth while he coughed violently. A red line snaked between his fingers, over his knuckles and down his face until it dripped rhythmically from his chin. Horror on top of horror on top of pain.
Sudden apathy and exhaustion hit as fast and brutal as the arrow had. He collapsed on his back, cushioned somewhat by the soft moss patches poking out from the leaves. That earned him another stab for jostling the arrow, but strangely, he was losing the urge to scream. The urge to moan and make pathetic little noises like an animal caught in a steel trap...no, that hadn't died. But screaming seemed a terrible waste of effort when he was lying there in utter defeat.
The chill wind returned, a soft hand stroking his flushed face and trembling body. Warm tears spilled over to trail down his face. Not since his mother died had he allowed himself to cry freely. Nor did he now; he simply couldn't muster the strength to stop himself. Another scream died on the tip of his tongue. No, couldn't scream any more....
Delirium born of mind-numbing pain settled in, seeping its way into every little corner of his thoughts. Every sense was twisted by agony, making the world seem completely surreal. The canopy of dust and sky blurred in his blank, tear-streaked red eyes. Pain wouldn't allow much input from his tactile sense. Just that there was soft, wet sand under his head, and there was some rock or something digging into his side that he distantly wished he could move. The sand was soft as a pillow under his head, nice and feathery and cool against his cheek.
Maybe... maybe he wasn't really lying in the middle of a desert dying from that terrible pain eating away at his chest; maybe he was home in his bed with his face buried in a pillow. In his real bed, the one he'd slept in when he was a child, not the cold cot in military barracks. Maybe this was a dream. He'd wake up screaming and Mama would hold him close and tell him he was having a dream, no, a nightmare. She would pretend to scold him then, he'd been yelling in his tormented sleep loud enough to wake his sister, and she would tell him he was foolish to be afraid of a little dream....
That dream trailed off into nothing, lost in the chaos of a delirious mind.
His life didn't flash before his eyes. He drifted aimlessly from one thought to another with no real coherency, no rhyme or reason to it. Somehow he curled up on his side, knees halfway to his chin. Rather than the blurred sand, he stared dully at the bloody mess of chest, hands, and pole. His hands were all but dripping red. Red.... The color of life, love, and horrible bloody death. A faint ghost of a smile touched his lips even as he sobbed. He liked red. Pretty pretty red, so nice and warm and bright and, and....
His senses were taken over, dragging him deeper into delirium. His nose and mouth were blocked with the bitter taste and coppery scent of blood. It was so hard to breathe, so damned hard just to get a tiny wisp of air into his lungs without choking and coughing up twice what he took in. Cries of battle tore through the fading dusk of the desert around him, but it was all very far away and unimportant. Only muted half-sobs came now, so weak they were barely audible. He no longer thought to yell for help. That same bitter, beautiful crimson would have bubbled from his mouth if he tried.
He watched the carpet of sand, glass, and rocks change color around him, fading to the red of dying autumn leaves. God...what a beautiful red. He wondered why death was such a pretty color.
After a few hours, Raven came to. He crawled his way back to the facility. He didn't try to pull the shaft out, since he was completely unaware of it now. It eventually fell out on its own into the sand, the blood trailing as he crawled.
Raven was crouched at the edge of the facility, next to one of the burn marks that marred the ground in the sand. Crouched. It was too hard for him to stand just yet. He'd tried and found his body stiff and uncooperative. His mind had started out as uncooperative as his body, but the fog had cleared a little. Movement was coming back little by little, frustratingly slow. A little recovery here, a little there... The mercenary was growing impatient.
The scent of burned grass that permeated the clearing seemed to burn a hole through Raven's sense of smell. It was an overpowering stench. Everything was like that right now. The smell of burning was too strong. The sun was too bright. The wind was too cold. And he felt far, far too tired.
'Tired' was a joke. Nothing felt right. Everything from weariness to pain to discomfort was fighting for his attention, but none of it could quite reach him as much as it should have. It was like feeling everything through a cloud that softened the impact five times over.
His strength was slowly but surely returning to him, but for now he felt like absolute hell. And he burned to know how long he'd been out.
The signs of battle were still very fresh in the area, so he couldn't have been out of it for long. It was hard to know how much time had passed since that battle. It could be narrowed down to the span of a few hours, but even that wasn't precise enough. Every hour counted now. Every MINUTE counted. Raven couldn't leave this accursed wasteland fast enough. When the time came, that is. There were still things he needed to do here. Things he'd failed to accomplish in the battle.
The scars around the desert allowed him to trace back the fight. That burn was where one of his lightning shotgun sprays had barely missed an MT. That massive glass gouge in the sand was where Lexington and an enemy AC had tangled blades. He could see where he and some other new type had stood their ground against each other. Raven's attempt at a quick and brutal attack against the hated machine ended with a blade shoved halfway into his AC. The MT came away from the attack without so much as a scratch, and had the nerve to tell Raven not to attempt an overboost. There was no stopping the merc after that. The attempt almost killed him. In the end, a barrage of bazookas proved better instead.
Yes, the details of that battle were still VERY clear to him.
It was nothing he could remember fondly. It had been satisfying to sear Kisaragi and the enemy ACs with lightning quick dashes of the blade, but a lost battle was a lost battle. One he shouldn't be walking away from.
Raven tried for the third time to stand, but lost the strength to do so before he rose more than a foot. A soft grunt escaped him as he fell back on the carpet of sand, glass crysals, and blood. He wasn't walking away from anything yet.
The gash on his chest took his attention. It wasn't something he wanted to examine closely, but seeing where a misplaced jagged piece of pipe stabbed him was a little unsettling. Thankfully, it did not pain him any more. There was a lot of blood, but it no longer hurt as much as it had before he blacked out. Not fatal after all, he supposed, but it had knocked him out of the battle for good.
A quiet, tired sigh escaped him as he leaned back on the heels of his hard leather boots. That made him notice the blood trailing from his mouth. He'd coughed up a gallon of the stuff after he fell, and it was still coming.
Raven absently wiped the blood from his mouth, then brushed some dirt off the crest on his ruined uniform. A tired but very hateful sneer curled his lips back. The Kisaragi soldiers should know to check corpses before they were buried premature. If he'd had a burial, that is. It was just as well he hadn't. Digging himself out from under a pile of stones or a foot of sand because of a soldier who failed to notice he wasn't dead would not have made the last hour any more pleasant.
Raven's angry sneer didn't fade any. Kisaragi. Corporate filth. FORMER Corporate filth, anyway, as soon as he can get back to work. Once Raven lost both Lexington and his enemy to the thick dust clouds and the thread of Fate, it hadn't taken him long to decide two things.
It was going to take a while to find his way out of this place.
And Mirage was full of shit.
Thoughts of Kisaragi stabbed at him until he couldn't sit still any longer. Weariness hadn't left him, but his strength was coming back. Confusion still lingered as well, like a fog around his mind that refused to break. At least he was getting better with that. He couldn't remember his name when he first woke up. That damn crash must have bashed him on the head pretty hard to make him wake up so confused.
Everything seemed slightly off center in his mind. It had taken him long enough to actually come to. The half-aware state he'd awakened to only lasted as long as it had taken him to realize his eyes WERE indeed open, and that WAS the slightly cloudy sky he was staring up at rather than the bright lights that had stolen his vision with a three-story fall from his AC.
Setbacks only made Raven more determined to get what he wanted. He'd come here to kill this dragon. Failed miserably. Intended to kill the Kisaragi battalion too. Failed more miserably. This time he'd add the entire corporation of Kisaragi to his list. Raven had learned a few things from dealing with the less-than-truthful former Corporation of Mirage, among them to take everything said with a grain of salt. Why he'd actually listened to Mirage's directions was beyond him.
Being at the edge of the facility was a help to him then. His hand felt around behind him until it touched a sturdy low pipe spitting out from the wall. With a quick prayer for strength, Raven wrapped his hand securely around the pipe. Ignoring the sticky oil that smeared on his gloves, he pulled himself up.
It took more effort than he could have imagined. He had to lean against the pipe to stay on his feet. Something as simple as standing up had never been so difficult before. His joints were sore and stiff, and he was inexplicably exhausted. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that Kisaragi had foolishly left him for dead, but he doubted he'd feel any worse if he was.
The wall was his support for a while. Another moment and he'd be fine to walk back through the desert. It could go on ahead for another twenty miles for all he knew. At least if he backtracked he'd have some idea of where he was going. If he made it back to the Layered district, he could get to the civilian sector and meet up with Kaori.
That would come when he could walk. For now, clearing the cloud around his mind was crucial. He felt half asleep even though he was sure he was awake. As a mercenary and, unofficially, as a brilliant tactician, Raven needed a clear mind and could not afford lapses in concentration. A misdirected stride in the wrong direction could easily kill him. He'd seen it happen to others. The easiest mental exercise he could think of right now was to smooth out the wrinkles that had appeared in his memory. Every time he tried to recall something it took him a moment to process it. That wouldn't do.
The events of the last few hours were the clearest in his memory, so he started there and worked his way up, recalling every detail with as much clarity as he could manage. The arrival at the facility. The unholy ACs that Lexington and Raven had found lurking here. The slow realization that there was something much more complex going on here than a mission to push Kisaragi out and destroy their prototype. The supposed murder of his friend Lexington. The chase down the desert. And the climax of an ill-fated meeting between Raven and the Kisaragi army, a two-on-many battle with Raven and Lexington versus a whole lot of MTs and ACs.
Raven was semi-conscious for some time after, and what his half-alert mind caught only furthered his solid belief that Mirage and Kisaragi were manipulative dogs who needed to be silenced immediately.
Raven tried to move his dwelling memory away from that. It wasn't clearing his mind any, just clouding it with rage.
Another memory came to him, one that was far beyond the desert. It came far too easily and altogether unexpected.
The screaming voice. Someone yelling in his face.
A spray of blood. Warm metal cupped in his hands.
Nothing pleasant.
Triggering that made him instinctively reach for the amulet he kept tucked under the collar of his uniform. An...an old trinket to remind him of home and family. It wasn't actually an amulet, but a small brooch set and threaded on a silver chain. The finest thing he had had ever made. Raven's mother had worn it every day without fail, and it had fallen into his hands when she died. It was always safely out of sight, either around his neck under his collar or in his pocket. He doubted that even Kaori knew he had it.
Knew. Had known. That was the first time he'd forgotten his sister might be dead.
He reached for the amulet to reassure himself, and found nothing.
His hand grasped at his neck. The comforting weight of the necklace wasn't there, and he couldn't feel the chain. That sent him into a panic.
Miraculously, he didn't fall when he let go of the branch to search his pockets. Preoccupation with the missing amulet made him ignore the fact that he could stand again. There was no reason to check his pockets, he clearly remembered wearing the thing through all his missions out of an old superstition that silver repelled evil. Little good it had done him against the powers of this wretched society. Even the powers of God himself couldn't stand up to the evil that festered in the hearts of Humans.
After proving to himself that it was not anywhere on his person, he found himself kneeling next to the bloodstained spot of ground where he'd come to, and sifting through the sand looking for a flash of silver somewhere. A few minutes of searching through the bloody sand yielded nothing but rusty stains on his skin.
It made him feel slightly foolish when he realized what he was doing. Here he was, kneeling on the ground searching for a trinket when there were so many more things he should be worrying about. Getting out of the Layered City before sunset. Getting out of this DESERT before getting out of this City before sunset. Finding whatever remained of the LMC. Fending off the unholy demons and soulless wretches that stalked every inch of this God-forsaken planet. Finding Kaori. Dalriadan.
Dalriadan...
It occurred to Raven that his AC was still missing, along with anything else he'd had with him. The grave robbing soldier had helped himself to anything his victims left behind, and Raven had been no exception.
Thieving Kisaragi scum. Thief, thief, THIEF!
'For God's sake, calm down.' Raven could feel his mind getting more clouded with every drop of rage that seeped in. That was what he was working to PREVENT. Getting so upset over a sentimental trinket wasn't going to help.
Still, the loss of the amulet burned more than he ever would have expected, and no amount of rationalizing would take that away. Corporations seemed to have a mission to take away everything that was important to him. Sera Cross, his only living parent, died with a Mishima experiment. The ravens, his second family, were being murdered one by one by Kisaragi and this whole accursed conspiracy. And the amulet. The damn soldier hadn't thought it enough to kill him, he had to take a trophy too.
It was hard to maintain much calm after that.
He had less trouble standing this time, but his body still felt very stiff and uncooperative, like every movement was a delayed reaction. The fact that he still felt strange did nothing to help, but that was another thing he was going to have to deal with as best he could.
He looked calmer than he felt as he brushed the sand from his clothes and gloves. Raven shuddered. It was so bloody cold in this desert. It hadn't been this cold earlier.
With a small shiver, Raven headed for the trail leading back the way he came. Being alone in this Layered, day or night, was not appealing. If he went back to the residential district he was sure to meet up with other ravens. If God was with him, he would meet that soldier first. Let the thieving dog stand up to him then. Raven swore that the AC pilot would not live to fulfill whatever little role Kisaragi was manipulating him into. The Tenlos Syndicate was here to smash those unholy corporate dogs and their leader in Kisaragi, and that was exactly what Raven intended to do. Once this horrible confusion and weakness went away.
He headed back into the desert, trying to remember all the landmarks on the way and wondering why it was so cold. And why the wind sounded so much like distant screams.