A mouse was struggling on the ground, trying to stand and run away, but its leg had been crushed by something, and as the girls approached the mouse grew more and more panicked. They could see its chest rising and falling at incredible speed as its heart pounded in fear. Jondy knelt to get a better look and watched the mouse for a few moments.
"We have to move out," Syl told her. Jondy glanced up, then nodded, starting to stand again. She hesitated.
"It's hurt."
Syl's eyes slid uneasily to the mouse. "There's nothing we can do. Move out, soldier."
"Yes, ma'am," Jondy answered immediately, picking up her machine gun and standing up again. They started to walk away, avoiding a large puddle from a rainfall the night before, but then Jondy stopped and turned back.
"210!" Syl yelled as she ran back to the mouse, cradling the creature very gently in her hands. Its eyes were wide with fear, the leg's angle looking incredibly painful to Syl. Jondy ignored her, walking past her and dropping to her knees in front of the puddle. She tightened her hands around the mouse and in one calm movement submerged them, waiting as the thing slowly began to stop struggling, and finally laid still. Syl heard Jondy's soft sobs and she put her gun down. She knelt down just behind Jondy and pulled her into a hug, letting her cry into her shoulder.
"Shh, baby sister," she murmured. "Shh."
Jondy looked up at Syl with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Can we bury it?"
"Of course," Syl answered after a moment, caressing her hand over Jondy's half-inch of blonde hair. "Let's find a pretty place."
"Syl," Zack's voice cut through the dream and her eyes opened. It was
strange, dreaming of something that happened at Manticore and then waking up in
camos, her arms loosely wrapped around a machine gun. "We're here," Zack told
her gently, and instantly she became nervous. She jumped down from the van with
the others, her eyes scanning her surroundings. Darkness. Trees whose
familiarity in her perfect memory was haunting.
Shadows chased across the bark as they padded through the foliage, not
making a sound. It would be dark soon, but being afraid of darkness was as
foreign to Syl as ice cream or hopscotch. The forest dipped in and out of
gullies and hills, ridges and small vallies. There was one place where a stream
cut through the landscape during the winter. But now it was summer, warm
outside, even as night started to fall. They were walking along the ridge that
overlooks the streambed, Jondy in front right behind Eva. They were on duty but
it didn't feel like it so much. Quin, Jack, and Tali were behind Jondy, and Syl
could hear Cade and Lia's footsteps behind her, feel their closeness in a way
that requires no effort or conscious thought.
Jondy turned back to Quin, smiled. She jumped up on one of the boulders, toeing the edge, daring her sister with her eyes. Quin was right behind her, leaping gracefully from rock to rock, her feet searching for crevices like it was second nature. She was always the first one on the roof. Jack hung back a little, scared. He didn't want to risk it, being cautious as always.
But Tali followed right behind the others, hopping up on the closest rock, smiling at her sisters as she teased them with a step to the left, a feigned stumble to the right. Eva was up ahead, ordering them all to hurry, to stop playing around. But children need to play, and even Manticore couldn't edit that out.
Tali ignored Eva and hopped, trying to outdo her sisters. She swayed a little, and Syl looked up just in time to see her stop teetering and start falling, the stones she's placed her feet on coming loose and sliding, betraying her. Jondy's hand reached out but it closed around air, a split-second too late. Tali didn't scream as she fell, she just calmly tucked into a roll so she'd come up standing.
They all paused to watch her fall, they all saw the gun catch on a tree and throw out her landing, saw her hands flail as she twisted and kept falling, saw her mouth open as she hit the ground. They all saw her cough, saw her eyes open wide in surprise, and they all saw the tiny, bloodied point of jagged rock showing through her camos, poking straight out from her thin chest.
After a moment of shocked disbelief they took off running together, and Jondy was at her side just before Syl. All her life Tali had the most beautiful eyes, the colour of burnt amber, but now they weren't shining, they weren't bright, they were just a dull, dull orange. A light gone out forever.
Syl felt a chill and she shook the memory away forcefully, tearing her
eyes away from the forest to focus on Zack. He handed them all earpieces and
then pulled out the map, spreading it out in front of them as they gathered
around it. Syl adjusted her earpiece as he spoke.
"Syl and Krit will proceed via service corridor four-alpha to the main and auxiliary generators and set charges." As he explained the gameplan, he traced their route across the map. Syl watched, memorizing it all. "Max and I will take the basement to the east air shaft and proceed to the DNA lab. At 0430 we lay charges. By 0440 the firing sequence will commence."
"We'll detonate the charges from here," Lydecker added. Syl's eyes slid to him as he spoke, and for the first time she felt no annoyance toward him whatsoever. That's when she realized how deeply in mission-mode she really was, and she felt both frightened and comforted by that fact.
"I'm in," Logan spoke up from inside the van, and they all looked up to him. "I've accessed the internal surveillance system. I'm copying loops into each camera feed so they won't be able to see you, but we will. So we can monitor you, steer you around any obstacles." Syl thought about that for a moment, imaging all the different types of 'obstacles' there could be... conventional soldiers, other X-series, even X5s- Syl froze. Brin.
"We rendez-vous here by 0448," Zack said. "Questions?"
Syl quickly looked up. "What happens if we run into Brin in there?"
"She'll kill you without a second thought," Lydecker answered immediately. "The sister that you knew doesn't exist anymore- she's dead." Syl felt a deep pang in her heart but fought it down.
"No she isn't," Max hissed. "She's alive. And that means we still have a chance to get her back." Syl looked to Zack, who wasn't arguing or agreeing with what Max said. The thought of Brin being brainwashed to work against obviously unsettled them all.
"Here's your clearance to the lab," Lydecker said, handing a small container to Zack. He took it and turned to Syl and Krit.
"You know what you have to do," he said simply. "Move out." Krit and Syl rose with Zack, and Max followed a few moments later. Syl felt the soft soil under her feet as she moved closer and closer to the place where she'd been born, the place she'd swore never to come back to.
Marching in hallways, morning drills, dinner in the mess hall, guards
watching, always watching. Maps flashed in front of her, targets named, orders
given, training, weapons, bullets and hand-to-hand combat. A brother not
progressing in his training for weeks, being gone one day without explanation. A
sister having screaming nightmares after her first live fire drill and coming
out of Psy-ops with haunted eyes. Psy-ops... a place with too many memories but
not nearly enough for how much time Syl spent there. The fear of the tests, fear
of doctors, fear of Lydecker and bright lights. Fear of everything and everyone
who didn't love her.
They stepped through the foliage and suddenly Manticore was in front of
them, its grey walls and sweeping searchlights as familiar as they were
frightening. Syl's heartbeat quickened immediately, and she couldn't help but
stop just to look. For a long moment, all four of them just stood there in
silence, staring at the place. Syl didn't bother looking at her siblings,
knowing their expressions would match hers, knowing that they were being
assaulted by memories too.
Tali hitting the ground, the blood sputtering out of her mouth, the
rock impaling her through the chest and her eyes open, lifeless, to a starless
sky. The sound her body made when they lifted her up. The blood that was still
on the rock the next day, and the way Syl felt nothing when she looked at it.
Ben's stories, his smiles, Jondy's giggles with Max late at night. Zack's
reassurances in the dark, Zane's goodnights, the day Jack seized and never came
back from the medical bay. Eva's head snapping back and her blood hitting the
walls and the floor and her siblings in the hall.
Seeing Bram fall, knowing he died by her hand. The tricks they played on
her in Psy-ops, the memories she has that can't be backed up, the one she's not
even sure are real. Her first heat, how scared she was, having her daughter, the
pain of labour and delivery, the greater pain of having nothing in her arms
afterward. The guilt of all of it, Zack's forgiveness, the way he watched her
sleep, the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn't looking back.
Zane's simple sweetness, Krit's arms warm around her, Max's soft smile
and the shadows in Jondy's eyes when she doesn't know you're watching her.
Brin's laugh, Tinga's smile, the way they talked about their lives, the way they
really fit in out here, the way they were really happy to be outside.
"This is for Tinga," Max's calm voice broke through Syl's reverie. Syl's
hands tightened around her machine gun and then they took off together, clearing
the fence in one leap. It was so easy at this size, not like how it had been
when they were kids, running to the fence, hitting it head-on, climbing up as
fast as they could but being unavoidably vulnerable for a good thirty seconds.
But at this age, she was over the fence with its curling barbed wire in the
blink of an eye and back where everything started, where her life began.
They split off from Zack and Max right away to get to the different destinations. Syl turned her head as she ran with Krit toward the building just in time to catch Zack slipping through the door. For a moment she felt anxiety at being apart from him again, after he'd been lost for so many weeks, but she took comfort in his promise. After this mission was over, she would live with him for a while again, and things would be better. After this mission was over, everything would change.
Syl smiled a little and followed Krit into the basement of Manticore, thankfully separate from the part that held transgenic mistakes, what Ben and her other siblings had naïvely called nomlies before they'd really understood.
"Do you still believe, Syl?"
When she looked at him, his eyes were dark in a way that was both colour and shadow. When she shook her head, he frowned. His face became confused, perturbed. A little boy's face. She turned back to the paper she had and kept folding, finishing a flower and moving onto a crane.
"Teach me?" Ben asked, putting his hand on her arm. The baby gave a small kick and she jumped a little, so he withdrew his hand slowly. "Why don't you believe?"
"She isn't real." Fold, flip over, fold, fold, done. A fish. "She never was."
"She's real," he snapped back.
Fold, fold, flip over, crease, fold, crease again, fold. Done. Another flower. "No." Zack returned and set down a bag of Chinese food, and they all dug in.
"Zack, Syl doesn't believe in the Blue Lady anymore," Ben said. Syl slid her eyes to Zack, wondering if he'd respond. But he hadn't said anything since North Dakota, and she wasn't surprised when he just chewed, swallowed, and grabbed another mouthful.
"We'll be in Detroit tomorrow morning," Syl said.
"I don't want to live in Detroit," Ben answered with a grimace. Zack stood up and Syl stood with him. They headed back to the car, Ben following along, dragging his feet a little. Syl heard him say a soft prayer for her, but Zack's hand closed on her wrist before she could react. She relaxed and Zack released her. They would be in Detroit soon and once Ben was gone, things would go back to normal.
Only Ben never had understood, even after they'd escaped, after
everything he'd seen and learned, it had only gotten worse for him.
"Syl," Krit whispered to her. "You alright?"
She nodded. "Fine," she said, shaking away her thoughts. "Just..." She trailed off but Krit smiled a little, tensely.
"I know," he said, then quickened his pace. Syl followed him, keeping close, her machine gun ready for anything. Always in the back of her mind was the thought that it was Lydecker and a man who Zack didn't trust who were, essentially, were watching her back. And that made her very uneasy. Adding in the narrow service corridor with its slick, pipe-laden walls and the low, bright ceiling lamps, this entire exercise made her very uneasy. She wondered if Max and Zack were having a similar experience, and secretly wished she'd been able to go with Zack instead of Max, even though the thought of seeing the lab where they had all been created, where samples of their DNA were most likely still kept, unnerved her. Anything that reminded her that she was the creation of other people made her both angry and very afraid. She made a mental note to ask Zack later what it was like to be standing there, a place that stood for everything they hated but that was also, cruelly, responsible for their very existence.
"Proceeding south to corridor four-alpha," Krit announced, breaking through her thoughts.
"You're clear all the way to the generator," Logan's voice crackled in their ears.
"Copy that," Krit answered.
After a moment Logan's voice came back, "I got you, Max." And then, "You're clear." Syl breathed an inward sigh of relief as her heartbeat quickened once again. It looked like this was going to go smoothly, they'd make it in and out without incident, just like Zack had hoped.
They entered the generator and immediately went to work; it was 0427, they were ahead of schedule, but they still moved quickly. Syl knew Krit wanted to be out of there as fast as she did.
"Okay," Logan's tense but relieved voice came over the comm as Syl was laying the last of ther charges. "Get out of there." Syl looked to Krit and he was heading for the door. She set down her last explosive and followed him.
"We've got an alarm," Lydecker's voice suddenly came over the comm. "Withdraw to the perimetre. Withdraw to the perimetre. We've been made. All units, withdraw."
"Copy that," Krit answered immediately as they picked up the pace as they listened to Logan and Lydecker's exchange.
"This is not good," Lydecker said. "Hack into the control panel at corridor seven alpha. We've got to lock down ward c-16."
"Why?" Logan's voice came. "What's wrong?"
"Must've been a last-minute change in deployment." Lydecker's voice was calm, but hurried, and it unnerved Syl. "There's still a contingent of X7s in the building." Krit turned and gave her a look full of questions, but she just shook her head; the X7s had been toddlers when they'd run away, she had no idea what they were capable of.
"They're just kids," she heard Logan say. She was surprised that after knowing Max he could say something like that, but she held her tongue to hear Lydecker's response.
"They're stronger, faster, and designed with hive minds. We don't want our people tangling with them." At that, Krit immediately increased his pace, and Syl ran after him, giving him a reassuring look as he glanced backward to make sure she was close, even though inside she was terrified. They hit a t-junction and stopped, flattening themselves against the wall and waiting for clearance to continue.
"Syl, Krit," Logan's voice came a moment later. "Unfriendlies behind you. 25 metres and closing."
"Take them out," Lydecker ordered immediately, and they jumped out from the corridor, firing into the narrow hallway. The men rocked with the impact of the bullets, but Syl was running again barely before she saw them hit the ground. Again Krit looked over his shoulder as they ran, making sure, and she gave him another reassuring look, wishing he'd stop doing that. It was much too familiar and familiarity was something she had too much of right now.
He turned his head, checking to make sure she was there, the third
time in ten minutes. She gave him a disgruntled look, wishing he'd keep his head
forward, warning him against letting his guard down. He turned around again,
they walked for another ten minutes. He glanced backward again and she couldn't
hold in an exasperated sigh, making her footsteps more deliberate, hoping that
would stop him from making sure she was there every thirty seconds. He looked at
her with his dark eyes, the little brother she'd always sworn to protect, the
one she was paired with most often because they worked well together. He smiled
a thanks at her, his stride relaxing now that he knew she was there, and Syl's
heart gave a little flutter. She smiled back.
"It's Brin," Lydecker's voice cut through the memory. Syl's heart froze.
"She's headed for the lab."
There was a long pause, and then Logan said with resignation in his voice, "Back the way you came, first corridor on your left." Syl knew then that Max had gone back for their sister; she just hoped Max could reason with her in time. She checked her watch- 0436. According to Zack's schedule, she had just under four minutes to clear the building before they'd detonate those charges. But Logan was in charge, and Syl knew he wouldn't let them go off with Max inside. She warred with her conflicting emotions as she and Krit hit the doors, clearing the fence and running through the woods toward the perimetre like they had when they were kids... the fence, the fence, I have to get us to the fence! Again with Krit, again not knowing where her siblings were or if they were okay, again with Manticore's soldiers after her, she ran flat-out for freedom and escape.
"She's clear," Logan's voice came moments later, and Syl breathed an inward sigh of relief. "Detonate." She waited for the explosion, but instead Logan spoke again, more harshly, "I said she's clear."
"Lydecker," Krit growled as they ran.
"Do it. Now," Logan said firmly. Behind them, the building erupted in flame and shattering glass, but Syl didn't bother to turn around. She just kept running with Krit for safety, a mirror of herself at ten.
"Max, where are you?" Logan asked over the comm. Then, "Zack, talk to me." When he immediately moved on to request her and Krit's location, Syl knew the others were alright.
"Closing on your position," Krit told Logan, and Syl could hear the relief in his voice too. "ETA is momentary."
A bullet ripped by Syl's head and they both hit the ground, pressing themselves into the foliage. They came up behind a small grove of trees as Syl's eyes searched the forest for their assailant.
"There!" Krit yelled, already bringing his machine gun around. He fired a spread into the trees but Syl didn't see anyone. Then she heard the snap of twigs and some bushes rustled. Krit ran to the spot and she followed. He came around a large tree and held his machine gun on the soldier he'd hit.
An X7, maybe twelve years old. Syl's breath caught but she forced her reaction back, didn't call the child Jondy, knew what this was. The girl was choking on blood, several of Krit's bullets having ripped through her chest and neck, cutting off her oxygen. Krit's eyes scanned the treeline as Syl dropped beside the girl and disarmed her. She lay there coughing, looking up at them, eyes wide even for Jondy, full of fear.
"It's okay," Syl found herself saying, her voice soft. She laid her hand against the girl's neck, but stopping the bleeding would be impossible and she'd already lost too much. The girl stared up at her, coughing, dying, the light fading from her eyes. "It's okay," Syl said again, keeping her voice soft, soothing. The X7 sputtered a few more times and then her body stilled. When she died her eyes stayed open, staring, too much like Jondy's. Syl gazed at her, the mirror image of a sister who she'd never really gotten along with, but who she hadn't seen in weeks and who she missed deeply. She reached out slowly and closed the girl's eyes, and then stood up again, turning to Krit, who had a pained but determined expression on his face.
"There'll be more," he said. "Come on." They ran, heading uphill toward where they knew the road was, where the others would be waiting. They both shot several more times into the trees, but they didn't stop long enough to see anymore of the X7s die or even go down. Krit grabbed her arm as she reached the top of the rise, and she hit the ground hard, bushes obscuring whatever Krit had seen. She moved so she could follow his gaze, and froze at what she saw.
Zane, Mina, Pip, Tosh... they were all there. Zack's clone too, about fourteen, his face at an age that Syl remembered well from when she'd been living with him. But that's not what scared her; the X7 of Zack was holding a gun on someone, and when Mina's clone moved aside, she saw with horror who it was.
"Z-" she started to yell, preparing to open fire and run down the hill to help, but Krit's arms wrapped around her, one hand closing over her mouth and cutting off the scream. Syl watched as Max's clone joined the others, and she kicked against Krit, trying to free herself.
"Don't Syl, don't," he hissed into her ear, his voice urgent. "There's a dozen of them and only two of us."
She bit his hand hard enough to draw blood and growled, "Three."
"No, Syl," he said firmly, his voice both pleading and sorrowful. She tried to fight with him again, but he was much bigger than her and she couldn't get him off. Deep inside, she knew he was right. And as more and more X7s joined the others, she knew running down there wouldn't accomplish anything but getting herself recaptured or killed. For a moment she considered doing it anyway, but she couldn't make herself struggle enough, and Krit's grip on her was too tight. When the X7s pulled Zack up and dragged him toward the compound, with him fighting the whole way, they dragged all her reassurances and comforts with him. Only running with Krit toward the van and trying to stay out of the line of fire kept her from completely panicking.
Seeing Logan, laid out dead or unconcious in the back of the van, was her first clue that something was wrong. "They got Zack," Krit quickly announced.
"And Max?" Syl asked when she didn't see her sister.
"KIA," Lydecker said, his voice heavy and sad. "Let's move out." He turned
away from them to get into the driver's seat, and they both just stood there for
several moments in shock. Syl fought hard to keep her footing, and then she
looked at Krit and saw her own fear and grief mirrored in his eyes. He put a
hand out to steady her, nudged her into the van as the engine started, and then
pulled her into his arms. She let him hold her because she knew it would comfort
him, but it made no difference to her. She didn't feel anything and she couldn't
seem to make herself feel anything. She just stared at Logan's unconcious form
as they drove away from Manticore and forced herself not to think, not to feel,
and not to remember a thing.
