Oh how evil the next three chapters are going to be, but never fear the final installment of the series is already in the works. This chapter is going to read like a really chatty internal monologue but I think once you reach the end you'll understand the point of it.
Bon chance!
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Live fast and leave a pretty body. I want to go out in a blaze of glory. But not today. If I had to choose I'd say that today definitely isn't the best day for me to die. But some choices are best left to the blue lady in the sky.
Automatically, I hold my breath while I walk through the smoke. It's thick, pouring out of the tree lines and it chokes out the dimly fading light on the horizon and the melted glass surface of the deep blue sky. I can't help but wonder if I'll see the light dawning on that horizon when the morning comes.
Then again morbid thoughts seem to get me into trouble, best to keep it cheery then. I find myself errantly wishing for my old leather jacket, the one I'd liberated from a really nice department store just after my Manticore escape. Somehow I think I'd look much cooler striding through the smoking palm fronds if I weren't wearing a bodysuit.
Nope, still being a pessimist. Although with the edges of the compound coming into view and the darkly silhouetted shapes of a hundred or so bad guys running in a panic through the smoke, pessimism seems like the easier option.
Five hundred more yards and the battle will start. I reach out with my enhanced senses and let out a little sigh of relief when I feel Max's presence far off too my right. Somewhere to the left Naia has to be lurking, and I'm glad that she's covering my other flank because if anyone else has a reason to fight these guys to the death it's her. This is a comfort to me, because my extensive training in combat is currently whispering in my ear that I'm an idiot and that this plan sucks. Somehow circling the bad guys under fire cover and taking them out in a hail of bullets sounded better before I was facing it.
Scratch what I said about wanting my leather jacket. First of all I'm getting caught on brambles left and right and I don't want my precious baby getting ripped up, somehow along the way it's become as dear to me as Max's motorcycle is to her. Secondly, and more importantly I would really like a flak jacket right now, nice, solid, and able to stop speeding bullets in a single bound.
I start humming Rachmaninoff under my breath, a sure sign of nervous tension because the piano melodies soothe me. It occurs to me that I don't know what Max might hum under her breath when she gets nervous or worried, and I have the urge to run over just to ask her.
I stop short of going to her though, it's foolish to move position and more fun to come up with my own answer. I once played a concerto that represented the beheading of a lover and one of the pieces had symbolized the head bouncing off the chopping block and away down the stairs. That seems like an appropriate theme for Maxie, impassioned and bloody and a little humorous.
Max has seemed different since she came to rescue me, quieter and softer, and yet more brightly burning somehow. A strong surge of pressure that feels a bit like drowning washes over me and I realize just how head over heels in love with her I've become. The thought isn't as frightening as it would have been once, when I feared making a connection with anyone or anything.
Now I have the urge to run over to Maxie just to tell her how much I love her, but that seems both more and less silly than asking her what her life's soundtrack is. I can tell that we're getting very close to the courtyard now, and the sounds of people running and screaming comes through much louder.
It reminds me morbidly of all of the other times that I've heard running and screaming, caused running and screaming. In this moment it occurs to me that I have no idea just how many people I've killed over the last twenty-two years. Probably more than a dozen on each of the larger missions and that isn't counting the more rigorously planned assassinations. I wonder why the kills don't make me feel guiltier, and how much the blue lady holds me responsible.
Really I ought to keep doing good deeds for another fifty or sixty years to make up for all of the bad things that Manticore asked me to do. The thought of running around fighting the good fight with Maxie until we're wrinkly and gray doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Although the color gray still gives me the chills, even after nearly a year of freedom.
Most of the shouting and running is silenced now, a lull as the bad guys gather themselves for the fight. I wonder if we'll age normally, me and Maxie that is, because our stem cells ought to keep away all of the nasty outward signs of senescence. Of course that's assuming that I live long enough to grow old, which in consideration of my lifestyle doesn't seem all that likely.
Now I can make out the individual shapes of people and I draw my glock from its snug back holster and release the safety. The weight of it feels warm in my hands and comfortingly familiar. Time to kill the bad guys and make the world safe for kittens and puppies again.
My first shot goes right to a man's head and I'm sure that he's dead even before he hits the ground. Now isn't the time to stun or incapacitate, not when they can inconveniently wake up at any time and put a bullet in my back or the backs of my friends.
A second shot goes straight through a man's heart and I wonder how many seconds his heart will continue to beat before the electric spark that keeps him alive finally gives out. It doesn't actually occur to me what an ironic thought that is, when a bullet come from the unguarded rear and plunges through my chest. It doesn't occur to me to wonder where all the transgenics pouring out of the smoke behind us came from. It doesn't occur to me to cry, or scream, to curse life or pray for forgiveness, as the world goes inky black. It doesn't.