Releasing Four Hands
By Agent Ahab
The War had raged for centuries and no survivors had any recollection of who started it or made the first attempt to extinguish the other. Each side had taken its casualties and each now bore the scars of the struggle which it was entangled in. Each had found a way to survive and each now had a new way of life opposite of what they had before. Each had prospered in its own way and found a new way to go on, but the War had come to a stand still and both sides' paths crossed once more and this time there was no other way to go.
It was a Releasing of Four Hands, and the great and undefeated Samurai Myomoto Musashi would have said, and when that happens each much find a new and different approach and there can only be the one victor while the other falls.
It was a dream; she knew that, it must be, nothing like this was in the real world. She couldn't fly in the real world, she knew that, but here she was flying. She was in the clouds, letting them swirl and comfort her body fitting to her body like a form fitted glove made just for her. She shed the glove and dove downwards to the sparkling lights, where she knew a city was. She knew the city wasn't real either, cities don't look that bright or beautiful, too much smog and pollution had caused that. She picked up speed and twirled into a flock of birds and made them squawk and veer off to get out of the way. She loved this feeling; the freedom of flying was like a drug that she couldn't get enough of. She reached the canopy of roof tops and rolled between them and swam among them darting in and out like a tiny fish among the lily stems at a serene pond. There was no threat, she felt nothing but pleasure, a pleasure that was limitless and brought memories back from when she was just a child playing in her mother's cornfield, running full speed among the stalks listening to the leaves rustle and the dirt crunch beneath her boots as she lost herself in the crowd of plants.
She maneuvered through scaffolding that resided upon a rooftop and weeved between the satellites as they sent and received information from all over the globe. She rose over a low building and arced over a small tower across a gap that spanned the freeway. She felt it then, the small feeling she got in the pit of her stomach if she road a roller coaster over a rise then fell down the next loop. It was small at first, the feeling, but then it got bigger and she felt it everywhere now, from her feet to her head. She could feel her arms and legs regain their weight, and feel the slight pull that escaladed into a massive tug towards the earth far below. She was falling, but why, she could fly, this shouldn't happen. She tried to fly, tried to remember that feeling, but try as she may the feeling didn't return and she plummeted downwards to her doom.
Heights were never her problem, she wasn't scared of them, and even once she had an apartment on the 15 floor of a building. It wasn't the height part, it was the inevitable fall while watching the ground rush up to you before your world went black, that was what she was afraid of. She shut her eyes and tried to scream but when she opened her mouth air forcefully rushed in and choked her breath right back into her lungs. She stopped trying to scream and started trying to breathe which also was a problem, even with air rushing into her lungs it was hard to dispel it back out again. She forced her eyes open and the wind tore at them like tiny shards of crystal and her eyes bled tears so hot that they burnt down her face leaving trails of heat in their wake. The tears ran back into her hair which was whipping about her face tearing cuts into her cheeks and getting sucked into her mouth aiding the air to choke her. She finally found enough strength to focus her eyes and all she saw was the ground rushing up to her and right below her was a street lamp that blurred up to meet her as she sped downwards.
The initial impact didn't hurt, but after she struck and impaled half way down the pole and then stopped and began to slide down the pole leaving a maroon streak created by the tendrils of her intestines a tidal wave of pain struck her and she convulsed and writhed and grab the pole below her trying to slow her descent. She began to drool blood and bile and she sobbed as she slid farther down the pole until the pole became too big and she stopped. She was a few feet off of the ground and blood began to pool underneath of her. The last thought that she could remember was that this wasn't supposed to happen, the test wasn't supposed to end this way.
Back on the Abbadon, Brooke or Beta as most knew her convulsed and her back arced as she pulled on the restraints. Her eyes moved rapidly under her eyelids and blood trickled from her mouth and slid down her neck to join the pool of blood soaking the front of her sweater-jacket until it was blue but a soggy mahogany. She slammed back into the seat and a low resonating beep was heard as her heart stopped and the flat line monitor revealed that she was in fact dead.
Tao slammed his hands down on the dash almost breaking the rusted steel, and his keyboard jumped and his neat pile of diskettes spilled off and fell to the floor. Phan Xu the ship's captain came over and scooped up the spilled diskettes and put them back onto the dash.
"It's alright Tao, she understood the risks. It wasn't your fault, the program just didn't finish processing. You can't stop now, we have come this far with worse results than this. We must keep trying, we can't give up, the time has come near my friend, the time has come near."