Breaking Point
---59:58:14---
It had been so long ago and yet, his wound ached fresh and sour.
She laid there, so soft and weightless in his arms. Spike held his broken porcelain doll so tightly as her silky golden locks cascaded all around her. When her eyelids fluttered open, he held his breath in a pang of hope. Then he saw it. The pain rippled in her vast blue irises. The cold soothing pain numbed her aching soul. She wanted this so badly.
And in the end, he wanted the same fate for himself.
Her last words slithered out her pale lips and all he could do was reassure her that it would all end soon. It did the moment her eyes closed shut. Thin tears escaped him. They burned down his cheeks filled with sorrow and hate, so he gripped her tighter as he trembled against her limp corpse.
"I'm sorry." He murmured. "I never wanted to kill you."
About a year ago he had gone to meet his destiny, as he thought it, and finally he would end this dream that had turned into a nightmare. Nevertheless, destiny never turns out to be as we want it. If so, then Julia's death wouldn't have occurred and his own would have been inconsequential. Who's he to understand destiny anyhow? He's a man, victim of his own delusions and tragedies. To his misfortune though, this time destiny had a name. Her name was Alyssa.
In his mind, he could not grant her that much credit. There was no trap to fall in, just the fact that he—like many times before—had lost track of his dream and this time someone had taken over for him, but this would not last for long.
By no chance did this mean that he felt secure that he could stop whatever her disturbed mind had planned. His cynical reaction had merely been due to the shock of everything that had evolved until now. Spike Spiegel's hands trembled as they handled the controls of the Swordfish II, racing through Alba's skyline and finally arriving to the docks. His pulse raced with the little digital watch on his wrist hiding behind the long black sleeve of his jacket.
Faye tells it when to go off. She's the spark, which is fitting don't you think?
He spotted the Bebop and after almost forty minutes of absolute anxiety, coherent thoughts of his own began to form in his mind. What am I going to tell her? What am I going to do?
Julia.
Julia!
Julia, I'm going to kill someone else.
Spike landed without noticing her at first, but as soon as he was out of his cockpit he spotted her small figure on the deck. He approached her hesitantly watching her svelte body glaze the hazy image of the bay surrounding them. She stood on the edge, sipping the smoke of her cigarette. His feet stopped at a small distance before reaching her. Her emerald eyes seemed focused on the sparkling blue of the water as her violet locks swayed with the wind and her pale skin glowed white like porcelain under the sun's rays.
No Spike, his mind questioned her seeming fragility. He knew better than to judge someone by their appearance. From far away, perhaps the hazy atmospheric portrait of this Romany could impair his judgment. All he had to do was to get closer, two feet, one foot and there. He glanced closely at her and into her verdant glare, and he saw the truth. Faye's eyes were hardly numb. They were resolute, full of emotion and power. Her right arm clung tightly to her body beneath her chest while the other held up the hand that brought the cigarette to her lips. He knew she could easily see how closely he watched her, but it didn't stir her. Instead she remained stubbornly focused on the bay, the blue waters, the sky and city cradled in this crater.
…nine million people or her…
Faye Valentine was looking at her fate without realizing it.
He stared at the city along with her for a moment. They both stood there listening to the wind and the distant sounds of traffic. His eyes shifted to the side when he heard her take in a deep breath.
"I lived by the ocean when I was little. I would sit by this large fountain after school, take pictures and make sketches—and I made this collage for a project once. I used to love the sea, so untamed and vast. Full of endless opportunities." Her eyes narrowed. "Now I realize that what I'm actually looking at is fake and imprisoned inside this crater." She puffed out a smoky chuckle and then proceeded to take another drag. He breathed in deeply, letting her smoke fill his lungs. Turning his face, he glanced down at the digital watch and then silently released the captive air inside him.
Faye licked her lips and spoke with the cigarette dangling in her fingers, almost out. "Jet won't tell me why. I keep asking myself what this woman wants with me and I know he knows. I know you know." Her face whipped to the side to face him. "Why won't any of you tell me? What the hell is going on? Who is she? Jet just looked at me with that stupid puppy blank face of his and then told me he was too busy trying to figure it out. So that leaves you. Tell me." Her tone had ranged from angry to monotonous. "What did you find?"
"Nothing," he responded quietly and indifferently. Faye took her last drag and let her cigarette fall to the ground. Her foot smeared the remnants of the tobacco stick against the metal floor of the Bebop. She glanced back at the sea for a few seconds, and then back at Spike. Her emerald eyes were filled with disgust.
"Go to hell," she uttered cynically and turned back to the sea. "Is that all then?" She asked crossing her arms.
"Where's Jet?" Upon arriving, he had also noticed that the Hammerhead was missing.
"I don't know, avoiding me like you? He said something about meeting someone, Bob-who knows." Faye responded without glancing back at him. His eyes fixed on her for a couple of more seconds and then he turned around to head back into the ship. He was sorry. He was sorry for letting Alyssa near her and for letting her watch him on his quest to die. He genuinely was sorry that he had ever hurt her—that he had ever made her cry. Seeing her in tears that day from afar had stirred something so strong in him that he thought it would shatter him in half. He was sorry, but there was no urge in him to apologize. There was nothing to apologize about, he rationalized. Apologies are always so selfish. They are often done not out of courtesy or appreciation for the person, but out of your own need to feel less pain. A thousand apologies would never redeem Spike Spiegel.
"You're looking for redemption?" Her voice emerged the minute he entered the dark hangar.
"No." He glanced towards his blonde ghost leaning against his ship.
"To God I commend my soul. Lord, save my soul," she whispered and then faded.
Spike choked on his breath as he let it out. He was going to explode and he didn't know why. Putting Faye in danger, coming back from the dead, seeing Julia constantly, it was all driving him insane. His brows furrowed and his face crumpled in a pang of remorse he couldn't understand. On the inside, his heart pushed against his chest. The guilt pushed against his chest and he couldn't breathe anymore. The sound of the roaring of the Hammerhead droned out his gasps. He shut his eyes closed and drew his hands in fists. He needed to find some control in himself. They would not win—no—he had more strength than his emotions could ever bear.
"Hey Spike, you all right?" Jet's deep voice called from behind him. Spike's body relaxed. He breathed in deeply and then turned around.
"Just fine. Where'd you go?"
"To meet Bob." Jet muttered with an uncomfortable expression. He walked inside the Bebop with Spike following close behind.
"So, did you find out anything?" Jet drilled him back as they emerged into the lounge area.
"Nothing." Spike responded finding it better to keep quiet until he figured out what the hell had just happened with Alyssa. "What about Bob?" He glanced at the brown envelope Jet was holding.
Jet's eyes shifted towards Ed, who dangled her arms in front of her. Ein rested next to her, watching the odd movements of its favorite companion. Jet then glanced down at the envelope and held it up to Spike with a grave gleam in his dark eyes. Spike took the package and stared at his friend.
"Prints from the autopsy." Jet murmured in a low voice, hesitant with a sense of wariness in his voice. Spike held his breath. He opened the envelope immediately and pulled out a thin stack of eight by tens.
He remembered her that night, full red lips, bright eyes and smiling. The images he had in his hand barely resembled the French girl. Natalie's lips were black, her hair a hay tone of yellow—and her skin was the worst part. The picture showed her bare chest, with a bullet hole straight into the heart. That part hadn't surprised him. It was the ragged marks of torn flesh surrounding her chest. They seemed like nail marks.
"What the hell…" Spike's reaction escaped him as he thumbed through the five pictures in his hands. "What happened to her?" He glanced up at his partner.
"She did it to herself. They found remnants of her own tissue under her nails." Jet sat down, eyes staring off to the distance. "They don't know why she killed herself. It was a risky mission, but not—they think she went nuts. There's nothing to tell them otherwise."
Spike grimaced and put the pictures down. He was disgusted to look at them, to touch them, to even think about it. Deep in him, his instincts tugged and screamed that somehow Alyssa had something to do with Natalie's death.
"Oi Ed, have you found anything?" Jet asked apparently wanting to forget the pictures as much as Spike did.
Ed growled in response. "Ed busy. Can't talk." The flamboyant girl now stood eerily still. Ein immediately propped himself up on his four paws and glared at the screen. Spike glanced at Jet, who simply shrugged his shoulders. Maybe, just maybe, she had found something.
"Julia." Ed muttered.
Spike's breathing had momentarily stopped. For that name the world around him always seemed to come to a halt. Everything dies all over again with that name. He glanced to his side feeling the heavy stare of his comrade. It had not been a fluke. He could read it in the man's face. Jet's eyes expressed a sense of worry and even fear. The poor man had probably flinched at the sound of her name.
"What?" Spike finally spoke up shaking his head. His heart beat at a staggered rhythm.
"Ed is buuusy. No talk, Spike-person." She murmured and kept still.
"Damn it Ed! Why did you say that name?"
"Name?" Ed glanced towards Spike with her goggles still on. "That's what it says on here." Ed pointed at the screen. Jet neared Ed while Spike sprinted to Ed. He scanned her screen over and over again and could not see it.
"Where?"
Ed sighed. "Makers of the wieeerd chippu-chippu."
"The what?"
"The microchip on the cookie." Jet clarified for Spike.
"Johnson & Ubert Liason, Incorporated Association." Ed continued. "J-U-L-I-A."
"Cute." Spike shook his head again. He felt like throwing up.
"Who's the head, chairman, whatever?" Jet asked the young girl.
"Mmmm, Edith Iafe."
"Iafe?" Jet scratched his head.
"Edith P. Iafe."
"Edith Piaf, as in the singer?" The middle-aged man's brows furrowed.
"Wrong." Ed buzzed and started typing on her tomato. Spike's mind hit a nerve that shocked the rest of his body.
"La vie en rose. Her father's favorite song…" Spike felt like he was in wonderland, stuck in some twisted writer's world for a child.
"Sang by Edith Piaf." Jet finished for him. "It's her."
"That bitch. It's a dummy corporation." Spike seeped in anger. First Faye and now Julia. She loved fucking with him. She knew him too well. Alyssa hadabsorbed herself in his entire life to just fucking torture him. He hated people like that.
"She's obsessed with you." Jet spoke somberly. A low pitch of anger echoed in his voice. "She's alive for you. To take revenge on you." Spike shifted his eyes to the side, not wanting to stare at Jet directly. He could sense the animosity directed at him. "She's going to die." His tone changed on that last phrase. It had fear and spite in his words. Faye was going to die is what he had meant.
"Ed will look faster." The young girl's voice was barely audible. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard still as a statue. "It's a promise!" Ed shouted candidly, her face fixed on the screen and then she continued typing. Jet's eyebrows arched, and then curved back down in a grimace.
"I won't let anything happen to Faye." Spike stated, trying to calm his comrade and trying to do the same for himself.
"It's too late for that now." Jet's face remained stern. Spike opened his mouth to respond, not really knowing what he would say before saying it like usual, but the bellow of the Red Tails engine echoed down the hall. Damnit Spike's heart sped up and Jet glared at him for a moment. She's running away, his dark eyes told him.
"I'll stop her." Spike told him and raced to the hangar. By the time he reached it, the Red Tail had already zoomed to the bay. Spike jumped into the cockpit of the Swordfish II determined to follow her and bring her back. There was no time for her runaway stunts. This was not a time to act like a neglected teenager. She needed to be here. He needed her here.
His controls came online and his cockpit lid shut close. As soon as he was in the air, he turned on his communicator link screen and before he could dial for Faye, Jet's face appeared on the channel.
"Faye, don't be stupid and run away on us now. We need you here if we're going to stop this." Jet's lips were pursed into a reproaching frown, but his eyes seemed to almost beg. He was begging her to stop and come home.
"No Jet. Not this time." Faye's pale face appeared alongside Jet's on the comm. link's three way channel.
"Where are you going anyhow?" He sounded annoyed and hurt at the same time.
"Somewhere. To find her myself. It doesn't matter." Her eyes never stared directly at the screen. Some odd emotion flashed in her emerald stare that Spike couldn't pin point and it alarmed him. Spike glanced down at the digital watch on his wrist. This was no good at all.
"Faye!" Jet shouted, his eyes now narrowed with guarding anger.
"Faye," Spike interrupted pushing on his broadcast button. "We don't have time for this. Don't you understand?"
"Go to hell Spike." She glared at him with piercing eyes. He snapped.
"Damn it woman! We have les then 60 hours to figure this shit out and you're not goddamn helping. So just get the hell back here so we can sort this out once and for all."
Shit.
"What?" Her eyes were wide.
"How do you know that Spike?" Jet didn't ask. He demanded to know.
"I met with her all right? She left me a watch and it's counting down by the seconds." God, he hated his damn mouth.
"It's a bomb." Faye muttered as her eyes became devoid of emotion.
"So get back, and we'll figure it out." His reply was a simple flashing screen signaling an incoming message. "The fuck?" He muttered clicking to accept it.
…follow the Yellow Brick road
where the Oaks and Elms grow
where the grass is green and
the world is clean
in a merry-go-round we'll go
if you follow the innocent glow.
"What the fuck is this?" Faye's voice boomed through the audio channel.
"I got it too." Jet simply added.
Spike stared at the words. It was from her, another one of her little games. He read the poem again, slow the second time then fast the third time. He picked the words apart one by one and examined them separately. Then it dawned on him.
Follow,
Yellow Brick
Oaks
Elms
Go, go, follow
Yellow Brick.
"It's an address. Yellow Brick Avenue and Elm, northeast Alba." Spike muttered.
"I'm on it." Faye stated and then cut off her link to the channel.
"No, Faye—Hold on. Damn it!" There was nothing he could do. He had no time to fight her, just to follow the stupid charade because Alyssa was in control. It was her show, her game, her play, and there was nothing he could do.
"Jet, we need information. I'll go after her." There was no response, instead a simple click and then a low hum. He took that as a yes. He increased his speed and turned to the right to head northeast of the city. His eyes narrowed at Alba's skyline. Like hell he was going to let anyone take another woman away from him. Not this time, not ever. If he was alive, he was going to make someone pay for it.
His finger tingled from anxiety, nervousness, or who knows. He had no idea what to expect, but there was no time to think about it. Not now, Spiegel. He didn't know what the hell to expect once they reached that intersection. Dead bodies, a bomb, Alyssa, to meet his maker? God, that's all he had wanted to begin with, to meet his goddamn maker and ask him if he got off watching people like him fuck up everything in his life?
He held his breath spotting the Red Tail straight ahead about to land on the rooftop of a building near the intersection the poem had instructed. By the time he had landed his ship on an adjacent open lot, Faye was already out of her ship and heading in to the building. He managed to run down the lot's stairs and barely catch up to her as she headed down Elm street towards Yellow Brick avenue.
"Wait up!" He ran up to her grabbing her shoulder. "You can't just run to it like that, we don't know what the hell she's planning." That stupid woman never thought did she? She immediately turned around and pried his hand off her.
"Oh yeah? Sounds like something you would do." Her eyes burned with annoyance. "Tell me something Spike, how the fuck do you know her? Is she an old girlfriend, another Julia?"
"Don't do this now Faye." He had no answer. He had nothing at all to tell her.
"Yeah?" She pushed her index finger against his chest. "Well, fuck you too." She turned on her heel and kept walking forward to the intersection of Yellow Brick and Elm. He resigned to letting her walk ahead of him. He figured he could probably watch her back this way. As they both headed north on the right side of the street, Spike scanned his surroundings. His eyes widened as he spotted someone walking down the street. In sheer puzzlement, he sped up to meet Celia nearing the same intersection from the opposite direction.
"Celia?" Spike called to her and stopped right at the corner of Yellow Brick and Elm. The old woman waved and waited for the signal to cross the street.
"Who is that?" Faye asked. She had followed after him.
"Celia, she's a nurse and a friend. She helped us when we found you." He glanced over his shoulder to her. She simply glared at him suspiciously then back at her.
"Well, it's good to know I'm not the only one running late." Celia said after having crossed the street to meet them. "Nice to see you awake, Faye." The old woman smiled and Faye simply nodded back, her attempt at polite gratitude.
Spike shook his head. "Running late, for what?" He had no idea what she had meant.
"To meet? You okay, kid? And I thought I was the old one." She smirked.
"To meet with you?"
"Yeah, you sent me this thing." She pulled out a piece of paper from a worn black purse, "told me to look at it and meet you." She smiled nervously. Spike guessed she was starting to realize that he knew nothing about any of what she had just said.
"Here?" Spike asked, his brows furrowing with suspicion and worry.
"No." Celia's voice turned somber and her eyes deepened with anxiety. "Next block over. Yellow Brick and 12th."
He glanced over at Faye, who simply stared with an enraged and confused look. Something was very wrong. He dialed Jet's on his portable comm. unit.
"Yeah? What happened?" Jet asked.
"Jet what did the poem say again?"
"Uh," He fumbled around and then grabbed a piece of paper. "Yeah, it's '…follow the Yellow Brick road, where the Oaks and Elms grow, where the grass is green and the world is clean; in a merry-go-round we'll go if you follow the innocent glow.'"
"Oaks and elms? Merry-go-round? What the hell?"
"You there yet?" Jet asked.
"When were you supposed to meet?" Faye asked Celia.
"At 2:00, it's a minute 'till." She responded glancing down at her silver watch on her pale wrist. Spike glared at Celia then at Faye and then down Yellow Brick. He started walking towards it. Something in his gut screamed at him that this whole charade was about to get worse and fast. He began to walk down the avenue towards the corner where Celia had mentioned.
"Jet, what's on the corner of Brick and 12th? A merry-go-round?" His voice trailed behind him and into his communicator. Celia gasped and he turned around immediately. Her violet eyes were wide. "Celia?"
"A school. Oak Head Start School, their insignia…" He started running before letting her finish.
"Spike! Stop!" He heard Faye's voice closer than he expected to, but he only ran faster.
"Oi Spike!" His communicator rang. He had forgotten Jet was still on the channel. "The chip on the cookie is doing something odd. The light is blinking faster." Spike's heart skipped a beat. He immediately whipped his body around and faced Faye. Faye simply glared at him with confusion.
"Spike, what the hell is it with you lunkhead?"
After that, it all happened so fast. That question is the last thing he recalls clearly. Everything after became such a blur. The explosion rang behind him in a powerful wave that hit him forcing him down. He reached for Faye who had kneeled and covered her ears with her hands while flinching in fear. His eyes scanned farther for Celia, who stood not so far from them wide-eyed and mouth agape. He grabbed Faye by the shoulders and helped her stand up. His ears were pounding. He couldn't hear anything but a loud screeching hum.
"You all right?" He thought he said. Faye nodded and then pointed behind him. He didn't need to turn around. He could already see the haze in the air, taste and smell the smoke spreading like locusts. When he turned around, he could see the cloud of black smoke emerging from a building a few meters away. He could now hear distant sounds of sirens and fire alarms.
He ran or he thought he did. As he whipped around the corner, he saw the front of the school, the bare bones of a small school bus on fire. The sign atop the entrance was black, and only the O from Oak was intact. Next to the O, he saw a small half-shattered carousel insignia. His heart raced and he heard everything inside him scream. The screams became cries and the cries became choked out sobs. He turned his head to the side, and realized it hadn't been his heart screaming. A woman a few feet away stood in front of the school, a red gash on the side of her head, wailing in despair.
"No! Someone, my baby! Danny! Oh God!" She yelled and choked, and yelled again. That's when he saw Celia's figure run to her.
"Come on now, it's okay, I'm a nurse. You're okay." Celia cooed while pressing a hand to the woman's head.
"Help… please someone." His attention turned to a woman who walked out through the smoke filled building, cradling her bloody right arm and tears streaming from her eyes. "The children, someone!"
Spike wanted to run to her. He glanced down at his legs. Move! This had nothing to do with him. It hadn't anything to do with him. It wasn't his fault this happened. He had no way of knowing that she was capable of this. That monster, it was that monster's fault. He had nothing to do with this.
"Oh my god." He heard Faye's soft whisper. She stood paralyzed next to him as she witnessed the black remnants of the explosion.
People started rushing out of the building. Mostly children, some had black faces and seemed unhurt, while others had gashes here and there. This one woman came out, fear and shock embedded in her eyes, holding a limp child in her arms.
"I'm a nurse!" Celia ran to her and examined the child.
There was nothing I could do.
"Spike…" He heard the soft murmur from behind him as a cold feeling gripped his right shoulder. Slowly rotating his head back, he saw Julia's image momentarily flash in an alleyway not too far from the scene. Past the spectators, past the smoke, he saw her. Anger burned as he narrowed his eyes. Something sparkled in the light of the fire. A single tear fell down Alyssa's numb face. She turned her back on the scene and the black hair flowed behind her as she disappeared into the alley.
His feet sprinted towards her. Towards the goddamn bitch, she had just set children to flames and for what? He reached the alleyway and found nothing there.
"Shit!" He shouted punching the concrete wall of the building. His nerves threatened to overflow and stain the black ground.
It's a bomb, Spike. What else could it be?
A goddamn bomb.
Inside Faye.
Ticking.
Spike stared at the ceiling, frantically smoking his cigarette. Jet sat across from him, smoking his stick too. They would occasionally make eye contact and then awkwardly break it again. Jet would look to the side and Spike back up to the ceiling. Faye's gagging sounds echoed in the silence pervading throughout the Bebop.
"I should check up on them." Spike suddenly said standing up. His cigarette was nearly out and that would leave him with nothing to do or focus his attention on. He didn't want to think about what had just transgressed in the past half-hour. After the cops and medics arrived they had kicked them all out, including Celia, who reluctantly left the scene. A paramedic woman asked them if they were all right. Celia's shirt was bloody, Faye had a stunned look on his face, and Spike's knuckles were bleeding. It must have not been a reassuring sight. Celia nodded for all of them. She told the woman she would make sure they would get checked up, but to focus on the children for now.
Now they were all back at the Bebop. Jet hadn't said anything when he heard what happened, he had seen it on the news already. Spike had given Ed the paper Alyssa sent Celia and she went off to study it in the circular hallway. Spike resigned to the kid doing her thing, since he was already preoccupied with Alyssa trying to blow up the world. Blow up Faye. Stepping closer to the bathroom, he heard the water running and then the squeaking of the faucet turning to shut off.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. I just hadn't had anything decent to eat—there never is in this goddamn ship—and then seeing—Jesus." Faye's voice drummed through the metal walls.
"Yeah?" Celia asked complacently.
"I'm gonna die, aren't I? That was a warning, don't you think? God, I don't even know you and putting you in some shitty spot…" Faye was barely coherent.
"That's fine."
Spike placed his hands on his face and breathed in deep. He stepped away from the bathroom door towards the lounge area. A child's face muddied by the smoke flashed in his right eye. He choked a breath and pulled out another cigarette. He lit his nicotine savior and brought it to his lips. Just don't think about it Spiegel. Celia had ridden in Faye's ship somehow, probably solely to avoid him. He didn't blame them at all. If he could avoid himself, he would.
He plopped down on the hard yellow couch while inhaling the miraculously healing smoke. Jet stared at him from across and then his gaze shifted to the side towards the women emerging into the room. Jet stood up and offered his chair to Celia. She declined, but Faye took it. Her face was pale and her hairline moist, probably from dipping her face into some cold water for relief.
"How many were there total?" Celia was the first to speak up. She addressed her question to Jet.
"Two dead. The driver of the bus who was just getting on and one of the administrators who had gone up to give the driver something when the bomb exploded. There's twenty-three injured. Fourteen of them children, a few passer-bys and some teachers. Two critical, both children, but should recover fine. Cause for the bombing, they say," He finally took his first long pause. "Terrorism. An act of terrorism."
Celia glanced over at Spike. Her violet eyes seemed insistent that he say something, anything at all. There was nothing to say. What could he say under the circumstances anyway?
"And the chip?" Spike asked Jet. Celia's gaze fell to the ground, obviously not the comment she had expected from him.
"The damn thing blinked red several times, then nothing for like a second and then—it just disintegrated. The thing inside the cookie turned into—I don't know and then nothing." The old man's face had the most puzzled look that Spike had ever seen his comrade have. At least, he hadn't witnessed what they had, which had been so much worse. The room fell silent again and Celia seemed to have given up on Spike saying anything at all.
All of the sudden a beeping noise rang through the silence. They had an incoming call from within the city, but the location was unknown. Jet bent down to the computer sitting on the center table and clicked to accept the call.
Alyssa's cold face appeared on the screen.
"You motherfucking bitch!" Faye ran behind the yellow couch and yelled out towards the screen. "You actually have the gall to fricken call now? What the fuck do you want from me?"
Alyssa's stoic expression remained unaltered by Faye's outburst. She simply narrowed her dark eyes at Spike.
"I see that you now understand how extremely serious I am, Spike."
"What do you want?" he asked, his expression hard as stone.
"This call is simply out of courtesy. I don't have to do this, since I'm sure your pet comrade—Ed is her name right?—should be figuring out the paper I sent to our dear Celia. Since, I'm almost sure by Faye's outburst that you haven't told them a thing, I shall now do the honors of reminding you what I told you."
"You fucken bitch. I didn't understand a word you said." Spike had risen up as if to strike the screen, but simply stood there with his fist inert by his side.
"Not surprising of a simple mind like yours. I really thought you would be quicker to understand than this. The fortune cookie I gave you had something called a Membranic Trace. A new form of bio and nano technology that binds itself to the material it is exposed to. It is a trigger per se. The Mtrace inside the fortune cookie was the trigger for the bomb on the bus."
"You sick bitch, all for what?" Faye shouted again. Alyssa continued on, ignoring the woman's outbursts.
"It is the ultimate weapon. You see, that little thing is programmed to tell the bomb when to go off. It sends a constant signal by the seconds, as it gets closer to the time, the signal increases. You cannot stop it once it is set in motion. You cannot make the bomb go off earlier or later. A better Mtrace is inside Faye, more complex, for a bigger bang." She smirked at the word 'bang.' Spike wished then that by shooting the screen, he would shoot her.
"You're saying there's a bomb connected to the thing inside Faye?" Jet asked. Alyssa smiled frigidly.
"I'm saying that in—how long is it Spike?—fifty-six hours another explosion will kill all of Alba. That's where you come in Spike. You see, the Mtrace has one incredible weakness, you destroy it and the bomb stops, no problem. That is why it is usually built within the bomb, because you touch the bomb and boom."
He hated her. The sound of her fluid, but cold voice, her dark smile, her deviant eyes, her stupid worthless tear, he hated all of it.
"I am giving you a choice. A bullet through the heart and bang, it's all done. The explosion is averted."
Something clicked within Spike's mind. He saw images of Natalie's gruesome pictures run through his mind.
"It was you. You did that to Natalie."
"Good scientists need to test the psychological repercussions of their inventions." Her eyes were like ice. "You can choose to save her. You can flee to Jupiter while the city blows to smithereens. By the way, you can run away to the end of the galaxy. The fun thing about it is that I made the Mtrace's signal's barrier almost non-existent, but the minute it disappears, like hyperspace, it sends a weak signal to have it explode. So there is no other way out Spike. You must choose. It's either her or the nine million people in Alba."
Spike's eyelids trembled and he saw her smile the minute she detected fear in his eyes. He hated himself for letting her see that.
"My brilliant mind is the legacy my father left behind."
"Why me? Why the fuck me?" Faye shouted once more. This time Alyssa took it into account and her smile grew wider.
"Well, well cowboy. You haven't told her why yet. I'm disappointed, oh well, that's your own business I suppose. Bon chance, Spiegel." She waved and the screen went blank.
"What have you done?" Faye muttered. Spike glanced up at her. She hid her eyes behind her curtain of violet hair. "What have you done!" She took a few steps back and fell into her chair. Spike glanced up at the ceiling and his hand crumpled into a tight fist. He could feel Celia and Jet's eyes on him.
What have I done?