Chapter 25: Escape presents its fair share of challenges!
Sophie looked down at her watch.
It was five in the morning. Much too early, and much too cold.
She rubbed her eyes and looked around. Several familiar faces, the ones that she had worked besides for years, looked back at her with similar tiredness. Perfectly choreographed, they all simultaneously stood up, put on heavy coats, and walked. Sophie stuffed zip-ties, a stiletto knife and a handgun inside her coat pockets. Within the time it took from her bed to the Lieutenant's room which was a spacious, emptied out supply closet, they all looked like the same old scientists who had stayed up late working.
She showed her ID badge to the two guards outside the door, and they allowed her to knock.
"Lieutenant?," Sophie called with urgency. "They're retreating! You have to come up and see this!"
She heard the man fall out of his bed. Closet doors were heard opening and empty liquor bottles clinked and clanked on the ground, all the while he asked frantic questions.
"What? When? Now?!," he exclaimed, bewildered by the claim.
The door opened and out barged the shoddily dressed Lieutenant, who barely gave Sophie or her team a second glance. They matched his urgent pace, following behind him as he marched up the stairs and up towards the surface. He didn't bother to put on a hazmat suit to shield him from fallout, both too sleepy and stubborn to do so.
Up there, it was cold and quiet. Some soldiers were still asleep, leaned back against sandbags with a rifle in their arms. Spent shell casings littered the ditch they walked through, the crackling noise they made when stepped on waking some of the soldiers up. They looked confused as to why the Lieutenant would be up on the surface.
He looked through a periscope sticking out between two sandbags. Heavy, morning fog covered the space between the two sides, raising his suspicions.
Now most soldiers leaned forward with their eyes wide open, looking at the Lieutenant and the scientist behind him. Sophie looked around, not caring that they could see her sticking the end of her handgun at his side.
"Move," she growled, glaring at the back of his head. He turned around, looked down and slowly raised his palms up. In no way did he seem shocked that he was being held at gunpoint.
"Ah. Nicely done. You got me this time," he muttered as he slowly walked across the ditch. "But your turns coming soon."
"Definitely. But I cannot let a dog-shit piece of human filth exist until that day comes," Sophie snarled with sheer rage. The scientists behind her looked just as fierce.
"Oh come on Soph. The way I treated you happened to all of us. Me, you, every goddamn person on this planet. You're no different."
"Then you know exactly why you need to die. In the most painful way possible."
The group of scientists led the middle-aged man out of the ditches and behind the remains of a destroyed building. She kicked his legs and he fell to his knees, shoulders slumped down.
"5:30," Sophie said to her associates. "This'll be done in 5. If you don't want to watch, leave now."
"You're all pathetic. Look at yous. I've read your records. Some twisted shit I've read. What'll happen to me will happen to you," he laughed as Sophie clicked open the blade of a stiletto knife.
"Murderer. Rapist. Coward."
"Fuck you. I'd do what I did to you a thousand times over if I had the chance!," he cackled uncontrollably.
Every single one of the scientists didn't feel a single ounce of sympathy for the man. His attitude shifted quickly after feeling the blade of steel slice through his gut, as if he were a frog being dissected for an experiment. His innards spilled out onto the now red-coloured snow, steaming as it came into contact with the air.
All the while, Sophie's expression of sheer anger didn't falter. Throughout the bloody and messy session, she replayed the scenes of abuse and trauma she had suffered at the Lieutenant's hands, hoping that this would make it go away somehow. Hoping that this would justify what had happened and to give her some kind of closure.
But it didn't. She simply felt empty as she let go of his collar, and his lifeless body slumped down onto the snow. There was a moment of silence where she looked for any remaining signs of life, secretly hoping that there would still be some living soul present in the body that she could direct her ever-present anger towards.
But there were none.
"Professor," a nameless scientist called, snapping her out of her blood-lust. "Time's up. Let's hurry back."
She closed the stiletto knife, deliberately not cleaning the blood off the blade.
"Sorry that you have to carry me."
"No no, it's fine! Really! You're...really light..."
"Thanks?"
Vignette sighed. "That's not a good thing. We need to put some food into you missy."
Gabriel tightened her hug around Vignette as she put one foot in front of the other, alongside everyone else. The blankets that were draped over her did nothing to keep the heat in. It was all she could think about: how dangerously cold it was down inside the subway tunnels. Even worse, she knew that they would have to endure this for at least a day or so, at the rate at which they were moving so far. With limited food, water and warmth, everyone was stuck survivor-shuffling forward. And they didn't even know if the end of this tunnel would lead them to their destination. If the end were to be blocked off by rocks and rubble, then they wouldn't have the strength to go back, and they would freeze to death.
It was no doubt that Vignette was by far the only individual with the most hope. And it was fuelling her in the way that she could ignore the cold and focus forward.
After all she'd been through, there was no way in hell that she would let Gabriel die from temperature. She would have liked for her to die old, sat next to an equally old Vignette, recounting their adventures together, but dying from hypothermia? Only losers died like that. Vignette grit her teeth, seeing more of the hopeful future than of the present. With the sun on their backs, crops ready to reap and children playing in the fields.
"...that...sounds familiar," Gabriel mumbled, her mouth covered by Vignette's oily hair. She perked up after hearing the tune that Vignette was accidently humming to herself.
"Of course it is stupid," Vignette growled through grit teeth. "It's your...our...favourite song."
She sounded irritated, but Gabriel could tell it was just her way of dealing with the cold. More of an 'I will make it to the other end' sort rather than a 'I'm mad at you' kind.
Gabriel hugged tighter at her girlfriend and rested her chin on Vignette's shoulder. She felt pleasurable warmth rush to her face as Gabriel quietly sung back the lyrics, her breath tickling Vignette's ear.
"T-That's not how the song goes," Vignette shivered. She didn't notice her hands come up to hold Gabriel's.
"I...know...," Gabriel breathed. "I...changed...it..."
Vignette took her wool-lined coat off and wrapped it around Gabriel. Despite the freezing conditions, Vignette still managed to chuckle at how the angel looked like a tennis ball with five layers of clothing on.
"Don't say a word," Vignette said sternly. "I'm fine and you're still sick. Try and get some rest."
Gabriel was once again on Vignette's back like a baby koala, sporting a wide smile that Vignette only caught a glimpse of.
"Vign...," Gabriel whispered.
"Yeah?"
"What...do you want on your ramen...? I'm putting tamago, chasu and nori."
Vignette grinned, imagining Gabriel with a chef hat and apron. "I would like...tamago, moyashi, negi and kamaboko please."
"...eating healthy are we? Heh...typical Vignette. Ok...coming right up."
"Miss Gabriel. The last thing I want to think about is food," she groaned, her stomach replying also.
"Ok. Guess I'll...hang the clothes up to dry then."
"Riiiight. Remind me how you do that?"
Gabriel stayed quiet for a moment before answering. "First you put the clothes into the machine."
"Uh huh."
"Then you turn on the machine."
"Yup."
"Ah..achoo!...ermm...Then in goes the detergent."
"How many cups?"
"Like...two? Three? Whatever."
Vignette's smirk grew wider.
"Then you turn on the machine and off I go to play video games...!," she finished. It was as if she was delivering a presentation she didn't even write.
"Hmm. Why don't you let me handle the laundry dear. It doesn't really suit you."
"...well I've gotta do something. You're just gonna do everything by yourself?"
"Maybe. Why, the old Gabriel would've loooved to not do anything! My my...how times have changed."
Gabriel dwelled on her words for a moment in seriousness.
"I'm...no, we're not the same people," she said, resting her forehead on the back of Vignette's head. "I don't even think we belong in a house. It'd be too strange."
Vignette nodded. She did have fantasies most days of her, Gabriel and Ansel living in a two-story house, having plesant family dinners at the table, playing board games and whatever advertisement friendly families do. After they had tucked their adopted kid into bed, they would light the fireplace up and watch a nice movie, snuggling on the couch together.
But no matter what, there was a creeping feeling that their front door would explode and men with guns would barge in, to haunt them for their past. She knew it would be impossible to live like that after they had killed countless waves of individuals, and altered the lives of even more, for better or for worse. Even if she had simply tried to survive and get by without hurting anyone, it would seem as if every choice she made was the wrong one.
"...no way we'd even...e...s..."
"I couldn't hear you on that one."
"Forget about it."
"Tell me. I need to take my mind off this cold."
Gabriel breathed deeply. "Kids. I said we wouldn't even have kids."
"Eh? Why not? Ansel would get lonely, of course we would have another."
"Vignette, I don't think we would make good parents. I mean, I was raised in literal Heaven and you in literal Hell. What do we teach them? How do we raise them?"
"It's scary when Gabriel is uncharacteristically serious like that."
"I was just thinking. Over the past few days," she admitted. "If we get out of this and win the war, then what? We just...go back to our daily lives like nothing ever happened?"
Vignette kissed Gabriel's hand. "Of course not. But we'll be good parents. We'll raise them in a loving household. We'll teach them to be strong, admirable individuals. And we'll try to keep an open mind during their rebellious phase."
"Wow...that far..."
"Yes. I will make sure we die with grandchildren."
Gabriel buried her face in Vignette's back, holding back tears. She let out a quiet squeal as she envisioned the life that was promised in front of her. Never before had she ever wanted to be a parent, but suddenly the idea of being one with Vignette made all the difference. It would be tougher than any training course she ran, except this time she would be doing it with someone who she loved with every fibre of her being.
"Ahem...! Um. Yes. That would be nice," Gabriel said, trying to talk with her usual façade of indifference.
"You know it's okay to be happy," Vignette quipped. "After living with you for so long I know who you are."
"Blergh. Sappy."
"You pretend to be cold, stoic and indifferent, but after a little while you will begin to let the walls down and open up about your feelings," Vignette explained half seriously.
Gabriel stayed silent, letting the thought marinate in her mind. At this point Vignette was just thinking out loud.
"I remember there's a word for that kind of thing...never mind."
"...kuudere?," Gabriel mumbled.
"Ah! That's the one!"
"Did ya always like kuudere girls Vignette-san? Or was it a...recently acquired taste?," Gabriel purred in a low voice.
"Hah...scratch that," Vignette sighed. "You're waaay too sarcastic to be a kuudere."
Their quiet chat came to a halt when some of the flashlights flickered out, causing the crowd to stop and light improvised torches on fire. Without a word, they began sitting down on the rail tracks to catch their breath and Vignette followed. Even through her multiple layers of clothes, she noticed that the layer of small rocks decorating the railroad felt like ice-cubes when she sat down. Or maybe that was just because she stopped moving.
She too began trembling, realizing that it was only because she was putting so much effort in walking that she wasn't frozen. Gabriel and Vignette huddled together but now none of them radiated heat anymore.
Plumes of smoke escaped Gabriel's mouth as she talked. "...have anything to burn...?," she croaked.
"W-What? Oh...yeah. Hold on."
Her fingers were burning and they felt like they were about to fall off. She unzipped her bag and fished through her belongings. At the very bottom were two boxes of medication. She removed the white cardboard packaging and gave to Gabriel for her to burn. The heat was short-lived however, and everything else was either plastic or metal. Gabriel even mentioned burning the sling of her rifle but Vignette decided against it, saying that it wouldn't be worth it. It probably wouldn't have even burned anyway.
Vignette's eyes shot open from her half-lidded state when Gabriel began removing a layer from her shoulders.
"What the hell are you doing?!," Vignette scowled, quickly covering her back up. Gabriel's expression didn't change, her face stuck pointing at the ground and her eyes struggling to stay open.
"I was just...gonna burn it," she mumbled with her mouth and nose buried in a scarf.
"A-Are you stupid?! Just keep your hand over the lighter. Try to keep your fingers warm..."
"...can we hold hands? We're wasting butane."
Vignette sighed, causing the flame to snuff out. She grabbed Gabriel's hands and shoved them under the layers of her clothing. "This will have to do. My hands are just as cold as yours."
"Thanks Vign."
Gabriel was beginning to lose it. It was a wonder that she had it in the first place. Not only was she recovering from radiation poisoning, but she hadn't eaten anything in days.
Nevertheless, they got up and delved deeper into the abyss, their surroundings looking significantly more orange. Long icicles could be seen now, most likely from leaks in the ceiling. Large sheets of ice painted the curved walls too, creating a surreal, almost alien landscape. To its passer-by's, including Gabriel, the long, straight icicles would soon begin to look warped and out of focus, as their corneas began to freeze. The path was clear of any obstruction, as if the tunnel was beckoning for desperate survivors to come in, using the hope of sunshine at the other end as bait.
Gabriel noticed Vignette's knees buckling and decided to get off her back despite her reluctance. "Gabriel I-"
"It's fine," she interrupted with a bit of annoyance. "I don't have much to carry. We have to keep up."
"Aren't you gonna dump your rifle?," Vignette asked. She had pretty much left behind all her weapons at the start, with the exception of a small knife.
"You gave this to me."
"Let me hold that for you-"
"Why are you like this?! Just keep going!," Gabriel snapped irritably.
Vignette immediately went quiet and kept walking, side by side with Gabriel. She matched her pace of painfully slow, her back hunched over in a futile attempt to stay warm, but to no avail. It had gotten to the point where she couldn't feel her fingers anymore, despite them being wrapped in ripped sheets of fabric and tucked under the crooks of her armpits. Her body refused to send blood down to her lower body, meaning her toes and feet burned with numbness. Although she didn't mind if she lost her toes to the cold in exchange for her fingers.
She didn't know how far away they were from their destination, but they were far behind the crowd. They were a faint orange spot in the distance. Vignette's vision began to play tricks on her, and the orange mess began to change shapes, ones that maybe her brain would recognize. They began splitting into two and morphing into one again and again the more she looked. She looked to her left and the criss-cross patterns on Gabriel's scarf, dimly lit by the embers of the makeshift torch, began to extend outside of the scarf. The patterns stayed scorched into Vignette's vision no matter where she looked and how many times she blinked.
"I don't have much to carry. We have to keep up."
"I know," Vignette replied. "I'm walking as fast as I can."
Gabriel looked at Vignette confused. "Huh? I didn't say anything."
"What? You just...wha...I'm feeling dizzy here...," Vignette let out, stumbling against the ice-cold wall. She was dragged back onto the tracks by Gabriel.
"...hearing stuff too Vignette...," Gabriel trembled through gritted teeth. "You're...repeating stuff..."
Gabriel began to panic when her knees gave out and she crumbled onto the ground. With the little light they had, she saw at least four copies of Vignette helping her get up and Gabriel didn't know what to do. For a moment, she forgot about the group far ahead of her and realized she was in the dark, freezing cold and couldn't walk.
"V-V-Vignette?!," she cried out, ripping her scarf away. "VIGNETTE!"
"Gab!," she responded, as terrified as Gabriel. "I'm right here! Breathe, calm down!"
The embers on the torch faded away, leaving the two in complete darkness. Disorientated, Vignette stumbled backwards and laid against the wall, holding Gabriel in her arms.
"I'm blind! I can't see Vign!," Gabriel screamed in Vignette's arms.
"S-S-Same here..! Fuck! Christ...no...no the torch! It went out I think...I don't know, I can't think straight!," Vignette yelled, hands clamped down on her head.
"Why are you like this?! Just keep going!"
"ARGH! Just...SHUT...UP!"
Gabriel stayed as motionless as she could, trying to concentrate on anything but the cold piercing through her clothes. They stayed still, locked in each other's embrace until Gabriel heard Vignette's heart settle - at which point she stood Gabriel up and away from the wall.
"Okay," Vignette began, taking deep breaths to calm herself. "It's a straight path. We just need to walk towards the orange, okay Gab?"
Gabriel replied with a simple 'ok', feeling herself calm down after hearing the cool and collected voice, although she tried to ignore how the words were tinged with shakiness from anxiety. They stumbled forward, feeling like their legs were about to snap off like a thin piece of wood. Each step demanded their full concentration, but despite that sometimes their minds would wander off to a place that had more sun, and they would inevitably trip over a large rock.
It was gruelling. Gabriel started to believe that the tunnel was somehow sentient, maliciously so. Even though she wore two heavy beanies over her head, it somehow managed to penetrate through and make her head feel like it was being compressed under the weight of a car. At this point she couldn't feel anything that was too far away from her chest, in order of severity: her toes, calves, thighs, fingers and practically her entire face. The scarf did nothing to stop air colder than liquid nitrogen from numbing her nasal passage and the inside of her lungs.
They knew that without the heat given off by a burning flame, they would run out of internal fuel and they would either freeze or starve to death. Although they agreed beforehand that a double bullet-to-the-head suicide would be preferable, if it ever got to that point.
At the slightest decrease in speed, the orange glow in the distance that was motivating them forward also decreased in size. It sapped away at their limited supply of hope and their minds wandered down the deepest, darkest parts of their psyche; the parts which they were afraid to explore. Without speaking a single word, Gabriel and Vignette simultaneously looked at each other as if to say 'we're fucked'. They had difficulty breathing because it felt like ice was built up around their lungs and slowly creeping in like an invading country, limiting how deep they could inhale. Seems like the tunnel had gotten bored and stolen the tool that supplied oxygen to their brains, the panicked, shallow gasps taking a toll on their ability to think.
The glow was as small as a singular star shining against the vast emptiness of outer space. Focusing on it too much caused a light show for Vignette however. First it doubled. Then it expanded to twice its size before doubling again. She blinked her eyes to reset her vision, but it did the opposite. Her oxygen-deprived brain tried to make out an understandable image from the limited information it was given, and she saw the dot swirling and dancing, like the embers of a fire.
"...sa...Ga...closh...or eyes al thish time...?," Vignette gasped, her lips practically frozen together. There goes their ability to speak. Everything that made them 'them' was being dismantled like a stolen car, piece by piece, slowly and painfully.
"Yeah. I get that too sometimes," Gabriel spoke in a normal voice. While Gabriel was to the left of Vignette, she heard the words equal in volume in both of her ears, clueing her in that she was hallucinating again. She clamped the sides of her head, the imaginary words disintegrating into loud, distorted, meaningless static that only she could hear. Soon she was on her knees, violently shaking her head in pain. Gabriel wrapped her arms around her in a futile attempt to stay warm.
"ARGH...!," she cried through clenched teeth. "Shut...up...!"
In the final stages of her hypothermia, Gabriel's mind began repeating back the last comprehensible words that Vignette spoke to her, like her mind wanted a bit of joy before freezing to death. Some of the audio recordings were still intact, but as she sat there, clinging onto the sobbing Vignette for dear life, some of the phrases became corrupted and incomprehensible. It was like her mind was desperately trying to hold onto them but they were being erased by the cold.
"I'm right here! Breathe, calm down!"
"You're waaay too sarcastic to be a kuudere."
"It's a straight path. My hands are just as cold as yours, okay Gab? This will have to do."
She closed her eyes. Strangely enough her chest began feeling extremely hot for some reason.
"Yes. I will make sure our grandchildren will die.
"Gab...you're such a reckless little loli, you know that?"
"...fuck...you...Gabri...el..."
While the voice did belong to her, it sounded foreign and demon-like to Gabriel's dying mind. It was like the anti-Vignette spoke to her in that moment, and Gabriel suddenly flared up in anger.
"...fuck...FUCK...YOU...VIGNETTE," Gabriel articulated forcefully with the last of her energy. "FUCK! YOU!"
Vignette shoved Gabriel off her and she crashed against the adjacent wall. She felt around her torso and loosely held her rifle by following the sling wrapped around her. The safety was disengaged and she held down the trigger, long enough for her to think that she was the one getting shot at, for some reason. In an enclosed space, the sound alone was enough to send Vignette tumbling down onto the ground instinctively with her hands cupped over her ears. If she had been shot, there would have been no way to tell. Not only was it pitch black, but most of her body was numb so it would be easy to mistake the pain in her hand as a bullet wound.
Gabriel came to her senses and she dropped the gun in fear. It made a loud clang against the metal of the rail track which resonated like an ominous bell, like it marked the end of two lives. Gabriel curled up in a ball on the ground, her left side losing heat to the colder than cold itself ground. Vignette stumbled around in the dark, using Gabriel's incomprehensible babbles to guide her closer to her. She flinched when she felt Vignette touch her face, but quickly found herself easing into Vignette's arms once again, forgetting that she had almost shot her.
It was all too quiet. They could be in the vacuum of space and they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They breathed slow and laboured, as they lost heat like it was payment for the tunnel. Gabriel found herself nodding off in Vignette's arms, feeling the final sensation of heat in her cheeks and chest. It was like she was back home, under the covers after a long night of gaming. She threw her double-layered beanie away without another thought and sighed that her hair could finally breathe.
Vignette was about to go to sleep when a noise woke her up. She slowly lifted her head and looked right, expecting to see darkness, but instead a ball of orange light. She brushed it off as another hallucination and closed her eyes again, but it got brighter and brighter and hotter.
"FUCK! Okay...okay okay okay...heat packs...heat packs where is it...guys? GAB! VIGN! STAY AWAKE!"
Sophie stuck multiple heat packs on their necks and chests before starting a small fire with a wad of crumbled up newspapers and some gasoline. She laid a large, rectangular blanket next to the fire and gently moved the two onto it. Moving them closer to the light, their faces were scarily pale and blue.
"...Vign? Can you hear me? Are you awake?"
Vignette nodded and slowly shook Gabriel.
"...Gab...wake up...," Vignette whispered. Gabriel laid next to the fire lifeless, her colour seeping away to be replaced with the ashen pale of death. Vignette could only watch as Sophie immediately jumped on the girl, tore the layers near her chest and began performing CPR desperately, trying to bring her back to life like she was playing tug-o-war with the grim reaper itself. She cringed after hearing a loud crack in her ribcage but continued to repeat the mechanical movement with intensity.
"NO!," she screamed, feeling her arms tire. "Just a little more!"
Without any more fuel, the fire began to die down and the heat packs began to succumb to the environment, symbolising Gabriel's soul escaping her body. After almost an hour it was nothing more than a smouldering pile of embers and ashes, and Gabriel was still unconscious. Vignette's cries echoed throughout the tunnel as she broke another rib by how hard she was pressing down.
"Vignette...," Sophie started, her arms hugging her knees. "I-"
"Don't you fucking start," Vignette snarled. "Come on Gab. Wake the fuck up."
Sophie didn't want to admit it. She was no stranger to death. Pretty soon, they themselves would pass if they didn't catch up with the group and get warmed up. As bad as it sounds, she considered dragging Vignette off Gabriel's corpse and leaving, because she knew the guilt of leaving her behind would ruin her. "Look...Vign. Our fire's almost out and I've run out of heat packs. I'm...I'm really sorry."
Vignette didn't falter. Despite the cramps in her arms, she continued to press up and down on Gabriel's chest rhythmically. Her face was still light blue and her mouth was slightly open from when Vignette gave her mouth-to-mouth. It felt like multiple bullets had torn through Vignette's lungs after feeling Gabriel's lips, bitterly cold and lifeless. But she refused to give up.
"Gab-ri-el. I know you're awake," she quivered, looking anywhere except her face. "I-I know. You can't die on me, not now! Not EVER!"
Vignette's arms began protesting in pain causing her to slow down. "...please...," she whimpered, her tears freezing in her eyes. "...just...just say something. Anything. I don't want your last words to be..."
She slumped down and held the angel in her arms as she felt the agonizing pain crush her soul. Her cries sounded as if all the pain and suffering in the world was condensed and given a chance to manifest itself. As one, long, heart-breaking wail.
Sophie couldn't help but weep after seeing how broken Vignette was with her lover. She had all but accepted that she had left, until she saw the angel's eyelids flutter slightly. Thinking that she was hallucinating, she held her breath as she crawled closer to Gabriel, and saw the faintest of vapor out of her mouth. Her eyelids slowly opened, only to be greeted by the sobbing mess of a creature that is Vignette. She took a deep breath and was greeted to the world with a stinging pain in her chest, but hearing Vignette's voice made waking up so much more worth it.
"...hey you," Gabriel whispered tiredly. "...how long was I-"
She was interrupted with a deep kiss from Vignette, her warm lips against Gabriel's immediately pumping more life into her than any hours of CPR. They broke off, and Gabriel knew that she was gonna get a earful by the way Vignette continued crying and clawing at her clothes.
"I'm...gonna guess a long time-"
"You...you fucking asshole...," Vignette wept, arms locked around Gabriel's torso. "...I...I...hate...you Gabriel. You know that?"
"...oh...," Gabriel mumbled, looking back at Sophie. "Did I-"
"Uh huh," Sophie interrupted.
"...fuck you Vignette? T-That's what you're leaving me with?!"
"It'll happen again if you two stay like that. Come on, I'm gonna burn the blanket. We should have enough heat to make it back. Let's move."
Vignette angrily put on as many layers of clothing on the loli as she could, including the beanies she threw away as well as Sophie's jacket, all the while Gabriel looked on with genuine remorse. Even when she was brought back from the dead, the fact that she had fucked up had immediately sunk in. More than the numbness in her limbs and the pain in her ribcage. She was lifted up on Vignette's back, and once again they began putting one foot in front of the other with Sophie leading the way with a well-lit torch.
"Vignette...," Gabriel started, a worried look on her face.
"I can't. I can't. Just stop."
"Please...I-"
"SHUT UP!"
For once, Gabriel didn't yell back with the same amount of anger. Mostly because she knew that Vignette was indeed, one-hundred percent, seriously pissed, and she didn't want to be on the receiving end of it. And because Gabriel didn't have anything to be angry about anyways. The first thing she heard when she woke up was the most painful cry she has ever heard in her life. What do you do when you're the one to cause such a sound?
Gabriel rested her forehead on the back of Vignette's head and cried as quietly as she could, although the sniffles and shaky breathing she couldn't do anything to mute. It definitely fitted well with the hellish surroundings they found themselves in. Sophie sighed internally, wondering what on this planet could ever repay Gabriel and Vignette's debt of her taking care of them.
"I don't want anything," Sophie thought with certainty. "I just want them to make up and forgive each other, is that so hard? It's so creepy when they're not totally in love with each other."
Sophie looked back at Gabriel. "Besides...it's not like she wanted to freeze to death. What are you so pissed about Vignette?"
When she started this journey, she always maintained the same angry and determined expression; her eyebrows in a 'v' shape and her teeth clamped down in response to the cold. If the tunnels had an agenda, one to end their lives in the most brutal and merciless way possible, she objected to it. "To hell with your damn cold," she would think, and she would vow to escape the other end with Gabriel in one piece, proving that they were tougher than they looked. But now she was completely beat down. Her mouth was agape in pain as if she was in a pit of burning sulphur, and her eyes begged a higher power for relief.
Her insides were frozen. Her body had used the last scraps of fat in her body to burn for warmth. Her legs were cramping and turning into stone. But despite all of that, the worst was what was left of her rational mind not knowing whether she was anywhere near the other end. She was ready to go to sleep right then and there if someone told her she was only a quarter of the way there. Because her watch had died sometime along the way, and there were no markings on the tunnels labelling where they were.
The three were trapped in their own minds. Vignette wondered if she had actually died before, and she was sent to an afterlife where the punishment for her sins was to walk an endless, cruel tunnel forever. One that whispered sweet meaningless nothings into your ear, and gave you hope by showing your hopes and dreams right in front of you, before vanishing when you got close. Vignette had actually stopped for a minute so that she could savour the sight of Gabriel running energetically in the distant fog, looking behind her and laughing.
"Come on Vign!," she laughed, waving her arm back and forth. "Keep up!"
She shook her head and it disappeared. She knew where she had seen that memory before. Boot camp. Gabriel was bragging about how much she had improved, and challenged Vignette to a footrace. Despite her losing, she was extremely happy for the girl, since she was head over heels for her even back then. Everything she did was somehow connected back to her in a way.
When the Gabriel dressed in her military uniform disappeared, a new one took her place and Vignette slammed her eyes shut, knowing that it was too precious to see right now. She cursed the tunnel for placing only the happy memories in front of her. She wished that it would have a neck, so that she could throttle it with both hands.
She didn't know how long her eyes were shut, but when they opened reluctantly, they saw people to her left and right. Somehow they had managed to catch up to the remaining survivors, looking as beat down and hopeless as her. Sophie knelt down and shone the torch to the ground, where an older man was resting with his fingertips black and facial features locked in place. Without a second thought, she gave the torch to an onlooker and was ready to perform another hours worth of CPR, but was stopped by a group of men.
"...w-what are you doing...," Sophie said with what was left of her voice. Her eyes widened after seeing the hopeless expressions on their faces.
"He's been dead for a while," he stated quietly, looking down at his feet.
Gabriel lifted her head and saw the two arguing with what little energy they had left. The man was painted blue with death, the wall he was leaned on sapping the rest of his heat away, while the fifty other survivors huddled together looking on. Sophie took off a glove and buried her hand under the layers of the dead man, not surprised that it was still moderately warm.
"A while?," Sophie sighed, putting her glove back on and standing up. "We...we can still bring him back. I just...w-with Gabriel over there-"
She turned around to face him, but was met with a handgun pointed at her forehead. She stumbled backwards in shock and felt the urge to run away after seeing the vicious, animal-like look on his face. The dim orange flame illuminating his face in the dark made him look like a hungry wolf emerging from the shadows, about to devour his kill. His humanity peeled off him like snake skin, leaving only the primal instincts intact. Sophie could only watch as his pack, consisting of around ten others, drew handguns from their coats and pointed it at anyone who came close to the dead body. The two groups were split by the rail track while Vignette and Gabriel were caught down the middle.
But as soon as the first chunk of flesh was carved and removed, Vignette reached behind her and pointed Gabriel's rifle towards the general area, holding the trigger down. It was three seconds of pure chaos. She didn't hesitate, unlike most times when a gun was in her hands. It was as if another hand had guided hers to unleash twenty bullets into the segmented group. She, like the once alive men surrounding the body, had reverted back to her animal ancestry, acting on emotions and instinct. She saw red splattered everywhere the orange light illuminated: the ceiling, the walls and on the rocks lining the rail track. It didn't disgust her one bit and she walked up to the bodies, having dumped Gabriel on the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Gabriel watched in horror as Vignette was shot three times in the chest by a dying man, but she kept walking and caved his skull in with the butt of the rifle. Gabriel thought for a second that she had someone become immune to getting shot at, until she realized no blood was visible and that the multiple layers of clothing was able to stop a 9mm round. The remaining survivors gasped and backed as far away from her as they could, watching her violently slice open his leg. He screamed in pain as she sloppily carved a chunk of muscle away from his thigh, showing not even the slightest ounce of remorse.
"V-V-Vignette?!," Gabriel choked in disbelief as the girl ended him with his own handgun. No one dared to come close to her or the bodies.
Vignette walked up to the traumatised blonde with a bloody chunk of flesh in one hand and the gun in the other. Her eyes were sunken and half-lidded, that of someone who was on their last legs. Gabriel refused to believe that the creature in front of her was the woman she knew and loved. She always thought that even during their last moments, Vignette would still somehow manage to hold on to bits of her humanity and not murder eleven human beings.
And now she was inches away from Gabriel, her pupils constricting to the size of dots.
"...eat," was all she snarled, shoving it near her mouth. Gabriel quivered in terror as Vignette dropped her gun, pinned her to the ground and forced her mouth open. "...or I'll end you myself."
"VIGNETTE...! P-PLEASE!-," she shrieked in a frenzy, but was cut off with a mouthful of putrid, human tissue. She writhed about under Vignette's weight, almost about to have whatever was in her mouth shoved down her throat, until Sophie shoved the animal off her. Gabriel coughed the human remains out of her mouth, gasping for air. Within a second her entire world came crashing down on top of her, realizing that her guttural screams of pain meant nothing to Vignette anymore.
She buried her head as far as she could into the sharp, frozen rocks and screamed with the anguish of a mother who had lost her baby. She began tearing out chunks of her hair in a desperate attempt to make the aching pain in her chest go away, while Sophie quickly rushed over and consoled her as best she could. Next to her were familiar faces who heard the commotion and had just rushed out of the crowd.
"...Gab...! Gab look at me...!," Sophie exclaimed over the haunting shrills. "You're okay now, see? She's gone now, everything's okay..!"
As Gabriel screamed painfully in Sophie's arms, Vignette was beginning to flicker back on again, having hit the back of her head against the adjacent frozen wall. She blinked her eyes a couple of times to melt the ice that had formed on her eyes, and realized what she had just done. Watching Gabriel cry like that felt like having her heart ripped out of her chest, made even worse with the knowledge that she herself was the one who caused it.
Sophie picked up the gun and pointed it at Vignette as she stood up.
"Don't...come any closer," she growled with bared teeth. She put herself between Vignette and Gabriel like she was protecting her child from a vicious beast.
"G-Gab...my God...I..."
The tunnel removed its burning cold hands from around Vignette's neck if only to torment her further. It didn't need to act when her own conscience would tear itself apart at what she did. She fell to her knees like someone had pushed down on her shoulders, so that she was eye to eye with Gabriel who was on sobbing on all fours.
"So...phie...," Vignette begged, noticing that Gabriel had taken multiple layers of clothing off in her agonizing confusion. "She's dying...kill me but please not her! Anything but her!"
Sophie felt nothing except hatred towards the demon, despite her look of anguish. But she was just as irrational as Vignette. To her, the person on the other side of the rail track was not her friend who was drunk from the cold, but a traitor. A monster. A bastard who had not just attacked an innocent human being, but her lover.
It was enough reasoning for her to pull the trigger.
As if the handgun had a life of its own, it objected to sending its bullet down Vignette's skull. It clicked stubbornly as Sophie's index finger spasmed on the trigger, buying enough time for Hensky to intervene. She yanked the handgun out of the mad scientist's hand and punched her in the face, sending her tumbling to the ground on her back. The look of sheer disgust on the Russian girl's face hurt Sophie more than the punch itself.
She took a moment to observe the scene in front of her with plumes of smoke escaping her mouth with each pant. A scientist about to kill her friend, a feral acting entirely on emotion and a betrayed lover.
"Are you all crazy?!," she yelled, her words garnished with a stronger than usual Slavic accent. "Stop right now!"
Seeing that they were now unarmed, the rest of the group ambled beside Hensky. Their faces were glowing an orange brighter and stronger than any before as they had swiftly dismantled the corpses into fuel. Seeing that they had spare lumps of bloodied fat, Hensky used one of their torches to start a fire between the three. Eventually they all slithered around it, trying to ignore the coppery smell of burning human. The longer they stayed seated around the fire, tinges of red returned to their faces and they were able to breathe properly, Gabriel and Vignette not noticing this as they were too busy sobbing and whimpering.
"...get me out of this fucking tunnel...," Gabriel begged to herself, rocking back and forth with arms wrapped around her tucked in legs.
Vignette remained hauntingly quiet, her dead eyes resting on the base of the fire. She had the thousand yard stare of a war veteran who had committed unspeakable atrocities. Hensky shared a look with Sophie who looked like she was caught on the line between being alive and dead. Not biologically dead, but not exactly alive either.
Hensky's expressions spoke more than enough for them to understand, given that the fire was losing against the environment. It said 'we're fucked. But we'll be even more so further down.' Her eyes slowly darted to the corpse that wasn't completely 'recycled' by the other survivors, Vignette and Sophie following her thinking.
It wasn't possible for them to look more miserable. Hensky could've sworn she saw the black bags under Vignette's eyes expand further down her cheeks. Warmed sufficiently by the fire, her old self began to return, picking herself up by the scruff of the neck and forcing her next to the corpse. A few gruesome moments later she sat back down with her legs crossed, her pants staining with blood from the chunk of human resting on top. She skewered it on top of her knife and held it over what was left of the fire, mildly warm ashes mostly. Hensky knew that it would have made no difference, even with a full fire. In the time between over the fire and into the mouth, it would have already lost most of its heat anyway.
With shaky fingers she clumsily separated it into three pieces, each piece small enough to fit on their open palms. They looked at the flesh on their palms, Vignette's piece the largest. She squished it slightly, leaving an imprint in the muscles like it was made out of clay. While it wouldn't be warm and resemble anything like a hot meal, their teeth could at least break it down. Any longer and it, along with the rest of the corpses, would be as solid as the concrete walls.
As Sophie and Hensky tentatively consumed the human flesh, Vignette slowly crawled closer to Gabriel, causing her to flinch. She made sure to move like she was convincing a stray cat to get in a kennel. But Gabriel would recoil her body away from Vignette's hands when she tried to touch her, so all she could do was talk to her from a distance.
"...Gabriel...," she began, hiding what was in her hands as best she could. "I'm sorry. I-I should've stopped I-I-I don't know why."
She looked down, ready to save her disgust for a time when Gabriel wasn't in danger.
"You have to eat. Or we'll freeze out there. Do...you understand?"
The blonde recognized that voice. It was the voice of the girl that had taken care of her all these years. The girl who had to put up with Gabriel's stubbornness and childish tantrums for the sake of doing what was best for her. For once, she didn't refuse and run away like most times, but instead wiped the ice from her cheeks and nodded. Because she didn't want to make it any harder on Vignette than she already had it.
"I-I-I'll..."
Vignette shivered with disgust, already gagging at the thought. "...chew...so you just have to drink, okay?"
She clamped down her eyes and quickly ripped a fraction of the flesh with her teeth, and let it fall under her molars. It wasn't as bad comparatively speaking, until she bit down, causing her whole body to reel in response to the blood that filled her mouth. It leaked out of the corners of her closed mouth while she chewed and chewed, not too dissimilar to how a robot might do it. While Sophie and Hensky took to as little chewing as possible by swallowing small bits of flesh, Vignette had gone the complete opposite by shoving half of her larger portion into her mouth, and wet, slimy sounds escaped her mouth as she grinded it down with her molars. It was the one thing that Gabriel couldn't simply ignore by looking away. At least she didn't get to see what would end up in her stomach.
After a minute when the flesh was reduced to a chunky saliva-slime solution in Vignette's mouth she turned Gabriel around, pinched her nose and rammed her lips onto hers. She bit the bullet and hesitantly opened her mouth.
"...hey," Hensky muttered, quiet enough so that Vignette and Gabriel couldn't hear. "I don't think we've met."
She nodded, still watching them 'kiss'. "Sophie. You?"
"Preobrazhensky."
Sophie chuckled. "...that's quite a mouthful."
"Tell me about it."
"You from Russia?"
"Yes."
"Nothing as cold as this over there huh?"
Hensky forced the last bit of rations down her throat, leaving nothing but a metallic aftertaste that made itself present as she talked.
"Only once," she gagged, fist over her mouth to prevent her from vomiting. "Th...is one time...urgg...eto otvratitel'no. I was caught outside in the snow. At night. Naked."
"N-Naked?," Sophie repeated. She had also managed to swallow hers as well. It went down easily as her mind now occupied by the Russian girl's story.
"...well...half naked. I was...I...sorry. My jaw's freezing up," she groaned, hiding the pain. "I'll tell you when we get out."
Much to their bodies weariness, they stood up and began stumbling forward yet again, as tired and weary as before. They felt like they were right back to where they started, stuck eternally walking forward and forward, only to remain in one place. The journey had gotten increasingly more individual in a sense. With most parts of their body stiff and burning cold, the lack of chit-chat almost made them forget that they weren't travelling by themselves. Even with the group up ahead, it made little difference to motivate Sophie, Hensky, Vignette and Gabriel, who tried to remove themselves as much as they could from the hellish enclosure by escaping mentally.
Gabriel's mind was torn, but her body could still remember being forced to push beyond it's limits. It remembered looking up from its boots, only to realize that the end goal was far off in the distance, and it still had a lot more running to do. There, despite her drill instructor yelling in her ear, she would enter into a zen-like concentration, her mind completely blank of all words and images, only focused on pushing through the pain. They all remembered something like that, considering they were part of the military after all. She didn't want to imagine what this is like for the non-soldiers up ahead.
Time melded together into an incomprehensible blur. Their eyes begged for a change in light, anything except the dim orange glow of the newspaper torch- so that they could either stay awake or fall asleep. No one wanted to even admit that they were sleepy however, out of fear that it was the kind of sleep where you would never wake up again. Solitary confinement would be a retirement home compared to this. But even though sleep deprivation definitely made them stumble about and cranky beyond all belief, they would soon realize it was the least of their concern when they finally caught up to the group.
Large slabs of broken reinforced concrete blocked off the tunnel. When the four caught up, they collapsed with hopelessness, seeing that their journey had finally come to the end. Coats and blankets were already strewn about the ground as people began to experience the madness of stage three hypothermia, and the sounds of sobbing resonated across the walls. In a final desperate attempt to cling onto life, some had climbed up onto the debris and began heaving the concrete away, only to get crushed by the effects of fatigue.
"Gab?," Vignette called, trying her best not to sound too dejected. "Come here."
It took a while for her to take her eyes off the blockade in front of her, afraid to turn around like it was the last page in a good book. But eventually, after scanning every nook and cranny of it and determining that there was no way through, she slowly turned around. The parts of her eyes that weren't blood red were the size of needle heads. She looked both wide awake and extremely tired at the same time, like her body had broken a long time ago, but her spirit was dragging it forward.
She refused to accept that after everything they've been through it had been for nothing. If she knew it would've ended up like this, how different would she have acted? Her regrets and missed opportunities panged at her still beating heart, and most of it involved Vignette. She wished she had been a better partner towards her, and not a sarcastic asshole. She wished she could've shown her more love. It was only fair. But at the same time, it was deeply unfair.
She ambled forward and rested her forehead on Vignette's chest, their last moments reframed in a new light. The arms around her back, the warmth of her body and the sound of her voice would all be gone forever.
"...oh Gabriel...," Vignette cooed as she sobbed in her chest. "My little angel..."
"...what did I do wrong Vign?," Gabriel wept. "Why'd it end up like this...?"
"It's not your fault. I promise you."
Gabriel stood up on her toes and passionately kissed Vignette with her gloved hands cupped around her face, savouring the feeling for the last time. They would die frozen in time, locked in each others embrace. They broke off gasping for air, looking in each other's faded eyes.
"I'm sorry!," Gabriel cried with all her strength. "I'm sorry that I'm so fucking selfish all the time! I'm sorry that I didn't pay enough attention to you Vignette!"
"STOP IT!," Vignette screamed back. "YOU HAVE NOTHING TO BE SORRY ABOUT!"
Gabriel kept her iron lock around Vignette like her life depended on it. "...all you've done...is bring me so much joy...so much meaning...," Vignette laughed with tears of happiness. "It was so much fun. It was worth all the pain Gabriel Tenma White."
She didn't know if her heart could take anymore of this. Not wanting Vignette to see her in such a vulnerable state, she began punching Vignette's chest, trying to get her to stop with the words dripping with sappiness.
"Ow! G-Gab! Stop that! Hahahaha- OW!"
Her third punch was forceful enough to send Vignette stumbling onto her back. "No! You stop! Stop...talking!," Gabriel cried between punches.
"Kiss me Gabriel White! Go ahead!," Vignette sang deliriously, pursing her lips together in an exaggerated manner.
"Fuck you! I didn't just break five ribs and eat human meat to die now!"
The two lovers were loud enough so that they couldn't hear the commotion erupting near the debris. Several survivors, more feral animals at this point, were expressing their rage towards the person who had led them into the tunnels with the promise of a better life at the end. Sophie simply closed her eyes, accepting the spit, kicks and harsh words they hurled towards her while she was curled up on the ground, ultimately believing that this all happened because of her. She felt as if all the pain and suffering down here were piled up high on her shoulders, and this would be the punishment that she deserved. It was somewhat comforting, in a twisted sense. The universe had not betrayed her and was not partial to her, but instead delivered justice accordingly.
A fatigued but furious man pulled her up by her thinning brown hair and shoved her backwards. Sophie tensed to prepare for the pain on her back, but when she crashed against the frozen concrete wall, it crumbled in a little which mentally woke her up. She ignored the boots slamming against her ribcage and spine for just a second, enough time to look at the wall where she smashed into. The inch wide layer of ice that was covering the concrete cracked into an asymmetrical spider-web pattern, some of the shards falling off to reveal the wall underneath. It was crumbling, to say the least. The concrete was not straight and flush with the other bricks, but instead caving inwards like there was something hollow behind it.
Sophie felt like she was touched by God himself. What little embers were keeping her spirit alive, enough to experience pain, had gasoline poured on it and erupted into a large flame. She jumped up, shoved each of the attackers away with ferocity and rushed to the wall.
"STOP!," she yelled, as if she was done playing a wrestling match with her siblings. The fire burned with intensity, causing her to be concentrated and serious as she pushed the ice sheet inwards like a broken window. Her arm disappeared into the wall and the fog of murderous rage vanished from the aggressor's vision.
Gabriel raised her head to the ceiling with her mouth wide open, as if she was silently crying out to Raphiel in the heavens. Vignette slowly sat up and placed her hands on the shoulders of the girl who was sitting on her lap.
"Are you hurting?"
She had hurt, was hurting and would stay that way even if they got out of this. Life was suffering: that was a fact, but the hope of a brighter future with a family that does not yet exist always made the suffering worth it a hundred times over. But right now both Gabriel and Vignette knew that future was ripped away from their hands, leaving only the pain behind. They would die here with the things they had to do undone, their story cut right down the middle of the book.
Vignette opened a pocket of her bag and pulled out a tiny bag of crystals. "Because...if you are...there's always this."
Gabriel caught a glimpse of it through her tears before looking anywhere except Vignette's eyes. "Oh stop it Vign," she blubbered. "This is enough. You being with me is enough. It's a hundred times better than that."
"Huh. I didn't expect that from you," Vignette stated.
"Be glad," Gabriel retorted quietly. "You'll be glad to know that you make me happier than crystal meth."
"That I am."
"W-Where did you even get that Vignette?"
"Well...in order to defeat thy enemy, you must know thy enemy."
"So Ares soldiers go into battle high as a kite?"
"Yup. You should've seen the look on my face when I found it in his pocket...!"
"Pfft! Ah...I can only imagine. Sweet, naïve Vignette..."
The two turned their heads when Hensky ran up to them, her face radiating relief. "Guys! Look over there!," she exclaimed, pointing to the crowd. "There's a way through!"
They let her words sink in for a moment before Gabriel shoved Vignette away with a blistering red face. She quickly stood up and tried to cover herself up with a mask of coolness and casualness as best as she could.
"...ahem!," she coughed, straightening her clothing out. Vignette rolled her eyes with a grin. "That's great news. Vignette, what are you still doing on the ground? Get your lazy butt up and let's go."
"Sigh...that's my girl. Coming right away ma'am."
The many rows and rows of pipes lining the small opening indicated that it was a maintenance tunnel of some sorts, barely wide enough for the shoulders of a person to walk through. It was annoyingly short, meaning it took a toll on the knees, necks and backs of the already exhausted survivors who stumbled into it. Each person walked in a line, Gabriel and Ansel at the front with a torch. The people behind looked at her with envy because she, as well as Ansel didn't have to bend their necks to walk. It was like they were in a mineshaft. Confined, creepy and claustrophobic. Taller men could be heard slamming their bodies against the two walls and ceiling as they panicked and screamed. The pipes above seemed to be frozen well enough that the whole thing wouldn't collapse on their heads, but the fear was there. Like a railing preventing people from falling off a cliff.
Gabriel could at least appreciate the change of scenery. No longer did she have to stare at the same rail track time and time again, but instead the different sized piping all pointing in one direction. They even had colours, as faded as they were anyway. And even though it was colder in the maintenance tunnel, the 'food' she consumed an hour ago could finally be used as fuel. And the warmth radiating off their newspaper torch easily bounced off the small space and back, not only heating her but the people in front and behind her too. Hell, she was beginning to like this. Not so much the case for most of the people behind her though.
She caught Ansel just in time as he was about to fall from the icy ground. The ground was solid and slippery as an ice rink. Gabriel wondered if she could propel herself forward by simply pushing off of the pipes. Her eyes wandered around and caught a small green pipe on the ceiling that wasn't frozen unlike the other ones.
"Ansel," she whispered. "Shine the torch here."
"What's wrong Gab?," he asked curiously, looking at the pipe.
She removed her glove and touched it with a finger, then two and then her whole hand, after realizing it was warm. She sighed in bliss, and the information was realized down the line like a game of Chinese whispers. Ansel unsheathed his small knife and was about to puncture it, but Gabriel stopped him.
"Woah, what 'cha doing there kiddo?," she asked cautiously. "Don't tell me you're-"
"-gonna wash my hands! W-What?"
"Do you have a towel?"
"Of course I do. I'm not a kid you know."
Gabriel smiled. She unscrewed the lid of her green metal canteen. "I have a better idea," she remarked. It took him three tries before the knife punctured the rusty steel, and high pressured steam came rushing out with a hiss. Moments later, the small German child had reached nirvana when Gabriel tucked the canteen filled with boiling water under his coat. She knelt down, zipped his down jacket up to the neck and he returned a wide grin.
"Ready to go to school?," Gabriel gushed, adjusting his scarf.
"School?," he repeated, tilting his head. "But we're in the tunnels. Wait, am I going to school after this?"
He sounded genuinely concerned. "No its...you know, because I...never mind. Let's keep going."
It was amazing what a little hot water could do to the morale of the travellers. One by one they raised their bottles and canteens up to the punctured pipe, creating makeshift hot packs which they attached to all the coldest places. You could practically see the waves of dopamine launching between synapses after having been dormant for so long, like a dam finally releasing water. Because they knew the heat would only last for minutes after all.
Gabriel wondered if a hot water bath right now would cause them to fall into a coma from overdosing on pleasure. Or anything sort of convenience from before the war. Instant noodles, electric blankets, phones on a full charge and a generous data plan all fell into this category. Especially the phone. She often found herself reaching into her left pocket more times than she'd like to admit when she was bored or wanted to listen to music, only for a small frown to appear on her face. Even better, if she was feeling especially brain dead that day, not only would she reach for her pocket, but she would begin to panic and check her other pockets too.
She fished the phone from her bag as she walked, just so that she could hold it in her hands and feel normal for a second. It was physically perfectly fine, even on a full charge maybe, except the blast from the nuclear bomb had fried all the circuitry inside it. All of the data on Gabriel's personal phone: her offline games, manga, books...pictures and videos. She could think of at least a hundred meaningful ones that were wiped completely. Most of them of Vignette when she either didn't know she was being recorded, or when Gabriel would pull an elaborate practical joke and film Vignette's reaction. She could never get enough of the reactions that her girlfriend would give.
But now they were gone, nothing more than memories inside Gabriel's head. Memories that could be forgotten and altered like it was pencil on paper. She sighed, knowing that half of the story was deleted. Vignette had lent Gabriel her purple phone, which worked since she was inside the metro when the nuke went off. The reinforced concrete and metal rebar acted as a sort of faraday cage, diffusing the rays around it rather than the coils in her electronics. Perusing through it during her treatment was lots and lots and lots of pictures and videos of Gabriel, which she didn't bother to scroll through and skipped right to the unusual selection of downloaded music.
She missed it all. Even the god-awful 'music' Vignette listened to, anything except the repetitive sound of their boots clonking on ice. She wished she had appreciated the luxuries of the modern world more, but she could only have in hindsight, after almost everything had been destroyed, lost or stolen.
"Whatever," she mumbled to herself. "I have friends. I have my family."
"And me," Ansel reminded casually.
"You're my family Ansel."
"Not until I save you from a terrible person..!," he exclaimed with determination in his eyes.
"Hm. Well, if that does happen you'll be...promoted. But you'll always be part of my family," Gabriel deadpanned.
Suddenly, an ear-rupturing boom thundered down the tunnel. Everyone instinctively fell to the ground with hands clamped over ears, expecting that another would happen again. Gabriel, being at the front of the group,
shielded Ansel by putting herself between him and the front. If there was someone on the other end with ill intent, this would be the perfect time to shoot down the corridor, punching a hole through six people before stopping. But it was difficult to tell if it was a gunshot, as the sound ricocheted off the enclosed walls hundreds of times, distorting the initial blast. No other explosions occurred, and some people began to slowly stand up.
"Maybe the steam pipe from before burst?," a gruff voice could be heard suggesting from way out back.
"S-Stay still - hands in the air!"
Gabriel's suspicions were confirmed when she heard the hostile voice bellow in the darkness. She, along with Ansel, sealed their eyes shut after a light brighter than the sun filled the entirety of their vision. Like they were being checked at a traffic stop, Gabriel could feel the man's eyes on the other end jump between the parts of her body as she stood up slowly with all her digits pointed up.
"I'm dropping my weapon!," she notified. She imagined the click that just echoed ahead was the selector switch changing to full auto.
"This person isn't Ares," she thought confidently as she lifted the sling up and over her head. "If this was an ambush, he would've shot us all dead by now."
Her rifle clanged onto the solid as concrete ice and it slid forward like a hockey puck when she kicked it towards the light.
"We're just passing through!," she explained, trying her best to sound confident.
The light dimmed, allowing them to relax their eyes and look forward. A man dressed in a black, futuristic trench coat stepped forward with Gabriel's rifle in hand.
"Yes, I can tell," he huffed, giving it back to her. He separated his words with a heavy South Korean accent. "I think I've seen your face before."
"You...you have?"
He removed the scarf covering his mouth and nose and shot her a look of sympathy. It was as if he could feel himself getting colder just by looking at the tattered coats, blankets and rags- any sort of fabric that was attached to her in an effort to retain heat.
"Umm...follow me," he said nervously after a pause. "We haffe to keep moving."
Gabriel did all that she could to get the most information out of the man who lived down here, on the edge of being too trusting and annoyingly nosy. For all she knew, there were plenty of reasons why he didn't just mow them all down on first contact. Maybe he lived down here, and he didn't want to carry dozens of dead bodies to his living area to use as 'rations'. But now that she was able to get a closer look at him, she was extremely confused. He looked like he was from the future, light years ahead of their time. The rifle on his back, various assortment of gear on his vest, and various places on his person glowed blue with electricity. His eyes were alert and awake, he moved in a way only an extremely well-fed person could and most of all, he didn't look cold at all. This wasn't the character of a desperate mole rat who would slaughter his own family for food.
She gulped. She figured she would erase the doubt completely from her mind before pointing her empty rifle at the man. "You're...Ares, aren't you. The M87 Gauss rifle, the radio on your vest, everything. Ares tech."
"Eh? O-Oh...I-heh...this a looks bad but I can explain! I stole it you see-"
"-how do I know...," she began. "...that you're not Ares?"
He sighed. "I can't. I-I don't believe there's away.
"Where are you taking us? Leading us into a trap?!"
"Ah. Mm. Mm. No? I don't see how I can trap..." he clasped his hands together and looked behind her. "...however many of you there are, haha."
"Tell me the truth or I'll blow your head off!," she threatened, shoving the end of her rifle against his forehead.
"I-I-I-I am! I'm just a scientist I swear! Shi-bal...how can someone be so confusing..."
She watched as he slowly reached into his vest pocket and held up an ID badge, with the Ares logo and his face on it.
"Ares scum," she snarled.
"No!," he yelled as he dropped the badge and backed off. "I swear to you! P-Please, just let me show you my home down the tunnels! If I was those bad people, I wouldn't even bother and would have killed you...!"
With what was left of her reasoning abilities, she let the scenarios play over in her mind. They were basically unarmed compared to the science fiction technology that Ares used: if they wanted the survivors, they would get them no matter what. What he said made sense, but it did little to ease her paranoid mind of all it's doubt.
"Come. Please. You are cold and hungry, yes?"
Despite her weariness, there was no alternatives. There weren't any cartridges left to fire at him, and turning the opposite way was out of the question. She walked forward nevertheless, the uneasy feeling in her gut forming due to the uncertainty. There was only one person she had ever trusted her life with, and that was with Vignette. He had started to walk calm and casual once Gabriel put away her rifle, almost like he had forgotten it was on him.
They were finally able to straighten up when they reached the room at the end of the maintenance tunnel, an expansive, circular place which looked like it was the control area for the trains. He flicked on the light and everyone crowded in. He closed the door, and Gabriel weaved around bodies like she was at a party. To the right, nearest to the railway tunnels, was five monitors side by side and five monitors on top of that. There was a large table in the middle with more gear, blueprints and parts scattered around it. It was a messy place, but not in the way that Gabriel would consider it. It wasn't messy due to the laziness to put trash in a bin or to wash the dishes piling up in the sink like at her old apartment, but instead it was a mess created in pursuit of creating something. Any empty space on the walls was covered with the scribbles of a mad scientist. Complicated math, diagrams, blueprints and sketches of tools, as far as she could see. She imagined the look on Sophie's face right about now, geeking out over this stuff.
He removed his vest and hung it up on a coat rack. "Please, everyone, sit and I will get you some food." He gave a small bow and semi-hurriedly walked into another room, where the sounds of filing cabinets opening and tin cans clanging together could be heard. Gabriel turned the corner and saw him accidentally knocking over tin cans and sauces in nervousness like this was the first time he was entertaining guests in his life. Her chest loosened in relief and ambled over to help him while everyone sat on the ground, basking in the warm air from the large heater on the ceiling.
"Wow," was all she said when she stepped over the pile of discarded cans of soup. "That's a lotta food."
"Mmm. I have found ah...favour with the Japanese Defwence Force, supplying them with vital information on Ares. Their technology is...ah...wow...nollabpda."
He looked up with stars in eyes, nothing but pure admiration in the thought. But he soon returned to earth when the baked beans began boiling over, causing him to flinch his hand away.
"Hm. Well, you don't sound like them, at least," Gabriel stated, opening more cans with a can opener. "You sound like you're actually a human."
"Hahaha. Thank you kindly."
"Name?"
"Name? My name is Dae-Sung! Pleasure to meet you, Gabriel White. My uh...colleagues call me Sun-dae? Which I believe is a frozen ice-cream confectionary, topped with sauce and additional toppings."
"You wouldn't happen to have any sundae's lying around here by any chance would you Sundae?"
"Unfortunately not. My apologies."
"Relax. I'm kidding."
Everyone felt like they died and went to heaven when the two served every individual a mixture of baked beans, spam and spaghetti out of a large pot. What little sugar was in the mixture was amplified on their tongues, causing them to sigh in relief like a junkie after their fix. It really started to feel like a party when not only they started chatting, but even laughing and cracking jokes about what happened in the past day. Granted, they smiled through the pain, considering multiple people had died on the way and many more had severe frostbite as well.
Vignette practically jumped on Gabriel. She fired a barrage of little love kisses all around Gabriel's face with her arms wrapped tightly around, leaving bits of tomato sauce scattered on her face.
"...Vignette...," Gabriel whispered, gesturing her head towards Sundae.
"Oh it's fine Gabbb!," she sang happily. "Whyyy...is my little girl embarrassed? How cute!"
She looked away, trying to hide her blush.
"Cheer up Gab! We've got food! We've got warmth! We've got it all!," Vignette cheered, causing others to raise their bowls high. She let go of Vignette and walked up to the Korean man with her hands behind her back. "Thank you so much sir. We really will be in your debt forever! What's your name?"
He laughed nervously and backed away. Despite him being a taller, more stoic looking man, he backed away with a wobbly smile, clearly not used to the attention. "My name is Dae-Sung! Pleasure to meet you uh..."
"Vignette Tsukinose! I take care of this one over here!"
"Vignette! That's a beautiful name. T-That's okay, miss. I-I understand what you must have been through."
"Gab, follow me! There's a heater over here!," she exclaimed colourfully, dragging her off by the hand.
Unlike everyone else, who had stripped down to two or three layers and were lounging in front of the gas heater, Sophie was stuck in place analysing the papers stuck onto the ceramic tiling with sticky tape. After she had eaten and gotten warm, it was probably the first thing she did: read the mathematical jargon attached to an interesting looking wire frame diagram. Sundae noticed, and mustered up the courage to walk up to the girl which he found somewhat attractive.
Sophie noticed him in her peripheral. "This here...," she said curiously. "It's a proof. What is it trying to prove?"
"It's very interesting. It's a combinatorial proof to a section in the Shoevs-algorithm-"
"-the...the bloody integral part?," she asked, now facing Sundae.
"Yes! Integral parts all over! I'm pretty sure it's already been proved, but I have to wait a while before I get the solution. How do you know?"
"I remember basing a custom one off Shoevs algo in my...fifth year. You're right, it is interesting, aside from the parts which make absolutely no sense!"
"I know right?! When you look into each component it seems to make sense, but as a whole they don't work together! But it still works somehow!"
Sophie positively radiated happiness towards the man but shook her head to herself. "I'm sorry, to barge in your living space and look at your work-"
"-no no! It's fine really! I wouldn't mind an extra brain to read this over!"
"Sophie," she said, extending her hand. "Sophie Loughty."
He shook hers with both hands. "My name is Dae-Sung! Nice to meet you Sophie. My colleagues call me Sun-dae? Which I believe is a frozen ice-cream confectionary, topped with sauce and additional toppings!"
"Sundae?," she repeated, giggling at how unabashed he was. "Sun...dae..."
"Yes! Sundae! If it troubles you, it is also the seventh day of the week! If we are going by the international standard ISO 8601, where Monday is the first day of the week that is."
The two held a conversation as smooth as a flowing river, carefully stepping over sleeping bodies as they walked from wall to wall, looking at the things he's been working on. He was like a kid who had his friend over and wanted to show her all his cool stuff. But that kid was half-dead and nodding off.
"I-I'm very sorry! I didn't mean to bore you-"
"-no! I...want to talk more! This is so...much...fun...," she drooled.
"Please, you've had a long journey. Lie down and sleep for a while Miss Loughty. We can talk again tomorrow."
With half open eyes, she stumbled next to the gas heater and passed out on the floor, not bothering to worry about the hard metal floor. After everything they'd been through, she would have perhaps the best sleep of her life, alongside all the other survivors. They didn't even react to the noise of Gabriel and Sundae gathering all the makeshift bowls and tidying the place up.
"Gabriel?," he asked wearily. "You must sleep now! It is one am...!"
"I'm okay. I sleep late anyways."
"Yeah, when I have the power of the blue light from my MMO keeping me up anyway."
"Well...okay then."
Before leaving to his bed in a separate room, he slowly moved his face close to Gabriel's, looking her straight in the eyes. "...I am not saying that I do not trust you Miss Gabriel White, I'm sure you have a kind heart but..."
"I understand. You're scared that you won't wake up again right?," she explained.
"Yes," he said with a nod. "So I will say this. I have let you into my home. I fed you and gave you shelter from the cold."
"It's okay Sundae. You're not one of them. I won't let anything happen to you. I promise."
"Okay. Goodnight then."
"Goodnight. Oh, and where do you keep your first aid kit?"
It felt better than better. Nothing in the world could ever compare to the pleasures that she was experiencing in her dream. Her sensations were being tickled gently by the soft grass, the sun on her skin and the sounds of children playing in the field. A gentle breeze whispered past her, touching parts of her body under her light, fluffy sundress. She closed her eyes, basking in the euphoric sunlight that never got too hot or too cold. Like it was meant to be experienced in by human sensations. Vignette ran her hands up her torso, bumping up occasionally from the lumps formed by scar tissue. Each scar took years to fully develop, and even more years of wearing irritating, itching bandages to stop them from reopening, so she could identify where and when each of them came about.
She felt the rigid lumps and bumps on her thigh, and like it was a button, replayed the memories in her mind.
"Plastic gas, five years ago," she whispered. "Painful to remove spikes; do not accidentally tear through uniform during a gas attack."
Higher up to her groin was a large knife scar which she smiled at. "Accidental knife slash. Gab. Please, for the love of God, sheathe your knives when you're done playing with them."
And this was only her left thigh. She could've talked to herself for hours, but fortunately a certain blonde loli thudded onto the grass next to her.
"Good morning Mrs White!," she chirped like the birds that were singing in the trees nearby. "How are we doing today?"
"Mmmm..."
She stretched, arching her back up to expose more of her belly to the sun. She moaned happily.
"...oh...I feel amazzzzzzzing. Better than better. Nice n' warm and...sleepy..."
"I suppose our morning jog is out of the question then?," Gabriel snickered, cuddling up next to her.
"Eh...postponed until this afternoon. It's better when the sun's down anyway. Plus, after the extra long run we can crash in the bed and binge movies til' we pass out."
Gabriel climbed on top of Vignette and began making out with her, expertly dancing her tongue to tickle the spots which made Vignette moan in bliss. The action never got dull, despite being married for over three years now. Because the blonde girl somehow always found a way to make things interesting, keeping Vignette on her toes.
"I brought capri sun," she declared triumphantly, fishing it out of her pocket. "Straight from the fridge."
"Oh good. Drink and keep making out with me babe," Vignette replied, drunk with affection for the girl.
"Not so fast. There's only one. And there's only one straw. Only one of us can use it, otherwise it would be an indirect kiss."
"We're married."
"If you want it...you're gonna have to drink it from my mouth."
"What was that about the indirect kiss-no Gab noooo!"
Before Vignette could sit up and stop her, Gabriel had already torn the top clean off and transferred its contents to the inside of her mouth. With her cheeks ballooned up like a squirrel, she shot Vignette a smug look.
"Oh boy...you want me to...to drink...from your mouth...?," Vignette clarified in disbelief, surprised that she didn't seem entirely disgusted by the idea. She had done worse in the name of stupid love.
She nodded, the grin on her face widening after seeing Vignette shudder at the thought. "Fine. I'm kinda thirsty anyway. And you, loli-neet, you've brushed your teeth yes?"
Gabriel gave a classic 'I-don't know' look with a shrug of her shoulders. Vignette closed the distance between them, until Gabriel pulled back quickly.
"Gross!," Gabriel exclaimed, swallowing the juice in one go. "You were actually gonna do it?!"
"Yeah. It was your idea."
Gabriel held her head in some form of embarrassment as she threw another capri sun onto Vignette's chest. "You disgust me wifey," she expressed, watching her lay back down with a red straw in the corner of her lips. "I want my ring back."
"Not until you beat me in Mario Kart 8."
"Never mention that game to me ever again."
Gabriel was distracted on ways to defeat her at the racing game, when Vignette swiftly pounced on her and pinned her to the ground by the wrists. Upon noticing the demon's cheeks were a bit more rounded than usual, Gabriel began to flop about under her wife's weight.
"VIGNETTE!," she screeched, tilting her head away while flopping around like a fish out of water. Their lips came into contact, but it turns out it's pretty difficult to transfer liquid mouth to mouth if the receiving end if closed. Gabriel opened her eyes after feeling her face get sprayed with orange juice mist from Vignette, trying to hold back her laughter. She got off her and knelt up, swallowing the liquid and emitting a deep belly laugh.
"Heahahee-*snort*-your..! Your face when I...*GASP*...oh my God I can't breathe..."
"Yeah yeah," she groaned, wiping the unique mixture of saliva and juice off her face. "We gonna make love or what?"
"Make love? Out in the open? My...how bold of you!"
"I meant make out. Idiot."
"IIIIII like the other one better!~"
Vignette turned around but stumbled backwards in shock. Gabriel was wiping crimson blood away from her eyes, only stopping to look up at Vignette nonchalantly.
"What? It's blood. Get used to it."
She ran a few metres away before falling down on all fours and vomiting like she was being squeezed around the stomach- similar to the capri sun she was just drinking. Chunks of human flesh too big to have been inside her slopped onto the grass, accompanied by more and more blood.
"I can still taste blood Vignette," Gabriel said calmly.
"I...I wasn't thinking straight Gab! I-I-It wasn't my fault!," Vignette screamed.
"Oh? And the eleven people you murdered?"
Vignette opened her mouth as wide as she could before letting out the loudest sound of agony imaginable.
