Chapter 24
Renewal
[Saturday, March 31st, 2040. 6:25 PM. Torque.]
I felt comfortable in the vent.
Hearing the violent noises from outside slowly disappear as I crawled my way through the maze of steel was surprisingly pleasurable. They slapped my breathing mask on, strapped my gun to my back and sent me on my way with a forearm display that I wouldn't need.
I could smell her.
It irked me. But in these tunnels, with steel walls surrounding me and my tail behind me, the only direction I could go was forward.
Her scent grew stronger and stronger. I shimmied up a vertical length of vent before cresting at the top and heading perpendicular to gravity again. My scales slided across the metal, and Kelly was thoughtful enough to put tape on my gear's metal zippers and similar to muffle the sound. I saw light ahead, and stopped once I reached it.
I could see the floor below. Kelly knew I was here, but I had to press a button on my dimmed display to let her know I was ready.
All I had to do was stop her for two minutes.
I listened in from above, expecting Ophinasa to be giving orders to someone in the room or on the phone. Footsteps or slithering to tell me how many adversaries were present. There was… nothing. But her smell.
She knows I'm here.
Good.
I pressed the ready button on my forearm. My exhalation was hot inside the half mask.
The grating couldn't withstand my weight pressing down on it, with the rest of my muscle springing off the surrounding metal to press into it. I flew down into the light.
I sprung back up with the view of an empty room. The media suite protruded outwards, its windows revealing the rest of the stadium save for the wall behind me that connected to the rest of the building. The corners weren't covered by gunmen. The rows of computer monitors and keyboards concealed no one. The only person that was present was Ophinasa, looking right at me with a view of the stadium behind her.
It was just me and her.
Training took over. "Get the fuck on the ground." I saw her yellow nose through glowing iron sights.
"It hurts me when we meet like this."
Her face held genuine concern. I gripped my weapon tighter.
Ophinasa looked at home in her original, Advent issue armor. The gold and matte steel finish was cut by interloping scratches and wear. She stood tall, but her body carried the same emotion as her face.
"Just wanted to talk to me, huh?" I lowered my weapon to my hip, still aimed at her. Just wanted to give her enough space to see my body language.
"As a matter of fact, I did. Preferably with your mask off."
"You're kidding me, right?"
"I suppose I've lost that privilege." She feigned an apologetic tone.
"Yeah. You could say that." I spat back at her.
Ophinasa sighed and folded her arms. I looked around her. The nearby console tops were empty: no weapons to be grabbed. No buttons or levers to signal her crew to release the pheromones. Maybe she's linked with a sectoid that will pull the trigger for her. Who knows.
"I've thought about what you said during our past conversations."
My mind went back to the forest. "I'd hardly call them conversations."
She brought her hand to her chest. "I'll admit, I may have been too… forceful."
"You tried to make me think my friend's dad killed my lover."
"Yes, but—"
"And on top of that you tried to say he was just like him. What, was he going to kill me next?"
"No, however—"
My jaw clenched together. "You had me point a fucking gun to his head."
Ophinasa took a short breath, closed her eyes and placed her hands together. "What would you have me do, Sella? Right now?"
It took me a few seconds to process that she had just asked someone else what to do.
"...Let me put you in handcuffs." I slowly got out.
"And?" Her head tilted.
"...Call off the attack?"
"And after that?"
"...Go to prison without hassle? Look, I don't know where this is going."
"Ah. That is something I cannot do."
"Why not?"
"I had a thought after my speech. It was a scary thought, I'll admit, but I entertained it nonetheless. I finally had what I wanted. I had this city in the palm of my hand. All I would need to do was say a few words, and I could rebuild our society from the ashes. Even if my plan did fail, my point would have been broadcast to the world. It would have to be answered. But somehow I thought about you. Earlier I said that you were the same viper that I knew five years ago. And in some ways you are."
The quiet reverberating of helicopters far away hummed through the room. All of the pandemonium outside, the yelling, the screaming, was barely audible through the soundproof windows.
She continued. "But you have changed. You've adapted. Much like many of the vipers outside right now, enjoying this human invention. The pheromones would place them under my control. In truth, I admire how similar it is to the Elder's influence. But I thought about us, our team. We worked because we trusted each other. We were there for each other. And in this pitiful plot of mine… there's none of that."
Her introspective expression softened. She faced to the side, and in the light I swear I could see a tear in the corner of her eye.
"All actions have consequences. I suppose losing you is mine."
If only you changed. If only you let the war go.
I lowered my gun to my hip. The sympathy in my heart felt wrong. But she was right; she's never getting me back.
"What do you want, then, Ophie?"
I watched her red eyes melt. It was unreal, fake, how those staring corneas of confidence could lay bare a window to her soul.
"I just want to feel… whole, again."
The glass behind her shattered, and Ophinasa was thrown forward.
A wet spray slapped my scales. Blood and her organs were contained by her frontal alloy armor, but as her husk collapsed on the floor I saw a warped, funnel-shaped hole in her backplate. The cavity that I could see through the hole dripped yellow, a fist-sized chunk of her completely dislodged and dissolved from her body. Around Ophinasa a rich, orange puddle of arterial ichor began to pool as her blood headed for a missing heart.
The tables, the chairs, the computers were all splattered yellow as the viper laid dying in front of me.
I watched as she swallowed a few times, her eyes acting on pure instinct alone, before they fell on me.
As she drew her last, ragged breaths, she closed her eyes.
"Is she dead?" I heard Kelly's voice in my earpiece.
I shuddered as I relaxed my weapon. A wave of adrenaline hit me as I stared at her corpse.
She's lying there. She's dead.
"She's gone."
[Sunday, March 31st, 2040. 1:38 AM. Torque.]
The rest of the day was spent with the squad, clearing out every single room in the stadium with 31PD's help.
It was quick work. Once the rumor that Ophinasa was dead spread throughout the insurgents, most gave up. They simply dropped their guns and blended in with the crowd of people trying to escape. Thanks to facial-scanning drones and kiosks however, most were caught. There were a few holdouts in the electrical room and a few sub-areas. I only had to shoot two. What's another two bodies to add to the list of deaths today.
My mind was mostly focused on one body.
Every room we swept through told a story. Knocked over shelves that spilled merchandise, destined to be stomped flat. Footsteps trailing from pools of blood. The bodies of innocent people that were easier to dispatch than to detain, according to a few Coil murderers. It occured to me that this was all Ophinasa. She was responsible for every single death today. And it felt right that she died as a result. In fact, it felt like the first thing that was right in a very long time. But at the same time, a part of me felt gutted. Like the bullet pierced through my insides and tore a chunk out.
I saw it in my squad's eyes. We've all created our own ways to ignore the carnage that we walk into, or often cause. They get this gaze where a child's body wouldn't even cause a reaction. And we all had it.
It made my relationships seem very distant.
The cold night air brushed my scales. It was still bright out. Flood lights illuminated the entire stadium. I've seen so many red and blue police lights, it might as well have blended into purple. I leaned against the APC's hull, watching stretchers ferry blanketed corpse after blanketed corpse from the stadium's entrance. It was an ugly funeral procession, surrounded by guns, security and fear.
Terminal felt obligated to help the medical staff confirm the dead. She stood above every body, the blanket peeled from their faces, with bags underneath her eyes.
Blueblood took time to count the bodies. He uttered a small "Twenty-eight," as Terminal flipped the blanket back over a hybrid's face. Cherub remained quiet for most of the night, now fiddling with his thumbs as he sat on a concrete barrier. Patchwork was nodding off as she leaned against the APC with me, and Verge stood with Blueblood, watching the devastation unfold with him. Kelly was nowhere to be seen. In a meeting with top brass somewhere. She told us to stay put, and even sent Whisper to keep us company. He was sitting on top of the APC with his eyes blank, watching the funeral with the rest of us. At least he brought coats to keep us warm. Even though I know she is the director, it's her job… I wanted to talk with her. I missed her.
I watched Terminal reveal another body. A teal-blue uniform shined its hues, splattered with dots of red.
She lifted an eyelid and shined a light into each one. Like a machine, she placed the covering back over his face. No, it wasn't him.
"Thirty two," Blueblood announced.
For the first time in a while I thought about him. I haven't seen Anthony today, despite 31PD throwing half the department at the stadium. Maybe he was part of the other half making sure if the city did fall apart there would be a last line of defense. Or maybe he's just on the other side of the block, just as tired as I was.
"Shit," Terminal said.
I flipped my vision over to her. I barely caught Terminal's gaze on my face before she slid the blanket back over an unknown body. She had jumped back even, keeping a larger distance between her and the stretcher. The paramedics by her side were surprised at her reaction.
"What?" I stared at her. Fear spiked into my heart, forcing me to my tail.
Terminal stared helplessly at me. "I…"
I heard a few voices call to me as I slithered to the stretcher a few meters away and ripped the blanket from the man's face.
"Shine the light in his eyes."
Her face lit up with astonishment. "What?"
"Shine the light in his eyes. We don't know if he's dead, do we?"
His arm was ice cold in my hand.
I felt the presence of the squad behind me. What, were they afraid I was going to do something crazy?
"Shine the fucking light."
"Torque…" She lamented.
"Just… just do it. Do something." I switched my eyes to Verge. "You can sense him, can't you? He's there!"
I looked down. This time, my eyes didn't hide the truth. Anthony was dead.
The warmth of his skin had faded into a dull gray. His lips laid ajar, slightly open, as if he was still breathing slightly. But it was his eyes that struck me. Those brown irises, his pupils I stared at, the person that unfolded before me whenever our gazes met… was underneath a glossy orb, still as glass.
Finger by finger, I let go.
