When Lucy awoke she found herself tightly bound to a stretcher that a half-dozen silpelits were carrying along at a rapid pace. Just able to turn her head enough to see, Lucy tried to get a better view of her surroundings.
She was at a military base; that much was instantly obvious. The barracks, the tanks, the jeeps, the airplanes…all painted the matte green used by the army. There were dead soldiers everywhere, and there were nearly as many dead silpelits. Lucy guessed that they were the children of military personnel who lived on the base. While the cost in lives had been high, it afforded the silpelits great knowledge in the finer workings of the hardware the suddenly had available. Lucy was certain that the strikes had happened all around the world and the idea of a society of emotionally unstable six-year-old girls with nearly unlimited access to weapons made her shudder.
The silpelits wasted no time in hustling Lucy into a cargo plane and securely strapping her to an intricate makeshift frame work. Lucy could sense the anxiety of the silpelits who were making their way to the cockpit. Because a few of their sisters had figured out how to take off and fly a plane, they knew too, but none of them had figured out how to land without crashing yet. Their thoughts made Lucy sick to her stomach with worry.
As the turbines rumbled to life and the cargo plane began to move down the runway, one of the silpelits approached Lucy and jabbed a hypodermic syringe into Lucy's neck. Lucy felt a brief spark of pain followed by the blissful nothing of a deep sleep.
-:-:-
Kohta sat up and rubbed his throbbing skull. He wished he had stayed asleep because his left leg was hurting him almost as much as his aching head. He tasted bile in the back of his throat and swallowed to try to clear the taste. He picked up one of the vodka bottles he had emptied and shook his head. "Hair of the dog that bit me, huh?" he muttered in English before flinging the bottle away. He had no idea what that meant, he just knew it had to do with heavy drinking.
"Kohta, you're awake!" cried Mayu joyously. Kohta groaned and covered his ears. He was having one hell of a hangover.
"Oh, my head!" Kohta moaned. He looked around to make sure everyone was alright. He could not help but note that Kanae was just staring off into space. "Kanae, are you ok?" Kanae just nodded her head and pulled her knees up to her chest and resumed staring.
"We think she's still in a bit of a shock," said Nana. "She's been like that since Nyu…"
Kohta noticed that Nana's eyes were red and puffy, like she had been crying hard for quite a while. "Nana, where is Lucy?"
Fresh tears began running down Nana's cheeks. "Lucy surrendered herself to the silpelits to draw them away from us. Their queen is looking for Lucy, but Lucy does not know why. She showed me that they took her to a military base they overran and had loaded her into an airplane just before they drugged her. She's having nightmares now."
Kohta wished he hadn't heard that. "What is she thinking? Is she trying to get herself killed?"
"No, but she knows it's a strong possibility," replied Nana. "Lucy thinks that if she can kill the true queen she can regain control of the hive mind and stop them from exterminating us. But, she's also convinced that she is going to get herself killed in the process." Nana wiped her eyes. "She hopes that by selling herself as dearly as possible that she will save all our lives in the process."
Kohta tried to rise to his feet. "Then let's not waste any more time here. Oh man, how am I going to walk?"
Mayu handed Kohta a makeshift crutch that she and Nana had assembled from the handrails and seat covers of a subway car. Kohta gratefully accepted it and slung Lucy's backpack over his shoulder. "Lucy wanted us to head northeast. I'm not sure why, but I'm sure she was planning on something like this happening. We will travel by cover of darkness; we'll have less chance of being spotted that way. Nana, keep me informed on what the hive mind is doing, and let me know if Lucy wakes up."
With that, Kohta hopped on his leg up the subway stairs and into the night with his little group of refugees following close behind.
-:-:-
Persephone was elated at the news. Her sister had been captured and was on her way home. Persephone felt delighted to see her sister face to face, and in her joy decided to take a peek into the drug induced terrors that plagued Lucy's mind.
The images were nothing short of beautiful. Persephone felt her breath taken away as she saw two figures pleading with Lucy. The first was a girl in green boxer shorts and a white tank top (of all the ridiculous outfits) who was trying to get Lucy to wake up, to fight back against the power that held her captive and to save her family. The other was possibly the most exquisite thing Persephone ever saw; a nude figure with her face wrapped in bandages, save for one exposed eye. This figure whispered its wonderful message of death and destruction to Lucy. To Persephone's surprise, Lucy was trying to fight back against it.
Persephone could not understand. Why would Lucy resist her true nature? Perhaps she only needed a stronger voice to convince her how beautiful the world would be when everyone was dead. The deranged queen set off to find a fresh body and some bandages. After all, her sister should have a familiar face to greet her when she arrived.
-:-:-
Lucy awoke to the turbulence of the airplane. Her head swam with the after effects of whatever they had injected her with and Lucy still felt very groggy. Lucy tried to lift her arms and found that she had been stuffed into a straightjacket. Her nose itched like mad and she had to… Lucy scrunched her eyes shut and tried to shut out that urgent message her body was sending her. Noting her discomfort, the silpelits released her and allowed her access to the Head. As soon as Lucy was finished she was forced right back into the straightjacket.
Lucy streached out her mind to the hive and had to strain hard to listen in to the communications that spread faster and more efficiantly than the internet. The mindset of the entire world-wide hive was changing. Before it had been a frantic attempt to kill as many normal humans as they could before the humans had a chance to comprehend what was happening. It had worked exactly as the queen had planned. The world's population of silpelits had been placed with the precision of a master chess player, and had struck with deadly speed.
They had won their 'war' nearly within the first strike. Their first targets had been the militaries of their native lands and they had all but completely conquered them. It amazed Lucy how fast they had managed to do so. The hive mind afforded the diclonius a level of mass coordination that could not be matched by the human forces. The silpelits were no longer frantic in their drive to kill their targets; now they were calm, controlled, and systematic. The war had ended almost as soon as it had begun. All that was left for them to do was nothing more than a one sided slaughter.
It did not take too much longer to reach Kamakura (Lucy wondered just how long she had been out). The silpelits became frantic as they approached the city. Several of their sisters had attempted landings in commercial airliners and while none had executed a perfect landing, they had found creative ways to minimize the damage to the pilots and occupants.
The silpelit pilot of the cargo plane leveled out the plane at just a few feet above sea level roughly a quarter of a mile away from the beach. She gently lowered the plane to the ocean's surface and cut the engines. The silpelits all around Lucy used their vectors to brace her as the plane skipped like a stone across the sea, finally coming to a stop on the sandy beach. As soon as the plane stopped moving the silpelits immediately hustled Lucy out through the cargo doors.
Lucy was not prepared for the sight that met her eyes. Kamakura had been reduced to complete ruins. There wasn't a building standing in the entire city. Thick smoke blotted the sky and Lucy imagined she could see Kaede House reduced to a smoldering pile of cinders. She sent the horrid image to Nana. They had a right to know what had become of their home.
-:-:-
It was tough going what was left of the Los Angeles highways. When the silpelits overran the local Air Force base one of the first things they did was to blast all the highways to and from the city to rubble. What was left of the interstate around L.A. was choked with the burnt husks of cars and their passengers. The sour stench of roasted human meat filled the air and stung the lungs.
Nana halted as the group wove their way through the wrecked concrete and gasped. She had to lean against a wall of smoking rock to steady herself.
"What is it Nana," asked Kohta. "What did you see?"
"Lucy is awake," Nana gasped. She quickly described what Lucy had seen. Kohta shook his head in disbelief. "Come on, we can't stay here. We need to be as far away from human development as possible before sunrise."
-:-:-
Lucy put up no resistance as the silpelits dragged her through the research facility. Lucy had hoped that she would never have to set foot in its dreary halls again. This place held horrible memories that Lucy would just as soon forget. Lucy could not help but notice the blood spattering the walls, floor, and even the ceiling like a grotesque Jackson Pollok painting. Something terrible had happened here.
Lucy found herself being escorted into an enormous lush office that would have been rather pleasant if not for the fact that the windows were painted black and the lights were broken. The only light in the room were from multitudes of candles lining the walls, casting an eerie glow about the place. More than a dozen silpelits crowded around an enormous chair.
So, my prodigal sister has come home to me, a rather unpleasant voice spoke into Lucy's mind. I don't have a fatted calf to kill, but perhaps the humans who have caused you so much grief would be a suitable homecoming gift?
Lucy gasped as the group of silpelits surrounding the huge office chair parted and the chair spun around to face her. Lucy's legs buckled and she fell to the floor on her hands and knees. The figure was completely nude save for the bandages wrapped about her face that left her right eye exposed. It looked exactly like that dirty figure in the back of her mind that prompted her to evil, save that this figure was drenched head to foot in blood. The bandages dripped their dark contents onto the figure's torso. For possibly the first time in her life, Lucy felt fear; fear of an opponent who had until now been just a dark unpleasant shadow that hung over her soul. "No," Lucy croaked. "You can't be real. You are just that voice in the back of my head. You don't exist in real life!"
"Yet here I am, sitting right before you, Lucy," the figure chuckled hoarsely. "We may not share the same mind, but we share the same father, however abominable a man he was."
"Who are you?" asked Lucy, her voice cracking.
The figure in the chair stood up and approached Lucy; unwrapping her bandages as she came. The face that was hidden behind those bandages could have been Lucy's reflection in the mirror, except that her face was pinched and thin from malnourishment. "I am your half-sister, Persephone."
Lucy found her courage returning to her. This was not some dark extension of her personality come to life, but a twisted creature of flesh and bone. She slowly rose to her feet and stood facing Persephone. "How is this possible?"
Persephone telepathically implanted the knowledge she had gained into Lucy's head. Lucy saw her father's face, knew what he had become infamous for, and knew that Persephone was not lying. Lucy suddenly felt incurably filthy. She was the child of one of the most atrocious acts that one human being could perform on another. She opened her mind to Nana and showed her the knowledge she had just gained.
-:-:-
Nana gasped as the group continued moving east. "What is Lucy showing you now?" Kohta asked without halting.
"The queen that Lucy kept mentioning," said Nana. "She calls herself Persephone, and she's Lucy's half-sister! They were both the offspring of a serial rapist and two of his victims!"
Kohta shuddered and kept hobbling along. "Whatever Lucy's origins are, that does not make a difference in what she became. Come on, we need to keep moving."
-:-:-
"Who are you talking to, Lucy?" asked Persephone. "Is it one of your silpelits, perhaps the one that is still with that human you became so attached to? I saw so much in your dreams," added Persephone, noting Lucy's shock. "I tried opening my heart to a young man once too. He said he loved me and that he would never leave me. He lied! As soon as I became pregnant with his child he left me for another young woman he was seeing on the side. They cannot be trusted, Lucy." Persephone shook her head and sighed. "I suppose it is up to me to rescue you from yourself." Persephone closed her eyes and began sending out another message. Find the man who…
"No!" screamed Lucy. She whipped out one vector and bashed Persephone across the face, sending her flying into a wall. Persephone slid down it and lay still for a moment on the floor before picking herself back up.
"That…was the worst mistake you could have made, Lucy," growled Persephone. Back away, she commanded her silpelits, I'll deal with this one myself! "Lucy, you disappoint me. I wondered for a time why haven't accomplished your divine work of eliminating the excrement called humanity from the face of this world, and now I can see why. They have weakened you. They have taken a goddess and bound her in the chains of love of all things. How pathetic!"
Lucy was desperate to get Persephone to change her mind. As much as she knew that killing her would be the quickest way of saving Kohta, she had to try to save her sister. Lucy conjured up every positive memory of Kohta she could muster; the time they spent playing together as children, the care he had shown her when she was ill, the forgiveness, the compassion, the sense of family…all this Lucy shared with her half-sister in the hopes of sparking whatever shred of humanity Persephone had left in her.
She might as well have spat on a battleship for all the good it did. Persephone laughed at Lucy's efforts, laughed to punish the futility of such wasted effort, laughed at the ridiculous message of love that her sister had tried to share. "I never imagined such rubbish could spring from the mind of one who had so much potential." Persephone wiped the tears of mirth from her face, took a deep breath to compose herself, and regarded Lucy with a coldness that Lucy could not have thought capable in the face of another person. "Diclonius who refuse to fulfill their purpose are nothing more than trash to be disposed of. I will not say I'm sorry Lucy, because I'm going to enjoy ripping you apart!"
Lucy leapt away from the queen and grabbed one the silpelits. She hurled the little girl at Persephone in the hopes that Persephone would refuse to harm her own daughter. Persephone sliced the girl in half and rushed through the crimson spray at Lucy, flinging Kakuzawa's enormous desk at her. Lucy smashed the desk with her own vectors and met Persephone head on.
They swung wildly at each other with both fist and vector, bashing at tearing at one another. They were so close to being evenly matched that neither was gaining the upper hand. Lucy had tossed aside all self restraint and was trying to give as good as she got. After several minutes both combatants backed away; both bruised, bloody, and exhausted. Persephone moaned and collapsed into a sobbing heap near the few remaining lit candles.
"Why?" she sobbed. "Why can't I defeat my opponent? Why must everything I do come to such a worthless end?"
Lucy stepped closer, her anger fading. Perhaps now her sister would listen to reason. "It need not end this way, Persephone," said Lucy calmly. "The humans don't need to die for us to survive."
Persephone didn't say a word. Instead she slowly got to her hands and knees… and threw the candles at Lucy's face; she had been faking her distress. Lucy did not have time to react. The hot wax spattered onto her skin and Lucy desperately tried to wipe it off. With about of insane, shrieking laughter Persephone whipped out with her vectors and took Lucy's right leg off above the knee. As Lucy fell and tried to brace herself Persephone sliced off Lucy's hands above the wrist. Lucy rolled over in pain as Persephone stood over her, triumph shining in her face.
"She who hesitates is lost," Persephone jeered, waggling one finger in Lucy's face. She plunged one vector through Lucy's midsection and impaled her on it, spearing Lucy's internal organs and opening gaping holes on both sides of her body. Pain worse than anything Lucy experienced flooded through her body, and she knew she was about to die. "Love did not save your life," said Persephone with a sneer as she stood directly over Lucy's body, "and love will not save your human family once I have finished with you."
But Lucy still had one last trick up her sleeve, one last maneuver that she had insisted that Nana teach to her. Lucy plunged one vector into Persephone's frontal lobe and squeezed her pineal gland. Persephone was absolutely perplexed as her vectors were disabled. As she stared at Lucy in shock, Lucy reached out and twisted Persephone's head from her shoulders and watched her body fall to the floor. She felt her body growing weaker as her life leaked out of the gaping holes Persephone had left in her torso, arms, and leg. "She…who hesitates…is lost," she gasped at her sister's corpse before succumbing to a welcome oblivion.
Lucy had just enough strength to send Nana one last message before death took her. Kohta, I'm sorry.
-:-:-
Nana choked out a sob and fell on her face. It took several minutes for Kohta and Mayu to get her to stop weeping. Nana pulled herself into a sitting position and began rocking back and forth. "She's dead. Lucy killed the queen but got killed in the process. She's dead, Kohta! She's dead!" Mayu began crying as well.
Kohta sank to the ground next to Nana. He turned very pale and began to shake uncontrollably. After all that Lucy had done, after all the people she killed, after all the families she hurt, she had tried to finish cleanly. "What's happening to the hive mind now?" asked Kohta.
Nana sniffed and closed here eyes, trying to feel for what was happening. "Persephone's daughters, the younger queens, they are all scrambling to claim as much of the hive mind as possible." Nana wiped the tears from her face and gave Kohta a brave smile. "Most of the queens are completely concerned with trying to pull their hives together and stay alive. One or two are intent on finishing what Persephone started, but mostly they are just regrouping and deciding where to proceed from here. I think Lucy stopped the slaughter!"
"They're dividing the hive mind up?" asked Mayu.
"Yes," said Nana, "by geographical division. They are being sorted by natural barriers that separate the queens."
"Then I think Lucy managed to save us all," said Kohta. He looked around at their location. "I think this area is a good location to spend the day. We'll start moving again tomorrow night." He pulled himself upright and began hobbling a short distance away. "I need some time to myself right now," he said. "I won't go far."
Once he was out of sight of the others Kohta fell to the ground and curled up into a little ball. He curled his fingers into his fists so hard his nails broke the skin and began to sob. Nearly everyone he cared about; Yuka, Nyu, and now Lucy…they were all gone. Kohta just lay there for several hours, letting loose the grief and anguish that had been building up in the last thirty-six hours. When he was finally able to compose himself, he took a minute to think about what Nana had said. The more Kohta thought about it, the more certain he became that Lucy had only managed to delay the inevitable.
-:-:-
Once the hive mind became divided, the queens began to contend with one other, each trying to gain control of more silpelits than their siblings. They had not yet matured, and their spoiled, selfish, immature and emotionally frantic minds began beating against their sisters. The message was the same with each queen, and they repeated to one another over and over.
Everything in this earth is mine; mine to control and mine to keep. You can't have it. If I have to destroy your resources to keep you from having them, that is what I'll do. I no longer care if the humans live or die, as long as I am in charge. I can do whatever I want, and you can't stop me.