The Final Pursuit

"Honey, I don't think I'm going to need to head out until tomorrow, the boss said there was a bit of a snafu, so I'm going to be able to – excuse me, sir?" A strange man caught his eye as he lazily sauntered through the kitchen, and he was brought to a stop by the intruder.

Heinrich knew almost immediately what the man was. It was another one, an Eraclea. He seemed familiar, perhaps this one had followed him around, becoming a familiar face at some grocery store or restaurant before zoning in for the attack. Good god, it was only a year since the last one, and now one of them managed to get into the house without him noticing? It took all his restraint not to physically remove the man immediately.

"Mister Heinrich Hamilton, son of the late Gerhardt Shonman. I advise you to come with me."

"Great news all around about the trip being postponed, I want you to take a look at – " Emma entered the room to see Heinrich looking at her with a dead serious expression, and a stranger in the other doorway. A moment later, a second stranger walked to close off the doorway by Emma. Emma mimicked Heinrich's silence, and sized up the room.

"Why should I go with you?" Heinrich broke the tension.

"You're one of the last defector families' Responders, of course."

"That's absurd! I'm a Hamilton of the business family, well known around here, do you think I'd be so idiotic to keep a dangerous lineage's name if it was true? I don't have a death wish! If you keep up this charade, I will have to notify the authorities about harassment. I don't wish to be lumped in with those fringers, if they're even still alive."

"You didn't ask what a Responder is?"

"I don't care!"

"You're son of the late Shonman, anyway, I know it. Would you care to know that the man whose actions killed him finally met the same fate? I killed the rebel myself. Idiot thought he could steal the Eraclea Mysterion and get away with it – but you know that he had the Mysterion, of course. He bragged about using it to torture you, thought that could win him his life. It couldn't, but his information was deliciously helpful. By tracking down his trail, once thought long cold, I found you. The pieces were there for any sufficiently intelligent human to pick up. Gerhardt. The strikingly non-military family. The small family. The pride forcing you to keep the name. Eventually, no matter how often you moved or what identity concealment measures you took, we were going to find you." The two men stayed fixed at their posts, clearly plotting their move into the center of the room, keeping in mind any escape that the two would try to make.

"Stop harassing him, just because of the name! My god, you're all insane. We've heard this before. How exactly do you think we could have survived if we were so obvious about being those crooks?" Emma started to go about business as usual, putting some now-dry dishes away so that Guita wouldn't have to see to them and instead could spend more time with Alvis when she came by the next day. Emma wasn't afraid, and was eager to demonstrate to the goons that she honestly barely cared. They had a response though, one that wasn't to bode well.

"Oh! How did you survive if it was so easy to find you? Well, I must have made it sound easy, I guess. It wasn't – you two are much smarter than a typical Eraclea moron, I'll tell you that. The outsiders are buffoons. I'm much closer to the top of the hierarchy. My name actually is Eraclea, for one thing. I know as well as you how hard you tried to make any record impossible to track. It took years to get to you, and for that I applaud you. Oh! It also wasn't all your skill – I needed to hit up another of your family members before I got here, and she was much more difficult to track down. Heinrich, Erna says hi. And, sorry for your loss sir. Our persuasion tactics didn't quite treat her as well as we had hoped to. Well, we needed our information."

"You son of a bitch." Heinrich set his jaw firmly, trying to speak, think, without breaking down. Erna. The family genius. One of the merely two deemed worthy of having the Recitation power in our generation. So intelligent it took years for the authorities to track her, god only knows how they did it. They got to her. They took the Mysterion from her. Dear god, she never even met Alvis, never knew she had a niece. What a world this is. What did we do to deserve this? Erna, who I haven't seen since she left to go underground… why did you leave us? That last goodbye was really it? My oldest sister, gone. The girl… god I still know her as a girl. What has happened to us?

"If you do not leave, I will notify the authorities. I warned you before, I'm warning you again, I will not hesitate to defend our home from you." Heinrich opened the knife drawer and took out a particularly menacing-looking piece of cutlery, and considering what he had just been told, he also unsheathed quite a bit of desire to use the weapon.

"Impressive. How's that going to hold up against a military-grade pistol, I wonder?" quipped the attacker by Emma, speaking for the first time. He aimed directly for Heinrich's head, and made it clear to all in the room that he was doing so.

"What do you want from me?"

"We want you to come with us. You know the Eraclea's little predicament."

"You'll have to kill me first." This got a rise out of Emma, though she stopped herself short of vocal acknowledgement of his comment.

"Boss?" Emma's guard spoke again.

"Yes?"

"I'll hold back this one, if you're ready for the verification? If you don't mind, I'd like to get back home at a reasonable hour tonight, once we're done this day will bear some celebration, I think."

"Good idea!" the other one responded, giving the affirmation his sidekick needed. Emma's guard, in a stunning display of agility, lowered his weapon and then seemed to incapacitate Emma in one sweeping motion, pinning her arms and bracing much of her frame against his own so she could barely move. She struggled violently, but the man was a professional – didn't give an inch in any direction. Heinrich immediately started across the room, this was too much indignity to leave to mere talk. But he was halted by the start of a poem whose lines he'd never hear. How unfair that you can't actually hear the Mysteria if you're a Responder, he had always thought. But now, he was frozen, incapable of thought, at least productive thought. Emma's jaw dropped as she watched him freeze in place, helpless to counter the sneering Eraclea's Recitation.

"Well, a successful run. I'm sure we'll have another one before her Ladyship later tonight. Then, I assure you, we'll celebrate. Not as much as when we finally get those other two poems and use this guy to blast the opposition out of the sky!"

Heinrich had a moment of clarity. He saw what his life would be, if he went with them. He knew that neither he nor Emma could turn the tide of the fight, as it stood. He verified with the captors –

"Sir. That will be my life, then. Responding for you until the wars are over, and victory is yours?"

"Starting today and ending with the great Judgment of Prestor." The captor seemed happy that Heinrich was resigned. Oh, trust me that neither of us will be happy in a moment, thought the wretched Hamilton. He gripped the knife that had never left his hand with as much strength as he could muster. It wasn't a lot. He shook the utensil a bit to prove to himself that he could manipulate it at all. Then, after a deep breath –

"No!" Emma's cry was sharp and high pitched. It was louder than any sound Heinrich made, he was remarkably quiet about death. A moment later, he and the knife fell to the ground. Emma fought her captor again, trying viciously to get to Heinrich, see if any life remained. She felt, just for a moment, that if she could get to him quickly enough, she could halt that expanse of red across the floor. She had helped him when he was hurt before, and he had helped her. It was the job of a spouse. She could not be denied this last thing she could do. His eyes were grotesquely open, she needed to close them. It was downright disrespectful to leave him so… surprised.

"Boss, you were right!" The man holding Emma noticed something. "The ring, it's got ER and HH on it – she's a Reichner all right, that's their seal on this ring around the letters!"

"Well, well. The Emma Reichner. Let her go for a moment, she's just as important as her hubby here. Of course now that he's gone we have no choice but to take her instead." Emma was dropped to the floor. She bowed her head less out of reverence than shame for her tears. "We want you alive, darling, don't be afraid of us. We know that you're the daughter of Gustav Reichner, the late great keeper of so much information a spy like me couldn't refrain from drooling just thinking about it."

Emma, in a calculated decision of near-military precision, launched herself at ground level towards her husband. What use was it to listen to this man proudly trumpet how much work he had done to find her and how much he knew? She had to pay her last respects to Heinrich before these barbarians took her.

Neither man seemed particularly inclined to separate the distraught woman from the husband – both were still baffled by the death of their target and weren't sure if they could have the triumphal return they so wanted. This hesitation caused them to let this go – a dire mistake.

Emma kissed her husband for the last time, and closed his eyes. That made her feel slightly better, she wiped the tears off her face and started to think calmly. Alvis. What about Alvis? How could she ever tell Alvis? That's it, she realized. I have to be around for her. I will fight these monsters tooth and nail. But mostly, I have a knife. Despite her abject horror at using Heinrich's suicide knife, she decided it was the only way. She grabbed the weapon in Heinrich's chest and swiftly pulled it into a sharp, dexterous grip. Almost immediately after fixing the knife in her hand, she plunged it into her attacker, before he had even reached for his gun again – after all, what use was a gun on a person you'd never intended to kill? Her attacker slumped to the floor, groaning and muttering in shock. Then she turned on Heinrich's tormentor. The man wasn't armed, his sidekick had been the one who knew how to really use weapons, anyway. Emma and the attacker froze in locked eye contact, both sizing each other up with terror. She stood slowly, keeping her eyes on the man, and froze again.

"Now, I will have you know that you have murdered your last Defector."

"You insult me, Reichner. And I have the utmost respect for you; you're hardly being charitable."

Emma hurled the knife into the man's chest, and turned to get the hell out. She met her own attacker's eyes – he was still alive. She panicked and took just a moment too long to complete her fight or flight response. The man's final moments allowed him to fire off one last, perfect, shot.