In the Beginning
He hated Gwendolyn with a passion. That went for just about every one of his so-called family members anyway. Until that day, he still wondered how he managed to come from such a circus. When they were children, people seemed to have a misinterpretation that because they were both intelligent and disliked his brother/her cousin, they would somehow get along. These people were wrong.
Gwendolyn was only smart for a given value of it. He didn't make the point of changing his tune around her, which she considered disrespectful and condescending. He just blinked at her pointedly as if she wasn't quite getting the idea. She visibly bristled a moment before she toppled the box of chili fries in his hands into his face. At ten years old, that pretty much set the grounds of their interaction.
Trying to endanger his cousin's life at ten was a little presumptuous. After all, she could beat him up in different creative ways with her martial arts. This gap was bridged more recently. That was, if he was armed. He may have physical strength and a bit more experience than when he was ten, but he had to begrudgingly admit that his cousin was faster and nimbler. When they were younger, he always had things pre-planned to torment her. It never escalated too far to something deadly because he always forgot how much of a spanner in the works his brother could be.
Occasionally, just out of spite, she would just use a reflective mirror in his direction and it was probably enough to make him flinch back. He hated the truth that they were family, which gave her enough history on his weaknesses. Otherwise, he wouldn't be at that much of a disadvantage as he was.
What kind of horrible deity decided to greet him with his irritating cousin when he had to request audience with the rebellion?
When the message came up on Cooper's screen that day, coincidentally having Gwen looking from behind him, her eyebrows knitted at the blank sender box. He was supposed to be showing her a new design for a program that would increase the security of the computers in the headquarters. Helen was just hanging around behind them, supposed to accompany her to the libraries to get some newbies inducted. Cooper's excitement at his first tryout of the system in the small section of Los Soledad coaxed her to give it a look, especially at his beaming pride at it.
Then a message came through. An unrecognized sender, which the computer took a while to gather its information. This made the previously thrilled expression on Cooper's face dissolve. After a few moments, the computer returned whatever it decoded from its origination. One word appeared after the computer finished tracking back: Ultimatrix.
Gwen's delicate eyebrow raised. Cooper had no idea what it meant and she told him that he'd done a good job getting that much from it. They decided to open the message, even with Cooper's belief that it might contain some malware or the other. But he was confident his program wouldn't be affected by it anyway.
She doubted he would send something like that. This guy wanted his message read. Said message was brief. It asked for the location to access the underground headquarters since they'd taken down the ones he knew, the blueprints of Los Soledad's structure, then it ambiguously gave a time and date. It was punctuated with words that were subtly mocking and contemptuous, which allowed Gwen to find out that this was definitely him. The after note simply told the person who received the message to redirect it to Ben, who knew what to do.
She decided that this wasn't necessary. Praising Cooper for a job well done on his new system - the younger boy flushing as she said her compliment, she turned around. With a nod to Helen, they finally walked to the library. All the while, she was typing a note on her phone about the meeting just so she could greet the proverbial prodigal son. Or should she have said cousin?
On exactly that time and date, a man in a hooded jacket was being barred from entry. He was simply standing there impatiently, arms crossed at the people pretending to be miners. From where Gwen was, she heard them ask for his permit, identification papers and tell him proper gear was necessary if he really was a worker there.
Kevin was walking by her side, dunking the contents of a can of beer into his mouth in one go.
She flatly berated him, "It's specifically laid out on the ground rules of the organization to not drink during work time. That's the first thing you get told when they introduce you to this place."
He responded cheekily, "You like my rule-breaking, roguish charm and you know it." as he crushed the can in one hand and chucked it at the general direction of his side. They were at the part of headquarters that was at least made to look like the tunnel of a mine.
She rolled her eyes at this before finally facing the men blocking her cousin from entering.
"He's okay," was the first thing she said. "Let him through."
The not-miners who served as guards through the entrance of that particular tunnel, looked at her and conceded. The space they provided to let her cousin pass allowed him to finally take notice of the person greeting him.
"You," he said with equal parts questioning and annoyance.
"Yes, me," she replied in a way that suggested she was trying to annoy him more.
"Where's Ben?" he demanded impatiently, crossing his arms as if he was still that rebellious fifteen year old that she routinely disillusioned by kicking his butt.
"Somewhere around here," she said dismissively, shrugging. "You're not even going to say hi to your favorite cousin?"
"What gave you the idea that you were?" he questioned irritably, looking around for anyone else other than her.
It was nice to know her cousin still couldn't stand her.
Of course, that was because they were family.
Gwen had barely any family left since that slow down spiral after Grandpa Max had died. She didn't hear or see anything of Grandma Verdona since then and she had no idea if her Grandma was still alive. Gwen was definitely Grandma's favorite grandchild for a few reasons and she was the one who took most notice of the disappearance.
Then her parents were also forcibly taken from her. Much the same way Uncle Carl and Aunt Sandra had been made to disappear. At the very least, her dad had some basic inkling and had given her and Ken some vital pieces of knowledge to make sure they got through. But her cousins got the less generous trade-off. Their parents were simply too optimistic to consider it happening. But all four of them were inducted, one way or the other.
Aunt Camille and Uncle Joel took them in. These were people who were a lot more closely related to the rebellion. People who had better idea of what was happening. They'd given them even better security and hid them under wraps from the government who knew the Tennyson name all too well. They had been made children of the 'Mann' family back then - adopted of course.
That was when the problematic cousin decided to leave the 'circus' that was his family. They were all very close-knit, but her white-haired somewhat sociopathic cousin had always been detached from them. He left with no word of where he was going.
It was a normal day travelling with her brother Ken to a farm in the next state that she encountered her first training mission. It was beyond brutality.
"God, you should've seen it back then in that summer with Grandpa. Ben was so annoying."
Laughter. "I can imagine!"
"Doing all those farm chores so early in the morning. I thought I was gonna die. Seriously."
"Well, isn't this great?" An impertinent, teasing eyebrow. "This vacation's gonna be filled with
so much nostalgia."
She slapped his arm. "Ken!"
Something popped and the bus lurched.
His face grew serious.
"What was that?"
He turned to her, dark green eyes wide. "Gwen-" He was cut off by the sound of gunfire.
She'd been one of those people put into training and education while Ben and Ken - and when Albedo was still there, him too - were out actually seeing the action. She'd always been childishly irritated by the fact that she wasn't allowed out yet, but it eventually dawned that it was because her medical training was extremely vital. She was by far going to become the most formidable ally in the rebellion. It just needed a little bit of patience.
The training session was methodical, swift and heartless. It was like shooting ducks in hunting season, except with people. Her blood boiled at the idea that these were rookies, being given some innocent moving targets to kill.
She was just one person. Even her brother was just one man. They worked very hard to protect each other and get out of there. It was a horrible luck of a day - poor visuals, no weapons and injury-ridden that they were - that had caused what happened. Her brother died in her arms. For a long time, she just held him, trying to ignore the bright red on his body - almost as brilliant as his hair. Her anger and grief fuelled the adrenaline in her veins.
She got out of there by the skin of her teeth. She later found out that she was considered 'processed' because they never found her.
Luckily getting in contact with Aunt Camille, she was hidden in Los Soledad while they gave her a new identity. It was getting harder to do so. She had to stay there for months like a truly dead woman. Ben was the first to meet her when she returned. For hours, she just beat his chest and screamed until she was hoarse. Threw things until her body and soul was tired. He was there for her, strong and stable so that there was something to hold onto. He decided to have his name changed too.
All of those things happened while the prodigal cousin gallivanted off to who knew where. There were so many questions she wanted to ask. It looked like he was itching to see his brother though.
Or maybe just itching in general. She curiously stared at him rubbing against his arm impatiently as he looked around.
"Those are some pretty nasty sunburns," she commented observantly, honing in on the hints of skin that showed under the jacket when he scratched.
He stopped rubbing and stared gravely at her. As if slightly aggravated by the need to do so, he asked, "Where's the infirmary?"
Green eyes sharpened for a split second. Even more curiosity. Her cousin came here for medical attention. He looked like he was sneaking around, which was probably a hint of another attempt to lay low. This guy had more of a story to tell than he was letting on.
"Come with me," she said gently, gesturing with her head through the tunnel. She looked at the incredibly inquisitive Kevin by her side who was looking at her cousin like he'd never seen something like it before. Looking up at her white haired cousin, she pointed at the dark-haired man beside her. "By the way, this is Kevin Levin."
"Hey," was Kevin's brief greeting, like he absolutely didn't care. She rolled her eyes.
Her cousin looked at her companion from head to toe, both eyebrows raised impertinently. Then scoffed after this brief inspection.
She could already see a vein breaking out on Kevin's forehead.
Kevin sunk down to Gwen's height so he could murmur to her, "Tell me you don't like this guy so I can flip his guts inside out."
"Kevin," she whispered impatiently.
"I can hear you perfectly," her cousin retorted.
"Great!" Kevin responded with equal venom.
"I'd like to see you try," her cousin added again, sharp red eyes glaring back at the black ones who were as excited for a confrontation.
She heard the knuckles crack. "Nice ta know I got the invitation."
There was much staring at the ceiling from her. This was going to be a long day.
Kevin didn't give two shits about all the politics happening around him when he dealt in illegal firearms distribution. He was wigged out by some of his friends actively going buddies with the government, just so that they could get legit and not get their sorry butts dragged into jail. Kevin just didn't like the System's nosiness so he convinced himself he wasn't going to play government dog anytime soon.
Something radically changed when he tripped up some military related crap while playing neutral party and offering some high demand, good quality weapons to the other team. They called themselves Incursions, one of those extremist subsets of the opposing country - one of them. There were a lot that the System seemed to be hell-bent on getting to see reason. By reason, that was just give their resources and be happy that they weren't bombed for cooperating sorta reasoning.
Kevin knew that stuff. It made some kinda twisted, stupid sense. A person just gotta get happy not being bombed, imprisoned, tortured and some such nowadays. On the flip side, he could get some nice little profit during the chaos. He wasn't if not opportunistic.
It wasn't like he was actively trying to cause this people trouble or hurt. It ain't his business. His business was giving people shit that they wanted and he got paid for it.
Sure, it was way fun when people who rubbed him the wrong way got into trouble. But that was another story. It was easy to get people into trouble when he had government buddies who got his back on this kinda stuff. Eventually he'd realized that opportunity opened way up when you were on the side of the guys pretending to be good. Because seriously, who nowadays was actually good? What kinda dumbass dope was actually clean?
He was kicked out of the house for being a destructive kid. He barely touched the surface of the seriously fucked up shit that was happening when he got into the business. Playing Mr. Spy for the high ups - and hey, he could be smooth wannabe James Bond for the ladies - was an interesting experience. Until he found his dad's name in one of the people the government 'processed'. That was like nice word for hunting down, locking them up and killing them. That's when he got pissed.
By pissed, he meant that he would find the crony those bastards sent on his dad and kill him slowly in a span of days. At first, he just wanted to go and burn those sons of bitches. But he calmed down, ya know. Somebody gotta give him credit for that. He tried to get more outta what happened to his dad and realized Devin Levin was part of a much larger group. Just nicknamed Plumbers on the official data. Okay, so his dad fixed toilets and got offed for it?
Then he did a bit more looking around and one of his buds was closely connected to the group. Now that kid coulda got himself in a lotta trouble, mostly because Kevin was the jerk who would call in trouble if he wasn't given the info he needed. His buddy specialized in forging papers, being government crony and all, so he knew about those Plumber guys.
That's when he got to know some info on other suspected and previous 'processed' Plumber guys. Gwen Tennyson who was dead, but wasn't. Her older bro who was definitely six feet under, according to his reluctant buddy. But there was also her annoying cousin Ben who was supposed to be dead too but wasn't.
See, he was a practical guy. The kind who used up resources when they were there sorta person. He needed some leg up, he got some leg up. 'Bout keeping all that friendship stuff is a little more on the maybe-side.
So he decided to make friends with Gwen and Ben, who were now Freeman by last name. He laughed so much at the stupid of that name until it got old and Gwen exhausted her reserves of glare.
"Are you done?" Raised orange eyebrow. Lovely thing you'd want to bite right off for being so annoying and exciting all at the same time.
The laughs finally sighed off. "Yeah, I'm out."
But he got to know them. Gwen most of all because Ben ticked him the fuck off. While all he originally wanted was to make someone pay for his dad's death, things changed rapidly. It was like something snowballed outta control. He gave his assistance to those rebellion people and he got his help tracking down his dad's killer. Pretty easy enough on paper.
It was a mission that started it off. They were all like the subtle sneaky bunch of guys who went around with their heads ducked down as they sniffed for stuff against the System. He was the insider with info and background on the prison while Gwen was the medic of the sent out group that he backed up. She was a heck of a lot more useful than playing nurse for the idiots who got scraped in the battle and he gotta admit he was proud of the girl.
It was when you realized real life was real life when these soldiers didn't play gentlemen on medics. She was putting up a pretty good fight with her martial arts know-how for a time. But when there were two of them that were armed and she lost her own weapon in the scuffle, a gun was pointed at her head.
Not cool. He wasn't supposed to be part of the fighting group but push came to shove here. A jumping kick, a punch to disarm one of them and the guy who was pointing a gun at her head faced him. His own hand at his gun, he pressed the trigger before the soldier did on his own gun.
Gwen stumbled aside as the dead soldier slumped down in front of her. Kevin was going to shoot the other one too but Gwen's quick arm movement to catch his hand caused him to stop.
"No."
For a few seconds he just stared at her. Stuff changed in those few seconds because he actually got stupid enough to listen. He used the butt of the gun to knock out the soldier instead.
She waved a hand for them to leave.
From then on in, he was following her everywhere. Because, fuck it, he'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit he kinda liked the bossy, goody-goody nurse of the rebellion. Not the other one - whose name was Xylene. That old crone ain't his type anyway and she wasn't completely all nurse and stuff. She was more like medical scientist bullcrap like that. But whatever. Not her, anyway.
It had been a couple of years since that moment. He'd been working double agent for the rebellion and filching vital info from the government as sneaky as he could. He was getting away with it so far. She had to be grateful that he was putting his neck out this much just for her silly little rebellion.
But she ain't convincing him to like other people. He was just getting used to Ben nowadays and he wasn't feeling like beating the tar out of his not-best friend. But this guy looked exactly like Ben but with all the means for an actual confrontation. Which was like 'better' in his vocabulary.
Gwen grabbed his arm.
"What?"
"No."
"Why not? He's asking for it."
"No, he's not," she snapped, glowering at her cousin and redirecting her attention there. "You have to play by the rules of Los Soledad if you want to stay here for very long." Not-Ben scoffed. "You want to talk to Ben, right? Don't mess it up with this."
Not-Ben waved a hand dismissively.
The guy was getting on his nerves fast. He was one of those cocky, prissy little shits who pretended they were better'n everybody. He didn't like those people.
He knew someone like that by the name of Mike Morningstar; who had attempted to infiltrate into rebellion ranks. But he knew scum when he saw it, even if the guy glittered like an 80s sparklefag. He also knew a double agent when he saw one because it took one to know one. He's a traitor for the System, and that guy was a traitor for the rebellion. Same difference.
It just naturally ticked him off seeing guys like that.
Traveling into Los Soledad tunnels made him spend more time with the arrogant Ben-faced cousin than he really wanted. At first he'd been curious about the guy, but two seconds in and he just wanted to punch the guy a new hole.
The only great thing on that guy's side was that Gwen was there and he wasn't going to kill her family in front of her.
"Three HQs assimilated in record time," he began coolly. A flick of his head towards the other man displacing his white bangs in front of his face. "The government is quickly honing in on Los Soledad territory. They may not know you by name yet but they're starting to recognize the company you keep." Snide now. "Have you considered maybe, I don't know, dismantling, your tailing organizations?"
The brown-haired identical man responded incredulously, "Are you kidding? And risk putting these people out in the open? The system's gonna shoot them all out."
An equally incredulous snort. "Haven't you killed them already? I seem to remember that news about the HQs being torn down."
In a cool tone that his white haired twin was surprised matched with his own, "I didn't expect it. I took action as quickly as I could when I got a report."
Flatly, he responded, "Yes, you had a massive relocation of all the useless while you suggested the majority of your actual men to hold the fort and destroy leads. That, for the one you received a report on."
"Those people were families: the young and the old," the brunette defended, shaking his head in disbelief that his brother would even suggest any other option. "They had to be prioritized."
"Now you have numerous hangers on that risk you more than you get any progress out of." More sarcasm. "Well done."
With great frustration, that aged his brother's naturally youthful face, the man cried out, "You don't understand what it is to take care of kids - heck, to take care of people. What you'd use as a tactic is turn my forces into a battering ram." He swiped a hand in the air expressively, something that his twin was more likely to do. It was a sign of increasing aggravation for the rebel leader. "You can blab on me getting my men killed slowly while you'll kill them faster."
Even more defensive, he bristled at the suggestion and retorted, "I may get them killed faster but it would actually produce visible results. You're still here hoarding information and preserving your bare-thread peace." Looking at his brother through his nose, he continued, "You know that matter ended with Afghanistan. All the system understands now is the language of gunfire and you're pussy-footing about it!"
As if a an old wound has just been scraped back open, the brunette's shoulder s moved up and down as if breathing deeply to calm himself. "I've shot enough people to explain why!" was the edgy reply.
Snorting disbelievingly and condescendingly, he remarked, "You hold this morality and it won't ever help you free these people you're trying to protect." An afterthought. "Besides, you have as much experience with children as I do. Stop acting like an expert." A white eyebrow was raised.
"I've been married for six years now," his brother replied flatly, crossing his arms. "I have two kids."
He blinked once. Twice. "... And I know nothing about this somehow."
"I would've sent you the invite to the wedding and the birthdays if I knew where you were. Or your new name." He paused as if the scepticism was unbelievable he needed a moment to process the information. "I mean, Emilien? Seriously?"
He took the opportunity to scathingly comment, "I knew you wouldn't be able to pronounce it right."
"It's French; duh!"
"And you're my mentally challenged brother. Goes to show."
The rebel leader stared at the ceiling for a while to stop the inclination to childishly jump into a fistfight with his brother, or at least that's what he assumed it was for. Either that or his brother was just trying to connect two brain cells together, which he understood took a while. "Can we stop with the name-calling and get to the point?" his brother said finally.
"I'm done. I'm waiting for your point."
Clearing out his throat, the brunette started to say, "About the family I was telling you about earlier -"
He cringed. Ugh. "I'm not that excited about meeting them. We don't have to go through that awkward process of meet and greet. I don't care."
"I don't care if you don't care," was his brother's quick response to his discomfort. Of course, he had to glare. "Besides, you don't have to pretend to be a civil human being in front of them. I don't have the time or the excuse to get them to meet you without being noticed. Especially with that thing about your status right now."
"Good call. Inconspicuous is not you."
"Gee, thanks," his brother stated flatly, getting increasingly irritated at him again. Insulting his brother's intelligence or subtlety never got old.
Snidely, he added, "We were just talking earlier about getting to the point. Tell me to wake up when you've finished your prologue."
It was a quick answer that he received: "My family's going through State borders. I can't go there because of the mission through Guantanamo -"
Slapping his forehead, he snapped at his idiot brother, "You're continuing the infiltration procedure through that processing camp? You keep mobilizing while the System's eye is on you!"
"What do you want me to do?" his brother questioned, incredulous. "Slow down? Stop? Or maybe just kick down the front door of the government central so we can all look like the terrorists they're making us out to be?" His voice was steadily growing louder at each word.
"That's how we can finally show everybody what's going on! It's quick and on a scale where those blinded, scared sheep that call themselves people can get it through their thick skulls! It'll finally click that they can struggle!"
"You're suggesting more warfare against warfare! I don't want to see anyone be force to shoot -" his brother paused, breathing hard. In a firm tone, he swiftly emphasized, "I'm not talking about this anymore. We'll talk about this next time. I'll just let you know that I need you on that bus with my family 0700 on Friday."
He sneered. "You're putting me on a babysitting job."
"Pretty much."
He hissed at the mocking green eyes, "I hate you. So. Much."
"Love you too," his brother responded with leaking sarcasm.
Screaming frustrated at the roof in disgust, he quickly pointed at Ben when he finished exclaiming. His eye twitched as he said, "One day, they will find your body in a ditch somewhere."
"Cool. Whatevs," his brother responded dismissively. "Anyway, I could give you their pics so you can have plenty of time studying what they look like so you don't 'accidentally' lose them."
"If I don't do this?"
"Well, you can stick around in Los Soledad staring at the ceiling because I'm not letting you on any other missions," his brother suggested. The smile that got on his nerves was there. "This one will get you out of here faster. We'll get some inside job cleaning out your records. Know Kevin?"
Remembering from the earlier meeting with Gwendolyn, his mouth skewed to the side in distaste. "I'm familiar."
Lips upturned in a mischievous way that suggested his brother was enjoying some irritating inside joke, the man commented, "Heh, knew you guys would hate each other on first sight. Too similar."
His skin crawled at the idea. "Who are you to say?" he snapped.
"Your brother," was the brief response. "Anyway, he'll get you all cleared out and ready for Friday. Get studying. Here's files." A manila folder was handed his way.
He raised an eyebrow at the first picture that greeted him. "It's wonderful that you have a picture of Julie Freeman," he mocked. "I'm sure it must be valuable to you on cold, lonely nights."
It took a full five seconds before there was flustered blushing and defensive garble, "Fwa-bu-guh-wah? What are you even-?" For a moment, as if trying to collect his composure at what his brother just suggested, he just raised his shoulder stiffly. Then he snapped, "That's my wife!"
He blinked. He had to. It was incredibly surreal. The idea was a little difficult to coincide with his idea of Ben - the kid who was dysfunctional with girls as he himself was dysfunctional with people. The same boy filled with bravado had tried to hit on this attractive Native American girl. The one who immediately crashed and burned so hard at the attempt, even he laughed out loud at the sight. "Did you somehow poison her drink during a date that caused her debilitating brain damage?"
His brother placed his brown-haired head in his hands. "I don't care if you don't believe me," he said in defeat, not even looking up. "I mean, my last name should be the tip off anyway. But, whatever!" The brunette did breathing calming exercises to himself that made him raise an eyebrow. "Since you know so much about what she looks like since she's famous enough and I guess you know her, then you won't lose her." The green eyes finally looked up at him. "Make sure you don't accidentally ditch my kids if anything happens."
"You don't believe anything will happen during this little excursion?"
"Pfft!" the rebel leader snorted childishly at the apparent ridiculousness of the idea. He thought being caught by the System had been ridiculous and he had marks all over his body pouring ice cold realization over his head. "Look, even you know Julie Freeman and you don't care about the world." True enough. "This is a precaution. And if things get a little bumpy along the way."
"Huh. You have the innocence and optimism of a child," he remarked studiously, placing his fingers under his chin contemplatively.
"Thanks?" his brother decided to happily misinterpret.
"I was being condescending but take it as you will," he said simply, which earned him an irritated glower. He waved the folder in his hand. "This will occupy my time for a short while. In the meantime, would you at least send me some equipment to tinker on? I don't want to get bored after I finish with this." Said equipment could probably help assist his study in the first place. This Cooper person may have some heavily intricate firewalls that were definitely a step above the government's own security. But he had time and boredom on his side. He decided to leave and turned away from his brother.
"As long as you don't make anything go boom, I'll get Manny to drop some stuff over your way," his brother replied.
"If I'm making stuff go boom, you'll know because it will be in your face," was his retort, closing the door loudly behind him.
His brother's loud voice permeated past the closed door: "Ha-ha! Very funny!"
Love to Hate pt. 1
You were my savior in my time of need
Blinded by faith, I couldn't hear
All the whispers, the warnings so clear.
She was staring on the ground. For a few moments, her sight was blurry enough that she couldn't tell the rocks littering the pavement. Actually she couldn't tell what anything was.
The sound of a gun cocking was part of what she heard, other than a deep familiar voice stating conversationally, "… massive amount of recoil. There's only so much aiming that can be done when it displaces the angle badly enough to make the difference between a graze and an accurate headshot. The manufacturer should really attempt to improve the design by at least adding a recoil buffer with the most economic cost. But then that still adds up, and I suppose rookie-issue isn't worth," a few clicks which she couldn't quite tell what was what, "the additional finances."
Placing a hand over her face, she pushed away the hair covering her face and wiped off the grogginess from her eyes. She groaned lightly, feeling the pain on her middle when she tried to move. Too disoriented, she wondered where she was.
"Ben?" she called out, hazarding a guess based on the man's voice.
From the fuzzy view of still sleepy eyes, she watched the figure at the corner of her eyes stiffen at the name. As her eyes cleared, the man's body posture slowly eased back to a more relaxed one.
In a tone that implied he was pretending he didn't hear what she just said, he continued, "I could probably push the rotational speed a little bit more with a few alterations. This could hypothetically increase the average of two point five targets shot per second."
Memory slowly trickled in and lead was settling down her heart. But it was so broken that it probably didn't need any more to be crushed. Her voice came out in all the edges of the shattered pieces of herself, "You can't shoot half a person." Just the way he couldn't have half-shot her son.
With an equally dry tone, he responded, "It's an average. It's not necessarily going to be a whole number." The diction was suggesting that she was slow, which was why it was important to explain things to her carefully.
She hated him. Hated his coldness and indifference. Like all this was just banter. What kind of monster would simply put aside shooting - not killing, she refused to believe her child was dead - an innocent? Like it was nothing? Here he was focusing on semantics and not what she was implying.
Anger fuelled the tired muscles in her body to push herself upwards.
Her voice wavered, like a broken wind chime as she said, "You shot my baby." Her knees nearly gave way as she tried to push herself to a stand. Fury gave her the leg up. Her lips were trembling. Everything in her was trembling.
"Congratulations," he retorted dryly. "You want an award for your amazing discovery?" Red eyes blinked underneath the maroon jacket covering most of his face. The jacket looked like dried blood. She could barely see the outlines of his face. The only thing lit up were the bright red points and a bit of his pallid jaw line. Very familiar jaw line.
"You bastard," she choked out, close to tears. Her body was too broken, her mind too tired. She couldn't decide on whether she wanted to just crumple up and die, or rage and batter the world for taking her children.
"Not an accurate assumption," he said simply. "But you don't know me so you can just guess."
"What did he do to you?" she demanded, forcing herself to walk towards him. Not that she was able to quite get there. She wanted to know. In the back of her mind, she could feel the trickling down her eyes. She ignored it. "He's just a boy. What did he do to deserve that?"
"Not to me; haven't you been paying attention earlier?" he responded irritably, rolling his eyes. "Why do I have to keep repeating myself?"
He barely finished his rhetorical question before she snapped, "I'd rather be killed than to see my child be shot, you asshole!" Her body was shaking. Her ears were ringing. "You don't make decisions on human life on who's more useful or not!" Placing her hands over her face, she felt like the world was crumbling all over again.
"That's being decided for you long before you even knew," he responded calmly. In a mellow voice that was too frighteningly familiar. Her mind was screaming defensively about how she'd never heard anything quite so monstrous; that she wasn't allowed to put the puzzle pieces together. "Every moment of your life. You never let yourself notice. You can continue watching the progress of the war. You continue to openly declare your nationalism but secretly question it. I've watched the transmissions and interviews. They don't broadcast those anymore but I saw them."
"What are you talking about? What does this have to do with anything?" she asked in confusion, blinking past the tears. They were talking about her son. Now they were talking about her interviews? Was this man really just insane?
"Before the censors caught up on your lack of Americanism, is what I was talking about," he explained calmly. "But you shut up, because you've had enough being questioned about your alliance. Because you're just half - you're different. So the only sensible thing to do is keep your trap shut or be questioned by the System. Because you know, on the inside, there's no such thing as freedom here. Or the decision about who lives or doesn't live the next day." He was using a small piece of ragged cloth to methodically clean the rifle in his hands. He wasn't even looking at her. As if he knew what he was saying was right and unquestionable; that he didn't need to look up to confirm.
"What are you saying?" she snapped, desperate and frightened. Her heart was beating fast. She was reminded of that one time when she was jokingly asked about the war situation and blocking off international travel.
Journalists always expect people of her kind - the sports playing, attractive people type - to just go ahead and mindlessly drone about 'all hail' support to the government. There was a lot of blinking after she expressed a little bit more opinion than they truly wanted. This was a live broadcast. She had to apologize publicly when the government started putting pressure on her. They canceled her travel to the next tournament and accused her of being a spy for the opposing side until she backtracked her words.
She was one of those people who were inwardly questioning the decisions of the government. Silence was all she could truly get away with. It was an instinct that told her that there was looming danger for those who caused a ripple through the imaginary quiet of the regime.
One of her tennis-player friends was imprisoned for making comments about the government. There were evidences that piled up on her arms distribution for the enemy. This made no sense to her because the girl wouldn't even be able to operate a water gun if her life depended on it. Julie had never seen or heard from her friend again.
"Please keep pretending to be stupid. It's not as if it's annoying or anything," he remarked scathingly.
"Why is shooting my son even related to this?" she asked, her throat becoming dry at even mentioning what happened earlier.
"Because you've finally been introduced to the real world, you stupid woman!" he hissed, rising from his seat abruptly. He stomped to where she was so he could glare at her. "Because your son was going to die anyway," her heart burned at this "whether it was from my bullet, from a soldier's or a stray one!"
Releasing a shrill, frustrated cry, she raised her hand to slap his face. His larger hand wrapped around her wrist and the familiar feel of it was what bothered her, not the pain. The light finally fell on his face, the smug expression on it illuminated by the moonlight. Heart hammering in her chest, she stared at her husband's features.
"You hit me once and only once," he threatened coolly. "Try again and you will regret it."
It was too much for her. In one night, she'd lost both her children. One of which she'd seen be shot in front of her. Now she was being threatened by a face she trusted and loved. The idea that the face also shot her son broke so much more things than she could handle.
The world disappeared in darkness.
He found her confusing. Though his patience was a lot longer around her than he was with most people, he was slowly getting irritated with her insistence to leave and find her dead children. It was a touchy issue and her attempts to harm him increased when he emphasized it.
That bright eyed optimism; he'd seen it before. In green eyes he found annoying. The other was also combined with quiet rage, while this was one was just optimism in its purity. She told him outright that she knew in her heart that her children just needed finding.
If his hands weren't on the gun, he would have slapped a hand over his forehead.
The problem with people like her was that they always looked at the world as if it was like a dead body. They'd use the defibrillator on it even if the heartbeat has flat-lined when it definitely won't work. He couldn't possibly be faulted if he acknowledged sensibility. The closer the guerilla teams targeted the government, the closer the System was to pinpointing them. So far, a lot of the other HQ outside of Los Soledad were quietly metaphorically incinerated.
His brother heard of the fact that they were methodically being finished off. As expected, his brother reacted by moving faster to drill into the evidences needed to dethrone the government. That was the moment he wanted to slam his head against the wall. He despised the government as much as his brother did but he wouldn't stupidly repeat an action that yielded little result. If the door didn't push forward, one would logically pull it back, right? His brother would be the person to push it even harder.
Now his brother's wife was doing the same thing. Somehow this didn't surprise him. Even knowing what would happen in the end of her search, she continued to run like a headless chicken.
At some point, he sighed and just gave in. He let her consider their escape as a means to find her children. She constantly tried to fight with him or escape to pursue her kids on her own. At least, she was following cooperatively when he kept quiet about his opinion.
There was something different about actually interacting with her as opposed to just inspecting. Quiet moments of her laughing, kissing her children's foreheads at night, affectionate looks, determined expressions during tournaments. He felt like he knew her. If one was given enough time to just focus on someone for a very long time, with really nothing else to do, one honed in and connected. Not that he wanted to.
When he was given the assignment by his stupid brother, he focused on it since there was nothing else. Nothing else. Other than waiting rather briefly for the results of his medical confirmation that he was clear of cancer or about to die soon. Instead of stewing in his anger over that, he occupied his mind. Entirely and completely. It was easy enough to get carried away.
He openly blamed his parents for his disgusting genetics, blamed his brother for being the stronger sibling that likely parasitically claimed his strength. He blamed everyone for making it happen to him. Never himself. He was the victim. Nobody truly understood the alienation and he begrudged them for it.
One thing that nagged inside him was that he was secretly jealous of what his brother had. Normalcy. Humanity he couldn't quite achieve. Everything was given to his twin on a silver platter. And everybody still wondered why he was so damned angry at his brother.
The leadership of the rebellion. Loyalty. Love. A bright smile that his brother never really deserved. Of course, he was furious.
It was entirely voyeuristic to observe his brother's fragile happy ending. It was with a condescending stare that he watched its progression and knew it wasn't meant to last. No such thing in that world was going to stay for long. His brother knew it.
But that woman, sincere and whole as she was, had no idea.
So he focused on that. It was something alien. Very different to see someone be so removed from that world, yet be intricately connected to it. And hell, she was a better sight than his idiot brother.
Watching her up close was an entirely different experience. She was strong but fragile. Whole but broken. He thought this was going to bore him, to finally break the original illusion presented by just watching. It didn't.
The more resentment she held for him; the more she became a confusing contrast; the more she showed who she really was, the more curious he became. It was a tug of war - rebellion against gravity.
He constantly threatened to kill her if she kept on being a pain but he knew that would be met with a lot of hesitation. The strength she dredged in the pits of desperation was nothing short of admirable. As delusional as it was - as stupidly optimistic as she came off sometimes, he held respect for it.
He knew determination. Starkly different though they may seem, that was one thing they both held in spades.
She took notice. It wasn't very difficult to. She wasn't blind. At first her mind wouldn't put two and two together because it was just wrong to compare her husband with the monster who shot her son.
Maybe it was one of those one in a million chances - two unrelated people who looked exactly the same. The sense of familiarity in his speech - this was a bit of stretch because he was still cold, but he acted like he knew her - was a clue. But she continued to delude herself and ignore it.
They'd been travelling in the forest for a while. She'd convinced him to help her find her children. When he opened his mouth to say anything she didn't like, she became extremely vicious. That stopped after a couple of tries.
Eventually giving in to her curiosity, she asked. There was knowing dread that accompanied the question.
Pieces of paper in his identification folders were given to her dismissively while they hid off in a canopy of trees for a while. As she read the name, he loaded the rifle with more ammunition.
Émilien Asimov.
She heard herself breath a sigh of relief. It was misleading comfort that she clung to for a long while.
But there was always a nagging feeling that she pointedly ignored. Sometimes, that fact that his age was the exact same one as her husband's - surprise, surprise even his birthday would just appear in her mind. She used that frustration and angered fear as the fuel to bludgeon some soldier with a blunt weapon when her life was threatened.
Sometimes he would mutter to himself about how hungry he was and cursed that there wasn't any chili fries in the immediate area. It was like her husband's crazy obsession with smoothies. There were just too many things.
Even their strikingly similar faces became even more similar in the face of danger. She'd seen her husband adorn that expression a few times. They were only a few moments and they always sent chills to her spine. Every time. That same expression as he pulled the trigger. She wanted to puke when her mind bombarded her with the comparisons.
It was a knowledge that filtered through, that snuck in and settled in the deepest parts of her heart.
But she refused to acknowledge. After all, what kind of person would hurt family? What would it take?
Her answer was eventually given. All her own accord. She gained it by experience.
The answer was: Desperation.
The woman placed her hands over her eyes as if it would shield her from being a part of it. With a raised eyebrow, he slammed the butt of the gun over the soldier's skull much stronger than necessary. The flinch from her shoulders when she heard the sounds never got old.
He'd pulled at her unmoving, cowering self to coax her inside with him. The entire time, she couldn't look at them. The others were dead, after all. For good measure, he pivoted swiftly and shot the last soldier a few more times despite the incessant pull on his arms to stop. She was going to rip his jacket if she kept on pulling like that. If she also kept on blubbering that way, her eyes would be the same color as said jacket.
Roughly, he turned her around with him and continued on inside the small fort - it was a pit-stop for the soldiers to collect more weapons. The directions to the place were easy enough to understand once he got hold of the map in the communications tower.
She tiredly stumbled to the wall when he let her go and pointed the gun at the kid handling the storage room.
Gangly and thin still; probably a new recruit. The way the kid was pointing the gun at him made him want to correct the kid's hand positions. The kid was too rattled. Actually, he did go ahead and inform the kid to keep his fingers away from the view of the sight. Enough of a distraction so that the boy couldn't get a lucky shot in. He fired at the kid's right shoulder.
Then swiftly crossing the rooms in a few strides, he disarmed the boy.
What surprised him enough not to shoot the boy was the grip on his arms pulling the gun away. He turned his attention from the cowering new recruit into a pair of angry dark eyes.
"Don't shoot," she told him lowly.
"I don't know if you noticed, but you're making me point the gun at the wall," he stated flatly.
"Good," was her equally dry response.
With an irritated scoff, he turned to the rookie. "Get out of here. You're not part of the training exercise. You're useless to me," he snapped at the snivelling lump in front of him.
The kid rushed off past them. He was careful to observe that the boy wasn't carrying any of the weapons. After said rookie was finally out of the storage shed, Julie let go of his arm.
"Thank you," he uttered sarcastically.
"You're a madman and a bully," she said simply, looking at him accusingly through a curtain of bedraggled black hair.
There were five of them. Taller, older kids in his class. He didn't even really wanna be there. Despite being accelerated, the subjects were still mind-numbing. These kids were the loud lot who were scolded during class.
They targeted him because he was the younger child who still upstaged them. He was small even for a boy his age. Pale and reed thin body; thick glasses that constantly fell down his nose. He couldn't be a better target if he was wearing a big red bullseye on his forehead.
It started with verbal abuse, which he was used to. It happened more often that he could count - and he could do better mathematics than the teacher. His sharp tongue always worked best, because the others were always baffled by his words. This time, it annoyed them more for it to escalate. The leader of the group had grabbed his glasses and crushed it under his foot.
He tried to attack. He managed to get a few good punches in before they all ganged up on him. They'd taken off his long-sleeved shirt and tied him to a tree with someone's sister's jump rope. And left him there. For hours. In the burning afternoon sun. In a place isolated enough not to be found for a long time.
His white skin had blazed bright red and patches of it had blistered. Trying to escape made his skin worse off, being blistered and rubbing against rough tree bark.
His brother found him later - he couldn't recognize the blob of brown at the start - and untied the knot to free him.
"Just take the shirt and stop being picky!"
He wasn't going to wear some disgusting baseball uniform his brother sweated in just to get clothed.
It was at that point, trying to stomp away from his idiot brother, that he found the camera. Just sitting there innocuously where it probably saw everything that happened. But no one came.
His blood blazed more than his mottled skin did. He snatched his brother's backpack just so that he could smash the camera to bits.
"Stop doing that! It's illegal!" his brother had shouted, trying to reclaim his backpack.
For safety. To uphold the peace. For the good of the citizens of country. The words repeated like a mantra in his head as he smashed the thing to dust.
The next day, authorities came to reprimand the school on the destruction of government property. The school had called his parents in and he was suspended for a week on grounds of illegal activity.
There was a valuable lesson to be learned here. He knew children. He knew monsters. They weren't under the bed at all. Adults were useless, if only to make things worse. There was no one to rely on and everyone to blame.
"Bully maybe, but not mad," he responded simply. He was calmer than he expected to be. It was probably out of the acceptance that everyone was the same anyway. Why would he deny it?
She was quiet for a while - just looking at him. A moment where she took off the haze of anger and resentment for what he'd done to express a hint of curiosity. He hated that look most of the time. That look was always accompanied with the concept of his difference. But this was just curiosity. Now he understood what he hated about her: his inability to find a reason or the inclination to hate her.
"It scares me to think that you're sane," she said quietly, a wisp of breath that could easily be muffled even by the sound of the breeze.
He didn't answer. Instead, he focused on collecting good equipment he could use and things he could just destroy. He picked one machine gun then dropped it when the weight suggested its impracticality; picked up a reasonable amount of ammunition and packed it into his suitcase. Continuing to go about his business, he paid little attention to what his companion did.
The night was hot. Summer evenings were much easier to deal with because they didn't have the sun as a deterrent for him to take off his jacket. So he decided to remove the stuffy red jacket around him and felt a little less restricted afterwards. There was a barely audible gasp from behind him. He ignored it and continued to check the weaponry and start looking into the communications system.
"What happened to your arms?" she asked, her wispy voice sounding as horrified as he imagined her face to be.
Sometimes, there were still nights that bones and ligaments hurt. He didn't really take notice of the scarring on his body anymore. It was a long time ago. Back when he was stupid enough to get caught.
"The System," was his brief reply. Pivoting calmly, he threw her extra bullets for the pistol she refused to use. She caught it adeptly, out of pure athletic instinct. "Just in case it ever occurs to you to use it."
Dropping the arm that held the magazine, she looked straight at him. "What happened to your arms?" she repeated, in that cool quiet tone that suggested sincerity - like he hadn't turned her world upside down.
He hated the memories. The pain itself had left. He couldn't remember the physical sensation anymore but all the emotions of hatred, of despair, of fear - something he rarely felt - would resurface.
When his head bobbed from the water, he breathed in all the oxygen he could. Choking on the water that had burst into his mouth and his lungs, he forced himself to take in the air. His nose and his throat burned. He tried to keep his eyes closed just to make sure the lenses didn't get carried away into the water.
They wanted information on Dr. Azmuth's blueprints. They were able to detect him and had barrelled past his created identity into his old one. These bastards were good. Better than the last ones who had accidentally allowed him to get away. But they were getting as much information on those designs from him as someone who knew nothing about it. Because those were his designs too. Perhaps, he even had more claim over it than Azmuth - that ungrateful old coot.
He barely had time to take in more chunks of air when they dunked his head again.
Struggling, feet kicking and arms flailing. He stupidly let his eyes open in surprise at the force of his head hitting the water. When they pulled his head back - his scalp felt like it was going to come off, he could barely see the person interrogating him. He was squinting on the colored blobs and much more glaring light in front of him. Dread settled down his spine when he realized he could barely see.
Days blurred together and he couldn't understand when was when. He spent days with barely any food - God, he would kill an army for one chili fry - driving himself insane inside the dark, dank cell they placed him in. They thought he could still be convinced to cooperate. He gave them signs, teasing hints of vital information that was important but not quite, just so that he could continue living. It was just self-preservation at that point.
Criminals were there, too. Not just dissidents who honestly wanted to struggle against the System. They were the ones who didn't want to cooperate either. Too stupid to consider making money off of being the bastards that they were. These criminals made no secret of what they thought of him. He was a tall man, but the nutrient deprivation, impaired eyesight and general overall weakness meant he was easy.
He discreetly pocketed some cutlery and created a little distraction to be able to keep it. When someone made the point of threatening to do something - and how imaginative, it was in the showers - he made good use of the fork. Vitreous humor leaked in the process. He was myopic, not blind. He was able to observe that happening. Getting that up close to him was a bad idea.
Of course, he was sent into an even worse cell for his actions. Not just the dark one that kept him from finding out when was day or night. It wasn't really a cell. No, they just left him out in the open the entire day to work while the sun was at its highest. With barely a scrap of clothing on. They did it for a couple of days until he felt like killing himself at the sheer pain all over his skin. They even had to send him at the infirmary at the degree of burns he sustained. This was becoming an interesting pattern in his life. He would be surprised if he made it past forty, heck, even thirty at that rate.
He couldn't remember what it was that he did that caused him to be beaten severely once upon a time. It wasn't even subtle anymore. It was something that scraped off skin as it connected with his back. His arms were being held by metals restraints that also damaged his skin. Every time he was hit, his entire body snapped forward, causing the sharp restraints to tighten around his arms and lacerate his skin. Several instances of it was just loud cursing, blacking out, waking up, angered and pain screaming. Wash, repeat. It was very garbled and confusing.
He didn't remember much of it. His brain just blocked it out. Sometimes he woke up breaking up into a cold sweat, in a fetal position, gripping his arms around him protectively.
He forgot. Unfortunately, a part of him continued to remember.
He spoke about it in a way that suggested he was reading out a shopping list. All the while, he was dismantling the camera in the fort. There weren't enough interesting information in that storage area. Perhaps in the next pit-stop he'd find something more useful.
All the while, the woman in front of him just stood unmoving as he told his moment of stupidity in the past that had gotten him imprisoned. He was disinterested in it already and had just vowed to never be lax about his identity ever again.
Finally deciding to look at her again, her dark eyes looked like it was going to start crying again. He was starting to think she cried at the drop of a hat.
"They made you," she whispered quietly, like a sort of revelation.
Those words were baffling to him. What brought that on, he'd never know. He didn't really have the time or the patience to decipher through them. After clicking the suitcase shut, he picked up the jacket.
Speaking of which, he was itching for some chili fries right now.
I couldn't see, your dark intentions,
Your feelings for me
Fallen angel, tell me why,
What is the reason,
The thorn in your eye?