Chapter 8: Near the End
Rock switched on the incandescent bulb in the center of the ceiling that gave off a faint yellow light. Defective car engines, old air-conditioning units, refrigerators, and some other unusable appliances were disorderly stacked around. They were thickly covered with dusts. The ceiling had disheveled spider webs hanging as well. The whole place smelled like dirt.
Rock carefully pulled Revy's arm to guide her through the mess of the basement. Revy was still unable to open her eyes because of the dirt that had gone into them when Leopold had kicked her with a piece of the ground. She was trying to cleanse them by crying, but a bunch of the particles was still scraping under her lids. That made her utter soft curses along the way. That, somehow, allayed the pain a little.
Suddenly, she felt that the one pulling her halted. "What's the matter?" she asked.
Rock didn't answer. He just opened the door in his front and entered in, pulling Revy along. He didn't stop, yet. He guided Revy to a small lavatory and opened the faucet on. Water began splashing on the metal surface of the sink.
Hearing this, Revy immediately pulled her arm out of Rock's grasp and reached out for the water. She got a handful and began washing her eyes with it.
Rock left her side. He went to switch on the light. An incandescent bulb, brighter than the one outside, lit on. It showered the room with its daylight and revealed the shelves of chemical containers lined along the length of the room. He realized that they were inside the main chemical storage room of the building.
The flow of water stopped. Rock turned to its direction and saw Revy intently looking at him.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I need to have a job or else I'll die of hunger," he answered as if he had rehearsed it, repeatedly.
She couldn't answer this. She tried but she couldn't think of anything to say. She was hoping that Rock would talk even if it was only to blame her.
He granted what she was hoping for. "You, what are you doing here? Didn't I cut ties with you, already? You shouldn't follow me, anymore. I'm on my own, now."
Some urge for her to counter this pushed her to talk. However, she didn't know how. She only managed to say, "I…I'm sorry."
He sighed. "Revy, I can't go back anymore. I made my decision. I will not turn away from it."
"But—" Suddenly, she noticed Rock's bloody right sleeve. "Rock, you're hurt!" she gasped.
"This is nothing. More importantly—"
She swiftly approached him. "We need to mend your wounds."
"Revy, please…"
She glanced up at him, and, with her pleading eyes, he yielded.
"All right!" he said, dismally. "But promise me you'll escape from here after this."
Revy began tearing his sleeve. "You say this is nothing and yet you're bleeding to death!"
"Revy…"
She focused herself in bandaging his wounded arm, but, actually, she was just evading Rock's request. Now that she had the opportunity to take Rock back, she was planning to do everything to not waste it.
"Revy, are you listening to me?"
"There," she said, pulling herself a little away from Rock. "I think I've done a good job."
"Revy…"
"Where did you get those, anyway?"
Rock reached out to confine her face in both his hands. "Revy, I'm asking you, are you listening to me?"
Revy looked away from him.
"Revy…"
"I'll not promise you."
"What?"
"I'll not promise you."
"Revy, this place is dangerous even for you. I understand that you are one of the most dangerous women in the world, but this place is on another level. I'm not underestimating you, Revy, but you need to listen to me. You need to escape from here no matter what."
"No!"
Rock inhaled, frustratingly. "Revy, you don't understand."
"If this is a dangerous place, then why do you still want to stay here?"
"I need to finish something here."
Revy was completely confused at his words. She couldn't understand what he was trying to say. She knew that his wounds had been made by bullets, even though she was acting innocent about it. Now that he was being targeted, too, she couldn't understand why on earth he still wanted to stay and what was that something that he needed to finish.
"If you're dying to finish that something, then please, at least, let me help you," Revy pleaded.
"I don't want to involve any of you in this. Please understand, Revy."
"You have said it yourself. This place is dangerous. I can be your bodyguard."
"I can handle this alone. I need to do this alone."
Because of growing irritation, she harshly pushed his hands away, making Rock grimace in pain. Rock's right hand had smeared her cheek with his blood. She glared at him.
"Fine! But I'll not let a wimp in here by himself!"
Rock didn't look away from her eyes. Thinking about it, he had never taken a good look at her eyes even for once. In them, he could see her sincerity and determination. She would not leave him no matter what.
"Revy, I'm an assassin."
Revy reacted as if Rock hadn't talked at all, as if nothing came out of his mouth. She took his words as undertones from her other self that didn't want to be with Rock.
"I have a mission here."
Revy scoffed. She began asking herself if she had heard him right. An assassin? A mission? She thought that Rock was just making excuses. However, choosing something hard-to-believe was somewhat lame and even funny.
"Are you making fun of me?" she said. She put her hands on her hips and confronted his stare. "Do you think I would fall for that?"
"I'm a soldier of the Kutzmann project, and I'm here to finish the last mission my master had given me."
She let a moment to pass. "You are very in to this, aren't you?"
Rock understood, now, that words were already not enough. Revy didn't believe in miracles or paranormal phenomena so she definitely wouldn't believe a weakling like him a killer. So, he decided to show her his identity in a different way. He closed his eyes and opened them with his Devil's Glare.
Revy's reaction was fast as if she was a small cat having a tiger before her. She leaped away a meter, pulling and pointing her guns out towards him, showing her killer's eyes. She could feel his dominance. The room around her seemed to shrink in, and Rock seemed to grow bigger. Any moment, now, she thought she would snap.
And that, she did. She shot him twice.
…
The guards heard the shots. Immediately, they had the same conclusions. They found them. They were in the basement.
Leopold excitedly smile. He could feel his body wanting to kill, craving to see and taste blood.
The guards in black suit began running for the basement, each have a .45 mm pistol in hand. Seeing the commotion, Leopold's sanity faltered. The guards seemed the many people he had been with inside the glass cage in the Kutzmann laboratory, where he had been observed and experimented, scurrying away from him who had been only a child then. His hands twitched, and the next thing he did was what he had done at that moment in the cage a very long time ago. He commenced a massacre.
…
Revy was trembling in fear as Rock's dagger's blade touched her neck. She could have been dead, already, if Rock had been serious in killing her. She couldn't understand what had just happened. He had just disappeared when she had shot him, and when she had come to her senses, Rock was already at her neck, ready to kill her.
Revy dropped her guns on the floor, acknowledging surrender. This was the first time that she was rendered helpless by someone. She still couldn't make herself believe the situation. The man that she had branded a wimp had unexpectedly defeated her. Was this what he had been trying to say about being on another level? The level of people that had skill so close to being unimaginable?
Rock took away his dagger from her neck and stared at her. She was still shocked at him.
"Do you understand, now?" he asked.
He seemed had shouted at her from her reaction—a sudden explosion of a firecracker inside silence that seemed forever. She stepped back, panting.
Rock understood that she was in a state of trauma of having been on the verge of death. She didn't want to die, after all, he thought. He put his hands over her shoulders.
At this, Revy began gasping for air. She abhorred and feared his touch so much she felt her legs getting weak in time. She attempted pushing him, but her strength was like of an ant's compared to a beetle's. She wanted to get away, already. She wanted to flee away from those disgusting hands. She wanted to wake up from this nightmare.
Rock tightly embraced her. He conveyed his warmth with his human half. "You are still human," the mother of one of his target had once told him. "You are more human than my son." Shocked, he hadn't been able to move when she had come to embrace him, making his knife go through her old body. That had been the first time he had felt a human warmth, and, unbelievably, the first time his heart had changed its rate of beating. It had felt strange, but he had felt that time relaxation he hadn't been able to feel even once before. He guessed Revy was in need of that warmth, now. He wasn't sure but he was so pathetic that was all he knew.
When Revy began wiggling herself out, he embraced her tighter. He tried being sincere on what he was doing for that was what his insides was telling him to do. "I'm sorry," he repeatedly muttered in her ear. He softly said it with utmost gentleness as if he was talking to a baby. "Please, forgive me, Revy. Please."
Soon he felt warm drops on his left shoulder. "Why do you need to remind me of that?" she said.
It was the memory she was trying to forget, but he had impressed deeper in her mind. It was when she had first killed someone, where her innocence had been erased, when she had managed to flee from the incredible terror of death. It had been the same. She had been about to get killed by the person she had trusted so much when she had found a gun. She remembered firing even after she had been only hearing clicks. Feathers from the pillows had been fluttering around the room. And the same as their number had been the questions she had wanted answers for at that very moment.
…
Leopold sat on the sofa with the bloody dagger in his right hand and a silenced pistol in his left. He was there with the dead bodies of the guards that had fallen victim to his thirst for blood. For him, it was their fault for reminding him of that thirst. He wouldn't have killed if they had just remained immobile.
Now he glanced up the stairs, looking at the location of the soundproofed room where Bernardo Faust's transaction with Eda was taking place. He stood up and began walking for it. First phase, accomplished. Second, commencing. He threw the gun away and walked on, grinning excitedly. In just a few minutes, everything would be over.
…
He pulled himself away. "I'm sorry," he said.
She was not looking at him but at her feet. She didn't want him to see she was crying even though she knew he had realized it, already. Knowing and seeing were different things for her, as if it would make a difference. However, it didn't.
Rock wiped her tears with his handkerchief. He knew his embrace had been effective to calm her down, but he also knew that she had become wary of him. "Forgive me if I've rekindled your undesirable past."
"It's okay," she said, pushing away his hand. "Don't mind me."
At last, Rock smiled in relief. By now, there was a big possibility that Revy would consider escaping away from the place. "All right." He put his handkerchief in Revy's right hand. "I will get Eda out from here. You just think of getting away from this place."
She held the damp handkerchief, but she didn't answer or even looked at him. She remained immobile even after Rock had started walking away. She didn't let herself move to watch him arrive at the door. She didn't want to see him at the moment.
Before Rock could place a feet out the room, he looked back. Revy was still showing apathy at his leaving. Truthfully, he felt at ease at that, but at the same time, sad. He went out and closed the door behind him.
Revy trembled as her tears began to flow once more. It was true that she had been afraid of him—too afraid really—a while ago, but still she couldn't understand why she wanted to go and run after him. She bit her lower lip as she crumpled the handkerchief in her right hand, controlling herself from moving. She wouldn't do what her heart was telling her to do. She would show him that she still had her pride as he had his. She would show him that—
She couldn't endure her heart anymore. She ran for him as fast as she could. When she found him at the foot of the stair leading to the first floor, hesitating to go up, she called him. Rock turned on her, and, before he even realized who was it, she was already burying her face in his chest.
"Revy…" he said. "Didn't I tell you to get out of here?"
"Idiot! I'm not going without you!" she said.
Rock tried pushing her away, but everytime he put pressure on her shoulders, she resisted by embracing him tighter.
"Revy, why are you so stubborn? I don't want you to get involved in this. Please, get out of here, now."
"I won't."
"Revy, you don't know who I am. The person you have always been with is not really me. He's a different person."
"I know who you are. You are Rock, the wimp. There's no one else."
Rock sighed in exasperation. It would hurt but he needed to say it. "I haven't meant all I've said since the very first time I met you," he said, straightforwardly. He felt Revy froze. "Now, do you understand? I've been just acting, playing a role all of this time. Since the time I can remember, I haven't been able to react on things without assimilating an ordinary human. You can shoot me endlessly but you won't see a twitch on my face. I don't know which is sadness from which is joy. I can be a living machine if my master tells me to. Revy, don't believe what I've been saying to you all this time. It's just so because it's a part of my mission."
Revy didn't move for a time. She was very confused at the moment her head hurt. What was he trying to tell? What was that acting he was talking about? Was this a bluff to convince her to leave? No, she would not fall for it if it was. She knew he was just trying to make her leave. She would show him that she was determined to take him back.
"Liar!" she said.
"I'm not lying. I was raised as a tool. I don't have true feelings. I only copied them all. The way people talk, the way people think, and the way people react. Even the way people feel for another. I'm an empty box. Fill me and I'll show you my content."
"I don't care a bit," she said. "Whatever you are, whoever you are, I…I will still love you!"
"There are many ways to react to that," he said, coldly. "I could say I love you too, or I have someone I love, already. I could kiss you or say I'm sorry. There are just too many possibilities. I will choose from those the most suitable choice for the situation. And now, where my intention is to make you leave, I would simply say, 'I'm sorry.'"
She embraced him tighter. "I will not let you go."
"Article 118: Never let outsiders die in a mission," he said. "I'm sorry to do this, but I should not let you stop me." He sent a fast palm chop to Revy's neck, which made her lose her consciousness. Afterwards, he carried her back to the chemical room and laid her on a bench in there. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have met you. I should have rejected your job offer from the start. I shouldn't have involved you too much with me." He stood up and went for the door. Looking back, he muttered, "I will finish this mission, no matter what. Forget about me, I'm begging you. Pretend that you haven't met me before." That said, he got out and pulled the door closed.
To be continued…
Author's note: For those who didn't know yet, I have revised my fifth and sixth chapter. Sorry. For my readers who had read the unrevised chapters and was suddenly got lost when the seventh got out, please accept my apology. I forgot to note in my seventh that I revised the fifth and the sixth.