The Path She Chose
Sand Island Base
December 07, 2010
Nagase's memory
---
"There's no use talking to that blockhead Base Commander. He treated the president like a fool because of his peace policies" I said.
"What about his Adjutant, Captain Hamilton?" asked Grimm.
"Right. Captain and I will talk to Hamilton, Grimm, you go let Pops and Genette know"
As Archer, Blaze and I taxied into our respective, adjoining hangars, we immediately noticed something odd: the hangars are devoid of life when at least a few mechanics should be on duty each time the squadron returned from sortie.
"Captain, something's wrong" Grimm noted.
A few seconds passed before he finally replied on the radio, "…bring your pistols along and proceed as Edge suggested. Stay alert"
Ever since our Cruik Fortress sortie, Blaze had been strange. He seemed distracted as if preoccupied with something and was much quieter than usual, forgetting to crack even one of his crappy jokes. When we met up at the corridor leading to the stairs of the Offices building, he suddenly grabbed my shoulders and pinned me to a wall. He then stared at me so seriously and intently for a few dozen seconds without saying a word. Those seconds seemed to be much longer in my perspective as we stood there looking at each other in the empty, dimly-lit corridor. If it weren't for the lack of lighting, he would have noticed my burning cheeks.
"Captain" I finally broke the silence, "what are you-"
I stopped when his serious face turned into a gentle smile. He let go of my shoulders, straightened up and let out a deep breath. His overall demeanor seems to be much more relaxed than it was before
"I will go to Hamilton" he said, "Nagase, you join up with Pops and Genette. Get to the armory and arm yourselves"
"What happening?" I asked.
"Trust me" he replied, "now go"
He waited until I rounded the corridor before moving on. Naturally, I had no intention of leaving him alone. I tailed him to the 4th floor corridor leading to Hamilton's office. The adjutant –looking hurried- was about to exit his office when Blaze elbowed him in the face. I could see his body falling over as the office door closed. After quickly shrugging off my shock at Blaze's action, I crept up to the door.
"Hamilton" Blaze said, not bothering to address the rank, "care to explain?"
"Wilhelm Grunder Schulz," said Hamilton, his voice lower, "if you weren't Grunder's favorite nephew, I would have you killed long ago for your arrogance"
"We were never friends so let's quit this charade. Why did the 8492nd ambush us?"
"Us?" Hamilton asked, "I see. So those two are your friends now, traitor"
"Stop stalling" Blaze warned.
"The Wardog has been too effective in its role in this stupid conflict. The 108th TFS must be buried, your wingmen must have died at Cruik; that was your mission. But you failed. The higher-ups deemed you a threat and tasked the 8492nd to set up an ambush"
"What about Joseph? Did he agree to this?" Blaze asked.
"Your uncle was the one who gave the order for the ambush. Knowing that self-righteous man, I bet he can spin the result both ways. If you died, he would gain respect of getting rid of your squadron. If you survived, he could boast the superiority of his blood and secure his position within the consortium"
"If I survived?"
"You will be sent to Sudentor for retraining- you know what that means"
"Brain wash…" Blaze reiterated.
"So what now?" Hamilton asked.
Blaze remained quiet.
"If you let me live, I will make sure you can't escape this base" Hamilton warned.
"I didn't come here just to see you" Blaze said, and after a pause, continued, "you were just a bonus. I came for this"
"Remote detonator?" Hamilton asked. "Ah, hahaha…I see. You were prepared. That was clever. I would never have searched my own office"
"Now stand up" Blaze ordered. "Turn around"
"Schulz," Hamilton said, "if you walk out of that door, you won't be welcome in whichever world emerges victorious out of this conflict"
"I know…" Blaze said, "But I chose poorly out of spite, out of anger for the death of my parents, and I want to amend for it"
"To each his own reasons, huh? Sadly, I don't have your courage how much I detest the Gray Men's methods. All I want is South Belka's freedom, and they are the only ones who can deliver it"
"It's never about what's right. It's about who wins" Blaze said. "The winner shapes his version of history"
"At least we agreed on one thing" Hamilton replied.
A few seconds of silence passed before I heard a noise akin to the hard object hitting a person's skull. The 'thud' that ensued confirmed my mental image of Hamilton collapsing after being struck by Blaze's pistol. Moments later, an explosion in the vicinity of the base's power generators rocked the building and shut off all power to the entire base.
I don't know why, but seeing my former flight lead for the first time in years made me remember long forgotten memories. That night was when I first found out the truth about him. Back then, I didn't realize what Hamilton's words, "You won't be welcome there," meant. But after the international Gray Men hunt of 2011 and the fact that Wilhelm was related to the chairman of Grunder Industries by blood, I understood. Though Harling promised to protect us by keeping our true identities out of his 2013 official report and referring to the Sand Island pilots with their callsigns only, he cannot protect Blaze from prosecution or risk his own reelection campaign. Perhaps that's why Blaze chose to disappear, chose to live the life he does now.
"I had hoped to protect you by not involving you. I'm sorry for everything" he said.
Protect, huh? I think I understand him a bit better now, but that doesn't free him from what he did. Taking the blood of those Gray Men scum serves only to dirty his hands, to make him a murderer.
I realize that my hatred for him - putting all my anger towards a dead man -was a tool - the crutch - that enabled me to get as far as I did. But now he's alive, I feel vulnerable, and confused...
But, I know one thing for sure: I want to see him again, I want to ask him everything I feared to ask years ago. And to do that, I must keep doing me job.
Airbus A380-900
Flight 413 to Lyons, Usea
Altantic Ocean
August 28, 2015
Present Day
---
When I came to that day, the battle was still raging and Wilhelm was nowhere to be found. I made my way back to the convention hall and managed to slip back into crowds. Like that abandoner of man said, the SDF were no match for the defenders. It was somewhat more of a suicide than an attack. When the skirmish ended an hour later, the Space Center sustained only minor damage with critical structures except for the launch pad of the mass driver escaping unscathed. Of course, that meant the shuttle launch had to be rescheduled and the whole Peacemaker project stalled.
Once I reactivated my mobile phone, there were multiple voices messages: one from Tanaka, who I texted back, while the rest from that irritating boss of mine, demanding details of the attack and ordering me on the first flight back to Interpol HQ. We have always butted heads on most matters but in rare cases like this one, we both agreed that a huge can of worms is going to come out of yesterday's incident.
I can already see one worm coming out of that can. It's in the form of money, money that I had to spend to get this first flight back to Lyons, Usea. Osea grounded all commercial air traffic for a day, the 27th, so getting the earliest flight back isn't cheap. There's no way I'm not footing the bill for this expensive Airbus seat. Interpol had better reimburse me- sigh...but I guess there are worst problems now than this, huh?
My attempts at trying to get more details on the Space Center attack led nowhere. The Osean military remained quiet on the matter; only the intelligence agencies of the participating nations of the Peacemaker project were given any information. Different news channels brought 'experts' to discuss matters on national television. But in the end, they could only speculate on what happened.
The voice of a little girl to my right – playing with her mother who was seated next to the aisle - provided a pleasant distraction. For a brief moment, there I thought I saw Sherry, Snow's surviving daughter. The girl next to me seems to about 8 years old, just like her. Since her parents murder, I have been taking care of her. Well, when I say 'taking care', it doesn't mean she lives with me. My job rarely lets me go home, so leaving a kid home alone is irresponsible. I enrolled her in a boarding school on the outskirts of the city of my permanent residence and visited her from time to time when I have the chance. It's been 2 months since I last saw her. She was always cheerful, always smiling; very strong for someone her age. I'm surprised she wasn't broken by the sight of her family dying before her eyes.
Looking at my reflection on the oval-shaped window to my right, I thought: I could never be like as strong as her. Despite appearances, events easily change me. Surprised? I would expect you to be. I never told anyone this, but my father was an OAF colonel who wanted me to serve in the army. I followed his wishes, at least for a while, and enlisted at 19 years old, becoming a medic. My old man was never a kind man. I didn't know what mother saw in him. She kept mentioning the goodness in him and that he was just stressed out at work. But everything I saw was of the contrary: he rarely comes home and on the occasion he does, he was often times drunk. He never did this before but one night I came home to find him abusing mother. That was the last straw. I snapped. All I could remember was breaking one of his arms.
My mother divorced him and we moved to another city. I enlisted in the OADF to support the both of us and to spite my old man who had repeatedly voiced his resentment towards the air force. He sent us letters every year expressing his regret for what he did but we never replied. Eventually the letters stopped and we severed all contact…
... I haven't noticed it till now, but the starry night sky outside is so beautiful. It was as beautiful as seeing it from the cockpit of a jet. But from the bubble canopy, everything was much closer, much more personal . . . I loved that life, at least until the Gray Men took it away from me. I won't stop until they are all destroyed.
But would exacting revenge really solve everything? I kept asking myself that question even though I know there's no simple answer to it. Gandhi once said "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." It sounds simple enough but how many of us actually appreciate the depth of those words? Many of the world's problems were caused by human nature: greed, desire, lust – of people hurting others. But the problems propagate because we want "justice", we want revenge for wrongs done unto us. I know logically I'm doing my job for the wrong reasons, but my heart desperately wants to exact this justice, to make those people feel the hurt I'm feeling. But, as to what end, I haven't figured that part out.
...Yawn…I like thinking such things: they lull me to sleep better than counting sheep… Come to think of it, I haven't slept in 30 hours…
Nagase awoke to the sounds of screams. They were coming from the front of the aircraft, past the blue-white curtains which separated the different compartments from view. Rather than the screams themselves, noise similar to small-arms fire that accompanied those screams worried her more. Since the female detective was seated in the window side front row, she approached the blue-white curtain separating the rearmost compartment - where she was in - from the one in front. A woman suddenly barged through the port side curtain, knocking Nagase down onto the leg space of her seat. The mother of the girl seated next to her tried to help her up, but the detective was distracted by the earlier woman who knocked her down being shot dead.
A man carrying a micro-Uzi entered the compartment soon after, joined by three others on both the starboard and port aisles. Though no one seemed to be breathing for one second, all hell broke loose the next second when the four men started opening fire indiscriminately. The first man that entered aimed the gun towards the girl's mother and Nagase and opened fire. The former pilot felt a sharp pain on one part of her body as bullets poured into the mother on top of her, shielding her from certain death. The woman's collapsed body shielded Nagase from view of the killers. She could only watch in horror as the girl's head, shock evident on her face, tumbled to the side from the impact force of a bullet.
The next moments were chaotic: screams, gunfire, and the smell of gunpowder and fresh blood filled the air. She didn't understand what was going on. Thinking it was all a nightmare, she closed her eyes and bit the inside of her lip. The taste of blood, the persisting pain on the left side of her body, the weight of the woman on top of her and the open, lifeless eyes of the girl staring at her from her death seat confirmed that she's indeed in a nightmare, albeit a real one. Those men were really killing off passengers. As the gunfire moved further away from the lower to the upper compartment of the double-decked aircraft, she looked down, finally noticing her hands trembling.
Edge didn't know how much time passed before the screams stopped and before her trembling hands calmed down. When it did, the eerie silence that ensued was unnerving. Occasional rat-tat-tat of weapons fire silenced groans of wounded survivors. Although the former pilot dared not move, she couldn't even if she tried. Any act of trying to move the still-warm body of the woman on top of her was painful. Plus, it could give her location away.
Despite that, ICPO detective knew she couldn't stay like this forever. Blood loss will kill her. To her advantage, however, the aircraft began pitching down; it was descending at a much faster rate than legally allowed. The steep descent angle directed some of the woman's weight away, allowing Nagase to push her off with much less effort than before. She gritted my teeth, pressed down on her wound and pulled on to the nylon strip of the seat belts as she got up to her feet. The scene that greeted her was horrifying. Blood splatters painted the compartment in some sort of sadistic abstract art. Blood dripped onto head and shoulders due to the aircraft's steep descent. The feel, sight and stench of death were so overwhelming that she almost vomited her dinner out. Only the pain of her contracting abdominal muscles prevented it from happening. She stumbled into the lavatory separating her compartment from the forward one and rummaged through the mirror cabinet to find a small bottle of alcohol. Biting down hard on a pillow, she poured the antiseptic onto the bullet wound. The immense pain drew tears from her eyes.
"No pain, no gain, no pain, no gain", she thought repeatedly despite how inappropriate the use of the proverb was.
As Nagase finished dressing her wound using the covers to the pillow, the A380 began leveling out. She peeked around the door of the lavatory and cautiously moved towards the front of the aircraft. Similar grim scenes greeted her at each compartment. She initially stopped to check for pulses, hoping for survivors, but after a dozen or so, gave up. She would go mad if she sees another open pair of dead eyes. Despite all the shooting, however, the plane interior was relatively unharmed. There weren't any bullet holes.
"The ammo used must not have been armor piercing," she thought, looking out at the window which showed the dark, 4:00 am sky and ground moving up quickly towards the plane. "And the speed at which they went about doing these. Must be professionals"
The sole survivor of the shooting turned on the nearest head-rest monitor and realized that they were already over land, Usean land. Seconds of rough vibrations followed as the large aircraft performed a belly-landing on a largely empty plain. Only several power poles – which were effortlessly swept away by the massive 500-ton plane - stood in its way.
She hid at the sound of voices coming from the cockpit portion of the plane. Their voices drew closer until Nagase saw their feet entering the compartment she was in. Her heart beat quickened by each step they took towards her. To make matters worse, the dressing to her wound was already soaked with blood. But then the feet stopped in front of the port side emergency exit hatch. One man opened it and deployed an air-inflated rubber ramp.
"Our ride is waiting" said one man in Osean, but with a distinct accent the ICPO detective couldn't recognize.
"Now there's only one thing left to do" said another deeper voice.
She jumped slightly at a gunshot 'bang' and saw the owner of one pair of feet collapsing. The remaining 4 men moved out of view and down the ramp. When Nagase peeked out the window, she could only see a pair of headlights disappearing into darkness.
"This certainly can't be a hijacking. What kind of hijacker kills all his hostages, lands the plane as if wanting it to be found, then runs away?" Nagase asked herself the rhetorical question. "This is terrorism"
She struggled onto her feet and moved closer to the recently-shot man with a gunshot wound to his right cheek. His eyes noticed and looked at her, but the rest of his body seemed to immobile. Kicking the micro-Uzi off his left hand, she heard him trying to speak despite blood clogging up his mouth and drenching the mask he was wearing. Confident the man was no longer a threat, she inched closer to his face.
"Emmeria… not fault… mistake …Pleas-" he trailed off, breathing his last.
A/N: Yay. 2 reviews. Thanks yellow and patriot. The first 3 conversation lines of this chapter are credited to AC5 game. And my inspiration for the latter part is credited to Makarov and IW. Players of Modern Warfare 2, you know what I'm talking about. *wink*.