Author Notes:
Hey! Site updates!
I decided to go ahead and make a little cover thing for the story. It's made up of the Japanese characters 遺産 "isan" which comes from the complete title of the story: スターフォックスの遺産 "Star Fox: Legacy" A full explanation can be found in my user profile.
But that's enough blabbing from me. Time for more story!
/
/
"He's in my head... That goddamn bluefur is in my head."
"Easy there–"
"How much do you know about Cerinians?"
"They're... different."
"Well no shit, genius, but how much do you really know? How much do you actually understand?"
"Why? Is it important?"
"When I start telling you strange things, when I start telling you about things that shouldn't be possible, I need you to promise that you won't think I'm insane, or just making up random crap. I need you to believe I'm not lying."
"All I want is the truth; your truth."
"Don't say I didn't warn you..."
/
低置に味方
Friends in Low Places
/
It hurt.
It was worse than any torture he'd been subjected to, any pain resistance conditioning he had to undergo, but this was a different kind of pain. It went deeper, cut harder, flooded every nook and cranny of his mind, shredded any sense of awareness. For a few moments at least, he didn't know where he was, what he was doing, or how that pain got there. Then it came back to him.
He was strapped to an uncomfortable examination bed, in a spartan medical bay, aboard Cerberus. There were two people standing over him: a skinny avian and an older ram, Adrian and Malcolm were their names.
There is nothing you can do.
No! No more! He couldn't listen to that voice anymore. Nothing was worth what he put everyone through. Fuck him! Fuck his revenge! Fuck his blood-money!
"You... you have to stop." he managed to say. His voice came out gasping, ravaged by what the drugs had done to him...
Holy Hell, what have the drugs done to him?
He could feel some of the deliriant effects of Substance D, some kind of amphetamines, a few others. There were some neurostimulators in there also, probably to keep him 'grounded' in reality, such as it was. He could still hear the others speak, see the room around him, and his memories were more or less intact. This made sense, the Cerberus crew wanted to question him, not send him on a drug-trip for the ages.
"We're not stopping anything until you give us a reason to, you know this." the ram reminded him.
"The ship!" you goddamn idiot! He wanted to add that on, but didn't, "You have to stop the ship! Stop it!"
Whatever other effects the psychoactive cocktail had, it did at least break free of that 'rut' the bluefur had on him. He just didn't care at this point anymore.
"I will do no such thing my friend, not without a damn good reason." that stubborn old ram said in his dull, patronizing tone, "Do you happen to have a damn good reason for me?"
Oh for the love of–
They won't believe you.
Fuck you!
"He knows... He's waiting..." gotta make the words work, gotta make them come out right. Those drugs certainly didn't help with the speaking. "He knows and he's waiting!"
"Who?" Malcolm asked.
You are nothing– no, worse than nothing, you are a worthless coward ...
"Urrggnn! You have to stop! Now! or it'll be too late!"
This wasn't the drugs, not this time. The bluefur was in his head now, doing hell only knew what. He could handle drugs and torture and such, but he was never conditioned for this–
The two others were saying something, but he couldn't make out anything they said, not over the domineering voice in his head.
And now, you will suffer for it.
And another spike drove into him, hitting him harder than even those crazy drugs they injected in him before. 'icy daggers in the head' would've been a picnic compared to this. There simply weren't words, to describe this. He didn't even hear his own voice scream, so smothered by whatever the hell was happening in his head.
He didn't remember blacking out. It was sort of like slipping into sleep, drifting into a dream without knowing realizing you've dozed off, but not really. For one, it hurt, like hell, probably worse so. After some time, it happened the other way, and he phased back into that slightly delirious state of consciousness.
Mercifully, that damned bluefur had finally shut up, and his mental fingers finally left him alone. Good, but also bad, because this meant he was focusing his attention on something else.
The effects of the drugs were still dancing in his head, sure, but this swirling delirium was a welcome step down from whatever it was the bluefur did to him. Were those alarms in the background? Maybe a conversation? Yes, it was a conversation.
"Ooh, this Harrow fella's a real spookster, ain't he?" the ram said. He sounded frustrated, agitated.
"You keep trying to get something from our guy here." He heard the bird said, "I'll head down to engineering and–"
Wait–
"No!" He remembered now, this was how Harrow picked them off. This was where his attention was focused. Come on. Form words. Spit them out... fucking drugs, "don't do it, don't take the bait."
"I'm going down there." Adrian said, not really caring. What will it take to get these assholes to listen? "We're sitting ducks until we reset the reactor failsafe."
That's gonna be the least of your problems in a minute. He began forming words to speak, but–
"Wait just a minute, Ardy" the ram stopped Adrian, "Now, you'd best explain yourself son."
Finally, you stuck-up old coot, you took the hint! Congratulations!
"He knows, and he's waiting..." Oh come on, they know this already. Complete the thought, use words, spit it out. "He'll pick you all off one by one from the shadows. That's how he works."
"You mean he's already aboard the ship?" Adrian asked. Um, no shit. Of course he's already aboard.
"How did he get aboard?" Malcolm demanded, "Where is he?"
Hell if I know. Broadly speaking, he's aboard your damned ship, but whatever, "I don't know, but if you take the bait, he will be there, and he will kill whoever you send."
"That's not a problem." Adrian assured, "I'll bring backup–"
"Then he won't be there!" Yeah right, sure, take this creep for a fool, "He's not stupid, he won't spring his trap if you just try to trap him back. He'll slink away and try something else... something worse."
"How in hell is he going to know?" the ram questioned again, growing more irritated with each passing second, "Who are his accomplices?"
Really? You guys are still thinking in conventional terms? How in hell to explain what he does so they'll believe? He knew what Harrow does, he's seen the patterns, just not the details of how. Move! Time is a factor! Words! Speak!
"He'll know, he'll just know, and he'll hunt you all down and knock each and every one of you until there's nobody left... and then he'll kill me too." may as well go for the sympathy card, for what it's worth.
"Then cooperate with us, help us." the bird said, catching on to this, "We can protect you."
Well great job so far guys! Here I am, whacked out on hell only knows what you injected into my system, getting mind-screwed by some Cerinian dickwad with a chip on his shoulder–
"No, you can't, not from him..." If they'd experienced what he did firsthand, if they'd known, they'd change their tune, "Shit, you can't even protect yourselves."
Wait, did they know he's Cerinian?
"We'll just see about that." the ram replied with his stubborn confidence. See how far that'll get you.
"You have no idea what you chumps are up against, do you?" How dull are these guys? Did they not know what it meant to go up against this creep? "Harrow is Cerinian, a damned bluefur, and a freaking powerful one too."
"What kind of problem?"
/
"I know what happened here, skip ahead. Tell me how you figured into the crew's plans."
"Hmph, I didn't."
/
"Alright..." the ram accepted, letting out a gruff sigh, "I take it you've got some kind of plan in the works?"
Adrian turned to the white wolf, suspicion glaring from those eyes, "First: we sedate him."
"What? Hell no!" he protested.
"You're a liability, just like you said." the skinny avian said in a dry voice while he prepared another autoinjector tube, "If Harrow is in your head like you say, then I'm not going to take any chances with what that means. I'm putting you out." and he emptied yet another dose into his system.
"You're making a mistake! Detox me! Let me on my feet you... you..."
He grew tired, very tired, and everything began to fade into a dull blackness.
/
"They knocked me out like a light, put me out of the way. I don't know for how long, but I didn't stay that way though."
/
The first thing he remembered was a voice, that voice, and the one word it said without saying anything.
Awaken.
With that word, he gradually returned to reality, growing aware, grounding himself in the world he found himself in. He wasn't strapped to the examination bed his time, not anymore, but was instead laying face-down on the med-bay floor. The bruises and sore spots he felt let him know it wasn't a gentle fall getting there. His head cleared up too, with the effects of those drugs waning away, but there was something else.
His slowly returning sight soon found a pair of feet in front of him. They were canid, strapped into a pair of athletic sandals, and the fur on them was blue.
"Stand up." Harrow ordered, and the pale wolf pulled himself onto his feet.
The Cerinian didn't stand quite as high him, but the shorter stature did nothing to diminish his presence. Harrow stood there, feet firmly rooted to the floor and arms folded across his chest. The hood of his sweatshirt dangled off his shoulders, displaying the razor sharp vulpine features of his face, and the laser glare of his eyes that bore straight through the wolf in front of him.
"I'll admit I'm disappointed." Harrow told him, his voice dripping with disgust, "You were stronger than the others; smarter, cunning, fearless, unscrupulous. You were ready–"
/
"'You were ready'? What did he mean by that?"
"I'm... not sure. There were rumors, but there always are with Cerinians–"
"What rumors?"
"Ghost stories, more like... The best of us who did work for Harrow –the smartest, most skilled– sometimes they would just... disappear. They'd go out on a job one day, and never come back. most of us didn't think much of it, it's a tough life we scratch out, and people die or get caught all the time. Somehow though, I couldn't shake the feeling that something just wasn't right about it. I mean, the best got to be 'the best' because they kept coming back, they always did, even when it seemed like they wouldn't. For them to just drop off the map like that, without leaving a trace... It just wasn't right."
"In my experience, if something doesn't seem right, it usually isn't."
"I know, that's why I was done, that's why I wasn't going to do this anymore. I knew I was getting to that point, that 'elite' position, and I didn't want that to happen to me. After this last raid, I was just going to walk away from it all. The Cerberus kink just gave me an excuse."
"These raider gangs just don't let their members walk away like that. They keep track of you, hunt you down, especially the bigger ones."
"And that's a chance I was willing to take."
"If you'd have gotten free, if you'd made it out, what would you have done?"
"Anything else, anything at all."
"You were truly that desperate to get away?"
"If it's so hard to believe, then let me finish, and you can judge me then."
"Right. So Harrow caught up with you, but he didn't kill you."
"No. I fought back..."
/
Before the Cerinian could finish the sentence, the wolf shot his hand forward in for a knuckle-strike to the throat.
His blow didn't connect.
Somehow Harrow simply wasn't 'there' when the fist arrived. Instead, the blue furred fox had already advanced forward, catching and twisting his wrist in an arm lock. The Cerinian pushed back, using the wrist-lock to force him off balance, following with a sweep kick at the back of his knee, sending the wolf down on his back.
Harrow was already on top before he hit the ground, with one foot smashing down on his tail, the other pinned on his chest. That exotic staff weapon of his appeared again, with the pronged, red-glowing end pointed straight at him, mere inched from his face.
The Cerinian didn't even miss a beat, "But look at you now: pathetic."
"Just shut the hell up and kill me, you sick bastard." he spat back at Harrow, "That's why you're here, so get on with it already."
The Cerinian paused a moment, considering the possibility it seemed, when–
"Come on! He went this way!" a muffled voice shouted. It sounded like one of the Cerberus crew, likely Malcolm by the gruff voice.
After hearing this, a sly little smirk developed on Harrow's face, "No." he said, almost whispered, and gave a small shake of his head, "I don't think I will."
When the Cerinian looked at him again, his eyes gleamed with that eerie pale light, flickering, flashing, like hundreds of little lightning flashes snapping on and off, one after the other. The headache started coming back again too, building, squeezing, crushing bringing out a an agony all its own. There might've even been a sound with it, a noise, something that like a staticky, writhing screech,
It became nearly impossible to sense what was real amidst the scrambled senses. There were images, flashes of a corridor, glimpses of the Cerberus crew, an occasional snippet of someone saying something, but it didn't make sense. Nothing seemed real or fake, true or false. Everything got chopped, blended, and smashed together in one great confused cacophony of the senses.
Then one voice, one phrase boomed out over the splattered everything.
Let me show you just how weak your 'saviors' truly are.
His vision cleared up, as well as other senses, and thoughts too.
He found himself in the familiar central corridor of Cerberus, running at a pace just fast enough to not be too winded. His body felt strong, robust, but stiffened by the years. The carbine in his hands felt comfortable, but restless, itchy.
There were others with him. When he glanced back over his shoulder, he found a thin, long-beaked avian in a long coat toting a truly wicked shotgun. Next to him was a fierce eyed ashen furred leopardess, sporting a set of utilitarian, military style fatigues, and grasping a sturdy assault rifle in her battle-hardened hands.
Where are you, you little bluefur twink? There's only so many places you can hide, and we know every single one of them...
He was thinking thoughts that weren't his, saying words he didn't speak, in a voice that wasn't his own, all while looking through eyes that didn't belong to him. It felt, for lack of a better explanation, strange...
The lights went out, plunging the central corridor in a sudden darkness.
This wasn't right. Nobody had hit the switch. This wasn't supposed to be happening.
"Ardy!" he barked at the avian's silhouette behind him, almost lost in the blackness, "What the hell is this?"
"I don't know." Adrian replied, his face eerily highlighted by the light from his wrist-computer's display, "It's almost like something hacked the system, but that shouldn't be possible– "
"Then figure it out!" Malcolm cut in, "It's bad enough we got a psychic psycho rampaging aboard, we do not need this crap on top of it."
"I'll check out the mainframe." Adrian said in a placating sigh.
"Chaks, go with and cover him." the ram instructed, "I need a word or two with our 'friend'."
With a pair of acknowledging nods, Chakori Adrian departed further down the central corridor, toward the ship's mainframe, leaving Malcolm alone.
No! Don't split up the team! That's where he'll get you! Listen dammit!
Ease up there, I'm not doing this alone. I'm going into the med bay, jolting him awake with a shot of adrenaline, and getting him on his feet. He knows the most about this Harrow creep, and if he's even halfway decent in a fight, he'll be helpful here. Holy Lyla, why the did I even let Ardy dope the guy out in the first place?
He arrived outside the med-bay with little trouble, even with the sudden darkness. Old Mal could walk the entirety of Cerberus blindfolded, a little darkness wasn't going to slow him down or get in the way.
The door to the med bay slid open, but the lights still weren't on. Someone walked out, canid by the look of his dim silhouette. It had to be the wolf, and so it was.
Wait. Something just ain't right...
"How'd you bust out of your restraints?"
It isn't right! That's not him! Look closer!
He... changed. It wasn't him anymore. The actual outline of the figure had altered from the wolf, to the smaller, sharper figure that belonged to the little Cerinian creep.
Without any hesitation, Malcolm fired a slew of shots from his carbine at Harrow, but nothing happened. Harrow just... disappeared.
It's an illusion! He's getting in your mind, making you see things that aren't there! Don't fall for it.
"You're screwing with my head here, aren't you." the ram observed aloud in a bitter voice.
"And it's so easy to do to a washed up old goat like you." the Cerinian's voice responded. It felt more real this time, not just a voice from nowhere, but from an actual somewhere, somewhere close.
"Really?" Mal scoffed in faux fascination, "And what led you to that conclusion, if you don't mind me asking?"
"You're jaded, temperamental, stubborn, set in your ways." the Cerinian explained,"Your mind is about as predictable and inflexible as a stone."
He's nearby. He's trying to provoke you into doing something stupid.
No shit. Now shut up, you're creeping me out, and you're not really helping... whoever you are.
"Clearly you haven't been around me much–"
"Because your 'grumpy old captain' routine is all an act?" Harrow cut him off.
Alright, fine. You want to help, you mysterious little voice, tell me where the hell this little bluefur twink is hiding.
I don't know–
Not helping–
I... Provoke him, force him to make the first move. He's bold, he's sure of himself, and not afraid to show it. Make him show himself to you, because he will, and use that boldness against him.
Worth a shot...
"Well it's complicated." Malcolm replied with a shrug, "But I'm sure a fastidious brain-picker like yourself would've easily caught onto such paradoxical mental anomalies, right? That, or you're just trying to insult me, provoke me into a predictable response that you'd easily exploit."
"Who says I need to trick the likes of you?"
Harrow's voice definitely came in real, with direction, and a place. It was still dark in the corridor, but a new shape came into being from the dimness from where the Cerinian's voice spoke. That was him alright: strutting down the middle of the corridor like he owned the place, this time toting his precious weird fighting stick thing.
Blasters weren't gonna work on this creep, not the normal way, not with that cute little force-field thing his stick makes. There were other ways to deal with that though, one of which Malcolm was lifting off of his belt, and pulling the safety pin from.
"And furthermore, nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to call me a call me 'goat'."
* Click *
He released the arming lever. The grenade was active now, and would detonate in a matter of seconds, no turning back.
"Ever."
Malcolm pitched the grenade straight at the Cerinian, who was more than ready to simply swat it away with a flourishing swing from his staff–
* Bang! *
The blackened central corridor flashed for a moment with white light brighter than any star. The heavy snap noise it made kept echoing through the ship, and kept on ringing in the ears several seconds after that.
Just as the light winked out, with the shock of the flashbang still lingering, the older ram charged straight toward where Harrow was, letting his carbine hang from his shoulder by its sling. Judging by the last fading light, the Cerinian had staggered back a little, hunched down, with a hand shielding his eyes.
No mercy.
Thundering down the corridor, Malcolm passed just to the left of Harrow, shooting his hand into him, clutching the Cerinian by the throat with enough force and momentum behind the ram's running bulk to lift him off the ground. Not a moment later Malcolm pitched Harrow down, slamming him to the deck on his back with a thud that rang and reverberated through the corridor long afterward.
"Gotta hand it to you, pain in the rear as you are, you sure come up with some hammy lines 'I am Harrow!'" Malcolm said half panting, half laughing as he ripped the staff weapon from the Cerinian's weakened grip and tossed it aside, "You know what else you are: done."
Malcom brought the carbine to bear on Harrow, and fired a spray of shots into his hapless opponent–
Nothing happened. The weapon didn't fire. The trigger clicked, but the carbine didn't respond with its torrent of blasterfire, only silence.
The Cerinian started laughing when he looked up at Malcom's baffled face, which quickly turned to rage as the ram went for another approach: using the useless firearm as a bludgeon. He jammed the carbine's buttstock down at Harrow's face, who grabbed the stock and diverted the blow past his head where it struck the deck with a clang. In quick response, the Cerinian twisted up and shot a thrusting kick into Malcolm's armpit, forcing him to release the carbine with a grunt as he backed away.
Harrow kicked up to his feet easy, a manic grin in his teeth, and a pair of ghostly lights igniting in his eyes.
"What the hell is this?" Malcolm demanded, "You can't be on your feet, not after the beatdown I gave you!"
The Cerinian took in a deep breath and flexed a few muscles, and let out an easy laugh, "But yet..."
The ram blinked his eyes, not believing them, and Harrow was gone.
"You fell for it, as I knew you would."
the Cerinian's voice came from another place now, the other side of the corridor, where the staff weapon lay discarded. But when Malcolm turned to look, the staff was in Harrow's hands again, spinning gently in his grip as he smiled back with that carefree grin of his.
He had just about enough of this, and it was time for it to end.
"Get your filthy voodoo fingers out of my head!" and Mal charged at the Cerinian, fueled at that moment by one singular hatred.
With Malcolm Aries bearing down on him, Harrow fired several blazing red shots from the staff, lighting both of them in blood-red flashes of fire. But when the shots found their mark, the rampaging ram ignored every single one of them, and kept right on coming. The shots stung and burned against his skin, but wasn't enough to hold him back, so focused he was on the one singular goal of destroying the little Cerinian who'd molded his mind like putty.
And for a moment, if only just a moment, there was a flash of true fear in Harrow's eyes as Malcolm came on top of him. But it was only for a moment.
Just as Malcolm swatted at the staff to knock it away, the Cerinian twisted back and away, spinning and then thrusting the sharp end of the staff at the ram's neck.
The speed of the run combined with the quick thrust, concentrated at the small point of the staff was more than enough to pierce through his throat.
There wasn't any pain, not then, but everything seemed to stop, to freeze in place at that turning moment when realization began to sink in.
After stopping in his tracks, the first thing Malcolm noticed was how awkward the first breath he took felt. Then when he couched up a mouthful of blood, not all of it came out of his mouth or nose. Some of the hot fluid ran straight from his neck, and down the gold-colored shaft that had skewered it.
He was going to die, and very soon with the amount of blood it felt like he was losing. Anything that wasn't running out or coughed up would just go down and fill the lungs, and he'd drown in his own blood, provided he didn't black out before then.
Shouldn't have sent Scott away. He'd have been handy in a fight–
No, gotta contact the others, gotta let them know–
Malcolm tried to activate the comm on his headset, but his hand was trembling, felt weak. It wouldn't go up. He tried to take a deeper breath, but was only racked by a fit of wet, sickly coughs, and more of the blood came out. My god, how much was there? It just kept coming out, and he couldn't breathe, couldn't take even one little breath without spitting up even more blood–
The Cerinian tore his staff from Malcolm's ravaged throat, and the ram's buckling, otherwise strong legs gave out underneath him. He collapsed to his knees under his own weight and quickly failing strength, forcing him to look up at Harrow like some sort of...
Well... Damn... Kinda figured it was gonna end like this some day. If only it wasn't this freaking twink that finally did it.
With one last effort, Malcolm Aries worked up a mouthful of blood and whatever else, and spit it down onto the Cerinian's exposed feet, miring that blue fur of his with the fruit of his exploits: the blood of honest folk.
And he was gone
To think you actually believed you could help this wretch.
He gasped down a breath so great and so fast it felt like his chest would burst open, and he continued heaving more lungfuls in and out one after another. His heart beat so fast that it almost felt like a drum-roll. His fur was standing up straight on end, damp with cold sweat. He found his hands clutching at his throat, fully expecting them to be soaked in his own blood, and shocked to find them clean.
/
He made me feel them die. He hooked my mind up with theirs; put every thought they had in my head, made me feel every scratch of pain they felt, every bit of anger, fear, frustration, and regret. Sometimes, I didn't even know who I was.
/
He was dead, he'd just had that staff stuck in there and–
These were canid hands, not his–
No, the hands were his. This was his body, not the other's.
His eyes were working again. He was back in the med bay, sprawled on the ground
"What are you doing this for?"
Figure it out.
Gotta figure it out.
No one should be able to hack into Cerberus, no one, and certainly not the Cerinian.
Adrian stood at the mainframe's main interface terminal with Chakori at his back while he did everything in his power to solve this puzzle. The self-diagnostics programs were already slogging through the computer systems, but he suspected that they wouldn't find anything. There didn't seem to be any immediate telltale signs of a worm or virus in the system, no tweaked coding –none that he didn't do himself at least– no traces of phantom programing, and all the interface points looked clean; no signs of a forced entry.
It didn't make any sense. It was almost as if–
His thoughts were jostled by a noise from outside, a dull thud carried through the bulkheads.
Chakori brought her weapon up, scanning her surroundings for any sign of trouble, while Adrian went to bring up a series of internal surveillance feeds into the mainframe terminal. It didn't respond though, not like it should have. It just displayed the "processing" icon, thinking, waiting.
This wasn't right.
"Mal?" the avian asked over the comm, "Mal what's going on out there?"
No answer, just silent nothing.
"I'll go check on him." Chakori told him in the cold, calculated, hauntingly level voice she used when she meant business. Without another word, the leopardess slunk silently out of the mainframe and into the corridor, assault rifle raised and ready.
Adrian considered protesting, keeping everyone together, but ultimately decided against it. If Harrow was going to set traps, pick them off one by one, Then let him think he has that advantage. Let him believe he's got the upper hand, only to blunder into a counter trap.
The avian turned on and attached a flashlight under the barrel of his shotgun, then reached into one of the many pockets of his coat and pulled out a small handful of specialty hand-packed shotgun shells, which he began to load into his combat shotgun. They were flechette cartridges, bundles of little razor blades packed into standard shotgun casing. The things they did when that kind of shot hit, when the swarm of biting, piercing, slicing blades met flesh, were among the most gruesome things that could come out of a firearm: like filleting a face with a dozen deep-cutting knife slashes in an instant. Adrian had been waiting for an especially sick bastard who deserved that ind of fate, and this Harrow character certainly earned it.
He took his mind off the computers, off the technology. That's where he'd want him to be thinking, to distract him, to sneak up on him unawares. That's not going to happen. There's only one way in or out of the mainframe, and if the Cerinian creep wanted in, he'd have to pull something better than parlor tricks to get past.
"I'll admit I'm impressed." Adrian said aloud, knowing full well that Harrow would be able to hear him, wherever he was, "What did you do?"
"It's simple, really." The Cerinian's voice came through on his comm headset of all places. Whether he was actually connected or just screwing with Adrian's mind wasn't clear though, "These machines –these computer systems– they communicate only in the simplest absolutes. There is no nuance to them the way mind is, no subtleties to puzzle over. Once you learn the language they speak, the codes, the patterns of such tiny pulses, the machines will obey orders without question. They do not ask why, or who; they simply do."
"Any hacker worth their bits knows that." the avian retorted while he kept his eyes looking for any movement, scanning the entrance with the light he shone into the dark, "What makes you so special?"
"Why don't you tell me?" Harrow mocked back, "You've already seen it, you already know: I can control this vessel now just as easily as you can."
That's when it hit him.
"You don't mean–"
/
"Wait, are you saying he hacked into Cerberus's systems?"
"Sort of, but it's not like that. He has a way to use his... 'psychic mojo' to interact with technology directly."
"How does he do it?"
"I don't know, he doesn't tell anyone his secrets. All I know is that he's figured out a way to... interfere with tech, to use his Cerinian hocus pocus to screw with electronics, manipulate them, give false positives, that sort of thing. That's how he was able to sneak aboard and remain undetected, even with security feeds."
/
Without wasting a second, Adrian scrambled in the command to activate the Lethe procedure, to put the ship to sleep, and Cerberus obliged. The whir and hum of computer machinery that normally dominated the mainframe went quiet. The thrum and gentle vibrations of the engines and power plant died out. The ship became so quiet, so suddenly, like no other sound would be heard again.
"What did you do?" Harrow's voice was real now, not some detached bystander inside the headset speaker, "The patterns, they've changed, gone silent."
"I took away the one advantage you had." Adrian answered, "You don't have control anymore, do you?"
"And you believe that's my only advantage?" The Cerinian stepped through the entrance into the light, staff in-hand.
"It's the only one that matters."
* Boom! *
He fired a shell full of flechette where Harrow stood, but he'd already moved aside. He didn't vanish and 'reappear' like last time, just moved quicker, or seemed like it.
The Cerinian had already fired back a volley of fire-like shots from his staff, and Adrian had only just barely enough time to duck around one of the server towers, into the tight guts of the mainframe.
This was the most ideal situation under the circumstances: force Harrow into the tight places, into a shooting gallery with nowhere to hide. Every corner he turned, he pointed back, ready to blast the Cerinian full of flechettes when he made his move. The two of them exchanged fire at almost every opportunity, but both were out of the way before either hit their mark...
The deadly game of cat/mouse was expending more shells than it should be. At some point, he'd have to find an opportunity to reload, or find another option–
Time's up. This last avenue was a corner, and the magazine had just emptied. Adrian fished another fistful of shells from his pocket to replenish the weapon, but it was too late. The Cerinian had already turned the last corner, staff at the ready.
"Stop!" Adrian commanded.
He had one last ace up his sleeve, and now was the time to use it.
"You're not going kill me." the avian tech stated this as fact, "I've got the only means to reverse what I did; to wake up the ship. You kill me, ad it's gone. This ship will be nothing but a drifting hulk, and you'll be trapped aboard with no means to communicate, or escape."
He still had the pistol on his belt, hiding inside the coat. He'd just need a moment of distraction...
"What makes you think I care?" and a blizzard of blazing blood-red shots screamed from the staff into Adrian.
The first one struck, and burned in such a scorching pain, as if he'd been jabbed in the face with a hot soldering iron. The next one blinded him, winking his sight out in a burning blaze of red and white. The shots kept right on coming, like a torrent of jagged, white-hot daggers, each one hotter and more painful than the last. It kept building on top of itself, and it felt as if his head had burst into flame.
There was nothing left now but the pain. Adrian Crane had lost all awareness of everything, of where he was, who he was, what was happening. His entire existence was defined by the agony tearing him apart, and punctuated by the guttural, bone-wracking cry the reflexes of his collapsing mind demanded he scream.
But then his lungs ran out of air, and those very same reflexes demanded that he take a breath.
His sight returned with his breath. He'd covered his face with his hands, trembling hands, canid hands.
That wasn't him, he was here, but the pain stayed, lingering like an echo, a ringing bell that wouldn't go away. No matter how distant it seemed, it still stung, still cut at him, still burned at him.
/
"Are you okay? You're shaking."
"The telling makes me... 'remember', sometimes more vividly than I'd like to. I still have flashes sometimes, of their last thoughts, their dying agonies. They may be dead, but can still feel them dying."
"We can take a break if you need–"
"No. You wanted to hear my story and goddammit, I'm going to tell it."
"Tell me what happened next. Tell me about Chakori."
"She's a fighter, but she's so much more too..."
/
She ran.
Only moments after she discovered Malcolm's still warm body did the muffled shotgun blast ring out, answered quickly by the blazing screeches of Harrow's weapon. And so she ran through Cerberus's corridors, with only her breath, her thundering heartbeat, and the ever-nearing clamor of combat to beak Lethe's silence. It wasn't an especially large ship, only a frigate, but the distance between the med bay and mainframe couldn't have felt longer, and the time to travel between them couldn't have felt more rushed.
She ran, but she wasn't fast enough.
Adrian's dying screams, his wail of pain, stopped her dead in her tracks, and she was only a few feet from the mainframe.
Harrow had killed him. That arrogant, bloodthirsty showoff had snuffed out another one of the closest, longest running friends Chakori ever had.
Focus.
She could have broken down. She could have given up. She could have succumbed to the despair, the rage, the grief that her instincts implored. by all rights she'd earned the chance to; and in some ways, she did.
Balance.
It was something of a paradox as these things often are: to immerse yourself in the emotions, but to maintain control of them, to allow the emotions to fuel your actions, your resolve, but to never lose sight of the goal, to keep all that pain and anguish harnessed and contained.
Control.
Chakori edged to the wall of the corridor, to the edge of the jammed-open door of the mainframe, drew her heavy, forward deflected knife from its scabbard. It rested there easily, as if it were a natural extension of her hand.
There was a set of quiet footsteps, emerging from the mainframe. The Cerinian probably already knew she was there, was aware of her state of mind, and was just as ready for the encounter. Momnets later, Harrow stepped out into the corridor, reeking of death. It was dark, and he was little more than a silhouette, but she didn't need to see him to know where he was, or predict his actions.
A jagged spike of rage flared up within her upon seeing the Cerinian. It wasn't ordinary rage though, it was rage fueled by need: the need to avenge Malcolm and Adrian, to make their needless sacrifices not be in-vain, for her to make up for recent shortfalls. It all boiled down to a need to destroy the one called 'Harrow', and it threatened to consumer her, to overwhelm all the discipline that she'd made her norm...
Focus. Balance. Control.
Rage and Discipline can work together, as one. Just as fire powers the engine, so too does rage give power to martial expertise, to reflexes, and refine discipline. Focused on her task, and balanced in a tranquil fury, Chakori took control and assumed a fighting stance...
"I do not fear you."
The Cerinian didn't even turn to look at her. He just gave a satisfied nod as he responded, "Good."
It wasn't clear who struck the first blow between them, but the battle started fast, and didn't let up.
Every move, every strike, every maneuver flowed straight into the next. There were no more lines between offense and defense, between thought and action. The action simply happened in direct response the other's action...
In the heat and intensity of single combat, Chakori's rage refined and crystallized into a refusal. She refused to be defeated, refused to die, refused to let Harrow get away with it...
/
"I... can't remember anything after that, not before I blacked out. He... cut me out of the loop."
/
It was quiet when he came to, so hauntingly quiet, and dark. There was a scent of death lingering, a mingling of raw and burnt.
He had to survive.
So he stood himself up on weary feet, and started through...
/
"I spent the next few hours, days, working to survive, refusing to die... Those where the last thoughts in my head before I blacked out: Chakori's determination, her resolve to not be defeated, to not die. Fast forward a little later, when it cooled off and I was almost freezing to death, and that's how you found me."
"You know, I'm just throwing out speculation here, but it almost seems like, in some weird perverted way, Harrow may have saved your life. He made you feel Chakori's thoughts just like everyone else, with the intent to make you feel her die, but she didn't play along, and her determination leeched into you. He accidentally 'imprinted' that unyielding determination to survive, and so you have."
"Now dope me."
"What?"
"Knock me out. You're stocked with tranquilizers and such. Use them on me."
"Why?"
"Do you know what it's like to constantly relive someone else's dying moments in your dreams? Do you know what it's like to take someone else's thoughts into you as your own? You start thinking you're them, you lose track of who you really are for a moment... I want them out of my head, all of them... I... I want it to end. Can you do that?"
"..."
"Can you?"
"... I can't promise a cure, but I will see what can be done to help."
/
See a person's methods. Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character?
-Confucius-
/
Serge Noire arrived aboard Cerberus with Rachelle Cooney shortly after. For the most part it was a fairly dull event, and most things went precisely as expected. Serge didn't say much, but did briefly reminisce with a short, "it has been some time." He walked Cerberus's dimmed corridors as if walking down a forgotten alley of memory lane. It was a subtle shift, but for Serge, even subtle shifts were as different as night and day.
He gained access to Cerberus's mainframe with no trouble, reactivated the systems, arousing the ship from its deep and troubled slumber, making it ready to ride proud once more. Rachelle plugged in, downloaded everything she needed –namely: the missing shuttles tracking beacon parameters, data collected from the smart bug, as well as any records that might be of use. When it was all done, she wiped the ship's storage files as clean as she could make it, just in case.
All the while, Serge simply watched, or listened, or muttered something under his breath while he surveyed the damage caused by the battle: the shattered server units, warped casings, frayed electronics and other such. It was of little consequence, given the automated redundancy built into these kinds of units: if you break one part, the suite automatically reroutes the data stream through to an undamaged sector. In essence, one would have to disrupt the entire system to cripple it beyond repair.
With the tracking beacon parameters, it should be easy enough to locate the missing shuttle, and hopefully provide a much needed lead on a trail that was running close to cold.
But, only most things went as expected.
Rick Cooney stopped by the mainframe with Wiley, just before they were about to depart Cerberus for good.
The Cooneys hadn't mentioned Wiley or Harrow to Serge, only that Cerberus was useless while Lethe was engaged. Even so, the twins had their suspicions that Noire knew more than he let on, or was at least curious enough to investigate for himself. It was the game of secrets in its truest form: how much does he know? How much does he know we know? How much is he choosing to let on? Questions, but too few answers.
One way Rick had decided to probe for answers was to bring the wolf who let himself be known as 'Wiley' into Serge's sight, to let the shadowy patriarch become aware of the troubled renegade, and observe his reaction.
The hunch: Serge was a teacher– a trainer of assassins, hitmen, spies, and black market dirty-work doers of the highest caliber. The thing about teachers though is that they have patterns, traces of their methods that pass through to their students. Serge's kind were few: enough so that picking up on patterns and sorting them according to known instructor's methods was reasonably easy. Wiley's tactics, his strategic choices, his careful concealment, his ruthless decisiveness and merciless execution, while a little unrefined, pulled itself toward this hunch.
And so Rick Cooney entered Cerberus's mainframe with Wiley in tow, just as Rachelle was wrapping up her part of the operation.
When Serge and Wiley met, there was a reaction.
Wiley flinched, puzzled. He recognized Serge, that much was certain as he eyed the older, dark-furred canid with a certain familiarity. It was a mixture of surprise, puzzlement, a trace of fear, and strong underpinnings of reverence. 'What is he doing here?' he was no doubt thinking. 'What was this all about? What ind of crap did Rick pull?'
Serge however had a markedly different response. He paused, eyebrow raised in curiosity, sharp eyes scrutinizing every inch of the pale wolf in a series of glances, and finger stroking his chin in thought, complete with his trademark, "Hm..."
A long, awkward silence permeated the mainframe chamber then, with both Rick and Rachelle Cooney looking on, waiting for the next action.
After careful mental calculations amidst the awkwardness, almost reveling in it as he considered the stakes and the play-field of that ubiquitous deadly game of secrets, Serge made his play.
He spoke to Wiley, walking right up to him, but made absolutely sure that the Cooneys could hear, "There is an older vulpine woman: she lives in Port Seyid, Zoness, north district, Sol Nascente apartments, unit number 513."
"Excuse me?" the wolf replied, even more puzzled than before, and sparking closer interest from the Cooneys.
"Her name is Cassandra Alexi," Serge explained, "and she might be able to help with your... troublesome Cerinian friend."
Rachelle stepped in at hearing this, drawn in by Serge's revelation, "I never said anything about a Cerinian–"
"Hm." He cocked his head to the side, returning Rachelle's prying gaze with a tiny knowing smirk, "I'd say more, but she will tell you more than I."
It was difficult to tell exactly how much he'd kept to himself, being the sort that habitually plays close to the chest, but there was enough sincerity in there. He knew about Harrow and what he could do, likely knew about the Amity attack, and obviously knew the fate of the Cerberus crew. There was one inflection that seeped through his flinty voice, one imperfection: a small twinge of anger, of disdain, the need for revenge.
In Rick's mind, the scenario revealed itself: Harrow wronged Serge Noire, betrayed him somehow– and then it clicked into place. Skilled and talented as he was, Harrow didn't learn how to do most of those things on his own, he was taught by someone. The methods of Harrow described: they were somewhat exotic simply by his nature, but infused with a set of method-patterns that Rick recognized in both Wiley, and in Serge himself–
Serge must have seen traces of these thoughts happening in Rick, to whom he nodded and said, "You know what you need to do."
"I'll see that it's done." Rick responded with a cool head, giving Serge the same knowing nod.
-To be Continued-
Author Notes:
Whew... This was, for me, the most painful and most difficult chapter I have written in recent memory.
I hope you can understand: I killed –brutally murdered– OCs that I very easily could have created their own entire spin-off arc for. I have invested that much effort into each of their characters, to give them depth, to give them life. Killing them off, and in the visceral way that happens here, takes a lot out of me; more than I expected it would. It's almost like I'm killing my own kids.
Just needed to unload that, thanks for bearing with me.
I know these later chapters have been brutal, but I promise the next chapter will be an easier, breather chapter. Believe me, I'll need it at least as much as you.