Chapter LXVII: Wham
May 24, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later
Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System
Ah, Paris, the beautiful French city, when the French surrendered in World War Two, back in the twentieth century, their city was spared, which meant that all the architecture remained the same, leaving a lovely undamaged city instead of a bombed one. Its beautiful bridges, cafes, and monuments were famous throughout the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy. It had held the spot of the most visited city by tourists for over half a millennium.
This was not that Paris. This was the ugly, industrialized, and urban world of Paris IV. One of the most important colonies, perhaps second in place only to Reach, it was a military hub in FLEETCOM Sector Two. Unlike Reach though, this planet was actually more a colony than a military base, uniformed military personnel were only seen rarely and even then only near bases or space ports. Right now, we had our leave in this city.
I almost would've preferred to take my leave on board the Inconvenience. Almost, but not quite.
Udinia was the largest city in the planet, and this being a large colony, it also meant that there were slightly over ten million souls inhabiting this place. Unlike smaller colonies, this one hadn't been fully developed or colonized at once, instead, it had grown over a couple of centuries of colonization and expansion. Udinia alone accounted for a tenth of Paris IV's population. That would've been completely fine by me, if it didn't mean that all the smoke form old cars would make my nose and lungs feel like they were being burned with acid.
"You get used to it."
"When?" I asked sarcastically. "As soon as our leave ends?"
"Hey, relax," Marina smiled, "and try to enjoy this."
Our tourist tour of the city had been interesting, that I would admit, we heard several stories about early colonization, technological advances, the small Parisian Civil War that took place in the planet, and the relatively recent Insurrectionist attacks. A lovely monument accompanied every story. Unfortunately, the monuments were so damaged by acid rain that it almost took away the charm from them. Also, I could barely see my hand if I placed it in front of my face in account of the smog. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit.
"It really worries me that no one here is wearing surgical masks."
"Relax," she repeated. "All the smog in here is almost harmless, it just looks so bad because of some mumbo-jumbo in this planet's atmosphere."
"I knew that," I lied.
"Didn't your mother tell you not to tell lies," she asked me after making a clicking noise with her tongue.
"I dunno," I said, lowering my eyes. "She might've, but I probably forgot."
"Frank, why do you have to make me feel guilty?"
I looked at her.
"Fine, I'm sorry."
"You're forgiven," I said with a smile. "Provided you compensate me accordingly." As I said this I put one arm around her waist and pulled her closer towards me, looking her in the eyes and smiling as she giggled and tried to look dignified. I leaned in for a quick kiss before she pushed me away and told me to listen to the tour guide.
Our tour guide was an old and tired-looking hover robot with what was now called an "Intelligent Interface", that meant that it could answer certain questions about the monuments and tell stories related to the tour and possessed some additional information about the city and planet, but it wasn't truly intelligent.
After another fifteen or so minutes, the tour ended and all the tourists, mostly military personnel on leave or businessmen doing a pass by on the planet, we all went in our different directions, some of the tourists were probably headed towards the famous skyline restaurants of Udinia and some others would certainly go back into their hotel rooms to breath pure oxygen for a couple of minutes just to feel slightly safer about the health of their lungs.
The safety of my lungs didn't immediately concern me, I could get a new set of those easily enough, in fact, one of them was as good as new. What actually concerned me right now, was my liver's health. It wasn't nearly as damaged as I wanted it to be.
"Drinking?" I asked.
"Drinking."
I really loved this girl.
"Frank?" he yelled. "Francisco?"
"What?" I slurred back.
"Get off the table!"
"But everyone else is doing it," I complained. "Even your date."
"Everyone else who doesn't have a thing hanging between their legs is doing it, it looks sexy on them, on you it looks weird, get down."
I had to admit that my friend had a point. Besides, the tables were really small for a large man to stand on, and my current state of mind wasn't really helping with my balance at all. I jumped down and had to hold on to a chair not to fall down. I raised myself upright slowly, but the floor still managed to go forty-five degrees sideways. I had to shake my head, which only made it worse. Luckily enough, Pavel knew me better than anyone, and quickly jumped under my arm and threw me into one of those fancy couches.
"Thanks bro," I said.
"No problem," Pavel sarcastically replied. He had only just arrived half an hour ago, by that time the bar had turned from a relatively calm semi-fancy place into a place filled with drunk marines and soldiers trying to make the best out of their short leaves. There were also the occasional military groupies who were very forthcoming when it came to thanking us for our sacrifices. Lonely men followed the horny girls and this place was soon pretty crowded.
"Aw shit," I laughed to myself.
Marina, decent as she was, had chosen not to jump on a table and take half her clothes off. She had instead drowned herself in tequila and was now sitting in the couch next to me, giggling crazily to herself and doing a terrible job at trying to stroke my hair. I wouldn't have thought it possible a few hours ago, but Marina was drunker than me and she seemed to be a happy drunk. For some reason I always pictured her as a mean drunk that went around telling everyone the truth that they didn't want to hear.
"Oh my God," she said, sounding astounded, "those lights are awesome!"
I do believe that she was also slightly high on some narcotic.
"So pretty," she whispered, trying to reach out to grab the invisible lights with her hand."
All right, she was very, very high.
"Frank, you gotta get her out of here," Pavel ordered me.
"While you get a lap dance?" I asked, eyeing his newest conquest. "Don't think so."
"Frank, look at her."
"Weeeeee!" Marina yelled as she tried to spin around with her arms wide. She looked cute in a way, but she also looked like she could be in one of those Girls Gone Wild videos. Not that I would know anything about that (yeah right). I stood up, doing my best to focus and be a responsible drinker and moved towards Marina.
"Hey, this guy just told me about this awesome place," I told her.
"But I'm having so much fun here," she complained.
"Let's go," I said, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards me.
"Pleas no, let me stay a little longer." She was actually crying now, which for some reason made me feel sad and guilty, like I wanted to cry myself. Man was I drunk. I was in no position to take care of myself, let alone another person, but Pavel was enjoying the lap dance that I mentioned before and there was a big grin on his face as his newest date did her best to make him happy.
"Let's go," I said once more, this time a lot more insistent.
Marina started crying like a little baby when I started pulling her through the crowd and towards the exit, but she was complying with my instructions and didn't provide any resistance. But things were never that easy were they? Nope, they weren't, in case you were wondering what the answer was.
"Hey you, where you taking that girl?"
"Outside," I replied. Maybe I should've kept my mouth shut.
"Looks like she doesn't want to," the voice said. Marina sniffled a little.
I turned around to find myself facing a large man wearing an extremely tight fitting shirt. He was a little shorter than me and slightly less muscular, which meant that he was in tiptop shape. Two less impressive-looking specimen that could've easily been the missing link between apes and men immediately flanked him. I was in a moderate amount of trouble.
"Look, I don't have time for this," I muttered.
"I don't wanna go," Marina complained.
I hate you.
"Why don't you let her stay?" the lead guy asked, the threat evident in his voice.
"Piss off."
Ah, nothing like a good 'ol fashioned punch to the face to snap you back from a drunken stupor. Especially if you are a battle-honed special operations ODST Helljumper with killing instincts. My head snapped back with the impact and my nose started bleeding a little bit. I wiped the blood from my nose and looked at it before glaring menacingly at the man.
"Big. Mistake."
His next punch was a hook that I blocked with my left hand, I karate-chopped his upper arm, sending the entire limb downwards with pain, I then blocked a clumsy jab from Henchman #1 and dodged another from Henchman #2. I grabbed the leader's head and slammed it into one of his henchmen's head, knocking them out, the other guy received a kick to his thigh and ribs before I gave him a solid punch in the forehead, sending him into dreamland as well.
It had probably taken about five seconds total since I was punched, not bad for being three times over the legal blood alcohol limit. Not bad at all.
"Marina, we're leaving."
She must've thought that I was going to knock her out as well, because she simply looked at me like she was afraid of me and nodded violently before she headed towards the exit, with the crowd opening up to let us through. Some of them glared at me with anger, others looked surprised, others were drunk as hell, and yet some others had a look of admiration in their eyes. I took this all in before I left the place through a back door. A bright light immediately blinded me.
"Is it daytime already?" I asked myself.
I realized that it was a streetlight and hit myself softly in the head as if to punish myself for being that stupid. Marina looked like she was about to be eaten by some sort of hallucinated monster so I jumped towards her and hugged her tightly.
"You're high," I said. "None of this is real."
She mumbled something and went unconscious in my arms, almost bringing me to the floor with her. I softly lowered her to the floor and fanned some air at her. When she didn't seem to react I checked her pulse, which was just fine, if perhaps a little bit accelerated. Finally I resigned myself to the situation and sat down with my back leaning towards one of the alley's walls. I placed my girlfriend's head over my lap and stroked her hair softly while I waited for her to wake up.
The bright star of Paris system (aptly named Paris) woke me up, the light managing to hit me hard despite all the smog particles in between it and myself. It must've been late morning, because the sun was already above the edge of the alley's wall. I groaned and closed my eyes. The sun was way too bright.
"What! Where am I?"
"Jeez Marina, don't yell," I complained.
"You're yelling," she slurred angrily.
"Great, you're still drunk," I said.
"Am not," she shot back. "You're the one that's drunk."
"I'm not going to argue on that," I mumbled to myself. Marina was still yelling and the sun was unnaturally bright. In addition to that I had a terrible taste on my mouth that didn't seem to go away even if I spat repeatedly. At least the floor wasn't shaking anymore, instead it just wobbled occasionally. Marina, on the other hand, wasn't faring nearly as well as I was. She kept stumbling and reaching for balance. One of these times I would simply let her slam to the floor, give her a good lesson on not trying to tell me to drink any less.
"You still seeing purple elephants?" I asked right after we left the alley.
"What?" she asked. "Oh."
"Yeah," I agreed. "Oh…"
"Shit Frank, I'm so sorry," she said.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." I was pissed, I was having a decent time until little miss sunshine here decided that it would be cool to experiment with Grade-A drugs. While drunk. On a bar in a city she wasn't familiar with. I swear, if they made awards for stupidest moments Marina would surely be the proud owner of one. Me, on the other hand, was left alone to take care of her. At least I still had money on my pocket in addition to a phone.
"I'm so, sooo, sooooo sorry," she apologized.
"Let's just get back to the hotel," I said as I walked ahead.
The long walk back to our hotel (which happened to be an actually nice place) was quiet save for the occasional noise of cars flashing by and background noise. Marina didn't try to apologize anymore and I didn't bother looking back at her. I don't really know why I was so angry with her, but I sensed that I was right in being pissed at her, especially when I had to sleep on an alley with her head on my lap just so that she would be ok.
Once we arrived I went straight for the washroom and slammed the door closed just as Marina opened her mouth to say something. I sat on the toilet while I waited for the water to heat up. I was surprised when the water in here didn't immediately come out the temperature that you wanted, but the feather beds certainly made up for it. Fifteen seconds later the water was at the perfect temperature and I was inside the shower. The hot water and steam slowly sobered me up while I swallowed copious amounts of water to get the taste off of my mouth.
Ten minutes after I initially stepped inside the shower I turned off the water. I stayed there for a few moments, letting the extra water slide off. I finally shook myself back to reality and grabbed one of the towels. I walked out to the main section of the bathroom and one of those holo-mirrors popped up on a previously empty wall. I looked at myself carefully. My eyes were still light brown, my hair was still the same color, even if it was slightly longer than usual. My skin was tanner in account to the weeks in Aztlan, even with my armor on. My face was the same, but it somehow looked different. Was it just thinner? Maybe I had lost some weight? No, that wasn't it. There weren't any visible scars on my face, so that was out of the question. It was true that I had some stubble growing, but that wasn't it either.
"Easy there champ, you might just break the mirror?"
I jumped so hard my head almost hit the ceiling. "Who's there?" I called out. "Marina?" Even as I called out the question I knew that it hadn't been her. The voice had been distinctly male and completely unfamiliar. I was already in a combat stance, my eyes darting left to right, but I was the only person inside the bathroom.
"I would've taken you for a harder man," I heard.
The skin on the back of my neck stood up and a chill went up and down my spine and then back up again. I was sweating cold sweat and my heart was beating a thousand miles an hour. Something was wrong, I don't like it when something is wrong, especially this kind of wrong.
"I'm imagining things, imagining things." I opened the door to find the room empty. "All in my head," I kept telling myself. As I dressed up I found a voice note from Marina telling me that she had gone out to get some food and water. I double-checked it to make sure that I couldn't have misheard it. I hastily put on my shirt and then opened every single drawer and closet door to make sure there wasn't some asshole playing a prank on me. I shuffled through my clothes and Marina's alike before I came to the conclusion that there was nothing inside the room that could've made the noises.
"Shit, shit, shit," I muttered. "Oh shit."
I rumbled through all my possessions again, this time I grabbed every single article of clothing and went through it, patting it twice to make sure there wasn't a hidden mic in there somewhere. There wasn't an entertainment system in our room, not even a radio, all we had was a phone to contact the front desk and other rooms, and I checked it when I got out of the bathroom. It was hung up. I grabbed the already open drawers and pulled them out completely, turning them around and checking twice for any artifacts that could be hidden there.
"Cold, cold, colder, and more cold."
"Shut up!" I yelled at the voice.
I threw the bed sheets into the air and had them go through the same rigorous process than before, making sure there wasn't a single thing in there that shouldn't belong there. I threw the mattresses up in the air and checked underneath to make sure that there wasn't anything else in there either. I wasn't getting more scared by the second. This couldn't really be happening, not to me.
"Wow Francisco, you're going to make a mess out of this place."
"I said. Shut up!" I screamed in desperation.
I went back inside the bathroom and opened the doors under the sink as well, making sure that nothing could've made a noise there. There was nothing but toilet paper and extra shampoo bottles. Next I scanned the towels three times each same as I had done my clothing and the bed sheets. I checked underneath and behind the toilet, inside every the shower and through every single container twice. The place was empty and I was becoming more desperate by the minute.
I went back into the room and grabbed my knife from the night table. I grabbed one of the mattresses and then cut it open, pulling out all the feathers and cotton and filling. There was nothing but white feathers inside, nothing. The other mattress was exactly the same thing, absolutely nothing inside that shouldn't be there. The more I looked, the more I feared the truth.
"Well, well, well." I heard. "I did warn you that we would make a mess."
I turned around and saw the most frightening thing I had seen in my entire life. A man. A simple man was standing in the middle of the wrecked hotel room, a cocky smile on his lips and a look of death in his eyes. I had never seen this person before, but he looked average enough. "Maybe next time you'll listen to me," he said, smiling at me creepily.
"Who are you?" I asked, my voice shaking.
"What, you really don't recognize me?" he asked, but he didn't really sound surprised.
"Who are you?"
"Francisco, you really should know better."
I lost it. I yelled and screamed in fury. I twisted my knife in my hand even as I raised it over my head to make a throw. The man in front of me didn't even flinch, his smile simply turning into a grin as I let go of the blade. The knife flew perfectly, two beautiful spins and the blade would've landed directly in the mystery man's neck, cutting open his windpipe and perhaps an artery. Death would've been almost instantaneous. Only that the knife didn't hit anything. It simply flew straight through the person and slammed hilt-first into the hotel door and fell to the ground noisily.
"I'll be back," he warned me.
The door opened and the figure in front of me disappeared. He didn't poof or fade or anything, it was simply gone. One minute there and the next one it wasn't. Behind the man was Marina, a grocery bag in one hand and the hotel key on the other. She looked at me and took in the scene around in an instant. She didn't even have time to open her mouth before I did.
"I lost it," I said, finally giving up and realizing what was wrong." I'm insane."