A/N: Apologies for missing the Friday deadline. There will be a a three week hiatus after this chapter in order to accumulate material. Expect the next on March 13th.
Kara was reeling from the knowledge that she was still alive. She'd been to the edge of death twice in the past hour, and both times she'd walked away unharmed. Even stranger was James's sudden sincerity, the care he seemed to be showing for her. But it was difficult to consider these things and also deal with the approaching mob of scientists.
She clenched her rifle at the sound of gunfire, but it was just James, firing down at human-like creatures with one hand on the wheel and one foot on the accelerator. "Ahahahaha!" He laughed, projecting the hoot to a scientist-laden ground. The truck swerved suddenly, crushing two men beneath a wheel, and brown, rectangular bags spilled from the back. Another round of gunfire.
"Fire at will, men!" He shouted to them, a wicked smile on his face. James reveled in the carnage.
Matt took a few carefully placed shots, aiming for heads and necks, killing with two or three bullets each. Most scientists in the facility seemed to be down here and, all entrances having been closed, Kara imagined that this is where they were when the facility began to burn.
She shot the hand off one who'd grabbed the railing of the truck, but it pursued quickly on foot. It was actually gaining, moving at around twenty miles an hour. Matt put it down.
James soon passed the horde, to Kara's great relief. It was all that much more frightening, then, when James turned the truck around and went through them again, just to kill off the stragglers. Once they were all dead, Kara found herself low on ammunition. She hoped that they wouldn't meet any new hostiles on the way.
The drive lasted for a few minutes. After all, this was an Agency labyrinth, and it would have been planned with only the highest efficiency as a goal. However, just as they saw the steep, manmade incline that would take them out of the cave network, gunfire erupted on the front. "Get down!" James shouted. They all ducked, bullets blasting through the windshield glass and tire rubber.
James lay a gun on the accelerator, yelled to jump, and hit the ground with a roll. Kara and Matt followed. Their truck careened through a crowd of soldiers, followed closely by piercing Agency projectiles. Matt and Kara kneeled, carefully scoping each target, while James fired from a wide-legged stance.
The truck slipped, spun, tipped, and slid burning across bloody floor. Then the soldiers regrouped, some using the truck as a barricade, other's advancing quickly toward the three units. Kara saw James dart off to the side, followed him closely. He kept low to the ground, zigzagging to the cover of jutting wall. The approaching soldiers were accurate even when running, but still primarily a cover to distract from the sharpshooters bunkered behind the truck. James ignored the advancing soldiers, taking two bullets in the process, and lobbed his last grenade behind the truck.
The advancing soldiers scattered. They'd not been expecting their reserves to be killed, and whoever was instructing them took them seamlessly in all different directions, leaving them invulnerable to concentrated gunfire.
But North Complex weaponry was very good. James's rapid-fire shotgun threw piercing rounds in a wide cone from the barrel. With Kara and Matt to offer supporting fire, he mowed down half of them before he ran out of ammunition.
He unholstered his pistol and ran through their ranks, using their scattered strategy to prevent them from firing, for fear of hitting a friendly soldier. And they were incapable of retreating to safety, as James was in constant pursuit, and all walls and alcoves were within easy sight of either Matt or Kara.
They were forced to risk friendly fire to rid themselves of this new enemy. James tackled one and shot it through the head, stuck the pistol barrel through the impressive hole, and used the dead man as a shield through which to fire. Weak East Complex bullets had no hope of penetrating the sack of meat, and when James had finished his clip, he took the dead man's gun and kept firing.
But the more soldiers they killed, the harder it was to kill the remainder. One managed to get next to James while he was reloading. James gripped his barrel and swung the stock with full force at the soldier's head. The soldier caught it and tore it from James's hand, then pulled its pistol towards James's chest and James grabbed the soldiers wrist and forced it back so that the soldier fired up through its own chin. Blood briefly showered down on James.
Meanwhile, Kara was trembling, backing away from an unarmed aggressor. Unfortunately for her, it was Axel, twice revived and exponentially more sinister than before. He dealt a harsh backhand to her cheek, knocking her to the ground. Axel scooped her up and held her against the wall by the neck, battered cheek pressing against cold stone. Kara couldn't fight. There was no use in killing the immortal.
The sound of gunshots faded into the background: Overwhelmed by rushing blood and lack of air, the world's noise seemed distant. But Kara felt reverberate through her the immediate voice of the dead. "You are a twist away from death, Kara Harding." Axel said, eyes aflame. She stayed limp against the jagged wall. The hold on her neck had not relaxed in the slightest, and the air brimming at her open lips was not free enough to enter her lungs. "Your friends will die now. You may die now, or you may leave death for the stupid, to whom it belongs. Kill James for me."
But, Kara reasoned, James is not stupid. If death doesn't come for me, it will run from him.
She was too weak even to shake her head, so she said nothing. Accepting her response, Axel squeezed.
When the blackness faded, Kara lay staring into the eyes of Axel, a dead man. Dead, as in still and not breathing and dead. Shot in the head. The kind of dead she was comfortable with.
At least until she woke up next to it. She backed away quickly into the wall, then stood to see James pulling bullets out of himself. "Morning, sunshine." He said to her. She looked around.
"Where's Matt?" Kara asked.
James pointed to a still body, and her heart lurched to think he was dead. "He took a nap about the same time you did. You two are lucky I'm such an efficient grim reaper."
She let out a sigh of relief. Kara was tired of her friends dying. She hadn't been over her former teammate when James arrived, she was devastated from Harry's death, and losing another one seemed too much to bear. If they died, she might as well.
"Can I ask you something, Kara?" James said. She was past the point of responding. Right now, she could only be described as inert. James asked anyways. "What are you most afraid of?"
Kara couldn't think of an answer right away. Before she came here, she'd have had the same trouble because nothing scared her, but now she couldn't decide what she'd seen that was the most fearful. She chose an answer that she thought encompassed most of her experience here. "Weakness." She said.
James agreed. "A good fear. But not one you need to experience. You're the strongest fighter I know, what could make you feel weak?"
"The strongest fighter you know?" Kara repeated dully. "Strong fighting aims to win, and a won fight ends in death. If your opponent can't die, strong fighting is meaningless."
"Which opponent doesn't die?" James asked.
Kara pointed down at the man that had choked her earlier, the one that only James had had the power to save her from. He lay dormant now, but Kara knew that a bullet didn't mean death for the thing Axel had become. He'd taken three of them in the shower, what was another one?
James peered over. "Looks dead enough to me." He said. Truly, it was just an ordinary corpse. Another face no one knew, another puddle no one cared about. James wondered what was so special about the man.
"Can't you see it? Look at it's face. It's hair, look at that." She insisted, getting agitated now.
"I can see it fine." James said. What was going on?
"Dammit!" Kara shouted. "It's Axel, James, it's dead Axel! He can follow us wherever we go! He could rise from the dead this second and twist my neck!"
It wasn't Axel. James remembered Axel in great detail, especially because the man had incited so much fear in Kara. Now James understood. Now he'd found her fear.
"Kara, do you remember the trail of blood that you found in the hallway?" James asked her. Kara was surprised... she hardly remembered telling him anything about what she'd seen.
"Yes." She said.
"And the time in Floor Four when you saw Axel get a shower closer to you?"
She was taken aback. She had certainly told him nothing of that. But she was too tired to question him, so she nodded and let him speak.
"The blood was an illusion. Or, if it was real, it was erased the second time you went to look at it. When Axel got closer to us, that was an illusion too. And the man you're seeing, dead at your feet? That isn't Axel. Not in the slightest." He said.
Kara wondered at James's words. She didn't know how he knew all this. She couldn't understand the implications, so she asked someone who certainly did. "What does it mean?" She inquired.
"It means that you don't need to fear being weak, Kara. You're beyond strong. Stronger than anyone who entered this complex, and stronger than anyone who's left. Whatever we're fighting against is the same as any player in this game - it doesn't like strong opponents. These illusions are directed at you because you're the best, Kara, and they're an attempt to weaken your resolve. They did, when you almost died a few minutes ago. You had a gun. That man didn't. If you hadn't seen Axel, you would have been conscious, shooting, helping me kill these things. So, Kara, you don't need to fear these illusions. If anything, you should only fear that they're working."
Kara digested this. Like most of what James said, it made sense... except for the part about her being strong. She didn't feel strong right now.
"I know you don't feel strong right now," James said, "but that's exactly the goal of our enemy. To make you feel weak."
James was too smart. There was one thing that he hadn't considered, though. "Well, you may be right." Kara said. She tried to steady her voice, failed. "But if anything can be an illusion, how do I differ from reality? Even your speech right there. It seemed real to me, but so does the face of Axel."
James pondered. And he pondered some more. After a minute, he'd been pondering so long that Kara had to ask him what he was pondering so much.
"I'm working on it. Give me a moment." He said.
James closed his eyes. It was dimly lit in the cave, and quiet, too. The only sounds came from distant echoes, water dripping from stalactites. With his eyes closed like this, he could almost deprive himself of his senses.
He travelled back to Floor Four. He remembered it in all the detail that he could, and he watched carefully as the lights shut off, listened for any sound, pictured every vivid detail. He watched Axel come closer as the light returned. He focused on the feeling. He focused on his mind.
He felt something rustle. It was a strong presence, unseen but unmissable. It fled easily from sight, but James's sight went beyond the eyes. He perceived it reaching in, only altering a small detail of vision, a detail small enough that it wouldn't be noticed. Just the lightest change, the tiniest addition, and its presence would usually not be noted. But James was not usual.
James seized the feeling of the alteration, inspecting it in his mind. It stood sorely out now, turning his stomach when he looked upon it. "Look at the body." James said quietly. "But don't use your thoughts. No memory. Only use your eyes."
Kara did, and there was a disturbing feeling in the pit of her stomach when she saw that she didn't recognize the face she viewed. It hadn't changed, she'd just ceased to see Axel, and Axel had disappeared. And a terrible presence skimmed the folds of her mind, running over the cranium. "No." She whispered, and it fled away.
"I felt it." She told James. "I found the maker of the illusions."
"Do you think you could look for him, Kara? Could you see him if he were to show you something fake?" James asked. She nodded. The feeling was too distinct to miss. If every illusion would be accompanied by this sensation, she'd never believe an illusion again.
Matt moaned himself awake. Kara did a quick check to determine whether he was truly getting up, and felt no influence from illusion. It was working.
"Damn." Matt yawned. "What the hell happened here?" Matt referred to the bodies strewn across the floor.
"I didn't kill all of them." James said. "I could have, but they all ran away before I got the chance."
"Well, in any case, we're almost out of here." Matt said. "Let's just follow that ramp for a while. That's totally the truck's old way out, right James?"
James nodded. "And we'll be home in time for supper." He murmured.
A spark of hope ignited in Kara's chest. She hadn't considered the possibility of this ending. She'd assumed that she might die in here, effort expent against delusions no more than a last stand, an attempt to die with sanity intact. But it turned that she may be minutes from liberation.
Or not. The ramp ended prematurely, covered in impassable rubble. Two hours were spent tearing at rocks to no avail. Matt kept at it until his hands were bloody, terrified at the prospect of not getting out, until James had to pull him away. Matt rested against the pile. Though it could hardly be called resting - Matt's hands shook and his eyes stayed large.
The spark extinguished.
They returned to the smoldering vehicle. Heroine fumes rose from bubbling plastic, so Kara kept a careful radius. Her stomach rumbled. She wondered if there was any food in the truck.
"What do we do now?" Matt looked to James for the answer.
James was pensive. He did not think aloud - he never did - but it was clear that he was working through their escape. "We head northwest." He said, with no elaboration.
"Why?" Matt asked.
"To get out." James.
"And northwest, that's the way out for what reason?" Matt demanded.
James didn't answer, only headed down a concrete tunnel and listened to two pairs of footsteps behind him. But Kara had little faith that this would be the way out. The only way out is down.
As the hours stretched on, Kara's hunger grew. She tried to control it, but matter was beating out mind. Her head was not getting the right amount of nutrition, it was hungry, she required some sustenance, she was starving, she was parched. And the dark shadows of the tunnel enveloped her thin ray of flashlight, ready to constrict at any moment, suffocate it from existence.
She wanted to say something, if only to break the monotonous drone of feet on concrete. James was too focused to speak, but she didn't know just what he was focusing on. Matt walked as quietly as he could, as though the slightest sound would bring death bounding from the shadows. And Kara felt that death had already come for her tongue. But there was a moment of reprieve. Her ears perked when she heard a thin whisper from the tunnel's edge. When casting her light over it revealed nothing, she carried on, but replayed the sound in her mind, trying to remember it. After all, there had to be some sound other than footsteps.
The whisper came again, this time from the opposite wall. Kara remembered the first one with great detail, and the same cadence and tone had returned. She swept her light over it again, and again found nothing.
James stopped. Focused on something on the ground. He peered down, eyes searching through a thin mist of smoke. Matt stopped before him and searched the ground. Matt's eyes came up to lock with Kara's, and he shook his head. There was nothing there.
But James was still looking, intent, face contorted in confusion. Matt dared not whisper his name, but brought a flashlight to his face. He found James's eyes to be dilated and jittery.
James shook out of it, reaching to push away the flashlight. There had been nothing there. He went on.
Kara heard the whisper again, and she knew that she was being spoken to. She didn't make any words, but managed to mouth a reply to the whisper. Say it louder. Went her lips.
And the whisper responded.
"The only..."
She heard it. There it was, the whisper again, and she heard the beginning. But the rest had faded into an incomprehensible hiss.
"...only way..."
James stopped again, then backed away, eyes vibrating, fixated on the ground before him. His teeth chattered, and he clutched at his wounds.
"...way out..."
Kara raised her flashlight to James's patch of ground, but there was nothing there, just the whisper, and the whisper was listening, getting louder...
"...only way..."
And louder, and higher, as though it were coming from close, from just nearby, and her beam raised, parting through the fog, flickered as
"KARA"
it found darkness, a form jutting from the ground, seen only for blocking the light's path, hard and cold and impossible to illuminate
"...way is..."
and the beam kept upward, flickered, a form, a form came, perfect, perfectly black
"ASHES"
and Axel went through her mind and the darkness of the tunnel became the darkness of the shower because there was no fate as dark as that which Kara had seen stock still then dead then alive then dead again
"...is down."
Her flashlight fizzled out.
It was pulled down and out of existence with a concrete clang and a shatter of glass.
But before it hit the ground, Kara recalled how Axel's face had disappeared from an earlier aggressor as soon as she knew it to be an illusion. And she noticed the strange feeling of an intruder skirting along her mind, feeding her thoughts that were not her own. The flashlight broke against the concrete and pulled her back to reality. She pulled James's flashlight from his hand and held it like a torch towards her imaginary foe, and found nothing had stood there but a well played facade.
Her light showed James staring blankly at the mist before him, shaking, and Matt kneeling, covering his eyes with both hands.
"Mom." James muttered to the mist. "You're so frail."
Kara grabbed his chin and pulled it in her direction. James's eyes were wide, boyish, and naive. "James," Kara said, tears welling and glistening, "you're our only hope. Please, you can't be seeing things too, please..."
James touched her hand, then looked back at the mist. "3:16." He consoled. "So you can't be dead."
"James." Kara repeated.
"I know." James said, looking away, an edge entering his voice. "I'm not seeing... there's no..."
He took a moment to compose himself. "We continue." James said without a tone. But Matt would not get up, and they had to carry him bodily to continue.
But before they got far, they heard another noise in the distance. Kara's inner monologue attained a long forgotten ember of ire, gaining so much ego as to almost scorn a second attempt to scare her. But the growl continued, and footsteps approached at an inconsistent pace. The feeling of alteration was fresh in her mind, and this was surely another trick.
But then the snarling man came into sight and leaped on Kara, knocking her to the ground. He pinned her wrists so hard that they bruised, and was prepared the moment James came to help. The man swung a fist that jerked James's jaw to the right, then grabbed a packet of clean filters from James's belt.
James whipped the man with his pistol, but a burst of black fire appeared from the man's hands, blowing James back and dimming the two flashlights. Kara fired haphazardly at the man's head, but her gun was soon grabbed and turned on her.
As she struggled to keep the barrel away from her face, a knife skidded across the ground to stop at her foot. There was no way she could reach it, though, in her current state. She inched a foot towards it, but found her head slammed against the wall, blood tainting blond hair.
The man's attention was diverted by James tackling from behind. He used all his weight to force the man to the ground. Just before the man took Kara's gun and shot James, Kara picked up the knife and put it through the man's eye.
A burst of black fire marked the snarling man's death and pushed back James and Kara. The filters ignited and burned.
To ashes.
"Dammit." Said James from the ground. His voice was clipped and terse. "Dammit, we need those filters. How many do you have on you?" He asked Kara. She said three. He asked the same of Matt, and Matt didn't respond. So he said it louder. "Hey, Matt!" James called, looking Matt in the face. Matt was dull-eyed and deadpan. No response. So James rifled through Matt's military jacket until he found a few filters, and he passed them all to Kara. "You can have them as soon as you get up, Matt." He said, venom plain in his voice. Something had suddenly shifted in James.
"It doesn't matter." Kara whispered. They weren't going to get out anyways. After all, loss was relentless in its taking. But James didn't listen.
"Alright then." He said, and kept down the tunnel.
"Wait." Said Kara. He didn't stop. "Wait." She said again. But the darkness was too thick to speak through. It had overwhelmed her nerve and projection, taken James's empathy and perception. She was forced to be loud. "Wait, James!" She said. He stopped this time. "We need to take Matt."
"If Matt wants to die, he can die." James.
"Please." Kara pleaded tonelessly. "James."
"Why?" James asked, turning quickly. "What use is a comatose idiot?"
Kara looked away. James had turned on her a fire he'd only ever reserved for his enemies. But she supposed that the darkness had torn down his filters. "For me." She said, giving a last effort.
A conflict raged in James's mind. But Kara won over his anger. She was his consolation, his last pacifier. He needed to keep her. Kara's life was a fragile barrack, but it shielded him from the slings and arrows of his past.
He hoisted Matt onto a shoulder, turned off one flashlight to preserve power, and carried on through the hungry cold. She trailed closely behind him, watching uneven footsteps and listening to erratic pacing.
"Run, run." Came a goading whisper. She knew it was fake, but it wouldn't go away.
A day passed. The dark of the caverns may as well have been the heat of the sun, the concrete or stone floors dry sand, for that alone could describe the limitless mirages brought on by hunger, thirst, confusion, and trickery. It became difficult to discern even simple speech from auditory lies. Once she thought she heard James muttering some ancient verse, again and again, but there'd been so much mental interference that she couldn't tell if it was real.
They'd moved ceaselessly northwest, but never reached their mysterious destination. Many strange locations passed them by without incident, but many revoked their clearance in the form of burning black eyes. James had become far less clinical in killing those that attacked him: Teeth were more often employed than not, and he had no fear of gouging eyes or tearing throats. He became drenched in blood and made little effort to clear it off. It became difficult for Kara to discern him from the enemy.
Fatigue burned at her muscles, but sleep wouldn't come. It was impossible to tell the night from the day. That's why sleep was so elusive, but she wouldn't have slept if she could. She was certain that no dreams would wait for her but night terrors. Or, day terrors. Whatever.
One day, after countless hours of dead ends and wrong turns, the group was assailed by fiery barrels. Matt took several bullets to the lungs, but he wouldn't have lived in any case. He hadn't asked for his filters, so James hadn't given them.
James's knife jerked as the serrated edge went through a living soldier's neck. The muscle, then especially the bone was quite tough, and the sawing came as a lurching movement. The soldier didn't scream, though, because the black eyed things didn't do that.
Then James did something worse, but Kara tried not to pay attention. There was no hope of Matt's recovery, and Kara assumed that James didn't desire for him to recover. She looked away while James did what he did. She covered her ears when the noises started.
When James called her over, she had trouble standing. Her legs were wobbly, thin. She hadn't eaten in what seemed like days, and her face was showing signs of emaciation. Matt was gone from his lying position, nowhere to be seen. In his place was a small fire with a large amount of meat roasting on a spit.
Tantalizing, she thought of the scent, but she then recalled the story behind the word. Tantalus had been cursed for his crime. It hadn't just been one against humanity, against his son, but one against the gods. Not that she believed in them any more. Still, her hunger drove her nearer the fire, to a smell so delicious that she would have salivated were not she so parched. A dry tongue felt strange over chapped lips.
"Here." James said, offering her some meat. Her conscience worried away at the issue, but it didn't stop her starving body from biting the flesh, bone of tooth meeting bone of arm, finger catching a droplet of hot juice to bring back to her lips. James watched her as she ate. "This, too." He said, handing her his water bottle. She drank it quickly, ignoring how it was so much thicker than water.
"Eat slower." James murmured. She'd been ravaging the meal, even though she knew better. It was hard to abide by the rule, but she didn't want this food wasted by nausea. She slowed.
When she was full, she lay on the ground, preparing another vain attempt to rest. James came to her before she could close her eyes, the fire behind him giving a warm glow, until she felt he was shrouded in angelic wings. Was that another illusion? She couldn't tell anymore.
He gently took out her filter and replaced it with a fresher one. James didn't want her to fall asleep with a used filter, or she'd wake up a used thing. Used by an entity she never wanted to meet. As James cared for her, she rested up against his body, his and the fire's warmth being the first she'd felt in long days. She wondered why James would even give such a useless asset such a valuable resource as a filter. "I'm no better than Matt." She whispered to him as they closed their eyes against the wall. "You're the only one who has a chance of living here. Take the filter for yourself."
"Oh, Kara." He soothed, running a hand gently up and down her arm. "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly, to the extent that you did it to these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.' There is only giving, Kara."
His voice was soft and kind, filled with a compassion that made her forget James's more heinous deeds. There were only the words, little as they made sense, and how they sounded to her wounded ear. And she would never sleep with a stomach full of that fire's meat, but she would rest against James now, with closed lids, until they both faded away from this place.
And as she waited for her eternal sleep to come, an idle part of her wondered what had been burned to make the fire.
Next morning, she was the first to hear the noise of approaching men. "James." She spoke, bringing him instantly awake. The fire had died down, leaving little more than hot embers, and deserting them both in the cold.
James leaped silently up, stalking towards the source of the sound, pulling a log from the fire on the way.
Oh, not a log. More body parts. A leg.
Finding that last night's food had given her some energy, Kara moved just as stealthily to help him. She found that her old habits had unconsciously returned, the stone below giving no indication that it was being stepped on.
James was on them just as the group of three black-eyed soldiers appeared, swinging the ember-covered leg at one of them, sparks scattered, soldier stumbled, flames raced. But James didn't stop, immediately plunging his knife into the one behind him, kicking out the knee of the other with such power that the joint buckled behind.
The one with James's knife in its chest drew an Agency machete from its belt. James swiftly broke its wrist and took the machete, swinging it at the burning soldier, fire now spread across its entire body, poisonous smoke rising. The soldier caught the machete, unhurt even though the edge bit into its skin. The dark blood that dripped out burned like lighter fluid on the blade's surface. James held the soldiers gripping arm to slice off four fingers, and when grabbed from behind, tore the already-lodged knife from chest to forehead. Then he brought the blade down on the other limping soldier, leaving a burning gash on its chest. That one advanced, so he rolled behind it, slashed its throat, and poured the ensuing stream of blood on the other. The blood ignited, and James's enemies were left in a pool of flame.
Kara had not once stepped in to help. "We will have been heard. Get the food." James said.
They kept on. Kara marveled at James's fighting ability. It did not seem that he had gained any new skills, only that he had let loose anything that had formerly been his restraint. Kara thought of the way the soldiers had burned. Flammable blood, producing the same black smoke that poisoned the entire complex. Of course, their meat had been cooked over that fuel. Ergo, they'd eaten meat infused with the poison smoke.
"James." Kara said.
"Kara." James replied.
"You cooked the meat using the soldiers' bodies, right?" She asked.
The answer was obvious, and he didn't respond.
"Well, the soldiers are full of the poison that we're wearing gas masks against." Not that it mattered much to her. She felt near death, only hoping that James could somehow slaughter his way out of this deathtrap.
Out? Asked her mind. The only way out is down.
But James didn't feel the same way. He stopped dead, eyes wide. "What?" He asked.
She stopped too, and turned. His mind was racing.
"That's..." He began, breathless. "I didn't think of that."
"I only just did." Said Kara.
"But. But, that is what I always think of. That's just perception. Why didn't I think of that? That's exactly the kind of thing I think of." James was thinking aloud, something Kara had seldom seen him do. His face revealed a clear anxiety, and he looked quickly around himself, searching for some unseen invader. He swatted the air.
"That's exactly the thing." He muttered, his face showing what Kara had felt when she saw Axel: Confusion, worry, a loss of an integral part of self.
"I wonder what the meat will do." He wondered aloud. Kara feared the answer.
James spent that night apparently reconciling his blindness with his need to perceive. To compensate for his earlier concession, he sought out a black-eyed soldier and drained the blood from its body. James spent that night (or dawn, noon, afternoon, dusk - it was impossible to tell) altering cartridges of a grenade launcher to contain blood filled packets. The following morning, among their incredible Agency technology was a fiery grenade launcher that was inescapably perilous to their foes, whose ammunition was located in their victims' chests.
James offered her the modified device, but she denied it, wary of anything with that evil blood in it. She was content to let James burn their enemies to death.
"How many bodies would it take to open that ceiling?" James mused. The result was far too high, an amount of explosives only a group of Agency units could haul in, so they headed to their northwest destination.
A new wave of strange effects washed over Kara, this one not induced by insomnia or hunger. Her skin became less sensitive. The nails of a soldier once raked across her arm hard enough to draw blood, and it was only when she saw her own blood dripping to the floor that she registered more than a stinging sensation.
She also cared less about things. Much as she'd been anticipating the answer, Kara could barely hold interest when James told her his theory of interconnecting complex tunnels. It made sense, a good explanation for this labyrinthian passageway, but all she still had the passion to be interested in was fighting off the lies and whispers of her manipulator. They had grown exponentially more invasive, some minor illusion or other within her view no matter which way she turned.
She couldn't tell, but it seemed that some of her apathy, some of her delusions, and some of her numbness had come from a recent meal. She tried to explain this to James, but he couldn't see her meaning. He demanded that they hunt for drink. So Kara and James stalked their victims, knowing that the soldiers were not trying to hide themselves. They found a large group: Six. James still had his flame launcher, but set it silently down. He didn't want to burn the blood, for he needed it.
The black-eyed soldier prey patrolled their area, waiting for someone to kill. But the black fire that had burned away their minds had taken also their perception, and the prey was not intelligent enough to notice the hazards of its environment. This one was a large cavern, complete with stalactites and stalagmites, but also fitted with manmade (Agency-made) structures. Any weapons or resources had been burned by the prey, but terraforming had been left intact. So Kara and James quietly ascended the heights of the chamber, where they looked down on their enemies from a concrete alcove.
James handed Kara one pistol. It was the last of the two firearms they possessed, and James had the other. James was more reckless than ever before. Without warning Kara or telling her any plan, he dropped a combat knife point-first on the head of one of their six prey, distanced from the primary group so as not to alarm them. The distance of the drop killed the victim instantly, spine fracturing and head pushing closer to shoulders. 1/6. At the same time, James himself landed feet-first on a victim in the middle of the group, crushing it easily. 2/6. His machete came quickly, removing the head of one, 3/6, then his pistol let an entire clip into another, 4/6. Kara was in wonder of his speed, killing four demi-immortals in seconds, but she had time neither to watch nor to offer supporting fire. A seventh soldier came from behind her and dealt a devastating punch to her throat, laying her on the concrete ground. She emptied her clip on him, but apparently not with the precision of James, for the soldier kept coming. It took her helmet, complete with filters attached, and threw it to the ground below. She held her breath against the poison air.
HELP! She shouted in her mind. She needed a filter, James's filter. She needed to kill this thing and get down and kill James's prey and take a filter all without a single breath. The prey grabbed her foot to keep her from backing away. It held her foot above his shoulder, so she was supported on the ground by only her elbows and head. It drew a knife, and it looked like a knife that Axel might wield.
No, no, she couldn't think that way, this wasn't Axel, it was a trick, she couldn't succumb to it.
"It is Axel, Kara. Don't you want to kill him? Let me help you. Let me inside, and you'll kill him so he'll never come back."
No, the whisper was fake, and Axel's face wasn't really before her. She tried to look past it into reality, but this time she couldn't. The knife grazed along her stomach, not cutting, but waiting for a higher command.
"You can kill him, Kara, don't you believe it? Just breathe, and you can kill him."
No, she wouldn't breathe. She wouldn't let it in. She refused to accept this...
Then the blade pierced skin, and she involuntarily gasped.
Breathing poison into her lungs.
And in the heat of her panic, black fire erupted from her hands, knocking the soldier to the ground. She stood quickly, and the soldier stood slowly, and when it stood, she punched it off the ledge, black fire following her fist.
James was fighting one remaining victim, standing by a most recent corpse that was speared on a stalagmite and missing its automatic rifle. 5/7. James looked up to the alcove at the sound of black fire, and shot Kara's victim as it fell. 6/7. In doing so, James sustained a volley of bullets from the victim just behind him. They exited his stomach and sent him tumbling to the ground.
JAMES! Kara screamed at him through her mind. He couldn't have heard, of course, but James seemed to have registered the shout, for he looked her directly in the eye as he fell.
She didn't know just what happened, only that some other force was leaving hold of her body as she knelt beside a bleeding James and a dead 7/7. She took one of James's filters and sucked clean air through it. Immediately, the force's hold further diminished.
But it didn't leave.
"James, James, you need to wake up, James, come on." She said. There were countless bullet holes in his belly, but they'd all gone clean through, so she didn't need to take out the bullets. She tore a shirt off of one of their prey, and used it to bind James's stomach. The blood seeped through, dripping to the ground, mixing with the strange, lustrous, silvery-red blood of the soldiers. My, the blood was odd. Luminous. Entrancing.
As she stared into the pool, she saw her own reflection. She met her own gaze, and found her eyes to be black.
No, she thought, closing them. It was just an illusion again, probably. She wrapped another shirt around James's wounds.
"Kara." He said, working to keep the croak out of his voice. After some wandering, his pupils aimed towards hers. "I heard you, Kara."
She didn't know what he was talking about.
"You called for me. You told me to help. Then you said my name. You called for me. How'd you do that, Kara?" James.
"I don't know." She murmured. She kept wrapping the holes.
"I know." Said the whisper.
Don't listen. She thought, trying to push out the invading thoughts.
"Just take off your filter. Then you can call for anyone. Come, it would be so easy to drop it, to let me in." Said the whisper.
"No." She said aloud.
"Let me in. I saved you from the soldier when you breathed me. Do it again."
"You can get out. Just give me control."
"LET ME IN."
Even talk from James was no distraction from the whisper, for James muttered odd nonsense aloud. "Sarai, my mistress... go back to your mistress... submit." A tear rolled down Kara's cheek.
"LET ME IN."
"Submit, therefore, to God... the devil... the devil... will flee." James.
He reached up and touched Kara's face, crooning, loving, saying that he knew that his mother was alive. "I never lost faith." He promised with the clouded eyes of a blind man. "I was only scared, and hurt. I never stopped believing."
"LET ME IN."
So she hit her head against the floor. It jarred her, but she could hardly feel the pain. She hit again, so blood dripped down her forehead. And again, and she finally fell asleep, for the first time in days.
Bad dreams.
And when she awoke, the lights were burnt out. James had not ceased his whispering, but he did it quietly now, cradling his knees to his chest. Silvery blood was dried on his face. He'd been drinking the blood, for he was as thirsty as Kara. She looked, and saw that all of their filters were had been rendered useless, fallen into the poisonous blood and soaked in it.
She stood, swayed, walked off to a corner. There was a small alcove there, and she sat in it, back to the wall, eyes closed, head rested up against the concrete. Another tear fell, and she hoped it would be the last one she ever shed. She could make sure of it.
Clipped to her belt was a holster. Inside the holster was a small, silver gun. In the gun's chamber was one bullet.
She turned off the safety and deftly pulled back the hammer. It was the only thing she was good at. And she'd finally have the perfect shot that every marksman dreamed of attaining.
"You'd better not. Take that bullet and go with it to North Complex. There are plenty of worthy targets there." Hissed evil.
No. There was only one target worthy of her bullet. One, last target. She held the pistol to her chin, steel still hot from its last use. The warmth was nice. It was the warmth of freedom.
"Not yet, Kara."
Trigger finger pressed down. Goodbye to the Agency, goodbye to her family, goodbye to James. Hello to Harry. Hello to Matt.
The only way out.
But before the trigger fell, her radio buzzed to life, the first time it had done so since she'd entered this dead place. This would not distract her from her target. But of its own accord, her mind reached out to it, grasping for It was the same communication she'd felt with James. Only now the receiver was much farther away.
Someone was on the other end. She couldn't hear or see them, but she could feel them somehow. She tested the connection, thinking through the radio waves.
"Who is this?" She thought to them. But as she asked, she knew that it was Sheriff Jay, primary benefactor of the Agency. She could feel the room, that the radio was off, that the Sheriff could hear static, that she was too quiet, but that he was listening closely for her words.
She had an idea. The Sheriff could help her. There was no possibility of her and James making it all the way to North Complex, but James had said the roof could be blown with sufficient explosives.
Then she thought that Sheriff Jay could send medicine as well. Maybe they could use whatever was in the filters to cure James, to cure her.
The Sheriff was still listening for her voice, so she sent it loudly. She winced as a burst of noise came at the Sheriff, but was relieved to see that he didn't stop listening. She started softly again, slowly rising until she reached the right volume, repeating the same message again and again:
"SOS, Sheriff Jay, this is the East Complex, please respond. I repeat, this is the East Complex, we are in distress, please respond."
Finally, he replied. Her gun fell unfired to the ground to be replaced by the radio held close to her face, and her one tear of sadness was replaced by many tears of joy. She might escape now. In her excitement, she forgot to manage the volume. It spiked, but she returned it back to normal.
She attempted to regain the concise prose of a soldier as she told him quickly of her situation. He pried, and eventually asked how she could communicate from the radio-deadened complex. She, in her soldier-like honesty, was forced to tell him the uncomfortable truth. The pace of her breathing increased as she recounted her disgusting encounter with blood and meat. But he reacted not with surprise, more as though her defect was a power, and one to take advantage of.
He directed her to a channel to file a report, and she gained a deeper control of her ability. But it wasn't an ability, she told herself. It was a curse wrought by a poisonous whisper.
His inquisition continued, but a footstep drew her attention away. James had already heard it, and disregarding his debilitating injury, was standing astute, hands clenched. No, no, James, you can't fight it.
James lumbered towards the sound.
Gunfire erupted at James, and she dropped the radio, inconsiderate of the static that burst forth in the far distance.
"James!" She shouted. "Come on, please, we can't fight them! James, come!"
He took a couple bullets to the arm. Kara knew James didn't feel them, though, because he'd consumed far more poison than her. His face was set in a hateful gaze as he approached them.
"Fffffuck that." He said. "Fffffuck their guns. I'll kill... I'll kill 'em with my goddamn hands."
And he did, cracking their bones and laughing.
The Sheriff confirmed the details of her rescue plan without showing any semblance of worry about the violence that was close occurring. She sobbed for him to bring medicine as she watched the scene of the battle. James bashed the head of one against the chest of the other, then kicked in any ribs that might not have been fractured, then stomped the ribs to shards when it was on the ground.
Then she ran out to catch him as he fainted from exhaustion.
She listened to the radio all night, just to block out the sound of James's biblical chanting. She'd missed having an inkling of what time it was, so she took advantage of the station's monotonous broadcast. There was no more whispering. The reprieve seemed almost like a reward.
The next morning, her rescuers entered the facility. She guided them in, taking them down the least treacherous paths she could, but it didn't really matter. Every path was treacherous. At the time that they arrived at B2, Kara saw an enemy, ran through water, evaded its bullets, and killed it with black fire before it could kill her. She tried to hide her panting, but it didn't work.
As her rescuers walked through B2, B3, and finally the sewers below, their observations reminded Kara of her own perilous journey. They made her relive every moment, every battle, every teammate's death - her teammates were very similar to her rescuers, and her rescuers died aplenty in B3. She decided that if she made it out of here alive, she'd quit the Agency and never fight again.
But then she considered something that she hadn't before. It was the smoke of the whisper's soldiers that had given her the power to communicate this way, and the whisper who had told her to call for help. Her heart sank. Nothing she said mattered anymore. The whisper had gotten just what it wanted from her, and her rescuers were not rescuers anymore; they had all become the distressed. Of course, she couldn't send them back. She'd learned that when she'd come down for the first time, that nobody could go back anymore.
Kara listened, crestfallen, as more and more of them died, and as their weapons decreased to nothing. Though there were no soldiers in the room... her rescuers were close, very close now, and maybe they would blow through the ceiling before anything happened. Pull the unconscious James from the room, escape forever. Kara and James could spend the rest of their lives happy, maybe together.
Not so. Kara saw her rescuers enter, and suddenly the stone cavern was swarmed with soldiers. They were each equipped with a gun, but their numbers were so great that none of them were drawn. Kara saw the fire die in the eyes of the leader of her rescuers, and heard her speak through the radio.
"Officer Eila reporting to base." Said the policewoman. "We are out of ammunition. There are too many of them to fight. This... this will be my last report."
Kara was stabbed from behind. Twice. And bitten. And stabbed. And carved. She fell to the ground headfirst, hardly feeling the soldiers who'd set upon her body. She watched the carnage, as black fire burned and red blades sliced everything. She idly searched the throng for her love, James, and saw him swaying in the battleground, muttering, somehow dodging the violence around him. He was illuminated by that same soft, warm glow he'd had back at the fire. She saw angel wings around him, and a halo atop his head.
His image blurred and faded, and she let herself burn out like a flashlight, muffled screams no longer touching her mind. She felt her soul being pulled down somewhere deep, warm, far away, and knew at last the meaning of those happy words.
The only way out is down.
While Kara died, James felt the strength of God healing his wounds.
"Do not kill these soldiers, for they know not what they do." God whispered to James. But James didn't hear, because he perceived only what he wanted to. And he wanted to watch in reverence as the room around him burnt a fiery orange.
"I am God's tool." He said to the room, eyes closed. Through his devotion, he released himself from the bonds of the Earth, ascending a few feet into the air. His arms raised at either side. "I will purge this evil, for humanity." And he was flying through the tunnel, back the way they'd come, heading for the surface. And if B1 wouldn't let him enter, he'd tear B1 from the Earth.
"I will be The Savior."