Chapter Fourteen: One Last Breath
Norianna found it odd that the guards that had carried her away from a hysterical Happy had suddenly dumped her in a doughnut-shaped underground tunnel and had left her alone, to go about her own devices, it seemed. They had been gone for ten minutes, at least, and she stood shivering, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to keep warm. She sniffed, looking around her, wondering if there was supposed to be another pair of Skaarj bullies assigned to her. The door that the Skaarj left through was locked, of course; she had tried the handle as soon as they had closed it behind them. The only way to go was forward, down the hallway, but she had an uneasy feeling in her gut that told her to stay put at all costs. She was very good at convincing herself to be brave, but she was having a hard time envisioning any sort of positive ending to her current situation. She had stolen a weapon from the Skaarj—never mind that it wasn't theirs to begin with—and had chased an entire Nali village into the mountains, sparing them a terrible fate at the hands of their constant tormentors. If that wasn't bad enough, she had threatened a war party and had raised her hand against her Skaarj commander—unsuccessfully, of course, but her violent intent was obvious to all.
There was an open grate on the ceiling off to her left; it looked out at an angle at the sky, which was surprisingly clear and smooth for being completely filled with gray clouds. The weather had been overcast so long that she had been led to believe that cool charcoal was the natural color of a Na Palian sunset. A balmy breeze slipped in through the holes in the grate and raised goosebumps on her skin. The temperatures varied a lot in the mountains, she remembered dimly. It might be freezing in one area and merely cool in others. However, she would trade being in Harobed with its frozen ground and subzero temperatures for her current predicament. But she had gotten herself into it; she had no one to blame but herself.
She wanted to walk. She tried to, once or twice, lifting her foot and deliberately putting it in front of her, but the uncertainty in her heart was so strong that she was paralyzed with fear of the unknown. Was she walking towards her death? Would she be actively initiating her last stand if she moved forwards? She couldn't do that; she wouldn't give the Skaarj the pleasure of seeing her wander into whatever trap they had set for her. But if she didn't move—if she didn't take action, as she was always wont to do—then she might end up dying a coward; the Skaarj had limited patience, after all. Her stomach flopped as she thought of finding out what was on the other side of the platform she was standing on. A legion of Skaarj to fight against, a band of humans pitted against each other in a gladiatorial match, a firing squad?
"Or a fairyland, or a porn set, or they'll force me to jump into a pit and plummet straight into hell," she muttered, finally making up her mind. Her brisk footsteps echoed off the walls. "Stop speculating and just go for it. It's not like you can change anything now."
She set her jaw as she followed the curve of the corridor. Whatever they were planning for her, she wouldn't give them the pleasure of seeing her give up. She was going down swinging, that much she knew for sure.
Misty bars of light broke up the gloom of the corridor as Norianna came upon a small set of stairs that led up to an open trapdoor. Through it, she could see the sky, colored like an old bruise, and part of the arena wall. She was looking up, it seemed, through the floor of the arena. The iron tree made a gruesome outline against the clouds. Was this where she was supposed to go?
She inhaled deeply a few times, trying to calm her beating heart. Every fiber of her being was screaming at her not to ascend the stairs. She could hear her inner voice begging her to stay put, to be safe, to try to run away while she was still alone and still had a chance.
Heh. Norianna planted one foot on the lowest step. What's the fun in that?
The circular coliseum rose up around her on all sides when she finally straightened her back after rising to the arena floor. The dust at her feet swirled in the wind that whipped down from the pre-storm clouds. Rolling her shoulders, she looked around, trying not to seem intimidated. Nothing was in the giant circle of sand except her and the tree, which, for some reason, looked like it had shrunk. The half-rotting bodies, hanging by their feet, were brushing the ground like bad fruit from an over-laden tree. She covered her mouth to keep the stench from making her gag.
"Norianna!"
Her head whipped around, eyes focused on one of the open tiers on the coliseum wall. She could see a hulking green form—Shas, of course—and beside him, huddled on her knees, was a pale white speck. Norianna smiled broadly and raised her hand, hiding her fear as best as she could. "Hey, Happy! What do they want me to do—start dancing naked or something?"
"Don't move! Don't do anything! It'll hear you!"
A quick movement from Shas effectively hushed her cellmate, but Norianna had heard enough.
It?
As soon as the thought flickered through her mind, the ground beneath her feet began to shake. She looked around, backing up a few steps until her heel hit something hard. It was an eightball gun. A sick feeling spread through her gut. If the Skaarj were voluntarily giving her this particularly destructive weapon…what did she have to use it against?
Up on the open tier, Happy, having had the breath viciously knocked out of her lungs, wheezed, "Don't…don't…." She glared up at the Skaarj. Shas's tail was twitching. He was anxious for blood.
The ground wouldn't stop shaking. It was like a controlled earthquake—but in this case the earthquake seemed to be a herald for something…else. Norianna bent down on one knee and lifted the eightball launcher into her arms, slipping her hand onto the trigger. The instrument was bulky, the majority of its length being dominated by the six interlocked barrels that looked, from head on, like a honeycomb. Up to six rockets could be loaded into each barrel, depending on how long the user held down the trigger; the secondary fire activated the grenade function of the small, roundish 'eightballs' that gave the launcher its name. The little missiles looked comically small, but they packed devastating firepower.
A loud sound from behind her caused her to spin on her heel and fire off a warning shot. The rocket exploded against the ground, sending up a spray of sand. However, when the smoke cleared, there was nothing there…except…
…the trapdoor was shut.
The sound of something spinning and cranking drew her attention to the iron tree. It was rising out of the ground, growing like a weed, causing the bodies on its branches to sway. Across the arena, something else was rising. It was a door.
She swallowed heavily, readjusting her grip on the launcher. From somewhere above her, she could hear a noise like sobbing—or perhaps that was the wind. The door was fully opened now, and it yawned black and empty—until a boulder twice the size of Norianna's body came rocketing out of the abyss and headed straight for her. She reacted purely on instinct, diving directly behind the iron tree and watching with horror as the giant stone connected with the arena wall and burst into rubble, showering her with debris.
She swallowed heavily, noticing that the ground wasn't merely rumbling, it was shaking. Shaking rhythmically—like something was walking. Something big.
She breathed in through her nose and set her jaw, shifting onto her knees and chancing a peek around the thick stem of the iron tree. She choked a little when she saw heradversary.
It was huge. Easily the largest creature she had seen on this planet, it stood nearly as tall as the third tier of the arena. Its scales were dirty brown in color and matched rather well with the tint of the coliseum walls. It stood on its rear legs, but because of its hunched back and drooping neck, it seemed to place a great amount of its weight on its long, lean, sinewy arms, using them as support as it walked. Its head was shaped like a lizard's, and when its mouth opened she could see that it had rows of razor-sharp teeth. It seemed to be looking around for her; she figured its small eyes must not lend themselves very powerfully to its senses or else it would have seen her by now. So this is what she had to kill. A Titan. Its name was perfectly suited to its image.
All right. She looked down at the eightball gun. I have to kill a Titan and I have 30 rockets to kill it with.
I think I'll give it a shot.
Without waiting long enough for her mind to talk her body out of the action, Norianna stood up and held down the alternate fire trigger of the eightball. A lever in the back loaded a rocket into one of the eight barrels; the barrel then turned, and the lever loaded a second rocket into the next barrel. When the fifth rocket was pushed into place, she turned around and oriented the weapon so that its fire would strike the Titan directly in the torso.
The last rocket clicked into place. Norianna leapt out from behind the tree and discharged all six of the activated rockets straight into the Titan's body. Each one of them exploded on contact, engulfing the beast in flames and black smoke. It raised its hands up to protect its face and hissed in pain. Norianna didn't give it a chance to recuperate and immediately began launching a volley of primary-fire rockets at her opponent, running in a wide arc to avoid its flailing arms.
Suddenly, to her surprise, the Titan made a fist and brought it heavily down onto the ground. Norianna's legs buckled as the entire arena floor beneath the sand fractured; she felt the ground shift as the Titan opened its hand and pulled a huge slab of stone from underneath the loose dirt. Its head swiveled in her direction and it lobbed its newfound weapon directly at her. It tumbled end over end; one of the tips struck the ground and ricocheted into the air above her head. She didn't waste any time in booking it in the opposite direction, trying to keep her balance on the unsteady ground. The slab fractured against the wall behind her, and she grimaced. That could very easily have been her body that was ripped apart.
She clamped her hand down on the trigger and loaded more secondary fire eightballs, noticing that their grenade function seemed to do more damage to the Titan's seemingly impervious body. As long as she kept moving, its huge projectiles couldn't hit her, and she imagined she was doing pretty well with hitting it with her constant flow of rocketfire. Using the iron tree as a shield turned out to be her favorite strategy, but the only problem was that she couldn't remain there for long or else the Titan would figure out where its torment was coming from.
"Look at me, Happy!" she shouted as she ducked another flung piece of stone flooring. "It's like dodgeball with a fat kid!" Her cellmate made no response, and even if she did, she wouldn't have been able to hear it for all the noise that the Titan was making.
She cheered when it seemed to flinch at the latest volley of rockets—until she realized that she had gotten too close to its ridiculously long arms when she sprinted away from the boulder it had thrown.
The Titan noticed this, too. In a split second—much faster than Norianna thought it could move—its arm was sweeping towards her, claws extended, shooting out to crush her body. She reacted purely on instinct, launching herself backwards and aiming a rocket at the hand that grasped at her legs. The rocket did its job in deterring the scraping fingers, but Norianna screamed out in frustration and pain as the splash damage from the projectile split her left leg open from knee to ankle. She landed heavily on her back, not far enough away from the Titan, and helpless to do anything about it.
Trying to ignore the blinding pain in her leg that was burning its way up her entire side, Norianna desperately loaded six more grenades into the barrel of the gun and fired directly into the Titan's face. It reeled backwards, growling and swiping at its eyes. Its blood poured down into its nostrils; it snorted to clear the airway, consequently spraying Norianna with droplets of red rain. She groaned in disgust.
"Aaaaah, shit," she hissed, quelling a wave of panic when she saw that her entire calf had been laid open to the bone. With shaking hands she fired more volleys of grenades at the Titan, but to her horror, it didn't seem to be feeling any of them. Or it could be her mind playing tricks on her—was she giving up too early? She thought of Happy and her mangled arm, thought of Shas quietly and steadily cutting the tendons of her cellmate's hand—and she set her teeth. She could get through this. She had used twenty rockets on this animal already—.
"I only have ten left," she breathed, staring disbelievingly at the ammunition display on top of the launcher. She swallowed with some difficulty. After a pause, she snapped the chamber open and pulled a standby rocket out of the barrel, tucking it into one of her flightsuit pockets. She figured she could allow herself one last-ditch effort, and, if worse came to worse, she could always blow herself up. She shivered.
Happy's watching. Don't lose your cool.
Trying not to listen to her blood squishing in her shoes as she stood up, she clenched her jaw and rested most of her weight on her right leg. The Titan was swaying on its feet, unsure of whether to approach her or just knock her out with another rock-throw. Norianna decided to make up its mind for it.
"Nine rockets." She pumped the eightball launcher in the air, simultaneously flipping the Titan the bird with her free hand. "I'm gonna take you out with nine motherfucking rockets, you fucking son of a bitch!"
The creature raised its head and bellowed into the sky. Norianna raised her voice in a scream of her own and lobbed six more grenades in its direction. Its entire torso and neck were coated in its blood when the smoke cleared. The Titan had had enough. It stepped forwards, its rumbling footsteps knocking Norianna off balance. As she fell, her adversary reached out and snatched her body off the ground, hoisting her up to face-level.
Big mistake. Norianna snarled in pain and fury and immediately discharged her last three grenades straight into the Titan's face. One of them made it into the animal's mouth and effectively blew a gaping hole in its jaw. It screeched and slammed her down onto the ground, bringing both hands up to its face in a surprisingly human gesture of pain. The now-useless eightball launcher fell from Norianna's fingers and bounced away, sending up a cloud of sand where it finally came to rest.
Happy swallowed a scream when she saw the way Norianna's legs bent when they met the crushed floor of the arena. She was almost certain that both of them had been broken in the fall—and she was proven right when her cellmate rolled over and began attempting to crawl away from the raging Titan, her legs bent at disgustingly unnatural angles.
The Titan, seeing its prey trying to escape, put one bloody hand forwards and closed its three fingers around Norianna's torso; she twisted away, but the Titan merely dropped its grip lower and seized one of her shattered legs. The woman screamed and whipped her head around, glaring hatefully at the monstrosity, her hands clawing the ground as she tried to wrestle with the burning, piercing sensations in her lower body. The Titan, of course, cared not for the pain of its prey, and without a second thought it hoisted her up in the air so that she hung with her head facing the ground, more than five stories up. She was practically on the same level as the platform that Happy and Shas were standing on.
Happy could see that she was in agony; there was a bright spot of white on her lower calf where the bone had punctured the skin. Her entire body recoiled at the sight, and she reflexively drew her legs closer together. However, for the horrible state that she was in, her cellmate looked almost peaceful. She wasn't flailing, at least, and her arms retained a poetic curve as she tried to adjust her center of gravity so that she wasn't swinging around so much. Her hair, its silky golden waves catching the overcast light, seemed to be the only source of color in the entire arena.
The Titan held Norianna directly above its head, staring up at her with its beady red eyes, watching as her body twisted listlessly from its broken leg. Norianna held its gaze with a stare of her own, realizing she was powerless to do anything now but wait for the next onslaught. She tried to reason through her situation, but the paralyzing pain in her limbs made it difficult to do.
The sky broke, but gently; the rain misted down so gently that, at first, Happy thought that the stadium was filled with a cool breeze. She only noticed that it was raining when the droplets began to gather on her arms and tickle her skin as they ran in rivulets to the ground. The moisture flattened the dirt that had been kicked up by the Titan's scuffle, and now that the two warring ones were still, the arena sand turned into sloshing mud. The wind shifted and there was a sudden unexpected parting of the clouds; sunlight poured forth from the sky, a brilliant and bright contrast to the black clouds and the rainy weather. Bars of light struck the brown stones of the Arena, illuminating the entire ring with eerily cheerful brightness. The contestants' bodies were thrown into harsh contrast, and it seemed that Norianna's skin was glowing.
All the while, it kept raining. A sun shower.
The Titan opened its mouth. A low, rattling hiss bubbled deep in its body, which quickly escalated into a full-throated roar. The sound was unnervingly triumphant.
The roar died away, and the monster drew its arm back. Happy furrowed her brows, leaning forwards breathlessly, almost tipping off the edge of the platform. Above her, Shas snorted and trilled in what could only be described as a Skaarj's laughter. She looked, panicked, from the scene unfolding in front of her to Shas, then back again. Her heart leapt into her throat and stayed there, hammering. Her breath began to grow shallow.
"Norianna," she whispered.
Twisting in the air like a wind chime, her golden hair flowing like a banner in the wind, Norianna stared into the Titan's gaping maw with a calm and steady gaze. It came as no surprise to her when the Titan launched her into the air once more with a mere flick of its arm, sending her tumbling into the air like a leaf caught in a hurricane. She vaulted past the iron tree and crested the top of her flight, clearing the ceiling of the arena by at least thirty feet. In the breathless second before her descent, where time seemed to slow down and she hung in the air like a bird suspended on a string, she reoriented herself so that she faced the sky. She reached up with both arms, flexing her wrists, trying to swallow the sun with her fingertips. Her hair was buffeted into her face by the wind but it could not hide the smile that curved her lips. The hardness of the unused grenade in her pocket was a comforting weight against her hip. It would be her last assault.
Guess this is it.
Happy tried to scream, but she couldn't work any sort of audible sound around the lump in her throat. Instead she began to sob—loud, shuddering, wracking sobs, her chest heaving as she tried to get air into her lungs. A steady stream of tears coursed down her cheeks and dripped to the floor. They were the tears of a child, confused and lost and hurt, watching as its mother died right in front of its eyes. A brave, protective, gentle mother, who held her while she was sleeping and told her to be happy.
Her cellmate's body tumbled closer and closer to Earth; she wished that she would just stay up in the air, or transform in to a bird and escape. Suspended between Earth and sky—she had heard that saying before. 'Twixt Earth and Sky—that was supposed to be where heaven was, wasn't it?
Norianna flipped in the air, spinning backwards so that she was falling head-first. The Titan, in response to this movement, lifted its own head higher and opened its mouth, letting its gray tongue loll over its bottom jaw. Happy tried to trace the trajectory of her friend's body; she was either going to fall into the tree, or onto the ground, or…or…!
"No!" Realization hit her like a slap across the face, and Shas had to kick her in the stomach to prevent her from leaping off of the platform. "You can't! You can't!"
Norianna landed directly in the Titan's mouth; its jaws snapped closed as if they had been spring-loaded. One of her legs didn't quite make it into its maw and was immediately severed from the rest of her body; it fell to the floor of the arena with a wet plop. There was a muffled crunch as the Titan chewed once, and then all was silent.
Happy got the sensation that she was growing smaller, folding into herself like a piece of paper being crumpled. She tried to breathe normally, but she could only take in small swallows of air. Her hands were clenched so tightly that her nails cut into her palms, making them bleed. Her perception of the world narrowed until she was only aware of her heartbeat pounding in her ears and the echoing chewing sounds of her cellmate's body being ground into a pulp.
Cellmate. The word violently threw her back into the reality of the situation. Norianna was gone. A sort of panic came over her and she stood up, throwing herself into the hallway, pressing herself up against the opposite wall, following its curve with her shoulder pressed to the stone as she pressed her palms to her eyes so hard that she began seeing spots of color against the blackness. "No, no, no, no," she chanted, fighting the urge to vomit. She walked faster, trying to run, but Shas's warning growl stopped her before she got too far.
Suddenly, an ear-splitting roar echoed into the hallway from the arena. Happy's head jerked to the side; she heard Shas's trill of surprise a moment later. She made her was cautiously to the edge of the arena, a good distance away from Shas; he must have been distracted to let her get this far. The Titan was on all fours, head arched upwards unnaturally, the fan-like protrusions on its spine flared. There was a muffled popping sound, and then its stomach split open, bursting from its body in a sloppy spray of intestines and blood. Its entrails—or what was left of them—slipped over each other and pooled onto the sand. Everything looked, and smelled, like charred meat.
She realized with a start what had happened. Right before she had been wounded, Norianna had put something in her pocket. A grenade.
It had exploded inside of the animal's stomach.
Happy's eyes burned with tears. Norianna had won. She had killed herself in winning, but she had won. And now she was all alone with Shas again, but she felt such strange pride in her cellmate. You couldn't kill her, she mentally accused Shas as she stared at his astonished expression. She had to kill herself because you didn't do it properly. You idiot.
And suddenly she realized. She couldn't be alone with Shas. She didn't have to be alone with General Shas any more. Norianna had shown her what she could do. What she had to do.
They believe you are the Messiah, Baran had said. And you are stronger than you know. So you take charge, now. You may not be the savior of the planet, but you are the savior to them. Here, now.
"Right now," she whispered. "Now."
__
General Shas-ulhara.
Shas started. The Source's voice was harsh inside his head. He dragged his attention away from the disgusting spectacle in the arena—Terran zar'chi!—and closed his eyes, connecting his consciousness with his Queen's.
I am issuing new orders. You shall slaughter all humans that come your way. I forbid their capture to be used in your bloodsports. We have very little time left to establish dominance on this planet.
Shas bowed his head in respect, even though the Queen could not see him. I will do all that you ask.
You and the other generals are treading dangerous ground, she continued. I will no longer tolerate failure of any kind. If there are Terrans upon Na Pali's surface, they will inevitably bring more Terrans. They are vermin. They are to be terminated, not kept as pets. There was a pause. Is that clear, General Shas-ulhara. It was a statement, not a question.
Perfectly clear, my Queen. He furrowed his brow as a nagging sensation at the back of his neck alerted him to the presence of danger.
No one was with him on the tier that would pose any danger to him.
No one except…Happy.
Will you pardon me, my Queen? I am about to be attacked by one of the lowlife Terrans that we happen to be discussing.
There was an echoing snort of contempt from the Source. I deny your request, General. I am not done addressing you. Perhaps if you didn't keep them until their sanity is shattered, you wouldn't be in the situation you are now. You shall wait until I am finished issuing orders, and then you may dispose of your plaything.
___
This was her last chance. She had to take it, and take it now, and it had to work, because if she failed, then Norianna would have died for nothing, and the unknown Messiah would be hunted down and murdered, and Na Pali would fall. It would be brought to its knees by the act of a single creature—her hateful captor—her dreaded companion.
He did this. He cut off her hand and raped her and beat her and used her and killed her cellmate—her friend—and as she stood there in the rain with the wind whipping her hair into her eyes, she thought, for a fleeting, terrible moment, that she could—
Kill him.
The word was a gentle whisper in her consciousness, running through her mind like balm, breathing life into her aching, mangled limbs, until she almost felt—what was that feeling?
Oh, of course. Happy.
She cast her eyes down at the twisted piece of metal extending out of her arm. The shredded metal tapered into a wedge at the very end, and with the strength of her whole arm, no, her whole body, behind it, it would serve her purpose. Sha's last act of violence towards her would prove to be the death of him. She looked at the back of Shas' head. There's only one place you need to worry about when fighting a Skaarj, Norianna had told her with a sly smile. Happy's muscles tensed.
Of course Shas didn't deserve to die in the same place where Norianna had fallen, but it was enough to know that she would avenge her friend and finally, perhaps, be at peace.
She took a deep breath. And another. The world seemed to slow down as she took her first step against General Shas-ulhara. Her whole body began to tremble with excitement. There was no fear any more—how could there be? She had lived the last six months of her life in constant anticipation of torture, of pain, of the unknown death that faced her, but now her future shone bright and clear before her, and she couldn't help the small smile that curved her cut and bruised lips. Here she was, making her own destiny. After all of her suffering, after all she had been through, the only hand that would take her life would be—
The sky churned in gray and purple swirls above her, whipped into a frenzy by the wind. Shas hadn't moved from his spot at the edge of the walkway—what was he waiting for? Why was he being so still? It was as if he was listening for something…but she couldn't waste time speculating. If he wasn't paying attention now, then she had to do it now. If she hurried, she could make it. She could do it, as long as he was distracted. Even in death, Happy thought, her throat constricting in grief, she's helping me. She told me we'd take them together. She told me we'd bring them down. And she's right. God, she was right all along.
A low roar of thunder rolled through the clouds. Here, now, with the wind of the storm pushing her gently but insistently forwards, the calm, gentle voice of Norianna echoed in her mind like the tolling of a church bell. The words rocked through her body and sang in her ears, until her entire being buzzed around the same wonderful, impossible order.
Kill him.
She raised her arm and whispered, through a hoarse, shuddering sob, "Yes."
She began to run. Her bruised legs and crushed feet sent painful barbs shooting up through her calves, but she was too focused on her task to let it bother her. She kept her eyes glued on the back of Shas' head—and as long as he stayed near the edge of the walkway, she could strike him. Just enough of a push, the slightest touch of metal against his head, and he would reflexively flinch away from his assailant. Which meant he would leap forwards without really thinking about what he was doing. And no Skaarj, to Happy's knowledge, had ever survived a sixteen-story drop. It was so simple, so easy—
–Too easy.
In the split second before she lifted her arm for the blow, a stray thought blew through her mind. Shas was smart. He demonstrated control over himself and his subjects at all times. He knew that she had followed him out of her cell. He had put on the show purposely, had baited her out into the open, made her watch Norianna's sickening execution, had left her chains unattached. He was standing in the most ridiculous position on the walkway. It was almost as if he were—as if he were—
—baiting her.
It was true that Shas had anticipated this very moment, where Happy would snap and attempt to attack him. But the moment had come at the most inopportune time. The Queen's consciousness filled his head like the rushing of water, cutting out any sources of distraction from the outside world. His sense of smell, sight, sound, and touch were all dulled as he listened to the Queen's harsh voice berate him and his fellow generals for being too lenient, but he could not listen to her completely—his primal sense of danger was in overdrive. Something was coming to get him, and he knew who it was, but he couldn't make his body move. He felt like he was in a state of hibernation.
Her footfalls were almost upon him now. In a last-ditch effort he clenched his fist. The Razik blades sliced out of their metal confinements with a satisfying hiss. Maybe he could save himself—the Queen could wait, for just one moment, as he turned, as if in slow-motion, to see if he could decapitate Happy before she struck him first. He felt her twinge of annoyance as his attention was drawn from her, but she could do nothing to stop him. He had to kill Happy before anything else could be done. That was her new order—surely the Source could understand that.
Pivoting on his heel, he swung his arm out to the side, getting his Razik blades in the correct position that would neatly remove Happy's head from her shoulders—.
She wasn't there. Or, rather, she wasn't where he had anticipated her to be. She was hovering, it seemed, three feet in the air, directly in front of him, her teeth bared in a snarl, her eyes boring into his, burning with courage and defiance and hatred; it was a look he had never seen her display before. It made her look strong. Of course he realized his mistake too late; that she had jumped, and now he was leaning backwards, his heels dipping off of the edge of the platform, losing his balance. He tried to bend forward at the waist to readjust his center of gravity, but his action was delayed by a brilliant point of pain in his forehead. He looked up, confused, and saw that Happy's mangled iron arm was buried up to her elbow in his crown.
His Razik blades, however, continued on their curved path, and he felt a spill of warm liquid on his arm as they sliced, not through Happy's neck, but into her torso, just beneath her armpit, until they became wedged in her sternum. They were imbedded so deep into her chest wall that he couldn't even see the gleam of the blades. Her dark eyes widened, and her mouth opened; a spill of red bubbled over her bottom lip. He felt a tremor run through her body; but still, she flexed her arm and drove the metal wedge deeper into his skull. His vision began to darken.
Their faces were inches apart. Her breath came in deep, rattling gasps; his, not at all. He tried in vain to fall forward onto the walkway, but Happy's forward momentum had carried them both over the edge. There was no going back. She had done this deliberately. She was facing her own death in causing his.
"Happy?" His voice sounded slurred in his ears.
"That's right," she hissed back at him, her voice thickened by the amount of blood in her lungs, and although he could not understand her, he sensed buoyancy in her voice, a triumphant strain in her tone. "I am."
They fell.