Omega [REDUX]

Chapter 15

Anna aimed down the sights, positioned the red dot directly at one oblivious soldier's head, and pulled the trigger. She didn't wait for him to crumple to the floor; instead she took aim again and fired, taking out another soldier nearby. "It's clear!" she yelled to the recruit guarding a group of civilians. "Get them out of here!"

He nodded, raised the rifle, and led the panicking civilians down the corridor, towards the supposed safety outside. Even as Anna began to reposition herself, she felt relief wash over her as she watched the last civilian disappear into the corridor. But there was no time to celebrate.

"There's so fucking many of them!" she heard Merida yell across the room.

Rounds chipped the debris in front of her and Anna dived for cover, letting out an expletive as she did so. "No fucking shit, Merida," she uttered to herself, getting back up and taking aim again. She spotted the LMG, but she realized too late that it was still aimed at her.

Damn.

Anna braced, pulling her hands to shield her head as she expected lead rounds to collide into her upper body, waiting for pain to explode all across her in quick succession. She heard a whine, and bullets clattering on a surface she couldn't identify. No pain.

"Got you covered," she heard a voice in her COM. "By my count, you owe me twice now."

Anna barely managed a smile before lightning struck her position, sending out an electric pulse all around her. She jumped in surprise, gazing at her adversary that continued to levitate above the ground, who stared back at her with a seemingly knowing look of rage.

"Of all the people you could have protected," he yelled at Elsa, who to Anna's surprise, levitated at the same height he did, "you chose to protect her."

She swore she heard Elsa swear under breath. "This makes things a lot easier," the strange man went on.

"Don't you fucking dare." Anna watched a potent ice blast catch the man in the chest, knocking him back, two more following as Elsa kept up the fire. Then she forced herself away, just as the LMG rounds cut through the ice shield in front of her.

"LMG 12 o' clock!" she heard someone yell. "Concentrate fire!"

A firestorm of lead raged on above her as she attempted to get a better sense of the situation. The room was divided into two sections; none of the recruits dared go past the point where Elsa levitated, and the soldiers didn't dare go past the point where the floating man was. As more soldiers appeared from the other side of the room, Anna pointed her gun at them and emptied her clip, forcing them to duck and change course. A few were caught in the cross fire, their bodies shaking violently as bullets tore through their flesh.

"Leave the LMG to me," Anna yelled at the other recruits. "Focus on the other soldiers! I need you to cover me!"

As the lead storm above her began to redirect, Anna drew up the energy shield, bracing her left hand with her right, and pushed herself out of cover, taking the full brunt of the gunfire from the LMG. Rounds struck her energy shield, the surface flaring with every impact. The sheer impact from the sustained fire caught Anna off guard, and she struggled to keep the shield up. Her feet skidding backward; she planted them into the carpeted floor and held her position, then slowly began to push towards the source of the gunfire.

Ice walls formed around her flanks, deflected incoming fire as she kept walking, feeling every round from the machine gun send a shockwave through her body, getting stronger with every step she took towards the gunner's position. She watched the gunner panic as the gun clicked, out of rounds, forcing him to retrieve his pistol and open up on Anna's shield, to little avail.

At the last second Anna quickly closed the distance between her and her adversary, knocking the sidearm out of his hand with a wide swing, then bringing the brunt of the shield back down on his head, sending him skidding across the ground, moving no longer.

"Get out of there!" she heard Elsa yell. Electricity lashed out at the ground around her, razing the carpet into charred black patches as she darted from left to right. Then out of the blue she tripped over the carpet, sprawling and tumbling across the floor, bringing up the shield just in time to block one particularly potent lightning bolt. The shield flared brightly, the glaring light painful to watch, but quickly subsided as a tingling sensation coursed over her skin.

EMP: 100% charged, the suit read.

Anna cocked an eyebrow.

More lightning. Anna pushed herself to her feet, drawing her rifle and opening up on the floating man, watching as her rounds clattered off some kind of electric field that surrounded him. She saw a grin spread across his face. Her heart sank.

Tendrils of lightning struck her across the face. Pain exploded through her head as she hit the ground, then felt jarring, painful shocks as the lightning appeared to wrap itself around her, tightening its jarring grip with every second.

What the fuck!? Her heart raced, though she couldn't be sure if it was her emotions or the electricity that had caused the jump. Anna struggled, flailing wildly, trying to disentangle herself, but every movement sent a small but potent shock through her body. It got worse; the tendrils tightened again, and lifted her off the ground.

"Elsa?" She glanced desperately at her friend as she felt herself rise higher and higher, the mask over Elsa's face concealing what emotions she must have displayed, as Anna could hear her irregular breathing over her own COM unit.

"Let her go, Edison!" Elsa yelled, her hand charging with another ice blast.

Anna looked around desperately. The gunfire raged on below, her delegation continuing to fire on the soldiers, but she spotted some familiar faces amongst the corpses that littered the floor amongst the civilians. More alarmingly, no one was coming to help; everyone was pinned down, and it didn't look like Elsa was going to get her out anytime soon.

This is it, I guess. End of the line.

The tendrils tightened around Anna's body. Now she could barely breathe. She was panicking. "I don't think so," came Edison's haunting, malevolent voice. "As far as I can tell, I'm the one with the advantage here."

Anna watched Elsa's eyes narrow, the icy vortex in her hand growing with every passing second—

And then a black mass came flying out of nowhere, enveloping Elsa and sending her crashing into the ground.

No.

No.

NO.

Kristoff lowered the gun. The net had hit its target.

Or at least, one of his targets. "Cover me!" he yelled.

His squadmates opened up, guns blazing, lead rounds sailing into the room but clattering off some kind of electric field around the still floating Ascendant. These fuckers are all the same. "Stand down!" Kristoff yelled at him, "or we will use lethal force!"

"Lethal?" The Ascendant gave a condescending, mocking laugh. "You must be joking. You cannot possibly hope to harm me with all that!"

Kristoff watched the suited figure struggle on the floor, the net unrelentingly trapping her, fibers strengthened by an electromagnetic current, becoming nearly invulnerable. The more the figure struggled, the tighter the net grew. "You don't know what you've done!" the figure yelled.

"Just shut up and let me do my job will ya?" Kristoff took aim again.

"Sir! Get back!"

One of his soldiers tackled him to the ground as a blindingly bright beam razed the space he'd been standing in, the air crackling with electricity. He saw his own HUD shimmer with static as he got up. "Thanks."

His soldier didn't have time to respond, merely ducking back into cover as more bolts came flying. Kristoff reloaded the net launcher, waiting for a lull in the fighting.

"We got civilians in the area!" he heard through the COM channel as the cover he was hiding behind began to take a beating. "Watch your fire! Academy delegates are evacuating them as we speak."

"Hostile units in the AO," another soldier reported, marking out black-suited soldiers with red markers. "Take them down!"

His squadron split into half; one half opened fire on the enemy soldiers, the other continued to suppress the Ascendant. Kristoff sprinted away, ducking as lightning bolts rained down over him, skidding to a halt behind a column. Without wasting time he spun around, aimed down the sights of the launcher and fired the net. The black mass soared across the room, but the Ascendant merely outstretched a hand, palm opened wide, blasting the black mass to the ground, fizzling with electricity.

Shit. "Weapons free!" Kristoff yelled at his squad. "Take him down by all means necessary! We don't contain him here, and the rest of the city is in trouble!"

A rocket fired by one of his soldiers impacted in a cloud of smoke and fire, but left the Ascendant snarling and unharmed. Kristoff's heart sank.

"Oh, now you've really pissed me off," the Ascendant snarled.

Come on, dammit! Cut free!

The ice blade she conjured slid harmlessly along the Tactical Net, the edge doing nothing to weaken the electromagnetically strengthened fibers. Elsa had only realized it was a Tactical Net after a fair bit of struggling, and now her movement was severely impaired; the net had tightened further every time she struggled. "Enough!" she heard Edison yell, as she helplessly watched Anna flail in the grasp of his electric tendrils. "Lay down your weapons, or this one is in for a lot of trouble."

"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!"

"Shit, he has a hostage?!"

She recognized the soldier that stepped forward as their commanding officer; the one that tasered her when she was being transported inside Empyrean territory, and had been subsequently rescued. Kristoff, as she'd learned through tracking him down via UIF military service records. He still has no idea what he's dealing with.

"Let her go," Kristoff said, removing his helmet, but Elsa noticed the way his fingers still tightened around the rifle. "We can talk about this."

"Get your squad to surrender, or she'll pay the price," Edison went on. "Everyone is to drop their weapons. EVERYONE!"

In a panic, the remaining delegates lowered their weapons. Elsa watched Belle and Rapunzel reluctantly comply. Merida threw down the gun in defiance, but refused to put up her hands in surrender. "God fucking damn it," Elsa heard her swear.

The black armoured soldiers emerged from cover, dropping empty ammunition clips from their chambers, sliding fresh ones in and taking aim once more. Almost every UIF soldier and delegate was now marked.

They were really in a pickle.

I've failed them, she thought. This is my fault. Now we're all going to die because of me.

"What is it you want?" Kristoff yelled at Edison, who floated quite some distance away.

"You're going to move out of here, and secure the perimeter so we can blow every single thing inside here into smithereens." Edison's voice had begun to echo, his words reverberating off the walls of the hall. "You will cordon off the area, and stop anyone who attempts to enter."

Kristoff shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not sure—"

"AND," Edison cut in, "I will hold this one—" He gestured at Anna, "—and this one in the net, with me." He gave Elsa an evil smile. "Those are my terms. Disagree, and they both die!"

"I'm still going to need some time," Kristoff said cautiously. "I'm not the one in charge of the whole situation here."

"That isn't my problem," came the reply. "So if there's going to be difficulty in meeting my terms, and unless you want these two will pay the price, you'd better do something about it."

Elsa slammed the blade on the net surface one last time, the icy construct shattering into fragments under the impact. No! she screamed inwardly. Not like this. I refuse to go like this!

"Elsa?" a small, frightened voice came crackling through the COM unit.

Her heart skipped a beat. "Anna!" she almost cried out a tad too loudly. "Are you okay?"

"Elsa? Am I gonna die?"

Elsa could not respond, and her silence was telling. She heard Anna whimper softly in fear, and she shut her eyes tightly. Her fists clenched the net she was trapped inside, twisting the net's fibers into her palm, blood pounding in her veins. Her eyes looked desperately around for a solution.

A brainwave.

It was highly unlikely, but it was her only choice.

"Anna?"

"Yes?"

"Do you trust me?"

She could hear Anna struggle to come up with a response. She didn't blame her; after all the shit that had happened today, after everything Elsa had revealed to her, trusting her didn't appear to be a legitimate choice in anyway. But right now, she needed that assurance more than ever.

"Y…yes."

"I need you to trigger your suit's EMP."

"Wha—?"

"It's going to hurt. A lot. But it's our only hope."

"I…"

Elsa took a deep breath. "Can you do this for me, Anna? For all of us?"

Around her, the black armoured soldiers tightened their fingers around their guns, preparing to fire. Any minute now, and we'll all be dead.

"Yes," Anna replied. "I can do that."

"Whenever you're ready."

"You'd all better get moving," Edison said again, as Kristoff found himself and his squad slowly backing away, "otherwise—"

Elsa watched an electromagnetic pulse rapidly expand off Anna's suit, slamming into Edison's back. He visibly recoiled, crying out loud in pain. The pulse washed through everything in the room. Kristoff's soldiers and the black armoured ones clutched at their heads, the static filling their heads and senses with immense pain. Kristoff collapsed to the ground, suit immobilized, grunting in defiance.

In a flash Elsa's ice blade cut through the now-weak fibers, the EMP coursing over the suit's skin harmlessly, but frying the net's circuits. The moment she leapt straight into the air, the entire of her forearm materializing into an icy, curved edge, Edison recovered from his initial shock, glaring at Anna, his hand firing off bolts of lightning.

Elsa already recognized it. Anna was going to be electrocuted. She was still too slow.

Anna's agonized screams reached her ears just as Elsa levelled with Edison, plunging the icy blade straight into his torso. Edison's eyes widened the blade penetrated his flesh, the electric tendrils grabbing onto Anna dispersing as Elsa twisted the blade, using her momentum to drag Edison back down, slamming into the floor. Some distance away, Anna hit the floor with a small "bump".

Edison raised his right hand, as if to ward Elsa off. She batted the hand away, pinning Edison to the floor and pressing her forearm down on his neck, applying pressure to the blade. Edison's eyes remained wide open, his mouth gurgling, as if trying to say something. Elsa swore she something in his eyes die away; his irises, once crazy and broken, now returned to a look of pain and remorse. Back to the Edison she once knew.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Edison's head seemed to nod in response, then fell limp.

Something inside her died away with Edison's wounded gaze. Back when Empyrean still owned them all, back when she had to shield Edison from the blows and whips, from all the torture they piled on him, and take the pain for him instead. She'd cared for him. And then after she was rescued, they'd broken him.

She never expected to be the one to end him.

Elsa drew back the blade, her face a contortion of grief and anger, the icy edge dispersing to leave only the blood of Edison on her right hand. With her left, she placed two fingers over Edison's eyes and closed them, permanently. It was the last thing she could give him. A dignified rest.

Anna.

She'd almost forgotten entirely. Elsa scrambled to her feet, sprinting over to where Anna had landed upon the carpet. The areas where the electric tendrils had grabbed on to Anna were now singed, smoke still sizzling from the suit's surface, but Elsa could see that Anna's skin had been seared. Anna herself lay limp, and for a short moment Elsa began to panic, until she placed two fingers to Anna's neck and found a pulse.

Thank god.

"Freeze!"

Her heart sank. The soldiers. All the soldiers, UIF and enemy; she hadn't looked at them yet. Now she feared the worse.

"Turn around, and step away from the body."

Her heart was swept up in a maelstrom of emotions; on one hand, she recognized the standard UIF protocol of getting their targets to stand down, so she was relieved. On the other, she realized she was now suspect of killing Anna.

I didn't do this.

Her suit quickly ran a scan of Anna's prone form, loading up a medical diagnosis.

"Do it now!" she heard Kristoff bark, already recognizing his voice. "Or you will be fired upon!"

Elsa turned around, her eyes frantically searching her HUD for something to use. Out of instinct she triggered the suit's speaker system, hoping against hope that she could convince Kristoff otherwise.

"Please!" she said, hearing her voice amplified by the suit, "Save her first! She needs medical attention."

"On your knees!" Kristoff went on, refusing to relent. "Hands behind your head!"

"Kristoff, please! She needs help!"

The blonde-haired soldier froze. "How do you know my name?"

Elsa reached up to take off the mask. Kristoff stiffened, his finger tightening around the trigger, but Elsa had the mask off in a flash and threw it to the side. She raised both her hands in surrender. "My mask has a medical diagnosis on her current condition. She doesn't have much time. I need you to take the info to the medical team, fast."

She could tell Kristoff wasn't listening. His face had hardened, but his hands holding the pistol that was pointed straight at Elsa began to tremble.

"Kristoff," Elsa pleaded. "Please."

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't blow your head off right now." He was breathing faster now, and more uncontrollably.

"Because if you wanted to do that," she replied, "you'd have done that after you'd secured me almost two years ago."

Kristoff kept the gun pointed at her head. He was having difficulty putting it down.

"But you don't, do you?"

She watched a tear roll down his cheek. "Sir?" one of his soldiers asked, uncertainly. "Whoever is in the other suit, is in bad condition. Our own diagnosis confirms that."

With an audible gasp Kristoff dropped the pistol, letting it clatter to the floor. "Get her out of there," he said, his gaze not moving away from Elsa. They held that stare, even as the other soldiers got busy picking Anna up, and evacuating the remaining delegates.

Then finally, Kristoff broke the gaze, placed one hand over his mouth to stifle a sob, and walked away, leaving Elsa standing alone in the mess of the convention hall.