Here we go.
Chapter 22
"OBEY!"
Jaune's eye cracked open, exhaustion and something crusty cracking around his single eyelid. Red ran down his vision, but in flakes, and he realised dried blood had crusted over his face. He tried to move a hand to wipe it away, only to find it held back by something. His lower body was as well, with something crusty and hard wrapped around his legs up to his waist, and around his arms from the elbow down.
"OBEY!"
The voice echoed in his skull, loud and imposing, and shaking his mind like a haymaker to the side of the head. Groaning, he forced his head up and let his one good eye roam about wherever the hell he was. Beacon—? The dorms—? The barracks—? Home—?
Hell.
He was trapped in a fleshy pod of a room with dead bodies strewn across the floor and a disgusting, wriggling mass of microscopic creatures on the floor. Memories came flooding back in, along with pain and grief and a bitter, bitter disappointment. He hadn't died. The Grimm couldn't even do him the kindness of killing him.
"OBEY!"
Instead, they'd infected him.
It was almost enough to make him laugh. No mercy, no brave death, just an existence as a traitor to humanity. In fact, they'd brought him here and then used some strange, crusty material to stick him to the wall. It was like hardened cement wrapped around his lower body and arms, leaving his upper body to hang free off the wall. He'd once watched an old documentary about insects that could secrete saliva that would harden. It felt like that. He was just a food source in a hive, or a recruit.
I guess this is it, he thought. This is how I die…
At least he'd tried.
An agonised sound across the room from him made his heart clench. It was feminine.
"R-Ruby,,,?" he croaked out. "Is that you?"
"J-Jaune…"
Her voice was weak, stressed, agonised. He forced himself to look, his eye widening in horror as he saw his last squad member on the wall opposite, but in a far worse condition than he was. Her eyes had either been torn out or crusted over, because red and black had formed over them, blinding her.
Like him, she was stuck to the wall, but, unlike him, there was rivers of red running down over the material. Blood was seeping through, and her skin was abnormally pale. Ruby had taken a lethal wound and was bleeding out, and the Grimm simply didn't care to realise it. They'd stuck her to the wall like they had him, but Ruby wouldn't have the time to become a thrall like he would.
"OBEY!"
"I can hear her," sobbed Ruby. "I can hear her in my head. Jaune, I… I'm so weak. I can't feel my legs. I can't think."
This wasn't fair. They'd agreed to come and die here, but they'd done so on the expectation death would be swift. Not like this. Ruby's body was so encrusted with the Grimm material that only her neck and head were free, and her chest was fully encased. There was no way for her to break free.
He didn't have the same excuse.
Muscles groaning, Jaune pulled on his arms, feeling his shoulder burn as he worked his fist open and shut, making the crusty material shake and splinter. It wasn't hard like cement despite looking like it, and it had a consistency closer to baked mud. After a minute of pulling and twisting his arm he was able to make it crack a little, and from there he pulled his arm out.
It was easier to break his second out with one arm free, pulling at the muddy substance to flake bits off until it was thin enough for him to yank his arm through. His legs came easier, aided by his full weight pushing down on them. Jaune broke free and fell forward, landing on hands and knees in the mass of tiny Grimm with a splash. Almost immediately, black started creeping up his arms. He stood, swiping them off, but there was no stopping the ones working their way up his legs.
Jaune stumbled toward Ruby, practically falling against her. His hands sought her cheeks and she gasped at his touch. "Jaune? I can… I can feel you. I can't see. Are you—?"
"I'm here," he rasped out. "I'm here, Ruby."
"Hahhh…" Ruby's breath rushed out, relief overwhelming her. "I—I'm glad. I… Jaune, I… I don't think there's anything left in me." It was a quiet fact. He couldn't debate it. "I can't move my arms. Can…" Ruby licked her dry lips. "Can you help me…? Please? I don't want to be controlled by them. I… My pill. Please."
Ruby's chest was buried in a mass of hardened matter, and her EX-Pill was buried in there as well. He didn't have the strength to dig it out, nor did he likely have the time. Her EX-Pill was lost.
But his wasn't.
He didn't hesitate to pull it out. He'd made a promise, and he would see it through. Unclasping and twisting the lid, he brought out the tiny, innocuous pill. It was dyed bright red so that no one would mistake it for something else, but there were no skulls or toxic symbols on it. Everyone knew what these were, and they were a mercy. The only mercy the arcology could afford to give its brave soldiers.
Jaune placed the pill between his lips and leaned in, touching them to hers.
Ruby didn't hesitate to open her mouth, nor to accept the small object he pushed into her with his tongue. She pinned it to the roof of her mouth and kissed him back, a final farewell, before he drew his mouth away and heard the tiny crunch of her biting into it. Immediately, her face slackened, the lethal levels of painkillers robbing her of any ability to feel the pain wracking her dying body.
"Ahhh," she gasped, slumping against him. "T—Thank you. I… I think I could have loved you," she whispered. "I think, maybe, I kind of did."
"I feel the same way," he replied, his forehead on hers, his one, sad eye, looking at her pale face. "I'm sorry it came to this."
"W—We had a good run, eh? A—And we'll see the others. Yang, Nora, Ren, Sun, Blake, Neptune, even the Lieutenant-General." Ruby's voice weakened. "Y—You kept your promise, too. I…" She gasped. "I love you."
"I—"
It was too late.
Ruby Rose slumped, dead.
"I love you too," he told her body, cradling her cooling face as tiny black creatures reached his waist. They were biting into his skin. He didn't even know if he did love her, or if she did him, but it felt like the right thing to say. "A—And now I'm alone again. The last survivor. T—The only one left over."
"OBEY!"
It was too loud to ignore. Too powerful to suppress. Jaune's legs turned without his control, pulling him away from Ruby. He marched, or he was marched, to an opening and out, past a hulking Grimm that didn't even look his way.
Maybe it would be easier this way. He didn't have an EX-Pill anymore, and the Grimm Queen wanted to destroy his mind and take his body. Maybe that was the best mercy he could expect. Maybe he should just let go.
"OBEY!"
Jaune sighed. "Yes…"
/-/
Winter Schnee stood on the bridge and looked down at the screen showing Remnant. Everything was a rough approximation, especially the ebb and flow of the battle on the surface, but Project Terminus was being kept roughly above the battle by virtue of transmitters held by the generals, which would frequently update Project Terminus with their coordinates. That allowed them to auto-correct their position and keep pace with the rotation of the planet, as well as with the displacement caused by atmospheric pressure.
Much of it was automatic now, with engineers entering in their final commands. Last-minute checks were being undertaken, and failsafes were being put in place. They had to be with what security had uncovered.
"This station is now under the Queen's control!" one of them shouted, pointing his SMG at a woman sat at a computer nearby. The woman didn't respond, neither to reach for her sidearm or duck for cover.
She just kept typing.
Everyone did.
"I said, this station is not under the Queen's control!" he yelled. "Stop what you are doing immediately, or we will shoot!"
No one stopped.
CRACK!
The woman's head exploded like a grape as the round entered the back of her head, exited the front and smashed into her terminal. She followed, crashing into it and slumping dead against the controls.
No one reacted, least of all Winter.
"Ma'am," said an officer close to her. "Our flight path has been locked in. There's no changing it now."
"Good work, Re—"
CRACK!
Ensign Reymond died with three bullets in his back before she could finish complimenting him, but he died with a proud look on his face. He'd been one of the survivors from Atlas, one of the first, and an original backer of Project Terminus. It felt fitting that he would be here at the end.
"Stop what you are doing!" shouted the three soldiers in perfect unison. "Your only hope for survival is to deactivate the systems. Your lives will be spared!"
"I've disconnected Bridge from the main systems!" called a female engineer. "Nothing anyone does here will stop the—"
CRACK!
She twitched as she was shot dead, falling off her chair with a soft thump.
"Weapons are operational—"
CRACK!
A thud.
CRACK!
Another fell, and then another.
The infected, realising no one would surrender, opened fire left and right, scything through the seated engineers and killing them en masse. No one had aura here. Aura was too necessary on the ground for anyone with the talent to be wasted on this mission. Few of them were even armed, because there wasn't meant to be a threat.
CRACK!
Winter both heard and felt the bullet enter her back as well, and her legs gave way with irritating speed. She gripped onto the table to hold herself up, and hastily tapped in her password, then scrambled it. There would be no getting into the main system now even if they contaminated her, Willow or Weiss.
A red light blared, an alarm signalling that the systems had been locked into an automatic mode. Winter smiled past blood running over her teeth, and let herself slide back down the side of the computer terminal. One of the men, his face pale, walked up and grasped her collar, dragging her up to snarl in her face.
"TELL US HOW TO STOP THIS! SHE DEMANDS IT!"
Winter laughed brokenly. "It cannot be stopped now…"
The traitor howled and pressed his gun to her forehead.
It's up to you now, Weiss.
Winter didn't hear the shot that killed her.
/-/
Weiss Schnee flinched at every gunshot she heard within the station. The bridge had gone silent not fifteen minutes after reaching the weapons systems, and she didn't believe her mother or sister were still among the living. That put her in charge, and she felt genuine terror throughout her small body.
The Grimm Rot had gotten on board, likely smuggled, and Project Terminus was being overtaken by the infected. The security team that had rescued her held the single doorway, and she realised that if she hadn't gotten caught up with the traitor trying to sabotage the station, she would have been on the bridge as well.
She would be dead.
It wasn't like the odds weren't firmly against her anyway. Weiss huddled back, staying out of security's way as they held the door with rifles trained on it, ready to open fire and damn the consequences. Anyone who came through was dead, and it really wouldn't matter if they were loyalist or not. There was no time to check.
A red light began to shine.
"What does that mean?" demanded the head of security.
"S—Systems are now locked in," said Weiss. "The bridge is no longer in control and all that's left now is to pull the trigger when we're ready to fire."
"Can that be done from here?"
Weiss nodded. "Yes. I can try." She ran over to the closest machine and logged in. Her permissions had changed, but only in relation to controlling the movement of the station. She couldn't alter its path but that was fine. It was keyed to respond to the signal transponders on the ground. "I'm in!" she shouted, relieved. "I can fire the weapon when needed."
"New orders," barked the officer. "Researcher Weiss Schnee's safety takes full priority. We hold that door until the end of days!"
"Remnant Invicta!" barked his squad.
It came not a moment too soon because the door opened and guns poked in, shooting wildly. The squad ducked for cover and fired back, clipping one man's arm and making him fall into the doorway. That brief moment of exposure was enough for them to fill him with bullets, killing him before he hit the ground.
Weiss had never heard a real gunshot until the fall of Atlas and she's dreamed about it every night. This was louder. It was closer for one, but she also heard and felt every ricochet close to her, the sparking sounds making her entire body flinch.
Project Terminus continued to drift, waiting for its signal.
/-/
Jaune did not know where his legs took him and wouldn't have been able to relay the route to anyone had they asked. His mind blacked out at several times, being replaced with something alien and devoted and horrible, before he would wink back into consciousness like he was waking up from a rough night's sleep.
He was being replaced. Supplanted. And worst of all, it was getting faster. The moments of lucidity were shorter, and more confused, and they were coming faster as well, which meant he was rapidly losing control as the Grimm Rot took hold.
There were others with him, too. He wasn't sure when they had joined, but he counted six other people. Huntsmen like him. Students of Beacon. They must have been captured as he and Ruby had, but they hadn't had the sense of mind to use their EX-Pills. They seemed more lost to the rot as well, showing none of the confused moments he did. Or maybe their instances of lucidity came when he was fully under her thrall, and he just didn't see them.
They walked out into a wide, open cavern of sorts, where Grimm coated the outer walls and more infected people knelt near the centre, before a creature that was both human and not. The upper half of it was human, a woman with pale skin and platinum-blonde hair. The lower half was monstrous, like a great slug that was at least ten times larger than the body housed atop it.
"OBEY!" the woman projected, the words slamming into his head. Jaune groaned, as did the men with him, and they stumbled forward to stand in front of her.
The Grimm Queen. Salem. The true enemy.
"KNEEL!"
Knees struck the fleshy ground as men and women dropped, some bending forward to place their foreheads to the ground. Jaune's legs trembled, but he stayed standing. The only one. His legs felt like they were frozen, like he wouldn't be able to bend the knee.
But the Grimm Queen did not care for such things.
"KNEEL!" she repeated, the psychic voice rising in intensity. "KNEEL!"
Each time it repeated, his body was wracked, and those already on their knees wept at their inability to follow the order any more than they already were. His mind was fuzzy, and the new him threatened to take over.
Jaune's left leg slid back, his waist dipping.
The Grimm Queen smiled cruelly.
"Hey man. What do you think you're doing?"
That voice.
Jaune turned his head.
Sun was crouching on the ground next to him, squatting with his feet flat on the ground and his knees out to either side, his arms resting upon them. When he had last seen Sun, the man had been torn in half, his lower body left to the Grimm, but here he was whole and giving him that irreverent grin of his.
Jaune's chapped lips bled. "S—Sun…? What are you doing here…?"
"KNEEL!"
"What am I doing here?" Sun laughed. "Man, what are you doing here? And getting down on one knee? I thought you liked tomboys with muscles. Don't tell me you're falling for twisted freaks now?"
Jaune's eye cried bloody tears.
"Phoenix Squad doesn't kneel!" shouted another voice. He twisted his head, and caught sight of Nora leaning on Ren, her arms wrapped around his neck. "Except if it's Renny kneeling between my legs."
"Nora, please," complained the quiet man. "Can we have some level of privacy?"
"As if everyone doesn't hear you fuckers going at it constantly," laughed Yang, strolling before Jaune and dropping into a squat like Sun. Her face was in front of his, grinning madly at him. "You're in a shitty spot, Jaune. Sorry I left you in it."
"Y—Yang? You… I…" His eye closed. "I'm imagining this."
"KNEEL!"
"OBEY!"
"SERVE!"
"Maybe," admitted Yang. Her hand came out to touch his ruined eye. "But you didn't imagine this, did you? It was real. We were real. Phoenix Squadron was real. We lived, and boy how we lived. No one lived harder than we did. And then we died."
"No one died harder than us either," laughed Sun.
"OBEY!"
"I'm still here," wept Jaune, as the Grimm began to close in. "I'm the last one."
He had not obeyed, and they sensed something was wrong. The monsters pushed through the kneeling supplicants toward him, their teeth bared, and their claws extended. Other soldiers, rotted through, were crushed underfoot as they came.
Soft arms wrapped around his neck from behind, and a small face pressed down on the back of his neck. The scent of roses filled his nostrils, and warmth suffused his body.
"Just because you're the last one doesn't mean you're not still a part of us," said Ruby, giggling into his ear. "It's too late once you're on our squad. You're stuck in it for life. And afterwards, too."
"We're waiting for you," said Sun, holding out his hand.
Jaune took it, and staggered to his full height, stood tall in front of the Grimm as the Queen of them screamed orders into his mind. White plates forming over his face cracked, and black blood ran down past his nose and over his lips. Jaune's destroyed eye opened, revealing a red iris in a black sclera.
"OBEY!" screamed Salem.
Jaune smiled, and raised his hand high, a small device clasped within it.
"No."
/-/
Weiss Schnee gasped as she felt something sharp bite into her shoulder. Blood, so pretty and red, splashed over the screen, and she slumped against it, the breath torn from her. Members of the security detail lay dead, and the infected stormed the weapons chamber, pointing their guns at her.
No.
Not like this.
After Whitley gave his life for them to flee, after her father died, after her mother and sister were killed, after all the work and all the losses, it couldn't end this way. Project Terminus couldn't fail because of her.
Weiss gripped the machine and hauled herself up it, agony coursing through her body. Her legs wouldn't work, her entire lower body failing to respond. Her blood was smeared over the screen, but she saw the yellow light blinking on it. Felt the shift as thrusters activated, shaking the room and causing the infected to stumble as Project Terminus adjusted its path aggressively.
"Shut it down!" one of them shouted.
"It's too late!" howled Weiss, laughing madly. Her fist slammed down on the button, and a high-pitched alarm began to play. Then, mockingly, the national anthem of Atlas started up as well.
Weiss slid down onto her back, staring up at the ceiling as the infected hurried over and aimed their guns down at her.
"It's too late," she wheezed, smiling past blood filling her mouth. "It's going to fire."
The man cursed. "It won't fire twice."
Weiss giggled.
Then laughed.
Loudly, until she was hoarse and her chest hurt.
"Y—You idiot," she managed, past her absolute manic glee. "Project Terminus was never meant to fire twice." Her bloody teeth glinted in the red light. "It was never made to survive the first shot."
A terrible humming filled the air, followed by an almighty thoom as the dust crystals fired, concentrating their energy into the singular one, perfectly placed above the activated signal. There was a screech as metal warped, and cracking as the first crystals exploded, overwhelmed by the sheer power.
Explosions wracked the station, which had been made in a rush to fulfil its purpose. They hadn't had the time to make it perfect, and they'd launched as soon as it was "good enough". It lacked so much. But, chiefly, it lacked any ability to land or come back out of the atmosphere.
Not that such would be a problem.
Weiss heard the beam fire, and felt the station shake as it came apart. Her eyes closed, a satisfied smile taking over her face as she heard the infected scream and felt the walls collapse. She had a date promised to her back down on Remnant, but as her body was sucked out into the cold depths, she had a feeling she wouldn't make it.
I'm sorry…
/-/
General Ozpin roared and smashed his metal cane into the face of a Grimm, lurching his body forward even if it cost him his balance, and might cost him his life. The lines were buckling, giving way, and he'd be damned if he survived another battle where men better and younger than him died in their thousands.
"Hold the line!" he roared. "Buy them time! For Vale! For Atlas! For Remnant!"
"Remnant Invicta!" shouted his battalion, and they would stay and die. They'd come here expecting to after all, so there was nothing to fear. Death was only frightening for those that didn't expect it, and those that held to silly ideas like going home alive.
Ozpin had given up on that decades ago, and yet fate conspires to keep him alive.
Long after he felt he should have died.
"It ends here!" he yelled, firing into the Grimm's face and tearing chunks out of it. "Where's our air support!?"
"Dead, sir. They're all dead!"
Damn it. He expected no less, and they'd all known the odds coming here. He'd hoped— Well, it didn't much matter what he hoped now. He could only leave this in the hands of fate and pray for—
BZZZZZZZZZZZT
The world turned black.
It was a pillar of black light, almost negative light, that punched down onto Remnant and into the hive, connecting the heavens and earth for a long moment. It sucked in all light around it, seeming to pulse and making the most horrific sound. It was like the rush of air and wind being sucked in, like a vacuum, but willed with screaming and screeching. It pulsed and vibrated until the ground trembled under them.
Then it ended. As quickly as it had begun. As the air rushed into the vacuum, it exploded outward, throwing out a shockwave that spread for over a kilometre. Ozpin was thrown from his feet, as were just about everyone else – the Grimm included. He landed hard, rolling in a tangle of limbs until he hit the tracks of a tank and came to a painful stop. Pain was an old friend, though. Even though he knew his left arm had broken, he pushed his right down and forced himself up onto his knees to take in the damage.
The hive was gone.
Erased.
In its place stood a gargantuan crater.
General Ozpin dared to look to the Grimm he had just been fighting. The monstrous creature sat still, empty-eyed and vacant, slumped down on its hind quarters like an animal which had lost control of every muscle in its body.
Slowly, nervously, a ragged cheer began to spread.
Had they won?
Ozpin's eyes filled with tears.
Someone had activated the signal, sacrificing themselves, and it hadn't been him. He cursed his leg, he cursed his helplessness, and he cursed his failure, slamming his good hand down as he screamed in rage. His students, his children, his subordinates. His soldiers. They had accomplished the impossible, but, as always, they had been asked to die to do it. And they had. Without a question. Without hesitation.
It was always the ones who deserved life the most who fell, and those that deserved death the moment that were left to pick up the pieces.
Victory had never felt so empty.
Next Chapter: 19th September
Like my work? Please consider supporting me, even if it's only a little a month or even for a whole year, so I can keep writing so many stories as often as I do. Even a little means a lot and helps me dedicate more time and resources to my work.
P a treon . com (slash) Coeur