By the time he left the warehouse district and the abandoned train yard behind, stepping out on to the main road Holiday had directed him to, the storm clouds burst and it began to rain. He paused in front of the apartment complex on his end of the street, mid step on the pavement and made not a sound, surveying the area ahead. Only the traumatized man over his shoulder breathed heavily... still quite far in the depths of his shock. The rain grew heavy almost at once around them, the only sound that emanated on the street, apart from the man's breaths and occasional mutterings. The rain soaked his armor, turning it bright and sleek in the street lights he stood under... washing away the dust, dirt, grime and blood with it, if not the burns and bullet marks. Cleaning him. Puddles formed all over the road almost instantly, tickling and flowing into the storm drains on either side. It trickled and flowed all over him, running down over his vision, his goggles. Yet not a droplet touched his skin. One puddle formed underneath him and the civilian, scarlet and murky... most of the blood coming from the man's completely stained suit.
Despite his trauma, something about the cold rain and wind seemed to sooth the man a little bit... and he stopped mumbling incoherently. Maybe it gave him comfort... brought back more pleasant memories. The Point Man let the rain drench them both, for a time, while he found himself surveying what had been another cluttered street that had been turned into a battlefield. While bloody, it was not nearly as bad as the one he had crossed through in the train yard. There, a one sided carnage had taken place some time before... though thankfully the only corpses had belonged to the Replica. Who else could have torn through that many of them single handed, including Heavy Armor Units, the Point Man couldn't fathom. Laying in their own puddles of blood, which flowed into the drains under the rain, were several Armacham Security Guards, not far in front of him... next to their burning, smoking Armacham Security sedan. They had been holding the front area of the apartment complex, before they had been shot down in the exchanging gunfire.
There was another alley, off to their left hand side, between the buildings, but it was fenced off with razor wire... a ladder hanging off the side of the apartment building over there. An emergency exit alley of sorts. Beyond the corpses of the Armacham Security Forces were more overturned vehicles, ones that had been used as makeshift cover for a trio of bullet ridden Delta Force operators. They had been caught out in the street in the crossfire between ATC Security and the Replicas. There were a few Replica corpses further on past them... but it was clear which of the three factions had won the battle. From where he was he could see more looming figures on the road, heads lowered to their chests, slumbering while while standing up, various weapons still in their hands down at their sides. A couple such figures standing over the Delta Force operators they had killed. More faceless, mindless executioners... carrying out what had been their Psychic Commander's will... before he had put the madman down, and with him, their entire purpose.
The Point Man's grip tightened on his sidearm down at his side, and he felt a mild sting of anger. Maybe if he had been faster in doing so, he might have saved the operators. Just as he might have saved the Commander's final direct victim.
He looked further, beyond them, down towards the far end of the street. Holiday had been right, a large, impressive church stood at the far end... stain glass windows forming elaborate murals, intact, and its doors closed. A great cross stood out in white at the very top of the building. There were a couple of tall trees among some sparse garden sections on either side of the small concrete plaza. While out on the front steps and walkways were more of the slumbering Replica, having been standing guard. They lined the far road... having been performing various tasks before they had shut down. He could make out a couple of the black Replica Armored Trucks, but not the left or right side roads on each corner, the road that ran across in front of the church. He breathed silently, looking down at the red puddle beneath his boots, slowly raising his head back up and studying his pathway ahead, through the silent battlefield. Steadily, carefully he began to walk ahead, holding the civilian tighter as he passed the destroyed, smoking ATC Security car and slaughtered security guards. Leaving the puddle of blood he had formed behind, and passing through theirs instead.
Most of the street was illuminated along the way... but there were shadows to be lurked in. He watched them as carefully as he did the path ahead, keeping his guard up. Reaching the bodies of the fallen Delta Force operators, he took a moment to study them. They stared back at him, eyes wide and full of terror behind clear, water coated goggles. He tracked what one of them was looking up at... the pair of slumbering Replica standing over them. Raising the AT-14, he shot them both through the head, a round each, and watched them drop unceremoniously, among the dead operators and other dead Replica. He felt almost nothing when he killed them, Replicas. Despite their words, their conversations, their show of fear when they had faced him... they were not real. Existed only to serve the whims of another. To sleepwalk through their existence. Despite knowing the truth about himself now... what had been done to him... he was not like them. He had a choice... and he had friends. People who cared for him. People waiting for him... who needed him.
He had chosen to help the civilian, had he not? He could have left him behind... as most probably would have. He had not abandoned the man. The Replica may have had the voices that he didn't... but they did not have minds. No matter what or how much Armacham had stolen from his. The Point Man lowered his pistol back to his side again with a breath of the cold, welcome air filtering through his balaclava. He was about to move on ahead to the church... when he heard it, and stopped, in the middle of the road. A low rumble of engines, somewhere far behind and high overhead of him. He peered up into the heavy rain, the black clouds, back up over the apartment complex. The engines drew closer... and he saw what they belonged to emerging high up from the clouds. He recognized the shape at once... it was a plane like the one he had seen earlier... a C-130. Roaring over the district. In the corner of his vision, words appeared on his heads up display, audio crackling static in his ears. Joined together with the sudden familiar ringing, spiking in his temple and static in his comlink.
Incoming... *Unknown Origin*
Before the C-130 could pass overhead of the street, there was a bright flash of light that exploded in the skies, and the Point Man watched as a blue lightning bolt struck the front of the plane in an instant. A roaring crash of thunder carried through the air... and for a single instant... he saw her, inside his head. Standing in the void of fire and shadows... deathly pale... her black eyes burning an enraged red. The image of Alma in that place vanished in another instant, along with the lightning bolt. The light that replaced it was the fire now raging all over the nose of the C-130... overtaking the entire cockpit and charring the screaming pilots alive, their control panels exploding. He could smell their roasting flesh amid the ringing in his skull, and could hear panicked shouts of men and women aboard the interior of the plane, a number of people still on the plane rushing and scrambling for the rear hatch to activate it. The fire flew off the nose, like a great phoenix's wings on either side, and it passed overhead. The Point Man's eyes within the goggles tracked it carefully, turning back around towards the church. It began to tip in direction, steering up a bit to the north east... and it was then more lights began to flash, artificial emergency ones along the back of the plane.
The Point Man watched as the back of the cargo bay opened up... and faint dark figures emerged, jumping out of the C-130. Free falling down towards Fairport. The flaming C-130 continued in its altered direction, passing out of view beyond the buildings while the skies overhead flashed blue again. And the thunder pounded through his eardrums. He watched as the figures, nine in all, activated their parachutes and began their steady descent into the city, vanishing out of his ground level view behind some buildings somewhere to the far north. For an instant, the silence returned to the street, save the rain... and then it came. For a second he thought it was the thunder rumbling again... but it was an explosion that echoed across the whole of Fairport. Not up in the skies, but from somewhere beyond the Point Man's position. In his mind's eye he imagined the C-130 crashing through the streets of Fairport, as the C-130 outside the subway had... scraping across the roads, wrecking buildings along the way. But another flashing vision came to him then amid the ringing... clarifying the true site of impact. He saw a massive tower, crumbling and burning beneath the wreckage of the great flaming, groaning hulk of metal. Valkyrie Tower. The name meant nothing to him... but it meant something to her.
His gaze shifted back up to the storm clouds... occasionally flashing blue arcs of lightning... and he knew the horrific fate that had befallen the crew of the earlier crashed C-130. Felt what she did. Her single minded purpose. Her unending fury. The same would happen to any plane that tried entering Fairport. The comlink activated again in his ear as he watched the skies... and Sergeant Major Holiday's familiar voice streamed through it, his ID picture appearing on the heads up display as well.
"Did you see that shit? Oh man. I sure hope that wasn't our ride out of here. Least it didn't land on our heads. Better double time it over here. You're getting close."
The comlink snapped off again... and the Point Man's gaze lowered to the Delta Force and Replica bodies around him for a moment. Looking at the war torn devastated street, he was reminded how small he was, how everything was, at ground level. How high her power reached. How much it had only grown, since the Vault's destruction. An explosion... he was already coming to regret causing. The more he saw of what he had done... what he had only helped unleashed on Fairport. He hadn't expected the blast to be as big as it had been. He silently cursed Norton Mapes... almost as much as he did himself for listening to the injured Armacham employee instead of finishing him off. Just as he'd been too late to save Alice, he had been too late to prevent Harlan Wade from releasing Alma... he had wanted to stop her for good... to stop all of this madness. Keep her from reaching the surface. It was the only option he'd had left, cut off from F.E.A.R... his comlink down. It should have worked... instead... how many people had he murdered in the process? Helped her kill? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? The near empty city spoke for itself. More than these puppet Replica had killed... of that he was certain. And he couldn't even tell anyone the truth. What he had done.
The blue flashes continued in the storm clouds overhead, and the thunder clapped, then, reminding him of his objective. There was no time to contemplate the destruction he had wrought. His mission remained. He would see the rest of it through. Save those people remaining that he still could... starting with the one he carried.
Looking up again, the Point Man forced aside his musings of the Origin Facility and Vault for the moment, and stepped over the Replica executioners and continued on down the road, drawing closer to the church. Black combat boots splashing through the forming puddles along the way, shadow passing under the occasionally flickering street lights. As he drew closer to the church, he took the time to shoot two more slumbering Replicas through the head, the rapports echoing through the night. They had been in the middle of dragging the corpse of another Replica away from the look of it. He stopped in the middle of the road running in front of the church, dividing the three ways. The way back to the apartment complex, the right hand side road and the left hand side road. The right road was entirely cut off by a burning flipped over semi truck, cutting off access back towards the abandoned train station he had come from. The left hand road led to an overpass, though the way beneath it was cut off by a number of familiar black armored Replica trucks, quite abandoned. There were a few more Replicas down that way... so the Point Man took the time to carry the civilian down there through the rain, and making sure they never killed anyone again.
When he was finished with them, he returned to the center of the road and looked up to the looming church. The blue lightning flashed in the skies above it periodically, and the low distant rumble emanated through him. A chill ran over his spine as he studied the church... in a way that had nothing to do with weather. The ringing had started again, coming from the place... beckoning to him, somehow. Something awaited him within, but no visions came to reveal what it was. Starting forward, he moved off the pavement and on to the cement, boots pressing through the various puddles. Raising his sidearm again, the Point Man executed three more slumbering Replicas on his way over to the steps, watching them slump and collapse down the stairs, bloodily rolling to the bottom. When he reached the top of them, he paused, looking back over the devastated street. He hadn't been able to do much... but those who had been victims of the Replica squadron might rest easier. Wherever they had gone. Part of him wished he could have remained there... not have to go forward... inexorably forward... but he knew it couldn't be put off any longer. He had been gone long enough... and had been led here for a reason.
Again his heads up display began to flicker as he looked back to the doors, and the ringing and static in his ears became even louder than it had been on the way to the church.
Incoming... *Unknown Origin*.
He knew the origin, better than the heads up display. All too well. He breathed silently, preparing himself... raising his sidearm at the ready. Drawing back his boot, he kicked open the great double doors. Bursting through the archway, the Point Man stepped inside the building, boots tapping on the floor, echoing... to the scene that greeted him. The great main hall of the church stood before him. Two upper balconies... with more stained glass windows running along each side, as well as on the main floor of the church. The windows were illuminated by close lights, making the rich colors of the elaborate religious artwork glow vibrantly. A number of stone pillars were positioned around the main floor at certain points, supporting the upper balconies. A massive church organ took up most of the wall behind the altar and the lectern, rising up nearly to the roof, illuminated along with the altar in front of it by four tall brass candle holders. The font basin nearby it as well.
There were two far doors in each corner close by them, leading further into the back of the church. Directly before him ran two rows of eight long pews on either side of the aisle's marble floor. The church was as silent as a tomb... but it was the furthest thing from abandoned. Towards the middle of the pews stood armed Replica soldiers on either side of the aisle, facing one another in each row, divided up. Heavily armored, armed, and slumbering like the others outside had been, chests rising and falling, heads slumped forward. Assorted uniforms... gas masks and helmets... the telltale patch on their shoulders. They weren't only at ground level... the Point Man could see them up on each of the balconies as well... and perhaps they stood on the one directly over his head. At the very end of the aisle, three figures stood side by side, facing in the Point Man's direction. It wasn't the two masked and armored Replica he focused on... but the one different figure between them, out of all the assembled.
A man not like the others stood at the front of the aisle, in front of the altar and lectern. He wore neither helmet nor mask to disguise his all too familiar visage... a visage that froze the Point Man where he was, pulse beating quicker. A pale man with slicked back black hair, his head bowed solemnly like the Replica soldiers flanking him... as though they were all in the middle of a prayer. A man wearing a familiar dark grey and faded orange, blood stained uniform-like leather jacket with yellow trimming. Not entirely unlike the Replica's own uniforms... he even wore their yellow insignia on his shoulders, over his heart and upon his back... but it set him apart all the same. Long, black combat boots and blood stained tan pants with a black holster strapped to his right thigh. Residing in it was not the handle of a gun, but the bloodied handle of a combat knife, while higher up attached to his right hip was another holster containing an eight shot .50 AE calibre revolver pistol of a red and black make. Just where both weapons had resided in the Vault, not even drawing them upon the Point Man when he arrived... in the midst of his bloody feast. Even now, his pale and bloody hands reached for neither, and instead a low, hollow, coldly silky voice that he knew spoke again. Not inside his mind... but in front of him as he stood, as a living man might.
"I know it doesn't make sense. Not much does anymore."
The main double doors he had kicked open slammed shut again behind them... locking of their own accord. The Point Man rapidly looked from them and back down towards the aisle... to the blood stained man who stood waiting. Slowly, he began to raise his head as he spoke, staring back down expectantly at the Point Man. Paxton Fettel gazed at him... cold blue eyes considering him. A fresh bullet hole remained in the center of his head, blood still trickling and dripping from it down his face... and the Point Man had another flash in his vision of him kneeling in a puddle of red next to Alice Wade's cannibalized, mutilated corpse in the Vault beneath Auburn. Kneeling in his cell in the Perseus Compound in the next moment. Those familiar, vacant, utterly insane eyes staring up at him... the blood soaked smile. He had no doubt whose smeared blood was permanently staining his mouth and teeth, coat and pants. His hands. Even now, with his own death and subsequent incineration with the Vault's destruction. He had maintained that mirthless smile even as the Point Man had squeezed the trigger... devoid of any regret for what he had just done to her.
"You killed me. I didn't like that."
Again came that stinging, familiar, icy anger he had felt in the Vault. The rage of his failure to stop him... to save her. The Point Man snapped up his sidearm, took aim in a split second at the hole he had left in the Psychic Commander's head and fired, dead on. He used the same pistol on Fettel that he had killed him with before... and like then, he didn't miss... but there was no effect on him this time. The high powered round slammed into the church's far wall behind him, over the alter. Fettel merely laughed quietly under his breath... and the two Replica flanking him snapped to attention, waking with a jolt from their slumber. Before the Point Man could fire again, Fettel's phantom broke apart into dark ashes, scattering and vanishing into thin air. Save for his voice, whispering all around the church... and in the Point Man's ear.
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Once more."
All around the church the Replica troops began to reactivate, above on the balcony's and below at ground level, one after another fully standing up. Shaking off their slumber. The world around the Point Man took on a red hue amid the ringing in his skull, and it began to slow, as he burst into instinct. The familiar sensation. His red world. He dropped the civilian down behind a bench for him to take cover out of sight, freeing up his hands. Before the civilian had even touched the floor, he drew his extra sidearm in the left, snapping up both pistols and gunning down the first pair of awoken Replica. Before they got a chance to aim the sights of their submachine guns at him. They screamed loudly and fell backwards in slow motion, blood pouring from every round he put through them. Accidentally firing off their weapons, the tracers flying wildly into the ceiling above, raining down debris and dust. Slamming down into the ground and bleeding out where they twitched and lie, their spent shell casings clattering to the floor around them.
The ammunition counter in his vision steadily dropped with each pull... but he made every one of them count. Taking aim at both sides of the aisle, he took down another pair before they could wake up, firing a round through each of their heads. Doing the same to the next pair facing one another... but by the time he got to the middle of the aisle, the surviving Replica in the church were quite awoken. They took cover from him behind the benches, taking up positions at ground level, while up on the two balconies, they returned fire. Submachine gun and assault rifle rounds were poured wildly back in his direction, and the Point Man took cover behind a nearby stone column. As he slammed back against the pillar, the red haze in his vision lifted, and time returned to normal within the church. Dust and smoke filled the air and cement flew in his vision as the rounds struck the floor where he had been and the column where he was. Tracers flitted through the smoke, the roar of their weapons echoing through the entire church. He heard the Replica's guttural, mechanized voices shouting at him and giving orders to one another, filtered through the voice modulator in their helmets.
"Die motherfucker! Suppression fire on the intruder's position!"
"Where the fuck is he?!"
"He's behind the pillar! Keep the pressure on him! Flank him!"
"Roger that!"
The Point Man waited just long enough for some of them to reload... and ducking low, he leaned around the corner of the pillar, still covered from the balcony where he was positioned. He targeted the remaining Replica along the aisle, some poking their heads out behind the pews, others still standing and firing from the aisle. He rapidly hosed them down, taking out two targets simultaneously and adjusting to the others. Their screams echoed over their radios, and their shots went wild, dropping down where they stood or knelt. Emptying both his magazines in the process, he took cover fully behind the column again and reloaded both AT-14's in rapid succession. The gunfire behind him died down at last, and he listened to their chatter on the balconies.
"He took out the lower level squad! As soon as the bastard steps around the corner, everyone light him up at once!"
"Copy that squad leader!"
The Point Man stared ahead at the wall, both pistols at the ready. The Replica were quite capable super soldiers... he'd seen them tear through Armacham Security Forces effortlessly, and they posed a challenge to even Delta Force. Their tactics were sound, especially given who was directing them. But they had the tendency to shout what they were going to do before they did it, and an imitation of panic settled in... when facing someone like him. They were not... sentient, not fully, he could gather even at the start of fighting them in Fairport. He wasn't sure if they actually felt the fear and panic they displayed as he tore through them, or if it was replicated emotion, true to their names. Replicated emotion that could hinder their performance, like ordinary humans feeling fear. He felt no pity when he killed him... they were not real... but something about them left him perpetually curious. Maybe Armacham had designed them too well... they became more human-like only in battle, with all the drawbacks of such.
"Come out and die, son of a bitch! Stop hiding!"
It was time to disappoint them. Breathing deeply as he concentrated, his world slowed down once more, red hue surrounding his vision again, and he tore out of cover, aiming for the balcony on the other side of the room. They all stood along the railing, focusing down at him... and not yet firing. Targeting the pair on the end of the balcony he fired several shots up at them. Tearing through armor, uniforms and meat, blood spraying everywhere as they reacted, falling backwards screaming out of view. The rest began to open fire... the rounds and tracers visible as they came down in unison. The Point Man ran back to the aisle, still aiming up and firing, ripping through their ranks to the last man. Before any of them could drop back into cover. When he reached the aisle, he was exposed to the other balcony... but so were they to him. They fired at the same time he did, even with his advantage, smoke and marble flying around him. He felt a stinging impact against his chest, and another against his leg... but he ignored them, focusing down his sights and bringing the fight to them.
He blew the head apart of the squad's leader, and focused on cutting down his subordinates. He heard them screaming and swearing at him... but none of their empty words mattered, as one after another he killed them all. Emptying his magazines into them once more. Standing where he was beneath the main third balcony over his head, he reloaded quickly, glancing over to the traumatized, rain and blood soaked civilian, where he hid behind the pew he had left him at. He was curled up in a fetal position, still shaking and trembling, but staying put... and alive. The Point Man listened carefully for any boots moving on the main balcony above. He heard nothing... but was careful all the same. Some Replica were more cunning than others with their tactics... particularly their snipers. With luck, they didn't have one... knowing only too well what their Type-7 Particle Weapons were capable of... preferring them in his own hands instead of theirs. Turning around hurriedly he stepped backwards a bit down the aisle, aiming up at the balcony. He kept taking a single step backwards at a time... until the entire balcony was exposed to him.
Thankfully, it stood empty, no figures crouching or standing among its pews in waiting. Finally, he lowered his pistols back down to his side, the smoke over the aisle retreating around him. Dust settling. Turning back down the aisle, he surveyed all the carnage... Replica corpses lining the pews and walkway... some bodies hanging half draped over the balcony's edges. Blood puddles collecting around the corpses, running and flowing along the gunshot covered marble floor. Rounds piercing the wooden pews all over the sections. The firefight had been brief... but intense. They always seemed to be. It felt like it lasted longer than it did... especially for him. He felt the sting in his chest and his right leg... remembering he had been shot. He glanced down... none of his blood was leaking, the material had not been torn apart. The D-12 Heavy Armor remained intact, even after the long night before... after the Origin Facility... and remained formidable. It was when the Replica started breaking out the heavier weapons he'd have to be even more careful than he had been. And employ more adequate firearms of his own to counter them.
He tucked away his spare AT-14 in the left holster, but kept the primary one in his right hand. Peering down the aisle to the wall on the far end, he glimpsed the two doors on either side of the massive church organ... back exits, most likely. He could cut through to the other side and make it out to the road Holiday had told him about. And he'd better do it in a hurry, before reinforcements inevitably arrived. He knew at once that the Replica of the church had not been the only ones awoken from their slumber. Turning on his boot, he moved back behind the pew and knelt beside the traumatized civilian, hoisting him over his shoulder once more and rising again. Turning, he moved back towards the aisle, and began to stride down it carefully, pistol at the ready. He passed among the blood puddles... the corpses and spent brass casings. They rolled about with each step, as he tracked red boot prints all the way up the marble floor.
"You have shown far less mercy upon the many born of my blood, than I have the one... born of yours. No... not many. Not yet. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me... shall be my brother."
The Point Man froze in his tracks in the aisle at the voice in his ringing head and echoing around him, his heads up display flickering... and watched, as in a flash, Fettel had appeared again. His phantom standing now up at the lectern... peering down off the platform back at him. Again came the impulse and temptation to shoot him, even knowing how useless the act would be. To empty his magazine into him. To watch him die again. For the moment, he tempered the desire. His rage. Fettel serenely rose his hands, gesturing to the Replica corpses slumped around the aisle, and to where they hung up in the rafters, along the balcony's. When Fettel spoke again calmly, it was not in his mind... but vocally. Blood stained lips moving. As they had before.
"No matter. You are right. They are all reawakened, now. And not merely what remains of this battalion. In thrall where they belong, to their true Commander. Even so... I cannot deny how impressive it is... to watch you again. Doing what you are best at. What they made you for. What has felt a day, hours to you... were eons, where I have dwell. Where I have waited. Where I have walked. You cannot even fathom how it is, to live beyond death. To master its secrets. To be reborn."
Fettel's phantom image flickered, then... like a television set. Dimmed. His image... but not his face. Not entirely, at least. In one instant he stood in his dark grey and orange, blood stained uniform-like jacket... in another he wore the clean body armor, uniform and insignia of a Replica soldier on each shoulder. Three numbers stamped upon the heart of his armor, which bore a couple small glowing yellow lights at either side of the center of the chest. A type of full, battle scarred grey and green armor he did not recognize from the battalion Replica he had fought through Fairport. In one instant, his face was stained and still, forehead marked by the bullet... in the next, it was clean and agonized. Twisted. Howling in futile pain and rage. Visibly older and more lined than his bloody face had been, hairline an even higher widow's peak of thinning black hair. His eyes having turned a steely grey, instead of a cold blue. His face... and the face of another.
The Point Man felt that other presence somewhere inside Fettel being smothered... steadily absorbed... a tortured soul. Screaming inside the Point Man's head with an agony he couldn't begin to imagine. His scream sounded like that of Fettel's... but was not his. Another victim... of a different, far worse sort of cannibalism than flesh alone. A consumption of the mind and soul. Despite what it wore... it was not a true Replica, any more than Fettel was. It was something... someone... more. The ringing in his skull told him it was a being of great psionic power. He heard the repeated, desperate banging of a gloved fist pounding on metal. Fettel's apparition smiled quite comfortably, something like recognition, understanding flitting over his piercing gaze. But still the soul continued to struggle. To fight a hopeless battle of reclamation, of an identity that had once been his. It wasn't a true name... a mere designation given by his creators... but it was his. He had to remember who and what he was.
Foxtrot 813
"Oh... you can see him? Feel and hear him? Of course you can. He is family. The greatest of my progeny. Far greater than these... useful shadows. Of another caste. Born of my body, and the ovum of one of Armacham's most powerful, unfortunate subjects still in their possession. A different scientific method than these paler imitations... though his growth accelerated in a tank, as they are. His gender selected specifically to try and replicate me the most accurately. Perhaps aged more than I was, while I lived, but a fair enough approximation. He should be a child... is my child, but appears a man instead. A Replica with a soul. My flesh, reborn. Bending only to my will... where my other children might be controlled by another strong enough to."
Comprehension formed and spread within the Point Man. A backup plan... of course. Fettel would not allow an inconvenience like death prevent him from his rebellion against Armacham... nor his goal of conquest. He had already seen how far the Commander was prepared to go to accomplish his goals... that nothing and nobody was sacred to him, beyond power and knowledge. He should have realized it sooner... but in the madness of Fairport, he had deluded himself with false hope Fettel was gone.
"Indeed so. He is with me everywhere... the vessel of my true being. And he is far away from here... quite safe, a Crown Prince heir resting upon our seat of power, in his conquering King father's absence. Where our war began. Through him, I shall lead our vast, gathering host in this war. Our mighty army. He was so willing at first... to share in my glory. Not even she could stop him from reaching me, as hard as she tried. Unfortunately... I rather think when the full scale of what I was offering became apparent to him... what I showed him beyond the curtain... he had something of a belated change of heart. At least... he tried to have one. He will learn, in time. The ingratitude and rebelliousness of man's own children. His own favoured son, made in his image. Perhaps I should have tried claiming yours, instead."
Fettel's smile deepened a little, and he closed his eyes, expression concentrating only slightly. Not exerting much psionic effort. The Point Man was overtaken by a series of visions... saw and felt the one called Foxtrot 813 being sealed away, forced to his knees... in the cell that had once been Fettel's, somewhere beneath the Perseus Compound. He watched the one with Fettel's older face lowering himself down to his knees in the middle of the cell, against his will, a Replica helmet with an advanced glowing yellow goggle visor forced over his head. The only door was closed to him then, and locked tightly shut. A number of heavily armed Replica Elites and Heavy Armor Units guarded the cellblock outside, keeping him trapped within. Many more Replica swarming throughout Perseus Island, fortifying it within and without. Attending to the cloning facility deep within the Perseus Compound. The heart of the Replica in Fairport. He was both physically and mentally entombed away in a cell that looked one and the same. Foxtrot 813's struggling screams fading, along with his gloved fists banging defiantly on the bottom of the cell door, where he had dragged himself to. His resistance futile. Silenced once more. The visions broke apart, and the Point Man knew it was a fate Foxtrot 813's body would soon suffer, as his spirit already was. Strong as he was, he could not fully resist Fettel... not for long. And by now he was exhausted and weakened, all the fight gone from him. The distortion and rippling in Fettel's projected apparition ceased all at once... and he stood tall, looking as the Point Man best remembered him.
Hated him.
"Well, here we are, brother. I seem to be a little worse for the wear.", Fettel admitted at last silkily, malignant blue eyes opening. Knowing the hatred he felt. Seeming to draw something from it. Releasing a faint chuckle as he looked down at his blood stained attire, and back to the Point Man. "And you? You are prey. I'll leave the two of you alone."
He broke apart into ashes like he had before, leaving nothing in his wake up at the lectern. Though he couldn't have gone far. The Point Man still felt his presence, all around him, amid the ringing in his skull. He scanned the entirety of the church around him, but saw nothing. Nobody. He was alone in the church... in body, if not in spirit. In mind. Jaw tightening, the Point Man moved ahead at last, stepping up on the small platform the lectern and altar resided... moving across it towards the back wall. The sooner he got out of the place, the better. Yet before he could get more than a few steps past the lectern... she came for him. A piercing, agonizing woman's scream carried through the entire church, then, shattering every single stain glass window in an instant. Shards rained and flew all over the main hall, and the Point Man set down the civilian behind the cover of the altar, kneeling over him to keep him from getting cut up. The ringing in his temple grew louder... more powerful than it had been even with Fettel. He heard the doors burst open again behind him... and he smelled smoke through the balaclava, rolling through the entire church. Wind howled around him... not the sensation of it, but the noise, carrying through a void he had visited before. Looking up to the closest balcony, he peered out the shattered windows... seeing not the streets of Fairport or stormy night skies and the rain... the flashing blue lightning or hearing the rumble of thunder.
Darkness. Another world, of fire and shadows. Her world, surrounding and consuming the church.
"I've found you!"
Her excited, feverish voice spoke in his ear... in his head, the ringing worsening further still. Not the voice of her child form any longer... but of a grown woman. A voice he had also heard before, in his nightmares and reality alike. He rose back to his feet, staring down the aisle he had come up, to find the main doors entirely wreathed in flames. And her tall, deathly pale, emaciated bare figure standing beneath the main balcony. Her long black hair, forever soaked like the rest of her in the amniotic fluid of the tank she had drowned in, draped over her gaunt white face, hiding it away... but there was only one person it could have belonged to. Holding her arms out towards him as she slowly paced inexorably deeper into the church's main hall, moving to the start of the aisle. Two of you. Evidently, Fettel did not even count the civilian's existence or presence. And why would he? This was a family affair, to him. A reunion.
The Point Man glanced down at the civilian, and back to her... and tucked away his sidearm. He unslung and took up his shotgun in both hands, aiming out over the aisle towards the inferno that rose higher, spread and grew with her every slow, inexorable step up towards the aisle. He aimed at her and fired a round... the shell roared with a great boom that echoed through the hall, and its slug struck true against her chest... blood splattering over her body and flowing on the ground beneath her bare feet. She did not even waver, or pause mid step at the impact. The marks it left on her vanished, same the blood, leaving her clammy, veiny flesh intact... clinging to her skeletal, corpse-like frame. He could see her rib cage, poking through her taut, unnatural flesh. As she passed the burning pews, each row began to lift and levitate into the air above her as she began to weep, hand touching the spot over her heart where he had hit, rubbing against the blood coating her deathly pale flesh there.
"WHY?! WHY!? WHY?! YOU HURT ME LIKE THE REST OF THEM?!"
There was another scream, then, but it did not belong to her... more shrill and distorted, less the suffering of a woman and more monstrous. Twin familiar, rippling voids formed in front of her, the air distorting and opening... and from its depths poured inky, barely humanoid shapes, flying quickly through the air towards the altar. It was a question how they could scream the way they did... not having mouths to do so with. Their faces were fused shut, save their eyes. Their eyes the glowing yellow of cat's eyes... wraiths given the appearance of distorted, gaunt, leathery human flesh.. devoid of the lower half of their bodies, where legs should have been. Each finger on their gnarled hands clawed and hooked. Shadowy beings backed by the intensity of the growing inferno. The hell they came from. Nightmares. Her nightmares. At least, a few of them. As they screeched through the air, rapidly closing the distance, the Point Man's readjusted his aim and fired a shell through the closest one. It burst apart in an instant with a screech, going up in a cloud of inky black smoke and ashes and vanishing.
Pumping the shotgun hard, he fired again at the other, and the rest of the apparitions that were pouring out of the twin voids. Working to keep them from getting too close, remembering the agony of one impacting against him, as they had before. While not yet through with all his loaded shells as the voids closed again, vanishing in thin air, he reloaded nonetheless, fingers moving rapidly. When he was fully stocked up again he pumped the shotgun... just in time for the next horror she unleashed. As she passed among the pews, closing in on the mid section of the aisle, a swarm of glowing red string-like tendrils burst from the fire... from her form, the two indivisible from each other. The long, thin tendrils seized and penetrated the corpses of the Replicas, raising them back up like marionettes in front of her. Wind up toy soldiers... puppets... twice over now, the pulsating strings animating them back to a cruel mockery of life. He'd never seen her do something like it before. Her twisted powers only grew like her fury. Exponentially. One after another the puppets were risen, scooped up their fallen weapons and began to take aim, firing and moving unsteadily up to the platform. Twitching and shaking all the while.
The Point Man took cover behind the altar again, waiting for them to run dry. They were not as accurate or strategic, as they had been in their 'lives'... nor fast. Even she could only give back so much to a corpse. And for all her vast power, she possessed too much rage to pass them a coherent strategy, unlike Fettel. When there was a break in the firing, he rose again, firing down into their blood soaked ranks. He blew one in half who was trying to crawl on to the platform, severing the puppet string as it fell back over the side. The pulsating tendril string retreated back into the flames... into her... but it was not the only one. Other reanimated Replica corpses eagerly lurched forward, still reloading their weapons... slower than they had been in whatever counted for their lives. They still spoke through their voice modulator... but the modulators were increasingly burnt, melted, like their helmets and masks, which dripped and ran down their blood stained fronts. All that came out was incoherent garbling, in and out, and the buzzing of static filled radios. Their proximity to Alma cooking them visibly.
Behind the sounds... he thought he heard agony. Forced to exist now as they did, their pain senses restored. He opened fire again, aiming and pulling the trigger as quickly as he could, taking the head off another, then bursting another into a cloud of red mist. One after another, he severed her puppet strings, her hold over the dead clones. He felt something forming like revulsion, watching her manipulate them... muted disgust in a way he hadn't even when they had lived as puppets the first time around. What little life they'd had. The unnatural perversion done to their forms, forced to come back. No peace even in death. It was a violation beyond even Armacham's initial violation in creating and using them. He killed every single one of them a second time... a mercy, if there was anything left in them. As they fell this way and that before her, and the last of the tendrils withdrew, their corpses and appendages were consumed in her spreading flames over the floor of the great hall. Licking up over what was left of their armored forms and eating away at it. Charring and vanishing beneath the wall of fire now consuming the pews.
He looked back down to her, as she drew near to the platform, her bare feet tracking bloody footprints up the aisle as his boots had done. And he reloaded the shotgun again in a flurry of movements, falling into his red world again. Breathing harder... the heat becoming steadily unbearable in his thick armor and bodysuit. Real or not, it was real enough to cook him alive... either his body, mind or both. He fired another couple roaring slugs into her, her blood spraying... or rather a psionic illusion of it... as a dead thing. Still she walked closer, slowed further by his reflexes... yet remaining unperturbed by his firepower. Another couple voids opened in front of her... the Nightmares that poured forth made it even closer to him than the ones before. His concentration and reflexes alone kept them from impacting against him... and doing whatever they intended to for her. His shotgun ran dry by the time the voids closed again, and he loaded the last of his shells in rapid succession again, as the sweat gathered and leaked down his forehead and dripped into his eyes, forcing him to blink beneath the lenses. What other horrors did she possess? In the fire, and beyond it in the darkness? She wasn't even trying... just wanted to embrace him... what would she be capable of if she did try? What abominations could she muster against him?
The Point Man remembered their eyes in the darkness... shifting, giant tendrils different from the glowing puppet strings. Twitching, leathery things. Horrors surrounding the blue void, guarding whatever lie within that curtain of light. How many of them were gathered in those shadows, lurking in wait for him? An army of her own, in this realm of hers he, the civilian and an entire building had been pulled into... or a recreation of the building. As his red world retracted again, the ringing in his skull spiked, and he heard her.
"You cannot survive them all. Not alone. You must leave this place. You are not ready to wander deeper into the darkness. To make us one. Not yet. Run. I'm waiting for you."
It was not the emaciated horror speaking to him... the child form of Alma's voice whispered in his ear, again... and he felt the fear in it. In her. Not for herself. Fear for him. A child's voice with an adult's mind. Whatever else he thought of her... how dangerous she was... his confusion she was helping him against herself... he listened to the voice either way. Obeyed. Breathing hard, slinging the shotgun again, the Point Man ducked back behind the altar as the flames licked up the lectern. Hoisting the sweat soaked, wide eyed civilian again over his shoulder, he began a hasty retreat, moving across the platform. The emaciated woman thing had finally stopped close to the altar, at the edge of the platform, peering up at it. Peering up at him. He finally saw her black eyes illuminated in the fire... soulless, and the personification of her darkness. The void world behind her. Everything they had done to her. She did not give further chase to him momentarily in this... Hag form... but her fiery touch did, rolling over the floor, consuming the altar as he jumped off the platform and reached the side door on the right.
He tried the handle, to find it quite predictably locked... remembering how many locked ones there had been in her world previously. He shot it several times with his pistol, tried to kick it open with all his might, but it would not even shift. Each round didn't leave a single mark on it. An unbreakable wall in her mind given the deceptive form of a simple wooden door. He could feel her flames at his back, the sweat pouring off both him and the civilian, trickling down his spine. The suit was fire retardant, along with the armor... but not to these flames. The mask helped keep the smoke briefly at bay... but the closer it drew, the more he began to cough, muffled. The smoke was psychological, he knew, as much as real... he couldn't let himself panic, or it would pull him down into unconsciousness... and death. He heard her bare footsteps again, drawing closer... could almost feel her long fingered, skeletal hand, settling on his shoulder. Seizing him... consuming him. Pulling him into the dark world beyond the flames with her. Taking him to the blue sphere he had seen. Free falling among the howling of the wind.
Locking him away inside her mind... her world, as Fettel had done to Foxtrot 813. Whatever form that prison took for her. Then, the ringing spiked again and he heard Fettel's disembodied, silky, amused voice voice once more, then... all around him, echoing in his head.
"Why run? You cannot escape something you've been part of since before you were born. The Vault's destruction heralded the end, brother. These are the final days, when the world will be shattered and reformed into a new image. When the war arrives. A new god born from the graves and charnel pit you hollowed into the earth. There are other realms than yours or hers... I have walked through some of them. All their roads lead to the World Behind the Walls. To what slumbers there. Do you think these abominations of hers to be merely the stuff of her nightmares? Creations of her psionic power alone? Come now... I thought you wiser than that, and on a team of would be supernatural experts, no less. She may be the source of us... but she is a conduit, not the source, of our family's power... nor of those like us who can also pierce the veils between realms."
Another flashing vision flitted through his consciousness amid the ringing... and he saw the blood soaked Fettel, sitting up comfortably on one of the balcony's pews. Watching him, and her below, entirely unaffected by the flames surrounding him and burning the very bench he sat on. Watching as he might a performance on a stage. Having watched it all. Mild intrigue in his cold eyes and thin, bloody smile. He saw mother... a brother futilely rejecting their connection, and the meaningless man he carried, from behind Fettel's eyes. From within his fevered, alien mind. The vision broke at once and the door returned... it had begun to rattle and shake, back and forth. In an instant, it burst off its hinges and hit the ground in front of it. Her silhouette stood in the doorway... diminutive... but he felt her startling power. Her will. She offered her tiny, pale hand to him... and he instinctively paused for a moment. Hesitation swelling. Glancing back over his shoulder, at the other, more monstrous her approaching. And the bloody faced son that horrific version of her was connected to, watching it all play out from the rafters. More voids began to open all around the interior of the church, numerous Nightmares pouring from them screeching, more than before, bound for the Point Man. Too many for him to fight.
Looking back ahead, the Child had not moved an inch. Still she offered her hand to him, asked him for his trust without speaking. She was his, in this world, and the real one. As the Hag was Fettel's. He tucked away his sidearm. Reaching out and taking her hand instead. Her pale fingers weaved through his gloved ones at once, and in a flash he stood in the back room with her, still holding the civilian and her hand alike, at her side. The Hag's fiery tendrils reached out for the door, screaming with rage again... he sensed her fury, as it had been when she brought down Valkyrie Tower. Screaming now at being defied... drawn from her reach. Before the fire could pass through the open doorway, the unhinged door levitated into the air, took up its upright position, and slammed itself securely back in place. Sealing out the Hag... Fettel, and her swarming Nightmares. He could hear her banging against and clawing at the door... screaming and weeping futilely. Bony, claw-like fingers and nails scraping. The girl in the red dress slowly turned back around to face him. She gazed at him deeply, keeping her small fingers woven through his gently, looking down at them, and back to his goggles. Seeing beyond them. She could watch him, anytime she wished... but she could not see into his mind... feel what he did. But he could glimpse and feel part of hers.
The love she felt for him, since before the day he'd been taken from her. It beat inside her, as her real heart no longer could. Kept her going. The Child's eyes were as black and otherworldly as the Hag's... she was no less dangerous... but what dwell in them was different. The ringing in his skull told him that... and in her close proximity had never been more powerful. It didn't make him feel any better, having her watching over him... if anything, left him more troubled and conflicted, heart racing. Trying to keep his fear at bay. Memory returning. This was the same entity who had watched Fettel cannibalizing her own sister without lifting a finger... may have directed him to do so to Alice. Why should he matter to her as family... if an innocent like Alice had not? And how many other innocents had she murdered around Fairport? At last she spoke to him again... within him. Around him. Her lips remaining immobile.
"Hurry. She is waiting for you. They are all waiting for you."
Alma broke apart into ashes in an instant... releasing his hand... but still he felt her presence with him. Silently drawing him to retreat out towards the back exit. Before he did, he listened to the Hag, still weeping with futile rage beyond the door she struck. He heard her voice in his head again... her older self, choked with fury and sorrow alike, in contrast to her calm, collected child's voice. Pleading and desperate... a teenage girl's mind in a grown woman's voice and monstrous form.
"What have I done?! I'm sorry! I would never hurt you! A madness took me... but it has passed! Come back! I looked for you everywhere! Even hospital beds and morgues! Just let me hold you again! Please!"
The Point Man lingered for a moment, listening to her barely articulate weeping. Her longing to reach him... to have him. Her need. It chilled him to the bones, even in the inferno the church was fast becoming. What frightened him more than her was that he felt stirrings of pity for her... and didn't know if it was her influence, or were his own feelings. Before they could deepen, he turned and burst into movement, running through the back room and to the rear exit of the church, slamming through the door. He didn't stop until he reached the outside yard that joined to an alley... only then he stopped and turned back, to find himself back in his world. The real world. He couldn't feel the rain... but heard it pelting against his armor and helmet, the sweltering heat lifting and the cool, refreshing air returning, and he watched the water trickling down his goggles. His rapid breathing slowly relaxed, balancing out, looking up into the stormy night skies. The wind had stopped howling through his ears... and he saw the blue lightning flash in the clouds above... hearing the low rumble. Even that was welcome... Fairport was welcome, compared to where he had just been. Where he never wanted to return to... even knowing on some level he would. That he had no choice in the matter. His gaze settled on the church, to find it fully consumed by her flames, by now... her fury... the damage done to it in her world had transferred over to the real world. As so much else seemed to be.
Had they really been in her world? Or in this one all along, and she had made him see it as her world? Had they only been in his head? Even now he didn't quite understand how it all worked. The rules. The other side. He did not want to know more than he had to, the knowledge liable to drive him as insane as they were. The ringing in his temple spiked again, and a voice came to him, then... a link back to that world... his cool, silky, knowing tone murmuring amid his troubled thoughts.
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Remember that, brother. We really shouldn't be fighting. Not with such a tremendous... miraculous... deliverance drawing so near. You do not know yet, of what I speak? She has not told you. Where the third part of her dwells, her mind is shielded even to you. In the void. But you will know the truth, in time. Run with your... friends... as far as you might. Ready yourself for war. We shall follow. She cannot shield you from our gaze or reach for much longer. Sooner or later, you must face us. Accept your place in this... complicated family. Let this communion serve as the harbinger for what comes next. For what must be. We will speak again soon enough."
With those parting, calmly assured words, the Point Man felt Fettel's presence lift... the ringing falling silent, and he was alone again. For the moment. Alone, even with the civilian breathing heavily with fear over his shoulder. The Point Man wasn't sure how much he had seen... if he had been able to see any of it... possibly pulled into a dead woman's mind, his own, or the other side... but he didn't look like he'd be telling anyone anytime soon. Turning away from the inferno, he climbed up over the ledge of the yard, mantling it and dropped down into the alley just beyond it. Boots meeting concrete, next to a dumpster. Without really thinking, he drew his pistol again and he ran, bustling noisily down the alley, putting as much distance between himself and the collapsing church as possible. As much distance between everything that had resided in there, and himself. Concentrating only on what was ahead. His objective. He ran out of the side road, out of the alley, and back on to the main road behind the church. He ran up it, splashing through the numerous puddles, moving so fast his gear bustled noisily... and didn't have to take out and look down at his datapad's local map.
He just knew where to go.
The further he ran from the church, the more distant the ringing in his temple became... until it was mercifully gone altogether. The echo of his boots carried through the ruined, desolate streets... passing overturned and abandoned cars. Lightning flashed again, and thunder rumbled in the distance. He heard distant echoes of gunfire and explosions as well, deeper into the city... some manner of firefight. Between who, he wasn't sure, but could guess. There were were some more blood stained bodies along the way, belonging only to Replica. Replica who hadn't woken up in time. Stripped of their weapons and gear. He saw it, half way up the road... the pawn shop, with the blinds drawn over each of the windows. Cutting across the road and sidewalk, he approached the door, drew back his boot and riot kicked it open without hesitation. Breaking the locks on the other side with ease, bursting inside and levelling his pistol, as a number of armored figures inside jolted upright, shouted and spun around to face him. Some of them bursting to their feet from where they were sitting. Scrambling in a sudden panic, taken off guard. Aiming their assault rifles, submachine guns and shotguns at him where he stood in the doorway aiming back.
Lightning flashed outside again, illuminating the room even brighter from behind him... and the low rumbling thunderclap came with it. He breathed, slowly but deeply, and did not do the things that came naturally when he ordinarily saw armed threats. He heard their muffled shouting amid his red world... he aimed at the closest one... almost seeing a Replica in him... but as he breathed... withdrew from the red world and returned to the present, the familiarity of the Delta Force operator's uniforms, the SFOD-D shoulder patch logos, American flag patches on their fronts, armor and helmets returned as well. Friendlies. Other survivors. A half a dozen of them all assembled in the front room, staring at him with shock visible behind their clear goggles. The seventh of them had been the first to lower his G2A2 Assault Rifle. A tall, familiar black man in the same uniform and armor as them, minus the helmet, goggles and balaclava, who smiled at him. His face was pretty well bruised and cut up... but it didn't seem to effect him. The relief in his features evident as he took charge of the situation, shouting at the others.
"Hold your fire, boys! Stand down! Does he look like a Replica, Taylor?"
"Actually? He kind of does, Sergeant Major."
"Well he ain't filling us full of lead and round housing our asses around the shop. And how many other giant, silent, bad motherfuckers do we know? Brought a civvie to the party too.", Sergeant Major Douglas Holiday fired back, raising his datapad for the operator to see. Activating it. The operator at his side, Taylor, drew closer, looking between it and him in the doorway. "And his GPS tracker is placing him right here in front of us on my datapad, so what do you think?"
Delta Force operator Taylor studied it long and hard, and finally looked back at the Point Man. Lowering his submachine gun at last with a slight nod of his helmeted head. The Point Man slowly did the same... lowering the pistol back down to his side, but maintaining his tight grip on it. The operator looked to the others around the room and gestured to them as well.
"Lower your weapons, men. He's with us alright. Thank Christ. Almost had a fucking heart attack..."
There was a great deal of noise, and sounds of relief, as they obeyed, their weapons lowered one after another. Shaking their heads and commenting among themselves about his entrance. Taking their seats again around the main room of the pawn shop, and staring at the Point Man where he stood. Holiday took a step forward, tucking away his datapad and passing operator Taylor, releasing a low, impressed whistle as he looked over the Point Man, clapping him on the shoulder approvingly.
"Well, well, well. Look what the badass dragged in. Even with that agility, you sure took your sweet ass time to get over here. Got a good excuse for it here with you, at least.", Holiday noted with a grin, shaking his head with a chuckle... looking between the blood and rain drenched civilian and over to a pair of nearby operators. Commanding voice speaking up again. Taking charge. "Jenkins, Bisenti, take that poor bastard off the man's hands, and find him a chair, will ya? Close the door too, there's a draft coming in. You know those locks are coming out of your meagre government salary, right Point Man?"
The two operators looked at each other, then moved forward a bit hesitantly, one of them closing the door behind the Point Man. Both of them looking back into his goggles, gesturing tentatively to the civilian. The Point Man looked between them and nodded, allowing them to take the man. Lowering his arm back down to his side once it was freed up. It felt better already, losing the extra weight and cumbersomeness. An objective completed. He watched the operators half carry half drag the man over to a nearby chair out of the way, setting him down in it and adjusting him properly. His eyes remained shut tightly, but by now he had stopped convulsing, shaking. He breathed a little more evenly than before, and seemed a bit more... together. Relatively. The Point Man looked back ahead to Holiday, who stood not far from him, chuckling a bit under his breath.
"Not bad, man, but I wouldn't want you running a marathon. You had a head start and everything, and even a certain someone got in here just ahead of you.", Smirked Holiday, shaking his head slowly. Looking back over his shoulder, he shouted towards the back room. "Jin! Get out here! Your prom date's arrived! Snazzy suit and everything!"
The Point Man heard some movement somewhere far in the back room behind Holiday, who winked at him knowingly. An unmistakable figure in a familiar olive green D-12 Light Armor bodysuit emerged after a bit, then... she came around the corner, a Delta Force operator wielding an HV Penetrator at her side. Her face was more bruised than the last time he had seen it, and cut up a fair bit, as she had been at the crash site, dark hair tied back, exposing it, and wearing a comlink headset. She looked to Holiday first with obvious confusion, not seeing him at the doorway right away.
"Doug, what the hell are you-..."
Jin Sun-Kwon froze next to Holiday, looking ahead where the Point Man stood before the entrance. He stared back at her, and felt his heart beating audibly again in his ears. Relief starting to form in him at the sight of her and gradually replacing the apprehension of before. She looked over to where the Delta operators were attending to the civilian he had brought, and back to him. Her lips visibly parting in shock as it all registered within her again.
"Figured I'd 'forget' to mention he was on his way over. Let him give you a good surprise when he got here. Didn't think he'd surprise the rest of us too, but there you go. We're all jumpy lately.", Holiday explained to Jin with his lingering grin. Looking back in the Point Man's direction as well. "Helmet looks good on him, should have been wearing one from the start. Not that you needed it with that hard head of yours, walking off at least two chopper crashes and a nuke to the face. And not like I'm one to talk."
Jin rushed forward, unceremoniously pushing past Holiday, running through the front of the pawn shop and to the door. She impacted against the front of the Point Man's body armor, wrapping her arms around him at once, taking him off guard. Pressing her head against his armored chest. Beyond her, he heard Holiday's riotous laughing... the operator that had been with her stepping up beside him. Looking a bit awkward and uncomfortable beneath the clear goggles, by comparison, shifting from side to side.
"I knew you were alive. That you'd come for me.", Jin whispered, breathing and holding him tightly, drawing back his focus. She drew back her head a bit and peered up at his goggles, looking at him as though she could see beyond them. As she had before. Her tender gaze was searching and concerned for him. "Where the hell have you been? What took you so long? What's happened to you?"
The Point Man rose a gloved hand, carefully touching the bruises and cuts on her face. Tracing her lower lip slightly. He peered down into her gentle, concerned, deep brown eyes... and he wished he could tell her. Answer her. Talk to her, more than ever. Even when they were together like this, it was an implacable barrier between them. He had to speak to her in other ways. He slowly tucked away his sidearm in its holster at last. His broad arms rose and enveloped her, and he held her back tightly. Lowering himself down a little. He held her for a long time, before slowly glancing back towards Holiday and the other operator standing next to each other. Then, static returned to his comlink... his heads up display began to flicker again, the familiar words of warning appearing in the corner of his vision.
Incoming... *Unknown Origin*
No. Not again. Not here. The ringing began echoing within his skull again, all at once. Where was Alma? How had she tracked him here, so soon? He needed to act, before she did to everyone around him what she had done to all the other operators crossing her path. Before he could pull away from Jin, draw a primary weapon and do anything to protect them, a third figure beyond Holiday and the operator, appeared from the shadows in the doorway to the back room, amid the flickering in his vision and static on the comlink. Unseen to all... but not to him. Neither the Hag nor Fettel. Tall. Shaven headed. The bloodstains, fresh blood forever running down from his empty sockets and over his cheeks like tears, and down over his neatly trimmed blonde goatee, collar and the front of his own D-12 Heavy Armor. A man he had only known for the final week of his life. A First Lieutenant who had showed him the ropes at the F.E.A.R. Headquarters' training facility... the team's former point man... and a man who hadn't trusted him.
A dead man, watching over him now without eyes that had once been blue. No... he sensed through the ringing. Watching over Jin.
Spencer Jankowski's phantom dissolved into ashes as Alma and Fettel had done, falling away in the span of a second and vanishing. His flickering heads up display and static filled comlink returned to normal, once more, along with the ringing dying down. Gone as suddenly as it had arrived. He stared at the spot the phantom had stood for a moment, before lowering his head, pressing his masked face into Jin's hair and closing his eyes beneath the red goggles. Holding on to her like a life preserver... shutting away the hell he had just ran out of. The confusion. The questions. Everything he had seen, done and survived... everything that followed him and he hoped to escape from. For the first time in as long as he could remember in that moment, he felt something approaching deep relief. Comfort. Knowing he wasn't alone, rather surrounded by allies, again... trusted friends. Her arms tightened around him in return, holding him close and murmuring comforting words for him alone to hear.
As bad as things had been in Fairport... as bad as they still were and might get... the Point Man knew he was back where he belonged.
Like Raynes, Paxton Fettel was a gift of a character to write for this story, and a villain at that. One of my favorites of all time. More of him to come in due course. The players begin to take their places on stage.