Written to the score of . . . 'Mountains' (from the Interstellar movie soundtrack), by Hans Zimmwe . . .
. . . tick, tock . . . tick, tock . . .
Michonne lands inside an elevator shaft, grabbing onto the thick wire and hanging on for dear life.
That doesn't quite stop her momentum, though; her impact sends the malfunctioning elevator shooting downward at a heart-stopping pace. With as much strength as she can muster, she unsheathes her sword, her grip on the wire slipping as she zooms downward, the levels shooting past her. Finally, she's able to cut through the wire with her blade, swinging herself with all her might out of the shaft into the first open floor she can reach.
The elevator crashes downward, sending up a mushroom cloud and a sonic boom that shakes the shaft.
The remaining cyborgs will be hunting for the source of the disturbance, now. She has to move fast.
Michonne slips out of the elevator shaft at the nearest junction, her brow dripping with sweat.
Backup life support is fading fast all over the tower. The air feels oppressive; hard to breathe.
Nevertheless, Michonne runs.
All around the tower, her team is getting into position, hopefully drawing those remaining cyborgs out to face them in one last, bitter standoff. She runs through the darkened halls, out toward the hall underneath the atrium – where the tank is guarding the secured vault that houses the mainframe, and the hostages with it. There is an emergency EMP inside. She's heading straight for it as soon as she's able to breach the vault. The tank appears to be resting.
Saving your ammo, huh, big guy . . . the hunch seizes her as soon as she sees it powered down for once.
The second it becomes aware of her presence, however, it will attack. She gets an idea, slipping through the various rooms on this level, avoiding the exposed areas where the tank will spot her if she isn't careful. No signs of cyborg sentinels. Yet.
She hears shuffling and growling coming from one of the offices to her left as she crouches behind a desk to think for a few precious seconds. The movement gets nearer, and harder to ignore. She scans the darkness, trying to see how many walkers she'll need to take down before she reaches the tank.
Three or four, maybe trapped back there avoiding sentinels.
Among the shuffling dead, she catches a glint of a buckle attached to a pair of suspenders.
It's Glenn. He's turned. He must've been trying to get civilians out of harm's way.
Michonne has no idea where the others are, or how long he's been wandering around in here as a walker since he died, but she decides to put a merciful end to him and the others quickly and quietly. Fighting back tears, she takes out the civilians first. Then she goes for Glenn, as gently and respectfully as she can. The noise of his body crashing into a desk when she pulls her sword out of his skull draws the attention of the tank. Fuck.
Heavy fire starts up immediately, splitting them apart as Michonne dives for cover through an open doorway.
Michonne makes it behind another desk just as the tank rears up on its huge, mechanical legs and turns its scopes in her direction, scanning the area for her. She unclips her radio and crouches low, half crawling as the tank scans. If she makes too much noise or exposes herself, that thing is going to blow her to smithereens.
"Daryl . . . " she whispers over the walkie. "You ready, over?"
"Copy," comes Daryl's grunted acknowledgment.
And then an explosion – Daryl shoots his rocket launcher into the area from some perch around the perimeter. The mini explosion turns the tank's attention away from her. It starts emptying explosive rounds through the crater in the tower facade, trying to take out the source of the surprise attack.
Rick was right – the tower will collapse if this battle keeps up any longer. They don't have 'any longer'. It'll blow up first if she doesn't move. She has to knock out every electrical signal around this tower to save them all. When she hits the EMP inside the mainframe vault, it'll take ODIN out with it. Trap him in net space, or erase his fucking existence, she hopes.
. . . tick, tock . . . tick, tock . . .
She makes a run for it.
Michonne darts out into the exposed hall, where all the levels are visible to the top and bottom from where she streaks through the darkness – a dark, sleek form disappearing behind the pillars that hold the criss-crossing staircases and elevator banks enclosing the atrium.
She is surprised by a cyborg that comes marching out of one of the offices, its huge shooter aimed and firing at her in a matter of blinding seconds. Its cold, red eyes gleam as Michonne activates the laser shield on her blade and drops to her butt, sliding toward it. In one swift move, she slices through its torso as she goes. The top half of the thing falls over the side of the railing, its shooter still drilling giant hyper-velocity bullets into the walls and pillars as it falls.
The tank turns on her now, sending more heavy gunfire exploding against the walls all around her as Michonne scrambles again for cover. From outside, she can hear her team's flyers moving in to distract it again with their own firepower. She has to get to that vault. Michonne sits on her butt behind a pillar, breathing hard as she sheaths her sword and unclips her guns from her leg holsters. It's now or never. She's running out of time. She has five minutes, tops.
Slowly standing upward, she remembers what Rick said earlier. She doesn't need to stop it. Just keep it busy until it runs out of ammo. Her hunch from watching it preserve itself when she landed starts to manifest again. Adrenaline pumps through her. She can do this. She can save them.
Michonne gets her shooters ready, taking a deep breath and centering herself.
She makes another run for it, darting in a wide circle across the exposed hall, narrowly escaping being incinerated with bullets the size of her fist. She launches herself gracefully over the railing, catching onto a blown-out section of the hallway across from her. She dives for cover as soon as she makes it there. The tank blows holes into everything in its path as it follows her. In comes more rounds of fire from Rick and the gang outside. Daryl blows another hole into the tower with his rocket launcher from somewhere close. Mike is taking out cyborgs two levels below to keep them off her. Maggie and Rosita are circling the sky bridges, shooting down any enemy flyers they see to keep them away, too.
The tank is trying to take out her team and locate her at the same time. Her plan is working.
Michonne rolls over and shoots upward again, running at full pelt toward the hallway behind the tank, which leads directly to the vault.
The tank abandons the outside offense and whirls around, blasting everything it has from all four of its guns at Michonne as she makes a run for it. The guns, one by one, begin to run out of ammo, a loud, hollow drilling sound replacing the explosion of jettisoning bullets. Michonne jumps from the railing directly above it, somersaulting downward, shooting with both guns as she goes. She takes out the tank's scope, causing two of its guns to jam up before she lands on top of it.
It wheels a huge mechanical arm out and around to try to grab her, but she unsheaths her sword, drops her shooters, and cuts the arm off before it can. Then she slices into the tank from every angle she can reach. One last gun pops up out of a compartment at the top, and Michonne jumps off just in time.
Missing her, the gun blasts a hole into the tank itself, which begins to sink onto its haunches, deadening, blinking out.
Smoke and electric sparks rise from its burned-out shell. Finally, the enormous thing dies. Heart pounding, Michonne turns on her heels and makes a run for the vault.
ODIN is going to try to stop her, the second she opens it, she knows. Michonne tears out the console that processes authorization codes. She hacks into the system and gets authorization, her fingers moving like lightning across the keys.
"Hmm . . . someone knocks at my vault."
ODIN has found her.
"Michonne! Hurry up, baby . . . we're headed for ground and you got three minutes, over," Rick's voice crackles to life over her walkie.
Michonne tries to concentrate, and finally, she gets the vault open. Its heavy doors part for her and she slips through, her eyes darting this way and that in search of the hostages and the EMP console.
"I am afraid the trappings of the flesh have fooled us yet again, Captain."
ODIN's voice suddenly booms over the ALL CALL projected across the entire building and the flyers surrounding it.
Michonne runs – looking around – finding no hostages.
"The last breaths of a dying man cannot be timed, after all . . . and now mere seconds remain . . . "
Michonne's heart stops but she keeps moving. No, they're here somewhere. They have to be! Ignoring the omnipresent voice echoing practically through her entire body, she keeps searching. There were life signs LIZZY said . . . but LIZZY is gone now . . .
The panicked samurai doubles down, headed for the mainframe and the EMP.
"Tick, tock, Captain . . . yes, he breathes his last . . . tick, tock . . . "
She hears it, now. The rapid, desperate breathing of a dying man. Gasping, gulping breaths. His last breaths.
The countdown wasn't a beacon or a timer. It was this man's life. Draining from him with every minute.
"It's a tick!" Rick's unhinged voice on her walkie again. "Get out of there, now, you hear me? MICHONNE!"
But she has to see . . . she has to set off the EMP. The rest doesn't matter, if she could just reach it. She grips her sword in her trembling hands, running through the cavernous mainframe room toward the rapidly weakening sounds of breathing.
She wheels around a corner and spots him.
One man.
Some scientist or other pencil pusher who was unlucky enough to be used as a pawn in ODIN's sick game.
The man is sitting against the mainframe, the large structure practically dwarfing him. He's bleeding out from a wound in his stomach. He's been shot. There is a cyborg sentinel guarding him with a huge shooter, its red eyes gleaming. The man is dying, his breaths coming out rapidly, becoming more and more shallow. His eyes are wide with panic and fear. He's holding a detonator over a trigger the size of a brick. ODIN's self-destruct beacon was a sham. The dying man is the bomb.
"I-I d-don't know how much longer I can . . . h-hold this . . . " he hisses, an expression of sheer terror frozen across his sweating face. Michonne is so shocked that she loses her footing and slides onto her butt. The moment she hits the ground the cyborg starts shooting.
Rick continues screaming into the walkie-talkie as Michonne takes a shot that almost eviscerates her shoulder before rolling away to take cover. Cover that will not last. The cyborg is coming toward her, now. She has no shooters, and that man is about to die in mere seconds.
The cyborg's systematic whirring sounds out with its every step as it closes in on her. Michonne's sword skids halfway across the room. Her shoulder spurts deep crimson blood and screams with pain. She looks up to see the sentinel is upon her now. It stares down at her coldly, red eyes gleaming as it closes in, raising its shooter. It's going to terminate her.
ODIN tricked them. All of them. Even their Companions. She failed.
She can only hope Rick and the others have gone to ground far enough away . . .
Rick . . . comes her final thought.
The dying man against the mainframe breathes his last, desperate breath.
"Boom."
Utters ODIN, as though closing his nonexistent eyes in ecstasy.
The man dies. The detonator falls with his lifeless hand.
The tower explodes.