28 - Tread Through Maelstrom
Vauquelin's Rest
Location Unknown
She's right.
Marcus Vauquelin finally blinked.
She was right.
His hands nervously rushed through his blanche white hair as a decade of his calculated momentum screeched to a halt in an instant. Jana's still-burning ashes floated up from his own private sea like an orange-lit ladder climbing toward in chases of his fleeing guilty conscience.
She might still be right.
Vauq's denials were no longer working, and his thoughts finally acknowledged what his heart scolded him for. Vauquelin knew he was supposed to be above responding to base instinct; chasing after another's manufactured haste. But, his eye twitched and his chest grew tighter. Anxious hypoxia forced him to suddenly remember to even breathe.
I am afraid.
He caught a scant glint of gold over his right shoulder, a gentle prod on his mind's eye. An indescribable longing struck him, reverberating through him like a bell's radial chord. The longing was not his own, he knew.
Vauqs felt the wind blow at his back. It scolded him with responsibility. Plucking away at the often-healed scar he still felt beat in his chest on occasion.
The winds had blown similarly harshly on Udeav. And, though the suns were different and the scents fresh; the wind also blew here.
There's no stopping it now. He thought fatalistically. Jana doesn't have a fallback, not like me. She's on her own. No second chances. I have to live with that.
He thought it would be a haven here, this green oasis he'd claimed domain over, wherever it was. Tensegrity had shown him a refuge to shield himself from the death his left-behind second half would soon likely experience. Vauquelin had always wanted to explore it, but never found the time.
I can live with that. I have to. She made her own mistakes.
Vauqs finally peered back at the broken staff in his ground, cursing that the needle of his mind's compass pointed wildly toward Jana's salvation. His eyes settled on the ancient weapon, and his heart's beat quickened. He tried blocking its influence out, but he still saw one-hundred thousand years of duty flash before his eyes.
He stood, lurching upward to defend himself as if accused of a grave crime. He felt thousands of eyes judge him, though they weren't there.
Udeav. Right ascension, fifty-thousand Cornerian standard units, give or take. I can live with it. Can't I?
He took a few more cautious steps closer to the staff, the black pyramids still towering in the distance. Their architects a mystery he would never solve.
"Fuck," Vauqs exclaimed. His nagging conscience nipped at his heels as he pulled his grass-stained sport jacket off his shoulders. He tied it around his waist.
The silver of Zeouna of Settler City's shotgun clattered on its new master's belt. It hung proudly, no longer concealed under his jacket.
"Fuck. Fuck," Vauquelin continued, with a shaky exhale. He rubbed his temples as he continued his approach toward his unplanned fate. Destiny's rewoven threads. Uncertainty.
His hand crept even closer to the golden rod, his green eyes appearing in reflection atop the least-charred section. Vauqs flinched. The blackened skin on his left hand recoiled at the harsh memory of their first meeting.
Fearfully, he grasped the staff like it was a live wire. Nothing moved physically, but his world became overwhelming as ten-thousand voices screamed at him to act. To do anything at all!
He pulled the shattered staff, what remained of it, from the ground and his decision was made.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
Over East Hept Tower Complex
The Wreath
The troop compartment of the descending V-series gunship jolted those on board out of their stun as it lowered to the murky waters now pouring into the Wreath's broken eastern perimeter.
After the initial blast, North Hept's tiny leaks grew into many larger ones as the outer walls gave way to the sea's crushing power. Boulders of steel and concrete the size of trucks had plummeted into the jaws of the beast, smashing into the surface structures below. The Wreath's inner waterways became overburdened almost immediately, blocking entrances to some of the inner-facing ship racks.
In the unthinkable chaos, crews, pilots and staff must have fought their way aboard any vessel in range. Defying any sense or order, the more desperate pilots pushed their vessels out from the bays and into the maelstrom as soon as they were able. And despite their hull pressurization, most didn't make it; being dashed to pieces by the constant rain of debris.
Some ships had forced their way out of the waterfall collapsing in on North Hept's vacant corner. The wise waited, taking on as many survivors as they could as they punched through the gentler waves, using the rising seawater as a shield.
Predictably, the Eastern heptwall showed signs of collapse next; the first deluge only a few meters below where'd the gunship had taken flight from.
A blast sprayed the closed side doors of the craft with debris and seawater, knocking a few souls to the floor. Those standing witnessed the landing pad of the gunship's origin wash away as the small breach threatened to open gargantuan.
The cowards aboard had wanted to run, but their self-appointed leader had set them on a course.
The jet black cat in yellow armor had seen to it.
Liana Caruso had barely been whisked aboard by the crew chief before she'd started ripping open the recovery boxes. She stuffed the belt-arrestor clips and the two rescue harnesses she scrounged up into a blaze-red rescue bag.
She thought the math was simple enough, but her repeated attempts to explain the calculus alerted her to the sobering truth; this was no rescue crew. No, nothing but emotionally vacant hardsuits, a few Vikr office jockeys here and the occasional hunter in red-spackled armor. They froze in place, each unwilling to be the ones to sacrifice their own warmth and lives.
"We can't just leave them!" Liana said. The yellow-eyed mercenary yelled desperately, pointing beneath their floor panels. "Not when we have space aboard!"
None moved. No volunteers. Not a single whisker, feather or scale abated. A cold arithmetic solved a survivalist's equation in their souls. Liana suffocated in it.
Liana pouted indignantly as she thumbed the release panel on her armor's breastplate. The yellow carapace hinged forward and fell out of its sockets. She repeated this for every section of brightened composite plate. She doffed the last of her armor, piling the expensive leave-behind neatly on the floor of the gunship.
"Ten minutes," Liana ordered, waiting for the first animal to react.
There was only the solitary nod from a warm-weather gecko wearing a suit and tie. An unlikely leader.
"You'll pull me up no matter what happens," Liana said directly to the lizard. "You start that count as soon as my ass hits that water. You keep your fucked-up looking eyes on me. You pull me up as soon as I start slowing down!"
Liana kneeled and opened the first rescue box before uncoiling an orange rescue line and threading it through a carabiner on the bulkhead door. She strapped her harness tight and stuffed two others in a rescue bag she tied tightly to her waist.
Everyone else froze up, but the unlikely gecko rose to the occasion.
Liana approved with a nod, before looking to the others. She appealed to them. "There's no winch. So I'll need all of you pulling, yeah?"
The gecko raised the rope toward the others, who likewise followed his lead. They grasped the orange rope tightly in their hands as Liana slid open the side door, greeting the occupants with a spray of rain and chilled air. The billowing grey clouds stormed above, and a purple zipper of lighting slammed an exposed section of rebar around East's collapsed central tower.
She looked back at her non-verbal volunteer, the gecko. Liana approached the terrified chair-rider, acknowledging to herself she'd never given him the moment of day otherwise.
"Ten. Minutes," she repeated even more emphatically with a raised eyebrow.
He nodded as Liana backward kicked the high-visibility orange line off the gunship's exterior. The high tensile line uncoiled as it plunged fifty meters into the fast moving waters below.
In the lull between arriving at the nearest breach point Liana made the mistake of looking over the edge, as beads of rain struck the back of her ears. When she heard the screams of the freezing and soon-to-die below, she excised any remaining regret from her mind.
Caruso, already shivering in her black nylons, leaned out of the craft and studied her path through the crumbling remains of East's exterior and the smashed remnants of the still-falling guest platforms. Liana noted that the debris field flowed closer to the small rupture in the Wreath's aluminum outer hull. All objects caught in the torrent flowed one way: in and down.
The pilot adjusted the collective lever to auto-hover carefully near the outer wall as the gunship roared to a level altitude. It was time.
Liana Caruso locked eyes with her unlikely partner. She flashed two hand signals to her only hope of coming home. One, with her index finger. Zero, with a cupped hand. The gecko nodded nervously, he may have even gulped.
Liana dove.
Dos y listo. She promised herself amidst her head-down descent into the frigid sea. A second later, she outpaced the rain drops slamming around her. Every lessening fraction of her dive sharpened her senses, the North Sea's frigid grip flexing tighter with every heartbeat. A merciless plunge ready to swallow her whole.
The cat submerged into the blackest water she'd ever known. A biting cold and muscle spasms. Her heart sprinted off as the frigid water interspersed throughout her fur. A stone-sober lucidity overrode the alcohol's previous sovereignty over her blood, as nerve endings wrung out their twisted truth. Liana surfaced, gasping involuntarily.
Liana's dive had been true enough. She was at least five-hundred meters away from the spillover, and the rescue bag was still firmly hooked to her waistline. Screams surrounded her, and she powered toward the loudest. Every swing of her arms and kick of her feet felt like a small hour's effort.
An elderly canid, his white fur soaked nearly gray. His arms swung weakly as he struggled to stay afloat. There was fight in his actions, yes, but his eyes told a different story. The tide pulled them both along on partitioned paths separated by a partially collapsed antenna tower. She was blocked in.
Liana kicked herself to the rhythm of the quickening current, determined to intercept him before he froze or fell to his death. Cut him off. Grab him halfway. She had almost gripped the tower as a bolt of lighting struck some metallic detritus to her front. It was fortunate she had not, given the audible sizzling and pop.
The freezing cat unclipped herself from the floating line hanging from the gunship overhead. Liana filled her lungs with several rapid inhales and dove under the torment. Her eye's remained open, seeking a route under the tower as the stinging rapids flowed towards the breach point. Liana squeezed around triangular truss metalwork and the pieces of still-sinking platforms as she held her breath.
She was mid stroke when another lightning burst lit up the skies and water around her. Bubbles emanated from her mouth as she exclaimed. The waters lit up purple, revealing the savage secrets of the open sea to her right: several immobile bodies suspended lifelessly below the surface.
Liana's lungs burned as each movement consumed precious oxygen. She pulled herself upward through the metallic trusses, bar-by-bar, tangling herself briefly. She was fortunate enough not to cut herself on the exposed steel that had been bent like reeds in the wind. She emerged in open water, and not a second too soon.
A second burst of lighting revealed a shadow the size of a small cruiser descending over her. Another guest platform had begun its descent, slamming into the steel jungle behind her. If Liana had delayed a moment longer she would have been taken with it.
Up. I need to get up and out of here!
She surfaced on the other side, a shorter-than-expected gasp for air alerting her to a new complication: Liana was starting to feel euphorically warm.
Three-hundred meters left. She could still see the dog resisting his drag away.
"Swim here!" Liana bellowed between the waves breaking over the back of her head, "swim to me, you idiot!"
Hearing another's voice, the dog with the dying eyes reignited a desperate final glint as he raised his arm and pointed downstream. His finger indicated toward another floating shamble ahead of him. This unknown captain of industry, he could have been one of the richest men Liana had ever been near; but he wasn't looking to be saved. No, something motivated this madman to kick toward the fissure point!
It was then that Liana saw why. A flowing dress a dozen or so meters forward of the desperate dog. She floated on her back. Mottled white feathers from head-to-toe. A yellow beak cresting above the water. Her arms cradled something as she kicked away from the current. The bird was resisting her end as stubbornly as the old man was, but unlike him, she was hopelessly past her breaking point.
Liana recognized the gentleman dog's fixated fatalism immediately and swam faster toward him, kicking with all her strength.
As she closed the distance, Liana turned-over to a back stroke, and signalled to the howling gunship above her with a two-armed wave. Incredibly, the remarkably on-program gecko's eye's were still fixed on her, as the line-held emergency harness and rescue bag swung by her head. She grabbed it and removed the first rescue harness.
Her own eyes fixed to the skies as she prepared it, Liana could see balls of fire rained down from the heavens. She immediately recognized the triangular orange firestreaks as result of atmospheric reentry of debris. Though it was distant above, it was a catastrophic hailstorm too hellish to be unrelated. More problems, multiplying by the minute.
Esto es un desmadre. She thought in her forefather's tongue. She pushed her stinging, hypothermic muscles into overdrive, finally reaching the old dog as he bounced off the inverted, floating remains of one of Vikr's once-prized seating platforms.
Liana grabbed at the man's chest and clenched his linen suit jacket with all her hand's might. His eyes widened alive at once as she pressed him against the fiberglass hull, feeling the unstoppable tide crushing her against him. Between kicks, her head submerged as the man's struggle became more aimless. She pressed herself into his chest further as she reached downward to loop the emergency harness around his torso.
He resisted, trying to force his way closer to the woman weaving away in waves. Liana stared into his face, her expression begging him to stop. He muttered something unintelligible as she finally slid the harness around his pelvis. The gunship's pilot maneuvered deftly, dangling the recovery line near Liana's face as she clipped the dog on.
Between the terrible racket of the repurposed war machine above, or the bite of the sea's cold, Liana didn't know what syllables she'd sounded out in response. Whatever it had been, it was enough. Peace returned to the man's gaze as he was lifted skyward by his harness. He hung limp, his will to resist collapsed as he was destined for scantly-warmed air among the radiant body heat of the timid.
Two-hundred meters. Liana kicked off the debris' edge, propelling herself closer to the slender avian growing ever closer to the edge of the breach. The feathered victim wasn't kicking anymore, and the detritus flow accelerated as the neared the collapse point. Liana kicked stronger. She swung her numbed hand's hammer blows harder into the waves as she rocketed toward the desperate woman.
Liana tugged at her dress as she caught up. There was no movement felt in response. No flickers of life or gasps. The bird rolled over, her face frozen open in a calm acceptance. Liana grabbed onto the dangling rescue line above her, and pulled the bird closer to the harness. She felt for a pulse, anything from her airway, or any sort of warmth. Nothing. Ya se acabó.
Liana reached for the last harness anyway. She started with one leg, then the second. She slid the arrestor straps around the bird's neck and shoulders. She was barely able to grip the hinge arrestor as her ice-dulled fingers slid numbly across its surface. The gunship's pilot read Liana's intent to raise this woman aptly, as indicated by the knock on Liana's head by the rescue line's metallic end.
Liana raised her dulled arm to signal over her shoulder and slung the woman onto the clip. Instantly, she rose from the water in short heaves as the crew above pulled the line.
Watching the avian ascend, Liana realized she had overlooked something. The svelte avian had held her arms tightly against her chest. She death-gripped onto something beneath the wide section of ivory-toned feathers on her arms. Something moving. As she lifted lifelessly into the air, the bird involuntarily released the writhing mass from her arms.
It was a boy. No older than six. Another cat, no less. Grey fur from his pointed ears down to his neck. A set of whiskers that came alive in the water, his little, shoeless feet struggling to keep himself afloat. Liana felt a tremendous heat well up within her.
Liana peered upward at the woman that had shielded him, a protective instinct that may have gotten her killed. Watching the boy bounce around the waves, Liana understood the instinct immediately. Babies shouldn't look this desperate.
Then, Liana made an instinctive decision of her own.
She submerged into the great numbness again. Both hands stung as she fumbled with the two central clips on her own belt. She guided each thumb into the caged clips and depressed them to release. One leg fell out easily, though she struggled with the second. Bubbles rushed to the surface, as she pulled the belt line and restraints off her shoulder.
Liana Caruso's heart's heat took control. She removed her own rescue harness.
A thoughtless rage blindly thrashed her upward.
One-hundred meters left. She rose once more, drawing as deep a breath as she could before swimming after the now panicking boy. The jet-black panthress' grey-world became red as she kicked through the last stretch of the breachpoint's siphon.
His kicking feet grew closer. Liana's singular mind propelled her to within grasp. She reached for him, seeing the boy's own yellow eyes reflect back at her. He reached back weakly with his own shivering hand. Liana growled as her fingers bounced off his. He eluded her by the breadth of a hair until she gave her last full exertion.
She caught him by the wrist! Liana held the boy's arm with hand and claw and pulled him into her chest as she flipped onto her back and kicked away. The young felid embraced her with a primitive, bewildered fear in his eyes. Liana cradled him like she would her own. He didn't even whimper or cry. Liana muttered primitive sounds of protection as she prepared his rigging, it was the last small portion of lucidity she could spare for him.
The gunship's repulsorwash grew louder. Liana looked skyward, meeting eyes with the gecko above. The gecko was yelling at her, pleading as the pilot skillfully threaded the rescue line to Liana's sight.
The Gods were merciful as Liana went to work resizing her own harness. Each loop fit the boy correctly as Liana placed it around his waist and draped the straps around his shoulders. She swept the open carabiner clip around the boy's harness, desperately attempting to find any loose slack that might work; hookpoint be damned!
She finally found one under the boy's thigh strap. And, not a moment too soon. Something shifted in the waters. Liana felt her kicks losing their effect as the deep began to pull her underneath. Faster moving planks of wood sucked under the waves before her, as the end drew near.
Liana death-gripped the rescue knot with anesthetized hands as she felt the boy being pulled up from the water. She was carried with him, and the air became warm.
Above her, the boy's tail twitched with life. Liana's vacant face smiled weakly. Salvation. A wondrous flood of realized redemption rushed through her. She'd saved lives, for once.
It never occurred to Liana that the peace pouring into her mind was a warning. It was impossible for her to tell, but her grip slipped with every reapplication of grip or claw. The numbing was so total that there was no longer any feeling where her fingers ended and where they began.
Liana slid, her frozen hands unable to grasp any longer; just hunks of freezing meat. She slipped down the remainder of the rope. She didn't swipe at the line. She didn't scream. She didn't dare try to drag him down.
Her mind reconciled peace with death as the chaos slowed around her.
The panthress hit the water back first, slamming into it like a sack of bricks. She emerged floating three seconds later. Her yellow irises toward the grey and purple heavens. Orange bolts held the lengths of continents; the sky was still falling. Lit flames on burning islands surrounded her as their embers floated upward like fireflies.
As the ashes rose, Liana wondered only what Jana would think, if anyone would tell her. She only hoped Jana would feel something.
She barely heard the screams calling for her from above as specific sensations became more surreal.
A whip of the line in the wind. A strange warmth in the air around her muzzle. A peaceful mask quieted her peripheral vision as Liana was carried.
Liana smiled weakly as she watched the Gecko's arm wrap around the boy, pulling him into the cabin. Maybe the smile was a laugh, Liana didn't know anymore. The heat of the water moved its way across her face and into her ears.
The visage of the Gecko returned, peering out of the cabin many meters above. His eyes met Liana's. She could see a beautiful web of browns and blues separated by a small slit of black in his, before they burned hers shut with salt water.
I'm sorry, Jana. I had too. I should have tried harder. I'm sorry.
With the surprise of a lightning strike, a black, fleshy hand grasped her black bodysuit's collar and pried her towards the surface. Liana's neck snapped back as she was lofted into the warmer air.
"Imagine my luck!" the black-hand fox said cockily. "Well. Our luck."
He began dragging Liana's crumpled form across the plankwood decking of a hoverskiff. There weren't any other survivors on the decking with her.
Liana shivering into shriveled up fetal form. Her hands began rubbing her chest instinctively, squeezing any water she could out of her nylons. Liana's haze of hypothermia temporarily averted as her eyes flickered open toward the fox. It was as if her mind grew warmer.
Blackened skin from the fingers of his left hand and his elbow gave way to aquamarine blue fur. A blue fox with a wicked smile, and an expensive tailor. He said something to Liana, something warm. She heard only a murmur as her world remained muted.
"Where is Jana?" He asked, more clearly now.
Jana. She heard the name, possibly the only word that broke through her daze. Liana didn't think the words, but every part of her knew Jana was dead. No one could survive a fall like that.
"She could. Jana would," the blue fox said, seemingly reading Liana's mind's doubts.
He pointed out toward the debris and crushed remains of the floating platforms stream on the Wreath's perimeter.
"Which one?!" He asked loudly, "Which one was she on?"
Jonny Huynh. Liana thought weakly. She cursed herself for letting her go; for not chasing Jana earlier.
His blue tail swung impatiently, its white-cap slackened with rain. And, despite mortality caressing her tightly, Liana saw that his eyes burned the same sunlit jade as Jana's. The similarities ended there as the blue fox took off his slate-gray sport coat and carefully covered Liana in its silken warmness. An act of compassion Jana would have rejected.
"Stay warm," He said, rubbing her shoulders. "We'll need all the help we can get when this is over."
The skiff's quad-mounted magnetocoil engines rose to the edge of the wreath's plummet, struggling to maintain traction. All seven Hept corners had now begun their final flood of sea water in the basin, crushing all below as uncountable litres of seawater's depth equalized with the North Sea's.
The blue fox hopped onto the finely-carved bow prong. Liana's widened eyes followed.
As he stood near the edge, his eyes searched the bottom. Liana saw the glint of gold and silver around his waist. A charred, golden rod looped on the back of his belt. In his right arm, the blue one, he cradled an antique shotgun. Engraved silver met greywood stock as it slunk by his side.
He turned toward her. His opalescent eyes met Liana's again. The engines began to spool up. The pleasure craft whirred as it delayed its programmed escape route.
"I'm going to find her," the blue fox promised. "You won't be waiting for us. When you run out of fuel, it'll be in much warmer waters. It's a good thing you left your armor behind. The less the locals know about you, the better."
You're going to die! Liana's thoughts screamed.
"Probably," The blue Fox blurted. "But, I can't live with this."
He leaned backward and leaned into the abyss. A smug grin still on his face as he fell off the platform.
The warmness he'd brought soon left Liana's side as she was left alone on his slowly-sailing skiff.
The lure of a peaceful death tempted Liana as she clung to life. Unable to stand, move. She lay on her back as her consciousness lapsed between clarity and abstract sensations. As the waters continued to pour the Wreath's basin, the final colossal platform slammed into the sea.
The journey's resulting seconds may have turned into minutes, but they felt like hours.
The clap of thunder did nothing to distract her from the quieting screams surrounding her. There was no sun to guide her, no compass to point her toward safety. She resigned herself to the knowledge that every fall of her eyelids could be her last.
At a certain point, Liana wouldn't remember when the desperate and trapped had stopped screaming for help. Part of her wished they hadn't, the other had wished it had happened sooner. Sensible words became a chorus of every manner of animal desperate calling upon their chosen, impotent gods.
The struggle to survive became a vain attempt to prolong. For some, it was a rejection of a reality. For others a refusal to quit. Many of the loudest voices were the first to accept; condemning themselves to a solitary, pointless dignity in their deaths.
Not one animal climbed aboard by the time she finally exited the debris field.
Liana never succumbed. Though, occasionally between numbed shivers, death felt the preferred outcome. Ranking low in a long list of enemies, the cold wasn't strong enough to kill her. The fire inside her was lit too strong.
Liana shivered furiously on the decking, alone, surrounded by death as its false promise of warmth and serenity failed to carry her away.
I'm sorry Jana.
The Wreath
Sinking Wreckage
A cold drop splashed onto a Jana's forehead. The pitter-patter of raindrops peppered around the supine fox as her jade-green eyes stared vacantly skyward at the shimmering ripples of grey above her. Violet hues of Udeav's long nights poked through the galloping storm clouds as evening approached and the storm began to lessen.
Another drop. She blinked. Celerity returned. Jana McCloud's right fist clenched as a crushing tide pain, ten-hangovers worth, washed over her. She emitted a gasping exhale. Unsure of where she was, or what had happened. A burning reverberation of pain echoed on the back of her head as nausea writhed about her stomach with an oily weight.
Whatever had happened must have hit her hard. Jana struggled to recall how'd she'd gotten there, sprawled on the hardwood floor. As far as she knew, she'd last been standing outside of Jonny Hunyh's private box. Peculiarly, the harder she tried to recall, the more elusive the memories became. Faces, feelings and figures faded like shadows spotted in the corners of her eyes. Her attempts to recall fell apart, leaving behind only the knowledge of their existence. Things were missing.
That's when the headache started. Jana swept at her ears, her nails digging for Jonny's poisoned gift desperately. The magnetic tabs tore from her ear, one launching into the air and the other gently ker-plunking to a puddle beside her.
As soon as the devices ripped off her ears, a flash of agony rippled across her forehead hit her as a patchwork of confused memories flooded her like a phantom pain. Jana saw the strobing images of a nightmare amidst green fields and blue skies. Her father's voice caught up in a cloud of anger. A concussion's nightmare, no doubt.
Another drop fell from the heavens and landed on her face and rolled down her forehead, down her muzzle and into the corner of her mouth.
Wait! Rain isn't supposed to be salty. The dazed vixen thought with a jolt of panic. Her eyes rushed open fully as her acuity returned. The glass canopy overhead shimmered as water seeped through the hairline fractures. Beyond it, floating islands shimmered above them, some ablaze in flame and smoke as they barely clung to the sky, which rippled like the surface of a lake. Other's began their descent to the sea. They looked close enough to grasp.
We're sinking.
Jana sprang upright. Her tail barely lifting out of the accumulating puddle to her right before she collapsed back onto her side in red hot agony. Jana winced, as the salt water burned an open wound on her right thigh. She watched some red intermingle with grey as the puddle licked at the surface cut through her trousers. There wasn't enough red, nor was it red enough for it to be fatal.
"For fuck's sake! Just stay dead!" A defeated-sounding voice said.
Male, five meters right. Something wrong with it, Jana's reflexes immediately identified. A Settler's City native accent. Not an offworlder, and not one picked up for show. A few dozen other men with loud voices had tried to kill her in the past, and Settler's City held a unique pastiche between Kewtalk's over-observance of vowels and Corneria's more urbane chattering.
Jana applied pressure to her thigh and stood again, this time more cautiously.
A felid, her eye's recognized the form slumped before her. The cat was propped up against the grand-ballroom's bulkhead door. Grey stripes on a black body, or black stripes on grey; Jana didn't know or care. He wore a soaked Vikr Security uniform, though he wore the cap with an off-kilter disdain.
A moment later she recognized him as the same cat she'd seen underneath the hept, the one walking behind James.
"I thought I had you," The crumpled-up cat said with a sick, bloodied smile.
The striped cat's breaths rang out rapid and desperate. Jana's eyes peered downward and tracked the trail of crimson all the way up to the red tanto blade plunged into his belly. He trembled. The familiar cat was not long for this world.
"Why are we?-" Jana stammered, realizing confusion had distracted her from her priorities, "-What happened?"
A colossal slam erupted from behind the grinning cat. It echoed through the palatial halls of the sinking platform.
Another followed; the sound of meat malleting on metal. An impact that flung the last sparsely standing wineglasses off their tables. It shook the faux-oil lamps hung on their swaying chains, it rattled the nearest ashwood cladding loose on their nails. The grand table in the center of the hall bounced. As soon as the strike's reverberation deadened, everything returned to its rightful place.
It was silent. Jana was surrounded by the limp, lifeless bodies of partygoers and Vikr attendants alike. Most killed in fall, some looked as though they had lingered.
That wounded cat laughed a fateful laugh sickly.
"He wants you bad," the cocky cat teased devilishly, "Maybe worse than I did. And, I can't hold him back for much longer."
His hand was wrapped tightly around the door's override panel. The cat had dug the wires and circuitry out with his bare claws, removing the copper spindles and pinching them between his fingers.
The trail of ripped-out conduit led all the way to the twin security doors. The door's emergency open circuit held together tightly, Jana recognized. She was locked in as long as he still lived.
"I'm not trying to save you," the smiling cat said, wheezing his words out. "Just want you to die knowing I killed you."
Jana's eye's narrowed. "Who are you?" She asked.
"Name's Fitzgerald. My friends call me Fitzy. I was born here. I'll die here. Where my father raised me. Where I buried him. On our homeworld."
"Ketumati," Jana deduced with a low growl. She moved toward him with intent to end his suffering.
Fitzy's eyes livened at her quick estimation of his allegiance; a rush of premortem satisfaction.
"What happened?" Jana asked, a realization having halting her to a crouch. "What did you do to Jimmy?"
He started laughing again, wheezing between gurgles before replying.
"That fall must have hit you pretty hard-"
"-Where's my fucking brother!?" Jana roared, shaking the dead man by his shoulders and slamming his head into the security doors.
Fitzy cackled.
"I followed you too close," he said. "You got the first stab on me. My mistake. I'll give you that. But, I overpowered you pretty quickly when the secondary explosions went off."
No answer to her question. Jana was furious. "If you don't tell me-"
"-You think I give a fuck about him?" Fitzy asked. "Look at me! Look around you!"
The cat looked down at the tanto plunged through his stomach and his T11 vertebrae. Blood loss or motor control, Jana wasn't sure what would kill him first.
"I fucking had you," Fitzy said. "But then? Maybe it was the crash, but you just started seizing up. Like you had a stroke. Your ass went to the floor. And your friend, he just started killing people. Everyone."
"Who?" Jana asked, her eyes raised.
Fitzy's laugh returned, unwilling to give Jana anything that might assist her.
Jana leaned on his knife, applying enough upward force for him to feel pain again. Fitzy winced.
"Don't even think about it!" He cried.
"I'm long past thinking about it," Jana said.
"I deserve to watch you die with me."
"Sorry to disappoint," Jana replied.
Jana removed the blade in a rage. A crimson red tanto she knew too well. Cryo treated microstructure, vanadium carbide, mirror-polished surface.
Fitzy recognized fear on Jana McCloud's face. A warrior's comfort in his last moments, each blood-drowned chuckle agonizing him more. He didn't believe a single word from her mouth as red coursed through the cat's shattered teeth.
"Now. Later. It doesn't matter. Few will remember my name, but my death mattered. And, yours will just be an empty, corporate epitaph people's eyes glaze over."
Jana watched as the cat's head fell backward. His fingers twitched less.
Cause,' I killed…" Fitzgerald uttered, shivering through his final aspirations.
"...The fucking butcher."
Fitzy's irises stilled with satisfaction as his head lay backward. His hand fell slack, releasing the cobbled up wires he held together. The rolled onto the floor and unbundled, breaking the improvised circuit he had joined.
The resulting silence deafened Jana. Alerting her to the trickling series of cracks above her. Though the pressure of the reinforced glass wasn't nearly at crush depth, the increasing force threatened to turn the glazed top into a grenade of shards.
Another desperate bang on the door made Jana jump. And, that's the only way out.
Jana knew what was coming. The near elemental fire she'd stoked earlier today. A colossus aroused by death, destruction and the near narcotic nature of disaster.
She braced herself raising the familiar blade upward in a defensive stance. Jana was ready to die on her feet this time. The way she knew she should have those long years ago.
Another slam. Knocking the rightmost door open by a mere centimeter.
That was all it took, as the snarling, beastly form of Anders Ljón pried the door open off its now freely-spinning motors, sending Fitzgerald's still-warm corpse tumbling down the three-stair gantry. The lion stood nearly the height of the doors.
His eyes focused with a terrible resolve when they met Jana's. Perhaps with a speck of relief as he realized his kindred mirror was still alive.
Jana began to tremble. She took two steps to backpedal away unconsciously.
"It's just us now. I made sure of that," Ander's said seethingly. Before spitting on the crumpled form of Fitzgerald. "I made sure to follow you. To keep tabs."
"No one gets to kill ya'," he said, as he took three steps toward Jana.
Jana backed away toward the center of the hall.
"You don't get to die!" he said through bared fangs. "No. You'll never earn your peace that easily. Not while I'm still missing mine."
Jana only realized she had been retreating when she bumped into the grand, oaken table. Causing her a momentary jump.
"I did everything for these people," Ander's barked. "I did all of it right. But, you… Fooking YOU! You come here. You cut into my job. You take my reputation. And, fate decides to kill us together?"
Another drop landed on her head. It was then Jana looked up, seeing ten meters of water between her and freedom from this beast. Light barotrauma over suffering at his hands ever again.
"No. No, no, no. You and I?" Anders said, spreading his menace further with each step. "We have to carry on. Can't you see that's what we were meant for?"
Jana refocused. She raised her arm to the light as her wrist-mounted PDA emitted red light.
He looked skyward, piecing together her plot as a sick smile grew across her face. No words were needed, she wouldn't ever give them up willingly. Ander's mind knew exactly what her desperation would beget, and he knew he was out of time.
Ander's face twisted, his mouth parted slightly; a disbelieving, frowning to his old partner. Maybe he'd even felt something for once.
"No!" was all Ander's managed to squeak out before a streak of red, squealing light shot toward the swirling, grey hell and raindrops above them.
"Yeah," Jana said. A single, terse taunt. Her mouth widened in a sick, incisor-laden grin.
Cracks grew into fissures and fissures to canyons.
A moment later, the implosion of glass and sea water crashed through the skylight under the pressure of the northern sea.