Rust...by aeon
The man walks slowly, cautiously across the room, eyes the color of wild
spearmint fixed on a small, pale woman next to the bar. His stride is
purposeful, his gait steady and even, his features fixed in an immobile
expression of grim determination. Those who glance up at him quickly look
away, sensing danger, and not wishing to get in his way. This is a man on a
mission, they think. They are wrong. This is not a man with a mission.
This is a man with incredible back pain, and he is doing his best to hide
it.
If only life were like the movies, he thinks. Then he would be able to fight
off seven attackers simultaneously, leap off a three story rooftop and then
walk away unscarred. But life is not like the movies. Not quite.
He hurt his back when he hit the ground.
The woman sees him, purses wintergreen lips into a butterscotch smile, then
frowns when he doesn't return the smile. She says something, but between the
shrieking crowd and the searing music, she might as well be mute. Then he
realizes she's not talking to him, but to the bartender behind her. By the
time he's fought his way across the dance floor, filled with people too
drugged up to notice that he's supposedly dangerous, there's a matching set
of drinks on the bar. He says nothing, takes a drink in a gloved hand and
prays it's strong, and swallows half. It's very strong.
She loves him.
"How'd it go?" She looks genuinely concerned about his health, although he
knows the question isn't about his state of well-being (or lack thereof).
She wants to know about the chip. Everything rests on the chip at the
moment.
"Fine," he mumbles, finishing his drink and flagging down a bartender for
another.
"Finish mine," she says, sliding the glass towards him. "I'm allergic
anyway."
"You're allergic to everything," he says, sitting down. His mask evaporates
for a moment as he winces in pain. He tries to cover it up by tossing the
drink down his throat, but it's too late. She saw.
"What happened?" Now she's asking about him.
"Street jumped up and hit me."
"Did you fall off another roof, silly?" He doesn't answer; he doesn't need
to. She sighs and reaches a hand around behind him to rub his back.
A few painful seconds later, she helps him up off the floor, looking very
worried. He dimly realizes that he's collapsed, feels a second wave of pain
hit him a second later. People are staring - this bothers him more than the
pain, because in the eyes of more than half of them, he's now fallen off the
wrong side of that thin line between predator and prey. She realizes this
too, and so she casually lets her coat fall back to reveal the needlegun
strapped to her thigh. A half dozen shadowy figures go back to their drinks.
"Come on, let's go upstairs and look at that. Can you do stairs?"
He doesn't answer, just grunts and tries his best not to look like he's
leaning heavily into her shoulder. The few who notice that he is leaning
also realize rather quickly that she's having difficulty supporting him
easily, but she's quite careful to keep her weapons in full view at all
times. Balance returns, and they're once again faceless members of the
crowd.
They make their way towards the game room, skirting the dance floor, and
make it to the staircase without incident. That's the easy part.
"How're the legs? Can you feel your legs?"
Unfortunately, he can. He grunts.
"OK, we're gonna do stairs. Slow and easy. OK, step. Step." The next few
minutes seem like hours, as his brain screams out every time he lifts a leg.
She's mumbling something, but he can't hear her through the wave of noise
inside his skull. Then it's over, they're on the third floor, and she's half
dragging him towards the closest room.
"I'm gonna clear it out. You capable?" She's asking if he can fire a gun if
he needs to, in case the occupants of the room aren't exactly willing to
vacate without a fight; the third floor is mostly a gang hangout, he
recalls. He nods dully as she repeats the question and fumbles his 10mm
automatic from inside his trenchcoat, trying to remember if he remembered to
reload after he emptied the gun into that guy on the rooftop. Probably not,
but there's no time to tell her, because she's already knocked on the door
with a steeltoe lockpick. Despite her small frame and seemingly tiny feet,
she manages to kick it open. She's been practicing, he realizes.
The room is typical - about 15 feet on a side, one small window, a mattress
without a bedframe and a few dozen roaches. But otherwise it's empty, and
they both breathe a sigh of relief, hers louder than his because his turns
into a gasp of pain halfway through. Somehow, he stumbles into the room and
collapses on a mattress. She shuts the door, sticks a chair under the
doorknob in a token attempt at security, and runs to his side.
"Roll over," she says. He groans.
"Roll your ass over," she says, grabbing his arm. He growls, but does what
she says. It actually hurts less when he's lying on his stomach, so he
doesn't quite pass out from the pain. The smell from the mattress, however,
almost does the trick. He gags silently as she fiddles around with his
pants, pulls them down around his ankles, then pushes his trenchcoat and
vest up close to his shoulders.
"Lower back?" she half-asks. He grunts as she runs her hands quickly down
his spine. When she gets about four vertebrae from his tailbone, he yells.
Loudly.
"Doesn't feel broken, and you can feel your legs, right?" He grunts. "Might
be a nerve. But I suspect something's cracked, cuz of the fall. How far was
it?" He grunts again.
"Knock it off. Your back's broken, not your mouth. How far?"
"Three floors, I think."
"About 25 feet then. Could be worse. Did you hit the curb?"
"No...I don't think so. Landed on my legs, then fell backwards. Feels like I
got a knife in my spine."
"I bet. You want me to kill the pain?" He nods. "OK, this might hurt for a
minute..." She reaches up to the back of his neck and pinches.
"It's not working."
"OK, I'm gonna have to cut you open then to get at the nerve. Where's your
blade?"
"Knife, coat pocket." She removes his jacket and vest and then fumbles for a
moment in his pocket before pulling out a switchblade.
"Have you used this on anyone recently?"
"No." He has, but it hurts too much to argue over insignificant details like
that.
"You sure? I don't want you getting infected. You know our immune systems
aren't exactly working like they should lately."
"I'm sure. Just do it."
"OK, sit still." Popping the blade, she slits the back of his neck. He
cringes, fights back a scream, but then her fingers fumble around by his
brain stem, find the switch, and shut it off. He immediately goes numb from
the neck down.
"Your nervous system might twitch from time to time, but that'll just be
phantoms. Ignore them and concentrate on breathing. Your system should
remember... but you know all this by now."
"Yeah," he mumbles. He knows all of this, has been through it before; too
many times before. He squirms.
"Hold still," she says, hitching her skirt up over her thighs so she can
kneel across his legs. If anyone walks in right now, sees her slicing his
back open, they're going to assume one of two things: murder, or some
bizarre S&M sex act. In either case, it'd be awkward, to say the least.
"Yeah, you jammed it alright. Second last and third last vertebrae are
nearly fused. This doesn't look like it happened with one jump. This is old.
How long have you had back pain?"
"Dunno...a few months."
"Stupid!" she yells, swatting him in the head. "You could be dead. Why
didn't you say anything?" They both know why - they couldn't afford the
parts before, which is why they pulled this latest job. But they both deny
the obvious.
"Never came up in conversation," he says. "Can you fix it?"
"Yeah...mostly. Just don't move." He can't anyway.
She sighs. He knows what she's thinking. Recovery paid well, but they were
getting old. They were already 21 years old, and both of them were feeling
the onset of middle age. If they kept breaking down, didn't take it easy,
they'd never live to see thirty. Not to mention the fact that just about
every credit they earned went back into buying new parts, just so they could
keep up with the newer jigsaw kids. The ones that lasted longer.
"I'm gonna pull your spine out now. You shouldn't feel it."
"I love it when you talk dirty to me."
"Shut up...I'm working..." There is a thick sucking sound, and then she's
kneeling next to his head, wiping off a 3 inch section of his spinal column.
She was right - two of his vertebrae were fused together from pressure,
making it impossible to move without excruciating pain. Like the pain he'd
feel right now if she hadn't disconnected his brain from the rest of his
nervous system.
"You know, from here I can see right up your skirt," he says. He gets
another slap in the head.
"If you weren't my brother I'd throw this out the window," she says. "Knock
it off. I need to concentrate."
"All right," he says breathily, focusing on breathing in and out, in and
out. Speaking makes this task more difficult. It's simple enough to breathe
voluntarily when you can do it yourself, but when your lungs have ALWAYS
been hooked to an involuntary nervous system, it was hard to remember how to
do it yourself. Everything was hard lately. Just like it had been at the
beginning.
It was tough, growing up knowing that you were "chosen." Not chosen in a
special sort of way, but chosen from a menu, a la carte, like picking genes
from a smorgasbord and piecing them all together until a jigsaw baby popped
out of a test tube somewhere - hence, the name. It wasn't easy being six
foot tall in sixth grade, being smarter and faster than everyone else,
having titanium bones in your legs and plastic organs inside you, but there
were others like them, others who had been "made," and who were receiving
the necessary treatments, so they weren't really alone. Not at first.
"This looks pretty bad," she says, interrupting his reverie. Her words
remind him that he's stopped breathing, and he has a moment of panic before
he remembers how to do it and draws in a lungful of stale air.
"How bad?" he asks. "Am I going to die?"
"No, you're not going to die," she says condescendingly. "You'll starve to
death before this injury kills you. I can fix this, but I have to sell the
chip and buy the part you need...."
"No."
"We have to sell the chip now anyway," she says. "Rendezvous is in an hour.
We would have used the cash for spare parts anyway. You, me...it doesn't
matter. It's us."
"It's not that," he says. "I don't want you to... leave me here like
this...helpless like this. Don't leave me." He doesn't add that he wants her
to stay because he's afraid she might get hurt again. Like before. She's
forgotten that day, lost when she sacrificed a portion of her cerebrum for
another enhancement. He doesn't need to remind her of that; he hardly
remembers it himself, memory wrapped in a dim haze of tears. She doesn't
even remember the day he found her with Dad, the day he ran away from home,
dragging her along. The day they left school and headed into the streets at
age 13. The first day they were ever alone.
"I'll come back," she says, buying his story. "I promise. But I need to shut
you off, switch to involuntary. You know what that means?"
He nods. It meant she'd turn off his conscious mind, turn him into a
machine. A garbage disposal, mindlessly grinding away. But he'd feel no
pain, and there'd be no chance of him accidentally suffocating. He'd be in a
closed loop. A safe loop. But she wouldn't be safe...
"OK then," she says, giving him a quick peck on the cheek as she grabbed the
chip from his pocket. "I'll be back."
Before he can nod, she reaches into his neck and turns off the world, and he
is alone again. Alone with his memories...
***
...with his nightmares...
... loneliness didn't last long on the streets. There were plenty of people
who had a need for 13 year old bodies, and both he and his sister did
whatever they had to do to make money to survive...
...administering drugs to junkies whose gangrenous legs were unable to carry
them to their own doom...
...selling their blood for money, then winding up in the very same hospital,
receiving emergency transfusions and free food, because they were growing
anemic...
...playing guide to gullible tourists who'd disappear halfway along the
"shortcuts" he and his sister revealed to them...
...selling themselves when they had to, sometimes as a pair...
...this memory disgusts him, repulses him, and he tries desperately to
reject it, but it stays with him, carving a hole in his mind, a dark, wet
hole sticky with blood and...
...no...he won't relive that...the night he found his sister, torn and
broken...
...the night he killed for the first time...
...the night they realized what they were truly capable of...
...instead of feeding drugs to crippled junkies, they tracked down the
ringleaders of the trade and made them disappear...
...instead of leading tourists into traps, they protected them from
assault...
...instead of selling their bodies, they sold their talents...
...a flood of memories...bodies falling...all those he's killed...the
pain...
...oh yes...the pains...
...the growing pains...a known side-effect of not having received proper
genetic treatments and implants as they went through puberty...
...muscles cramped...seizures racked their bodies...
...as their bodies degraded, it got to the point where there was barely
enough money to fix the broken parts...
...nerves lost sensation...vision grew blurry...
...that meant they had to go after the bigger, more risky targets...
...the immune system failed...
...that meant more bodies...
...bones broke...
...more injuries....
...leaving them with nothing but pieces...fragments of a jigsaw puzzle that
was slowly falling apart...and then...
...memories faded...
...Dad caressing his sister's bruised cheek...
...but only the good ones...
...his sister's body, bloody and broken in a hotel room...
...the nightmares were his forever...
...his father shoving them into their own graves...
...desperately trying to earn enough money to buy his sister treatments for
her ever-increasing allergies...
...the gun, detonating inside his foe's stomach...
...grabbing the chip...
...falling...
...
***
His body twitches involuntarily, his back arching upwards and pressing his
face and knees hard into the mattress. Then the spasm ends, and he's gasping
like a fish out of water, fuzzy lightning racing down his back. Drool runs
down his chin; he'd forgotten to swallow before she shut him off. It takes
him a moment to realize that his brain has been switched back on. His sister
is leaning over his back, soldering something into place. The smell of burnt
metal mingles with the smell of alcohol, and he dimly realizes that his head
is resting on his sister's beer-stained skirt; she's removed it so she can
move around better.
"Sorry," she says, "but you know this is the only way to do this. I did as
much as I could while you were out, but I need live connections for this
part."
"I know," he manages before another wave of pain rips him apart. It gets
better from here, he remembers. The first few seconds are the worst. It gets
better.
"It went pretty smooth," she says, trying to distract him from the pain she
knows he's feeling. "The guy was there on time, though he seemed surprised
to see me. I guess he was expecting you. He asked about you."
"He asked about me?"
"Yeah. I told him you couldn't come, and he asked why, so I told him.
Figured maybe he'd be able to help, so I wouldn't hafta deal with a
Darktech. And we got lucky. He had the part I needed for you. Almost like he
knew you needed it. These techs amaze me sometimes, the parts they smuggle."
"H...how long have I been out?"
"Three hours," she says, "but I've only been here for about ten minutes. I
had to wait for him to find this thing and bring it back." The new portion
of his spine rings as she taps it. "Took him a while, cuz he had a lot of
crap to sort through."
He grunts and tries to shut out the world as she finishes making the primary
connections and then seals him up. He winces with pain as pins and needles
lance their way down his arms and legs, but breathes a sigh of relief, glad
to be able to feel himself once again. Glad to be out of his mind, as
strange as that sounded.
"It'll take a few minutes till you can stand, and it'll be a few days, at
least, before all the nerves regrow. But you should be OK to walk in a half
hour or so. Just try not to dive off any buildings for a while, OK?"
"Yeah," he says, defying her and sitting up anyway. She looks about to
berate him, but he snarls as she reaches for him. Standing, he puts his
trenchcoat back on and takes a few uneven steps, somehow managing to make it
to a chair before collapsing. His legs are still too numb to walk yet, and
his lower back feels a bit stiff, but it feels good to move. It feels good
to be alive.
"You always were a stubborn bastard," she says, rubbing her hands. She sits
down next to his head and leans into his shoulder, resting her head next to
his. Already his muscles are hardening, defensively reacting to her
pressure, making it so he can hardly feel anything but a faint touch,
despite the fact that she's as dense as he is and weighs only a few pounds
less.
"Yeah," he says. "Always have been, always will be." She snuggles closer and
sighs.
"Remember when Dad used to snuggle up to us? Before he disappeared?"
"No," he says, wondering if her memory, fragmented as it is, really realizes
what that "snuggling" was all about.
"Dad never hugged you?" she asks.
"No," he says. "Never."
"Well, next time you see Dad, you make sure he gives you a big hug. Like
this..." She puts an arm around him for a moment, but pulls away a few
seconds later, fidgeting, scratching her hands and arms, each movement
sending tiny bubbly daggers along his nerve endings.
"What's wrong with your hands?" he asks, annoyed.
"I don't know," she says. "Allergies maybe. Something coating that chip we
sold."
"What something?" He's got that feeling in his stomach. She shouldn't have
gone...he shouldn't have let her go in his place...
"There was some sort of fine powder. Like a sealant. Most of it came off in
my pocket."
"Let me see your hands." Oh God, please let it be a rash.
"It's fine. I just..."
"Let me see your hands." She sticks her hands out, and he grabs her by the
elbows with his gloved hands and brings them closer to the window, where the
streetlight gives them a thin sliver of orange to see by. Both hands, from
fingers to wrists, are reddened, cracked and bleeding.
"This isn't just a rash," he says. "You're having some sort of acute
reaction. I think..." He stops, his throat catching, as he watches the rash
spread, slowly but steadily, up her arms. Beneath the skin, a bruise spreads
like a wave crashing on the shore.
"Ow," she says. "What are you doing to my hands?"
"I..." He lets her hands go reflexively, and she gasps as she sees what he's
just seen. Then she returns to furiously rubbing her hands on her white
pantyhose, trying to wipe away the itch. Red streaks appear, not wholly
blood, and the nylon dissolves almost instantly. "No...it's just a rash.
Just a rash." Blood starts to run down her wrists as she scratches, her
nails clawing through her now-frail skin all too easily.
"No it's not," he says, panic edging its way into his voice. Dammit. This
can't be. Breathe. Breathe. OK, now think. There should be something he can
do, something he can say, but there's nothing. He's seen this before. Hell -
he's done this to people before. He's prepared himself for it, immunized
himself. But she didn't, couldn't, because of her allergies.
"What is it?" she shrieks.
"You've been infected," he says. "A nanite swarm. It'll spread throughout
your body."
"No," she says. "It won't. It won't."
"It will," he says, feeling the tears come. It's his fault. Somehow, it's
his fault. "You can't wipe it away. The nanites are in your bloodstream.
That's why you're bruising. They're eating away at your veins."
"Stop them," she screams. "Stop them...I can feel them....up my arms..."
"I don't know how to stop them!" he screams, angry at himself. But she's
already hysterical, and reacts only with more panic.
"You have to go find him," she says, rubbing furiously at skin now peeling
off in layers. "The guy who did this to me. The guy who bought the chip. He
can stop it. He has to."
He nods dully, knowing it's probably hopeless, knowing all about what a
nanite swarm can do, trying to stay calm for her even though he feels like
vomiting at the thought of what's happening to her. And he knows that she
knows, too, that nanites only do two things: replicate themselves and act on
their programming. These were no living bacteria swarming through her body.
They were machines. Mindless. And they would not stop until she was dead and
gone.
"Go!" she yells. "Hurry..."
"OK," he says. "I'll be back. I promise. Just stay here. I..." She lies on
the mattress, furiously rubbing arms that he knows are going numb by now. He
leaves before her fingers start to drop off. He can't bear to watch that.
He's out the door like a shot, away from the scene, but his mind leaps back
to nightmare images of his sister, naked on the floor, body torn apart by
something savage, her face coated with rust. Childhood nightmares. Or so he
thought. Now she was, quite literally, falling apart at the seams, her skin
flaking and spotted with rust. Soon that would be gone, and her genetic
structure would unstitch as well. And there would be nothing left of her. No
trace. No. It can't be. He has to still be dreaming. He can't lose her.
She's all he has. This isn't happening.
Two flights of stairs fly past in 4 steps as he leaps over railings and
drunkards, not knowing how he'll manage to get halfway across the city, find
a man that may not be there any more, and return in time to save his sister
from an unstoppable disease. But he hurries anyway, because it's her. And
because he doesn't know what else to do. Pain lances up his spine with each
step, the graft not fully healed yet, but he ignores it, running on. It is
only at the bottom of the stairs, as he bolts past the antique video games
bolted to the wall, that he pauses, his peripheral vision registering
something that his brain refuses to believe.
Time slows to a crawl as he turns and walks across the room, eyes locked on
target. And somehow, he knows that the coincidence is too much to be
believed. That there can't really be a connection between this man playing
video games and the man who poisoned his sister.
"Hello Kyle," says the man, erasing all doubt. Only one person besides his
sister knows his name. This was the man he'd spoken to on the phone. The man
who sent him after the chip. The man who'd created them, nurtured them, used
them, abused them, then left them for dead. The man he hasn't seen in over 8
years.
"Hello father," he replies. "I..." He chokes on anger and tears, not sure
what he wants to say.
"You want me to save her," says the frail little man without looking at him.
"It's funny, you know. I thought she'd recognize me. Of course, I wasn't
expecting her, so the surprise on my face may have confused her. Or maybe
she doesn't remember me. It was so long ago...six years now?"
"Eight," he hears himself say.
"Eight...yes...so long..." Finally he turns and looks at his son, sees him
staring into the face that's aged far more than 8 years. "I look strange to
you? Understandable. A genetic deficiency. The same one that caused your
sister's allergies and your seizures. Incurable."
"Your daughter...my sister...is dying because of her allergies. Because of
you. Because of your goddamn chip."
"I knew that when I saw her walk in to deliver the chip. I saw the rash, and
I realized. It shouldn't have happened. It was supposed to be you that
delivered the chip. I'm sorry it happened this way. Really. That's why I
came."
"Sorry?" he says, incredulous. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a young
couple walk into the room, survey the scene before them, and wisely leave
the way they came in. "You're not sorry. You're a murderer."
"Let me see my baby."
"No."
"She's dying. Let me see her and I may be able to save her."
He doesn't believe this for a minute, but there's really no other option, so
he leads the way up the stairs and into the room, shutting the door behind
him. He looks at the ceiling, the floor, the wall, anything to avoid looking
at her on the mattress under the window. But his peripheral vision won't let
him escape it entirely, and he sees her sitting there, mouth agape, face
bruised and bleeding, arms already gone from the elbows down, her blouse a
rusty cerecloth saving him from what he knows is underneath.
Dead.
His nightmare all over again.
He's failed her three times now.
He left her with Dad that night, but he got her out in the nick of time.
He left her with a john that night in the hotel, but he rescued her.
But this time, he can't bring her back.
"If I had delivered the chip, what would you have said to me?"
"The truth," says his father, standing over his sister but, like him,
looking anywhere but down. "I would have told you I wanted to kill you."
He stands silently, too shocked to know how to react to this.
"Why?" he finally gets out.
"I hated you," says Dad. "I hated you for what you'd become. For what you
did to your sister. Dragging her out into the streets. Taking her away from
me."
"No," he says.
"I loved her. I paid a lot of money to have her, but it didn't matter. You
were too young to remember, but it cost me my entire fortune. And at first I
thought it would be worth it. Me, a barren man, unable to father his own
children, suddenly being blessed with a beautiful daughter, spliced from his
own genes. My beautiful little Serena."
He pauses, sighs, and continues, his voice rising.
"I didn't want you. I wanted a daughter. But the cell split, and there you
were, taking the best of my daughter with you. You were strong, and fast,
and smart. And sure, she was strong as well, but her allergies, her
deficiencies, her lack of superior intelligence. They're all your fault.
You're a parasite."
"No..." He wouldn't be blamed for what he was.
"I didn't want you. I wanted a daughter."
"You wanted a whore!" he spits back.
"I wanted a daughter goddammit, and you took her from me. And if that wasn't
enough, you ruined her life in the process. Not only did you rob my daughter
of a chance at greatness, but you dragged her into hell with you. She wanted
to be with her father, but you took her. She loved you more. You were her
friend. Her lover."
"No...that was never..."
"Don't pretend," says Dad, staring icily at him. "I know what you two have
been up to. Just because I let you go doesn't mean I haven't watched you. I
saw when you led her into a life of crime..."
"No."
"I saw when you made her kill..."
"No."
"I saw when you nearly killed her."
"No!"
"I saw when you slept with her for money..."
"I...we..."
"And now this," says his father. "This, too, is your fault. If you'd brought
the chip, you'd be dead and my daughter would be home with me. But now she's
dead."
"I..."
"My only consolation," says his father, "is that you'll be dead too."
"What?"
"Ironic, really. You cause your sister's death, and now she's the cause of
yours. If it's any consolation, it'll be almost entirely painless. A shaped
charge, like a scythe, from back to front. It'll sever your nervous system
first, then rip open your front so you'll bleed out in a few seconds. You
should go painlessly. I think."
How...then he realizes. His father had expected him. Had expected the
nanites to kill him, and if that didn't work, some other means. But his
sister had shown up, already dying from the nanite swarm. And his father,
knowing his daughter was dying, saw the perfect opportunity to kill his
hated son. A bomb, concealed in a new spinal section. He'd made her wait
while he "adjusted the part," placing the explosives, no doubt. And so his
sister had been a party to murder. Unknowingly.
But somehow, it seems appropriate. His back injury had caused the death of
his sister. And now, the same injury would cause his own death. It fit.
"How long have I got?" he asks.
"A few minutes...maybe a half hour..." He shrugs. "Your own body's the
trigger. Once the nerves have restitched, the electrochemical reaction will
detonate the explosive. Your sister would have appreciated it."
"No," he says. "Enough of this. It's over. You may have won, but she loved
me. We spent 8 years together. She loved me. Of that I'm sure. She'd never
wish me dead."
"Perhaps not," says Dad. "And that's why it saddens me the most to lose her.
Because she left me for you. She left her father for her bastard twin
brother. She loved you more than me. And I hate you for that."
"Hate me enough to kill me?"
"Yes."
"You think she would have respected that?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter. She's dead."
"And I will be in a few moments."
"Yes."
"And then you'll be alone again."
"Yes..."
"Both children gone forever."
"She's already gone."
"And me?"
"I'll be glad to see you go."
"Will you?"
"Yes."
That was it, then. His sister dead, through the actions of the father who'd
repeatedly abused her and the brother who'd repeatedly took her into the
mouth of hell, and back again. And soon he would be dead, too, and then it
wouldn't matter anyway. And Dad would win. He'd lose both children; one he
hated, and one he loved. Breaking even.
He sighs, finally glances at his sister's corpse. Something is nagging him.
Then he remembers, and looks at his father.
"Dad..."
"No begging. I want to watch you die."
"No...that's not it...I want you to do me a favor."
"I would never in my life..."
"It's something Serena wanted you to do."
"What?"
"She wanted you to give me a hug."
"Are you kidding?"
"No."
They share a moment of silence, and then his father's sobs echo through the
room.
"Seriously? She said that?"
"Yes."
"Oh Serena..." he sobs. "You were so nice. So selfless. So soft and caring.
You loved your daddy. I don't know how you loved that beast, but I guess you
couldn't help it." He sniffles, then looks up.
"Well then," says his father, sighing and wiping away tears which he doubts
are truly genuine, "I suppose I can do it for her. But only for her. Not
because I love you, but because I loved her."
Silently, he takes his father into his arms. Dad seems so small and frail,
but they embrace nevertheless, his large arms wrapped around his father's
back. Were it not for his sister, he wouldn't be caught dead in an embrace
with this disgusting piece of filth. But then, it wouldn't matter in a few
minutes, anyway. The bomb in his spine is more than powerful enough to rip
his plasteel bones and kevlar-weave muscles in half. More than enough...
"I'm sorry she died," whispers his father. "I didn't mean to kill her. It
was an accident. I know you understand that. I know you loved her, and I
guess I can understand why she might have loved you, even though you hurt
her. And I guess sometimes when I tried to show her I loved her, I hurt her
too. But it's the love that matters. I guess sometimes we have to hurt the
ones we love..."
Dad tries to pull away, but he holds the embrace.
"Yes we do..." he whispers.
Dad stiffens in realization, struggling, but he doesn't let go, wrists
locked, fingers intertwined. He let go of someone 5 years ago, and that man
nearly killed his sister. He was not about to let go of the man who'd killed
her now. And so he hangs on to all he has left. Hangs on for 15 more minutes
as his father wails and whines and pleads and the light from outside starts
throwing rusty tendrils of dust across the room. Only when the blast tears
them both apart at the middle do his arms release of their own accord, his
father falling to the floor in two writhing halves, one end still screaming.
He ignores the shouting and crawls over to his sister, dragging himself
along with what remains of one arm so he can stare into her face and waste a
few tears on her bloody cheek and bruised lips. Strength evaporating,
darkness pending despite the crimson daggers spilling through the curtain,
he drops his head into the soft pillow that was once his sister's lap,
whispering apologies into the rust.
