Special Branch XIII: Soulless
POSTED BY: NEEDY
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 22, 2023 02:59
VIEWED: 34426
PAGE 3 of 3
The sun beat down hard on Blessing reflecting on the blood of honest men and monsters. The heat stirred up the aromas of gunpowder, and flesh into a rancid stench enough to make most men gag. Wisp however was not most men. Neither did he have time to indulge in such a humane fantasy as disgust.
He stood surrounded by the bodies of innocent town’s people he had given his all to try and save.
He stood in the middle of a town thrown into a chaos and conflict beyond its very comprehension.
But mostly he stood as the sole survivor in a battle against blood thirsty crazed Reavers.
Wisp drew the breath from the last Reaver on the rooftop with his bare hands as his knees finally gave out. He collapsed beaten and bloody into the pile of limbs strewn around him, consciousness slipping from him. After the last of his fellow defenders had fallen, he had beaten a hasty retreat to the water tower to defend Chloe. Vastly outnumbered he had sprayed the crowd with his shotgun till they were upon him at which point he grabbed the barrel of the weapon and used it as a club. Like a Wildman he had swung it into the heads and chests of the oncoming horde till it had broken under the strain at which point he thrust the broken point into a nearby neck and drawn his long dagger from its sheath. This felled more enemies before becoming caught in the metal armour of one of the attackers. The final few Wisp had beaten with his knuckles till they streamed raw with blood. As calm descended over the rooftop Chloe finally came down from her perch atop the water tower where she had watched the tail of this grisly scene. She had personally seen Wisp take several blows that would have felled even the best of men and feared she would find him another member of the ranks of the dead. Upon reaching where he lay she checked for a pulse upon the wrist of the warrior, and found none. Frantic she held back tears and thrust her fingers at his throat to check again and was rewarded with a weak but steady pressure against her. Overcome with relief flooding to replace the terror ebbing away she allowed herself to weep. A few solitary tears broke into a racking sob as she looked over at the men not as lucky as Wisp who lay dead around her. Holding Wisp to her breast she wiped the blood from his face as best she could and cried herself to sleep in the leftovers of the slaughter.
The next morning a militia from the surrounding towns and hamlets crept slowly into the village of Campbell expecting to find the same malignant scene of death and depravity. It came as a great shock to them to find the majority of the town untouched by the maelstrom that had passed by. It was only upon reaching the tavern did they encounter the site they had expected. Bodies lay deep strewn around the base of the building leading out in a path out of town. Upon knocking on a few doors townspeople enquired after the men upon the roof of the tavern claiming tales of the able bodied men leading a resistance led by the mysterious young man known as “Wisp”. The would be rescuers had originally avoided this area of town for fear of booby traps and an unspoken fear of the dead beasts. However upon insistence by many of the natives they braved the blood soaked part of town to check the rooftop. Only a small cluster of the reinforcement headed into the slaughter field around the pub and many of those that did had to turn back and vomit before the roof was reached. Eventually ladders were found and the team entered the centre of the killing storm where Chloe sat dressed in blue in a field of red. Eventually after hysterics she managed to get across the fact that despite appearances Wisp was alive and in desperate need of medical aid. With great difficulty Wisp was carried to the ground and brought with all haste to the town doctor. A crowd began to gather as news spread of the heroic standoff and the lone survivor. Eventually the surgeon came out of his clinic to address the masses. His injuries were diagnosed as extensive with an assortment of broken and bruised bones, punctured and
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The night had lasted a long time. Well the night had lasted the exact same time nights always last on a space ship where the lights are all on a timer and you create your own natural rhythm. But this night seemed to have lasted a long time. Seryn’s shift on the helm was long finished and Safe’s would be up in a few minutes. Wisp knew he had to awaken and shower before it was his turn again but the sight of Vixen laid in the crook of his arm left him to pause. On a ship such as this an extra five minutes would go unnoticed, even ten would be fine. Wisp hated to be late for his shift but the peaceful moment would be shattered as soon as he moved. Questions hung waiting in the doorway like vultures, what did last night mean? Was it a one off thing? Was it meaningless?
All excellent questions that Wisp did not want to answer. Right now, in this moment, it was perfect. Vixen was his lifelong friend finally on the straight and narrow. She could be forever changed and good and they could live out a life of excitement together.
She could go back to her old ways though. This could be a temporary shift of alignment before she descended into a fresh murderous rampage.
These options and more lay unformed like Schrödinger's cat waiting to be made reality. Wisp didn’t want the universe to decide just yet. He wanted a few more moments of peace and open love before everything became complicated. Unfortunately his bladder had made an unrelated decision and he had to go and relieve himself. Slipping quietly out of her embrace he made his way out of her bunk into his own next door. He showered and changed and went to begin his shift at the helm replacing Safe.
“You know what you’re doing?” Safe asked. He had obviously seen Wisp leave Vixens bunk a few minutes ago. He had a right to ask, sleeping with an ex-psychopath was a decision that affected everyone on board.
“Not quite. But I believe she’s changed. I really do. I don’t know if she’s happy with the change but that’s something we can work on. What did you get outta Needy? Anything of use?”
“Mad ramblings, stuff that didn’t make sense. Hell he’s convinced of these things and I wanna believe him but it’s just so...” He trailed off. Wisp knew enough not to continue that line, Safe needed time to think.
“The next important thought, we got a heading? Kyra’s on board and we should have shaken any trail we carried from Albion. Soul’s gotta be our priority now, I’ve been looking and I can’t find a trace”
“You won’t” said a voice from the door of the cockpit. The pair turned to see Ciaran stood behind them. “they’ve got Marshall so hidden there’s not a trace of him anywhere around the verse. But I know who took him. The same man who attacked you on Santos. He’s called Kurren and I think I know where we might find him.”
Safe and Wisp looked at each other for a moment before Safe spoke up
“Where?”
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
“I know you‘re in here somewhere, Ruff! Come on out.” A pre-teen Kurren spun at the sound of a clicking tongue. Before him stood his father, The Grimjester Conrad. “You know that is no way to coax out your prey.” He gently chastised. “What did I train you to do?” Kurren closed his eyes and took a breath. “Target is named Ruff, He is eight centimeters long with a four centimeter tail that was cut down from six. His fur is light brown with patches missing from previous attempts at capture.”
Conrad nodded, “Good. So you know the physical description of the prey. ” He knelt down next to his son. “Next, What are his habits?”
Kurren opened his eyes and pointed at a hole in the wall. “Each night he leaves his den, follows the wall to the left and scrounges for food in the kitchen.”
“How many late nights did you spend?”
“Five in a row, then two each week to make sure.” Kurren replied.
“Good,. Well done!” Conrad clapped his son’s back. “Okay. Method of capture?” Kurren looked at his father with a smile on his face. “I‘m gonna feed him.” Conrad raised an eyebrow, his son answered back with a gesture that he should be followed into the kitchen.
“I put a sedative in a small pile of grains. When Ruff comes out on his nightly raid he‘ll stop at the grains and go to sleep after he eats the food.”
“Sounds like a good primary plan. But do you have a back up plan in case this one falls apart?”
“Uh….no.” the young Kurren stammered.
“You always need a back up plan. Always.” Conrad made a swift swing with his right arm. On the other side of the room a small crash was quickly followed by a squeal.
“Ruff!” Kurren shouted when he realized what his father had done. He made a beeline for the entryway of Ruff’s home. Out of the corner of his eye he could make out a brown blur on his left. Kurren leapt and made a desperate grab for the scurrying prey.
Kurren sat up in his hospital bed with his right arm outstretched and his hand balled into a fist. Disoriented, Kurren looked around at his sterile surroundings before Nate leaned into the room. “Hey, boss. We made it to that spacer station. It‘s called The Promenade. They got a little bit of everything here. The doctor in this medical station fixed up your leg.” Nate punctuated his sentence with a nod towards the limb. Kurren pulled the sheets away to see his leg. “The doc said the wound, the…uh.. Laceration, was deep and nearly severed an artery. But he was able to stitch you back up. The doc says you shouldn‘t walk for a while. Three months give or take.” Kurren said nothing he just traced his wound with his finger. “You feeling alright boss?” Nate asked. “I‘m fine. Just reliving a moment in the past.” Nate began to back away. “Don‘t worry, it wasn‘t a painful one like last time.” Nate stopped inching towards the door. “How is Li‘s plan holding up so far?” Kurren asked Nate. “So far so good. The ship stopped sending the signal as far as we can tell. Dawei and I are pretty sure we managed to root out the program that sent the automated waves. Li is meeting his contact now to try to get more information on The Chapter.”
“Ok, This is what I want you to do Nate, go get Dawei and Paul, bring them here. We need a back up plan.” Nate left the room quickly to complete his job.
“We always need a back up.”
[img]
[/img]
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
This takes place just prior to WYSB's post:
Quote:
“Julie,” Ciaran said, attempting to sound warm and considerate, but well aware of how false it will seem to the girl she once helped raise.
Julie didn’t answer for a while, letting the moment hang, before she finally answered in a cold tone, “Ciaran.”
Ciaran didn’t look the same.
Julie had remembered her quite differently. In fact it had taken her a while to put two and two together, and when she had… well, she didn’t quite know how to react.
Her father was dead. And the woman that had lied to him for god knows how long was standing before her now. She may not have pulled the trigger. But she was as responsible for his death as anyone else. She had sent him on a course that had led him to this.
Julie could feel Safe watching her from the corner, he knew she would try to stop a fight if it was to break out. But he was still a few feet away. She could still do damage.
Without hesitation, Julie clenched her hand into a fist and swung it at the womans face, clocking her in the jaw. The sound was that of a blunt thud, so loud that it almost didn’t sound real. As expected, Safe was there right away, a hand on Julie’s shoulder. Ciaran looked back up at her, her eyes watered and her mouth agape as if in shock. But the truth was she had expected it. What Julie hadn’t expected was that for the briefest second, it wasn’t Ciaran’s true face that had looked up at her, but that of her mother – the woman she had impersonated. And then she was Ciaran again – this stranger that had been a part of her life for so long and she hadn’t even known it.
Safe stayed close, his hand firm on her arm. He didn’t know who he was protecting. Instinctively he had come to the aid of Soul’s former lover, but his heart told him he should have been helping the other. She had been through so much, and he knew that Ciaran had been the reason for a lot of it. Truthfully, he didn’t know what the woman was capable of. Maybe he was protecting Julie after all.
Restraint or not, Julie wasn’t going to strike her again. True, there was a small bit of satisfaction gained in thumping the bitch, but it was all for naught. Her heart still ached. Hitting Ciaran wouldn’t change that.
“I’m sorry,” Ciaran finally said, her words trailing off as Julie held her hand out in a gesture to silence her.
“Save it,” Julie replied.
“I wasn’t myself back then,” Ciaran tried to explain.
“Yeah, I know, that’s kinda the point,” Julie answered, almost with a laugh.
“I mean…” Ciaran began but was interrupted once more.
“I know what you mean.” She answered. “I’ve heard it time and time again, I was brainwashed, I was manipulated, I was being blackmailed. You have any idea how many times people use that as an excuse for their sins?”
Ciaran fell silent. She didn’t try to respond.
“And now – what - you’re working for the “good guys” again? If that’s what these folk are. No offense.” She added, looking back at Safe. “Doesn’t change the fact that…” Julie hung her head and stepped away from the captain and the traitor. Taking a seat in one of the chairs by the side of the wall, she gazed at the beige rug – which seemed out of place in this room – as she continued to tell her story.
“He looked for her. My father. After what happened back there, with you, with this crew… he had a mission. To deliver Janti to the world so that his story could be told, to change the parliament for the better. But he couldn’t focus. It became about her. About finding my mother.” Julie looked up and across as Ciaran. “My real mother.”
Ciaran felt a lump in her throat. She’d done some terrible things in her life, and not even just with The Expendables. She hadn’t needed their programming to commit some truly horrendous acts. Most nights they haunted her, but on certain rare occasions they had the good grace to let her be, but ever since Santos, her mind had been plagued with awful memories. Soul was her mission now, and she tried to stay focussed, but seeing Julie like this only reminded
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by NEEDY:
“Yes. Of course, but I know that nothing I do to her will get me that,” Julie says, looking over Safe’s shoulder to Ciaran once more. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you weren’t in control. The Expendables, the ones that hired you, I know what they’re capable of. You weren’t the only one they got to. You weren’t the only ones who suffered. But if you are different now, if you truly want to help, then do something for me. Tell me the truth Ciaran. If there is a spirit that lives on after death then maybe you can still make it right with my father. Help him find some peace. Tell me what you did with her. My mother. My real mother. Where is she?”
The Hunt-Kismet Ball was the last place Ciran Torne wanted to show her face. She was growing tired; tired of the formalities and political etiquette. The ball may have been a charity function, raising money for the poor and the desperate, but she saw it for what it was – an opportunity for the rich to pat themselves on the back, whilst plotting how they might stab their knives into those of others; the chance for those in high positions to make arrangements to be placed in other positions by pretty young things. Her husband Liam didn’t like it either, but it was his job to smile and shake hands with these people. Ever the diplomat, he was there to represent his brother in law, Senator Sian Dreight, but that didn’t mean Mrs Torne had to like it. She never had.
Even so, despite the loathing she had for these sorts of events, there was a part of her that was glad for tonight. She knew where she stood with these people; her own family was another thing. Her husband in question was to meet her there – a strange thing to be sure, but not so uncommon for couples to arrive separately in this season (spring had always been a busy time for those in office, many nights were spent apart) – and that in itself would be an awkward situation. But her daughter, thankfully, she could be apart from for the weekend.
The girl had always been trouble. Ciran’s sister Audrey had warned her, “Don’t have kids or, if you must, at least find someone to look after them until they’re in their mid-twenties. They’ll bring you nothing but hassle.”
She was right. Julie had been a rebel from the get-go. From the age of six she would have temper tantrums, throwing things at her, breaking her grandmothers precious vase out of spite.
In the years that followed, she only got worse. Liam couldn’t see it of course. He only saw her on her good days. But he wasn’t there in the mornings or early afternoons. He wasn’t there to see her stroll in the early hours, still doped up from the night before. Ciran had covered for her, kept her out of the papers, and for what? Now she was pregnant and she insisted she didn’t even know who the father was. She would have her out the house already, disown her, but Liam was always there defending her. It was all about their public image. It didn’t matter what it was like living there, or that she was on her last tether, as long as they all smiled for the cameras. Quite how they could paint the image of a pregnant fourteen year old as anything but unsightly, she didn’t know. But Liam would see to it, that’s all he said. He would see to it. The baby would stay of course, Liam wouldn’t have it any other way. Maybe he would insist they raise it as their own. Yeah, that sure sounded like him. Maybe he would even keep Ciran herself out of the limelight, if only to maintain the illusion that it was she herself that was pregnant. Maybe that would be nice for once, or at least would be if she could have some peace and quiet. But no, she would have to stay there to take care of Julie, the insufferable bitch.
Maybe Ciran would do something he wasn’t expecting, just as she was supposed to be giving birth, she would come out and announce to the world that she was never pregnant and would leave him. Let him deal with the mess. Have him explain how he was keeping his wife prisoner if only so that his “adorable” young daughter cou
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Monsters haunt us all.
They stand in the shadows and peer at our every step, waiting for us to falter. We create some ourselves. Some to protect our fragile forms from the world, a demon stronger than we are that knows no fear and knows no pain. Some are mind creates on its own, secret thoughts twisted out of recognition to prevent our psyche from every considering the option.
And then some are made for us. By our family and friends. By the news. By soldiers. By priests. By men and women so swarmed by their own monsters they have to give them to others before they’re torn apart.
And sometimes if you get enough monsters, if you carry around so many that you feel them crawling underneath your sky at every step. They begin breaking through and snapping at you in the real world.
Then you let them out.
At first you release them drip by drip. Venting pressure from a bursting dam. But as the water starts’ flowing it’s hard to stop. And you’re stood in a raging deluge of creatures from your mind till you’re drowning. Grasping for air in a sea of torment; and you’re willing to do anything just to get that taste of fresh air again. You’ll break every bone, bleed every drop, and sell every inch that’s left of your soul just to see the sky again. Eventually you forget what breathing was like and begin to swim with your monsters. Be at one with yourself.
Be at one with your monsters.
Vixen woke up that morning and breathed fresh air for the first time in years. She was floating on her ocean of monsters, no longer trapped beneath the surface. The crushing weight of all her released inner madness settled into a calm, rising above it all she saw clearly all her past from the eyes of an innocent.
And she wept.
She wept for all the lives she’d taken, for all the lives she’d crushed and shattered, for every choice that she’d made leading to the suffering of others. She cried for her abusive family, for her rapist uncle, for the father who’d turned a blind eye in greed, for her brothers whispering ear of discontent. She cried for every child who’d grown up without a parent because of her, and sobbed for every child who never had life.
Her monsters had held her down so long she thought she had become one. Till she finally got the strength to break free. She was not clean but her soul was not stained beyond rescue. Then again her monsters had not left, though soothed they still swam beneath her, waiting.
Always waiting.
Vixen wandered onto the bridge as Ciaran was pointing to a space chart.
“I've got a name and a grid reference. The Chapter and something here” she pointed at a grid towards the edge of the rim. Wisp peered at the grid and pulled up the surrounding area.
“Christ they don’t wanna be found. That’s about as close to the black as I’ve known people go. Everywhere near there is spacer territory. Not a rock even half terraformed within a fuel tank”
Vixen sauntered closer and checked the coordinates, “I know the Chapter, well know is a slight exaggeration.”
“Really?” whined Ciaran “Cos I did a little looking and all I found was dust and a lotta dropped calls. How’s a psycho killer like you know anything?” Ciaran squared up to Vixen putting herself directly in her eye line. Vixen however just walked straight through her up to Safe.
“I did a job once. A bit of simple smuggling nothing too fancy. Picked up a package from the core and took it straight to the rim, speed run. One box, on ice, tamper proof ‘bout the size of a man’s head. Had no trouble got paid much more than it was worth. It stank of the old pay em in bullets game so i brought in a dead man’s trigger and everyone left alive. The drop point was on an asteroid but it was too small for anything major, my guess it was just a pick-up point.”
“well it’s a place to start” Safe patted Vixen on the shoulder “Nice work kid, give the directions to Wisp and we’ll be on our way. Wisp, find us a spacer port on the way to fuel up.”
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Raven blazed a trail across the black, heading for a rock in search of answers, in search of justice, but would reveal a whole lot more besides.
Julie Torne stepped into Kyra’s open quarters, catching sight of the young woman sitting huddled on the bunk.
“How are you holding up?” Julie asked.
“Honestly, been better. We almost there?” Kyra asked, barely interested.
“Safe said it will be about another hour,” Julie answered.
Neither of them spoke another word for a good twenty seconds, prompting Julie to take a seat opposite the only person she could count as a friend on this boat.
Kyra slowly glanced up, intuition told her that the girl wanted to talk, whether she herself wanted to or not. “And you? How you holding up?”
Julie rolled her eyes before answering, “Oh you know, I’m living the dream.”
“I’m sure that once we get there, things will…” Kyra stopped herself. “You know what, I honestly have no idea anymore what I’m doing here.”
“Where else is there to go?” Julie answers
“Well ain’t that a good reason,” Kyra replies despondently. “What about you? You got a girl, you got a man out there somewhere.”
Julie sighed, she didn’t want to talk about them. Deep down she would love to do nothing but talk about them, talk to them - she missed them so much. But it was just too painful. She had thought little of leaving them behind whilst she travelled to Hera to claim her fathers body. But she had counted on it being a couple of days… not this. She just hoped that they were safe, that whoever was responsible wouldn’t go after them next. It’s why she was there. She couldn’t live in fear for the rest of her life. She needed to know the truth.
Julie simply ignored Kyra’s previous statement as she said, “I-I just can’t help feeling that all of this has something to do with my father.”
Kyra finally pulled herself out of her own world and sat at the edge of the bed, her attention now focused on the young woman. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you have all this to deal with right now.”
Kyra didn’t envy the girl one bit, Julie wasn’t cut out for this, but then again neither was she. She’d just learned to live with the drama. But for the young woman to have to deal with her father being murdered, forcing her to throw her lot in with fugitives where she was now heading to meet known criminals, all the time knowing she has a daughter back home she might never see again… And whats more, now Needy had told her that her father probably hadn’t even been killed by members of the cult. That his death was likely perpetrated by enemies who had staged his death to look ritualistic in order to hide where the true blame lay. Maybe she would never know the truth.
Little did Kyra know that Julie knew more than she let on. She just didn’t understand it all yet.
“I guess this will all be over soon enough,” Julie said sombrely.
“Sure. Safe will deal with it. We can be done with it. And we can get you home to where you belong.”
Kyra stood up from the bed and made her way over to the young woman, planting a kiss on her forehead before pulling her into an embrace.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The room was disgustingly filthy with the vague smell of unwashed people and sewage seeping in through every wall. To add insult to injury it was stifling hot with an atmospheric control unit looking forlorn baring its non-functional insides in the corner. If this was the visiting room the prison beyond must be a real sorry place for human habitation. In fact from what he’d seen so far the whole planet of Ezra seemed a sorry place. Too hot, too barren. The only water around seemed to exist as humidity with the planets only ocean a miserable site when he came down from atmo. And as nearly everyone on the whole rock was a criminal of some sort, those they decided to incarcerate must be true vile examples of existence.
Why was he even here? The resistance had been a pipe dream for over two decades after their crushing defeat during their first real uprising. The power and swiftness of the Alliance counter attack had made blatantly obvious there was to be no second war of independence. Every prisoner had been executed, every vague accomplice arrested, every base and hideout reduced to ash and rubble. The complete scorching of the earth with any connection to the ill-fated resistance. A lasting reminder for any fool with the ridiculous idea of trying again. I guess that made him a fool.
One of the very few members who had not found himself freezing to death in the depths of space Alan Upton had quietly used his meagre savings to disappear to the rim and act like he had nothing to do with any of it. The epitome of the upstanding citizen without a drop of social disobedience to his name. The final record keeper of a dead revolution.
Freedom is a lofty ideal to walk away from, however dangerous it may be. A handful of names were all he had kept. The Heroes. The Immortal ones. The names whispered around every campfire with ideals of life beyond the heel of tyranny. Safe, Soul, Wisp, Needy, Seryn. Names that were suicide to say anywhere on a core world. Names that still made the Alliance taskmasters quiver in the midnight hours. Names that had nearly overturned oppression. Nearly.
Nearly hadn’t been enough.
And now here he was. An idiotic fool who sitting in a backwater prison on a rumour. Actually a rumour would be a vast overstatement. He was here on the very antithesis of a rumour. One of the only prisons in the known galaxy that didn’t have a bold claim of a resistance warrior within its walls. A lower than expected mortality rate, combined with a fearsome reputation and exactly average accounting for the last eight years. A perfectly unremarkable pile of go’se, on a Go tsao de unremarkable poor border moon. It had taken over a year of planning, plotting and praying to get him into this room. Upton was a doctor who had started research into infections passed amongst inmates on a meagre government outreach grant. And that had led to him visiting the worst jails outside civilisation in plans of coming here. On the hope of a dead dream.
This was already his second day of interviews and sample taking. The criteria were loose, he’d been unsure of how to proceed due to paranoia. His target was intelligent so would he try to appear dumb? He wasn’t prone to violence, however highly dangerous. Every option could be correct or simply subterfuge. He settled on Caucasian males twenty five to thirty five, sometime in solitary though generally viewed as amiable with an average IQ. That’s where he would hide, in plain view, perfectly mediocre and unexceptional. That was the only way he would have stayed hidden.
In a way he was almost tempted to leave him hidden. But he still had the dream. The dream of a people deciding their own destiny. A dream of the few not ruling the many. A dream where a man with wealth couldn’t just do what he wanted. But dreams like that need heroes. And all the heroes were buried. But maybe one hero had just buried himself.
The door opened with a waft of hot raw air and a blast of superhot light. The guard blinked into the darkness followed quietly by a legend. He stood upright not cowing
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Kyra had been fighting this fight for far too long and where had it gotten her?
Nowhere.
Every so-called victory felt like anything but. Celebrations were muted. Peace was something they spoke about often, but it was something she was yet to experience. Now, after a decade of running with wanted outlaws, she believed peace was just a dream.
The only thing she could still believe in – and she clung onto this like her life depended on it (because it did) – was that she had done the right thing; that she still was doing the right thing. It didn’t matter that some labelled her and her friends terrorists, that even her family and former colleagues believed those lies, what mattered was what they did. Actions spoke louder than words.
A lifetime ago Kyra had been a reporter, it had been her job to report the truth. She’d been naïve to think she could make a difference in that line of work. But time and experience proved to her that she had no control over the narrative. Even when the political system was revealed as corrupt and responsible for horrific crimes, it was swept under the rug.
The Alliance Abides.
It only really became apparent when she was reunited with him, Bernard Needham, that she truly understood how things truly were. Bernie – or Needy, as his friends called him – had once been considered an honourable man; a companion and extinguished gentleman well respected in society. But it wasn’t to last, and Kyra herself was much to blame for that.
Despite painful betrayals, he never lost sight of who he was, and what was right. He and his friends weren’t afraid to stand up for what was right… and for that, they were labelled enemies of the Alliance.
Rebels. Criminals. Terrorists.
When Kyra chose to join them, she was given the same titles.
After what happened with Bernie, she thought she’d give it up. But there was no turning back. There was no way to forget what she’d learned, or unsee the immoral acts perpetrated by those in power. And so she continued on.
For ten years she fought the good fight and had the scars to prove it. Some scars were easier to see, but it was the seemingly invisible ones that hurt the most. For all the lives they had saved, she could only think about the ones they couldn’t.
Bernie…
She would never be able to get over that.
Maybe that’s why she was still doing this.
She had been shot and stabbed and burned and would continue to take it. She’d watch more of her friends fall in battle. She’d suffer the indignity of prison and torture all over again. She would never give up because of him.
Because a man she’d loved had been the best of them and this world had destroyed him.
Because if this society had it’s way, it’d do it again and again. To another man, woman or child.
Kyra knew the life she had chosen would never bring her peace. But she just hoped that at the end, when the battle was over for her, she could rest knowing she did her best.
In death at least, she would finally find serenity.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
They called space "the black", romanticizing it as some endless void full of constant dangers and infinite possibilities.
"I'll make a name for myself out in the black."
"Somewhere in the black, I know she's waiting for me."
"Out there in the black, a UAP Marine has only one gorram thing to fear, and that's running out of scum to shoot!"
"We play our cards right, and we will be the richest outlaws the black has ever seen!"
Having seen the true darkness waiting out there, the man some called Soul knew the truth: the black was a monster, swallowing hope and spitting out despair, taking dreams and turning them into unending nightmares. He had lived those nightmares, and more than that, he had been used to pour out those nightmares upon so many others. He was a weapon wielded by those who were either too cowardly to strike themselves, or by those whose wealth was worth more to them than any amount of humanity.
Soul was done being used.
He wasn't sure how long he had floated in that place, but it felt like both eons and an instant. He had found a place he felt Safe, learned how to let go of everything and be light as a Wisp, and was reminded what it truly meant to be Needy as well as to have no wants at all. The shadow of destiny was only revealed in the light of truth, and he was finally ready to face it.
There had been so many faces, so many names. Voices he had both yearned to hear, as well as ones that stabbed like daggers when they spoke. Anger, joy, disappointment, love, heartbreak, lust; the emotions poured over him and through him, until every part of his existence thrummed with the attack.
Finally, the walls began to crack. First came the crumbling of the towering, unbreakable barriers put in place when he had first been broken and reformed into a weapon. Then the even stronger reinforcements that he had erected in order to avoid having to face his past shattered like glass. With a roar that seemed to echo through the black and beyond, the man they called Soul finally opened himself up to both all that he was and all that he had been made to be. Embracing it all, accepting it all, and---
* * *
Marshall Cade opened his eyes.
_______________________________________________
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME