Bubblegum Crisis: Tales of the Immortal Knight Saber: Crusade's End
By Kain the Seeker
AKA Andrew Graham (Kaintskr@aol.com)
With creative input and suggestions by Deunan (Deunan@aol.com ) and Imagines. (imagines@nlc.net.au ) (Thanks guys)
CMA Disclaimer: Bubble Gum Crisis/Highlander and all related characters are property of their respective owners. Colin Waters, Warren Bath, and any other original characters are mine. :)
MegaTokyo Spaceport, 12 August 2056
Nene stepped out of the terminal and into the balmy heat of a Japanese Summer. It was like breathing soup after ten years of artificial habitats on the Moon and beyond. Almost immediately she started wishing that she was back on the Moon, and she found it hard to believe that she had lived in comfort with both this heat and the gravity. She was sweating before she had even left the cover of the terminal. Not a good sign, she thought.
She flagged down an autocab and threw her bags into the backseat and sat down beside them. I just want to get to my hotel and get a nice long bath- one thing that she missed in space.
MegaTokyo Spaceport Hilton, Room 2113, 12 August 2056
She tried contacting Amanda the second that she had gotten in the room, but the televid's database claimed that there was no such person in the entirety of the Greater MegaTokyo area. Figures that she would go deep just when I could use a friend, Nene thought as she started emptying her bags. The job was going to be hard, especially since not many Immortals would be here. Not that she blamed them with the close proximity of Genom.
She looked through her window and realized how much had changed in the last twenty years. When she had left Japan two decades ago, she would have seen a beautiful sunset from the window. Now it was blocked out by squat monolithic menace of the Tower, now larger than ever. It sat there looking like a big grave monument to her, as she opened her shielded case and pulled out her last piece of equipment.
She held the saber up and looked at the Tower in the growing shadows of the evening.I wonder how many others died in the creation of that abomination, she asked herself, as she sat down with a whetstone and started sharpening the blade.
Genom Genetics Research Facility #3, 12 August 2036
Nene wished for a way to wipe her brow, she was even willing to give up all the new toys in her suit for it. It was hot and muggy, even though she was in a hardsuit. She tried to ignore it as she used her laser to cut through the outer shielding of the building's secure comm system. She pulled the shielding off and extended her suit's I/O probe into the mess of wiring that lay within.
The pseudo-metal probe writhed like something alive for a second as it interfaced with the comm line, while her suit computer sorted through the data that came in. She found the lines that she need quickly and started about ensuring that she had had a good link with them.
As she adjusted the links, sections of her display lit up showing building schematics and video feeds. She smiled; it was like taking candy from a baby. She tagged the lines that she would use and started rigging bogus footage and sensor readings for her penetration.
"This is Nene, I'm in," she whispered over the suit's secure comm line.
"We're on our way," came the reply.
She moved further into the duct system, pulling up the facility schematics and using her autocompass to place her movement as she went. Every now and then she would place a charge, but her primary job was to reach the mainframe.
Priss and the others coasted in on the moonless night. Each of the Knights went their own way and set up a series of charges that would bring the whole building down. Meanwhile, Nene had found the mainframe and linked with it. She brushed her way through most of the computer system without trouble and upload a virus that would destroy all traces of the research that was being done here.
"Package delivered, I'm on my way out," she whispered over the radio as she eased the link with the computer out.
"Don't linger, Nene. This place is wired to hell and back," Priss sent. Nene didn't bother to answer, she was already backtracking. That was when the first of the files she had left to watch the system kicked off. Before she was even able to glance at the location, two more also flagged red.
"Shit, guys, we've got trouble," she yelled as she looked over the video feed. Boomers, and lots of them. "My exit through the tunnels is a total wash, looks like a squad of boomers at least."
"No shit. Get yer ass to the roof, Nene. We'll meet you there and evac you.", Priss sent back over the radio. From the sounds of battle over the comm, the others had met up with even more boomers.
She triggered her suit's cloaking field and started working her way up the building, but it wasn't as fast as she liked. Even with Priss and Linna training her for over a year, she didn't feel ready to tango with a boomer solo. She came onto the roof with a pair of boomers following close on her heels and maybe more on the way.
"Nene, move your ass!" Linna yelled as she sprinted across the rooftop to the plane. 20 yards to go.
" Coming mothe...." An impact from the back blew her to the ground. She felt a burning sensation in her gut. For a second she couldn't move, then she rolled over to hide behind a heating vent.
She leaned against the vent and looked down at the hand that she had fallen on. It was covered in blood, with a lot more on the ground. Everything was spinning. Blood loss and shock, she told herself as she cued the suit's autodoc. The results were just more bad news. She heard the others calling her, as if from a long distance.
"Oh god, no...." she whispered as she cued the entire stimulant reservoir of the suit and cut the telemetry data. Her blood roared as the chemicals took effect, and her head wasn't spinning any more. Her chest hurt as the suit's bladders filled in an attempt to put pressure on the wound, not that it mattered.
"Speak to me, Nene," Priss called over the suit radio. "Tell me where you are so we can get you."
Nene shook her head and cried as she took in the suit's tactical feed. Fifteen plus boomers on the roof and sensors said more on the way. She knew what the result of that fight would be. She keyed the suit's radio.
"Forget it, Priss, I've a hole in my suit from front to back and..." she swallowed nervously and then coughed up blood. Not long to go, she thought as she continued. "Leave me."
"No! I won't do it." She could practically see Priss looking for an opening to leap to. Sorry, Priss, but I can't let you die with me. This is a solo act. She tagged the detonation program and blew up the front of the building. Any place that could have been a safe area to land was now gone, and the plane was forced to pull up from the blast.
"Nene, what the hell do you think you are doing?" Priss screamed. She knew what Nene was doing, but couldn't- or wasn't willing to- believe it.
"Saving your ass for a change," she said calmly. Funny how death makes it easy to do what's needed now. Tears made it hard to see as she typed in the final override. " Mackie I love you and ... I'm sorry." Please God, she thought as she cut the radio and entered the final code, `give me the strength. She watched the numbers count down from twenty. Shadows fell on her. Nene looked up to see five combat boomers standing over her, and some savage part of her howled in glee as charges detonated.
The building shuddered for a second and leaned to one side. She slid out from the sheltering vent and fell in a jumble of pipes. Then she went numb, and saw fire rise up from all sides of her with a roar in her fading sight. The blast lifted her up into the air, and she fell back into the fiery ruin as darkness claimed her.
MegaTokyo Spaceport Hilton, Room 2113, 12 August 2056
Nene dropped her sword. Her hands were shaking to the point that she hugged herself to stop them. The pain is gone, she reminded herself, I am not lying on the bottom of a hole covered in tons of steel and concrete.
Amanda and Warren had warned her that coming back might bring back bad memories, but the young immortal hadn't expected them to start so soon. She had expected to be hit by more familiar sights. It was looking at the Wallcom that made her realize something she had forgotten. The date.
She had died twenty years ago, today. She poured herself a triple shot of Jack Daniels and tossed in some ice. It burned as it went down. She sat down and drew in a ragged breath. I have got to go out, she told herself. Stay here and you'll go crazy, Nene.
MegaTokyo Club District 12 August 2056.
An hour later found her sitting at the bar of 'Hot Legs'. She was pleasantly surprised to find that the club was still open, and under the same name. She smiled at the reflection in the mirror. With her hair waist long and styled in a new wild look, and the black leathers she was wearing, she didn't have to worry about being recognized by anyone that might have seen her twenty years ago. Not that it was likely, most of the people looked to be less than twenty-five and dressed just as wildly as she did. Immortality had given her the time to find a look that she was comfortable with.
She spun the stool around and looked over the club floor. The music and styles had changed, but were still cutting edge, and the place was still packed to the rim. 'Hot Legs' could always be counted on for the best and most current in novahot rock and roll.
She had almost forgotten her earlier mood and was ready to get down dancing with a nice stud she had given the eye, when she spotted them. They were all here, clustered in a booth up in back. Apparently I'm not the only one that has memories about today. She looked over her friends and compared them to what she had known about them over the last two decades. They had not been idle.
Linna was almost unchanged; but for a gray hair or two and laugh lines, she could still be in her twenties. She had always been a great dancer and when she finally got her break, she moved on to become a choreographer as the years went on. Nene had followed her career through Vid and the Net. It was good to see her friend successful and happy. Even if she... Nene refused to complete the thought, and wallow in the self-pity that would follow.
She looked over at Priss. The singer was still fit and hale; after all she toured continuously. Nene had all her albums and had followed her career from the first meteoric rise in the charts to her ascension to legendary performer status. Even saw her once in the Lunar Dome, paid a scalper almost a year's salary for seats in the nosebleed section . Her first big international hit, Fallen Angel, was Nene's favorite. It was nice to see that Priss had risen to the level of immortal rock legend with all the other big names.
Then came the last resident of the booth, Sylia Stingray. She had spent more time in the Net studying the genius than the other two. Her mentor had never really stood out in the world; she preferred to keep herself in the shadows. With Nene's death had come the end of the Knight Sabers. Nene couldn't help but feel guilty about that. Afterwards, Sylia had nearly vanished from sight.
She had taken to writing papers, and had become quite well known within the scientific community. In fact, Nene had studied her articles in great length while teaching at Tranquillity University. The Stingrays, Mackie and Sylia, spent a lot of time on private projects and made it a point to stay out of the limelight whenever possible. It was strange that not once in all her papers, did Sylia ever mention or hint towards the hardsuits. She covered as wide an area of science as her father, everything from Astronomy and Genetics, to Nanotechnology and Robotics.
She looked closely at her old mentor and friend and realized that her death had weighed most heavily on Sylia's shoulders. It showed in the eyes. Nene couldn't help but feel guilty. Her death had been a significant factor in her friend's withdrawal from the world. With her death, the Knight Sabers had died, and in that passing a part of Sylia had died also.
She discreetly took a booth beside them and listened in on what they were talking about. It took some effort, but she finally realized that nothing was being said. They were all waiting for The Moment. 9:48 PM Tokyo time. The time at which she had died twenty years ago in a long destroyed Genom research complex. One of their watches beeped and they all raised their glasses in a toast.
"To Nene Romanova," Sylia said with her eyes glittering in tears. Nene was surprised- her mentor had never been very emotional. "To Nene," the other two echoed with tearful eyes.
Nene slowly walked out of the club. She couldn't stay. It was a private, sacred moment, and to linger and listen to the three women would be more than she could handle. She leaned against a wall, and looked up at the stars. It had been fifteen years since she had seen any of them this close, and she was sorely tempted to tell them.... No. They had accepted her death, now she had to.
"Shit, I shouldn't have come back yet." Warren had been right, she wasn't ready, things hadn't changed enough yet- but she had to do her job.It's nice to know you're missed, though. She slipped out of the back alley and flagged an autocab. One last stop for the night and she would be ready to go back to the hotel and face the night and whatever dreams it held. She looked back in the night's drizzle. Sometimes your past is really gone forever.
She knelt by the marker, brushing away the leaves that had blown over the plots. Her grave was empty. Sylia had finally made up some likely excuse for her death and missing body to give her parents a reason to grieve. The two markers beside hers weren't. She had long understood that she would in all likelihood outlive her parents. Even before becoming immortal, they had her late in life and by the time she had left home they were in their mid-fifties. She placed the flowers on their graves and bowed her head.
"I finally came back , Mama and Papa, sorry that it took me so long." She silently hoped that they had forgiven her. She stopped short, the approach of another car cutting off what she was going to say. She slid back into the shadows and waited for whoever it was to leave her alone. A single person stepped out of the car and walked in her direction.
Sylia walked to the marker, more by instinct than any visual cues. It was a familiar place. She came to think and talk to Nene. She had been Sylia's foil, something to test ideas against when Mackie wasn't available to do so and a reminder what the reality of her actions could bring. Why is it that I feel so guilty, she asked her fallen friend, about your death and not the others that I caused?
Nene's passing had been a hard time for her, and the end of the Knight Sabers. She used a variety of methods in her battle against Genom and hired others when force became a necessity. These days, however, she tended to work more in the shadows and behind the movements of stocks, the media and such.
It wasn't as hard on the conscience, she reflected as she laid the lilies on the gravestone. She turned at the sound of movement behind her. She looked into the face of her past and knew that she had finally run out of time. The assassin lifted her hands and showed Stingray the 40 cm talons that sprung from her fingers. A type C, she guessed, one of thousands produced over the years by Genom and sold all over the world. They were hard to fight in a hardsuit, and she didn't even have her gun. It was in her purse back at the car. Might as well be on Mars, she reflected bitterly as she backed up.
She tripped over a headstone avoiding it's first slash at her. It was toying with her, but she couldn't risk injury if she wanted to escape. She lay on the ground, stunned by the impact and looked her killer in the eye. She would go into the next life knowing that she had faced her death with honor. The boomer moved in for the kill, only to lurch forward and to the right as a blade emerged from it's breastbone with crunch. It was kicked all the way over from behind and the attacker yelled at her while trying to free the blade from it's back.
"What are you waiting for? Run, dammit!" The blade came free with a little difficulty. The young woman helped Sylia up and pushed her back towards her car. "Get moving, Doctor Stingray. I'll keep it busy while you get away." Sylia tried to reason with the girl, but she was pushed rudely away as the girl swore at her, "Get moving! It's already recovering and you're it's target, not me. Go!"
Nene stabbed downwards as she turned to face the boomer, hoping to get another shot at it's neural linkage or a power coupling. It's redundancies had already kicked in and it rolled to one side and snapped out a kick into her ribs. She reeled backwards and the boomer got to it's feet with inhuman speed and grace. She pulled away from a slash and was only just successful in avoiding having her throat cut. The swordswoman spun around and screamed at Sylia, blood gurgling out the ruin of her right cheek.
"Run!" the woman with the saber screamed. Sylia ran.
The boomer slashed at Nene's arm trying to disarm her. She countered with a whirling parry that took most of the fingers on the monster's left hand. Nene smiled and circled to keep her distance as the fingers landed on the ground. Her ribs were healing, but having the bones rub together hurt almost as much as they did breaking and she was winded.
The boomer, seeing a weakness, changed it's tactics and move for a closer range of attack. She was tackled by the machine and lifted up into the air. The bear hug wasn't the worst she had endured, but still it was painful as the ribs cracked audibly . She felt one pierce her lung as she slammed her saber down into it's chest.
It dropped her roughly to the ground and turned to walk away, determined to find and finish it's primary target. She was simply a removed obstruction. Till she stood back up and hissed painfully as she staggered forward to face it again. "We aren't done yet, machine."
It was incapable of doubt and disbelief, yet it had never encountered a human capable of enduring such punishment and still able to fight. It lunged at her, and she tried to meet it's attack, but her injuries slowed her tremendously and she couldn't. It sank the claws into her gut and twisted. She screamed in unspeakable agony, and didn't have the strength to do anything as she was pulled once again into it's grasp.
Then it's head exploded in a shower of red and gray, and she landed hard on the ground. She embraced the cool darkness of death rose up to meet her.
"Mackie, help me get her in the backseat," she heard as she was laid gently on the upholstered couch of a car. Still, ribs were jostled and the pain returned her to full awareness for a second before she passed out again.
"..... Mercy Hospital is closer..." she heard as she regained consciousness. She tried to sit up but was gently held down. In her present state, she couldn't resist. She recognized the voice as Sylia's.
"No hospitals," she croaked through a sore throat. The boomer had tried to crush her windpipe sometime during the fight. She didn't remember that.
"You'll die without immediate help." Nene cut off the rest with a curt gesture as she tried to see. Her eyes weren't working- did the boomer gouge out her eyes too?
"I can't go to a hospital, " she gritted through the pain of her own body trying to heal itself.
"No! I can't let you die!" She could almost hear Sylia think of her first death and putting the blame on herself. "You just hold on for ten minutes and we'll get you help."
Not likely, she thought grimly, a hospital would mean certain discovery. Guess I'll just have to finish the job myself, she thought as she twisted to the side hard. She screamed in agony as loose ribs and half-healed ones ground against each other and tore through tender flesh.
She was rewarded by a warm sensation that spread over her chest and was followed by a familiar numbness. About time, she thought as death enveloped her in it's cold embrace again and took away all her pain for a time.
Sylia checked her savior's pulse. It was thready- then it flickered and was gone. She knew it was futile to try CPR. Too much blood loss. Reaching down she eased the now unseeing green eyes shut. Who were you, and why did you do it, she asked the corpse as she wiped the blood from the girl's cheek.
Another nameless face to add to the ones that Genom had piled at the feet of her and her father. Why did it have to happen tonight of all nights? She ran a finger through the girl's hair and thought how similar she looked to ...
She stopped and looked again. Did a mental comparison and was dumbfounded at what her mind told her was impossible but her eyes showed her.
"Oh, my God." Mackie looked over his shoulder at her.
"What is it sis?" He asked. "Are we too late?"
"It's Nene." I've lost her again... Mackie nearly knocked her onto the body as he swerved after hearing her.
MegaTokyo 13 August 2056.
Nene sat up with a gasp. It was always a shock to be dead one moment and alive and intact the next, with your last memory being of getting mauled by a boomer. The gift of Immortality, she thought with a bitter smile.
She looked down at the bed she was in, and then to the person that was sitting beside her looking at her. Dr. Sylia Stingray, Ph. D, Nobel Prize winner, sat looking at her with disbelief and fear. She ran a shaking hand across the young immortal's face. "Nene-chan, is it really you?"
Nene took her hand into her own and smiled at her. "Yes, Sylia"
"You're alive. I'm not going mad am I?"
"No, it's me. I'm sorry Sylia, I wanted to tell you but...." she was cut off by a slap to the face as the other woman screamed at her; surprised by the venom in Sylia's voice, she took a few seconds to recover her wits.
"How could you let me think that you were dead? Don't you know how I felt when I saw you die?"
Nene caught her hand again and looked in the eyes of her old friend. In that instant Nene realised it wasn't anger at her she had heard in Sylia's voice, but self-loathing for sacrificing someone else in her vendetta with Genom. Sylia had feared that she had become the very thing that she had fought. Sylia looked at her with tearful eyes, "How could you let all of us think you were dead?"
"It wasn't easy."
"'It wasn't easy?'" Sylia screamed with outrage. "Do you know how many nights I woke up screaming your name, thinking 'what if I had done something different'? Maybe sent Linna in or gone in myself or pushed your training hard. Made your suit stronger, more armored."
Nene snapped back at her, the years of anger and frustration boiling up to the surface. "What makes you think that it was easy for me? I've had to live a lie, become someone else. Leave the country. I lost everything that ever mattered to me. I couldn't come home to bury my parents. It hurt to know that you all were alive, and to have to watch from the shadows and not share in your successes." Her voice broke. "I lost it all. I lost my life, my friends, my family..." Her rage guttered and died to be replaced by the old pain and regret. "I lost Mackie..."
She looked up at her old teacher when she felt Sylia touch her shoulder. Her tears were mirrored in those eyes. "It hasn't been easy for you, has it?" Sylia asked as she helped Nene up.
"No, it hasn't," Nene sniffed and wiped her eyes before looking back at the older woman. "Friends?"
"Friends," Sylia agreed and pulled the smaller woman into a hug. "Now go get cleaned up and we'll talk over breakfast. Okay?"
"Okay."
Nene stepped out of the bath and pulled on a robe reluctantly. Baths were rare off of Earth and it was the one creature comfort she had missed most. Her clothes were a wash she noted, only the jacket was salvageable and even then only marginally. She walked out into the pool area and sat down across from Sylia. She poured a glass of orange juice and leaned back in her seat.
"I know there are a lot of questions that you want to ask. Let me tell you what happened and some of this huge mess I'm entangled in." Nene went on to explain briefly what had happened and what she had become- leaving out only her current job. She talked of a secret war that had gone on since before recorded history- of a race who could not die unless you removed their head- of the legend of a meeting where those few left would gather for the final fight- and of a prize of power for the last one remaining.
She saw Sylia look nervously at the saber. "It was a gift from my teacher, Warren of Bath," she explained as she checked it for damage and sheathed it, "made in the sixteen-hundreds by a Spanish master- the greatest work that he had ever made. Warren gave it to me just before he died."
Sylia watcher her handle the sword with a grace and comfort that only came over time. Her own lessons in swordsmanship told her that Nene was quite at home holding it. The calluses on her hands were molded to fit the handle like no other person's. She was, upon reflection, quite a different person from the Nene that Sylia had lost years ago. Some of the other things that Nene had told her were equally unbelievable.
"You're Dr. Anastatic Petrovic? The lecturer on Nano-programming and engineering at Tranquillity University." She had almost every one of Petrovic's papers.
"Da," Nene replied in her best Lunar/Russian accent and a short mock bow.
"Sis, are you awake? How's Nene?" came the call from the doorway just before Mackie came it. Nene rose with a smile and greeted him.
"I'm fine Mackie, care for some breakfast?" She motioned to a seat.
"Shit, Nene, I knew what you told me; but I didn't really believe it was possible till now." Sylia's quick wit caught the inference and the almost conversational tone. She angrily locked eyes with her younger brother.
Nene broke her rage before it could explode with a gentle explanation. "I asked him not to tell anyone that I was alive."
Sylia looked as Mackie and took a deep breath before she could ask him the question on her lips. "How long have you known?"
He hesitated a moment before replying. "Ten years or so, ever since I went to Luna for the Lunar Symposium on Physics in '45."
"You met her at the conference."
Nene answered for Mackie with a smile and a shake of her head. "No, he saw me in a play I was starring in." She looked shyly at Sylia, who couldn't believe it. Nene had been the shy introvert when she was a Knight Saber.
"What play was it?" she heard herself ask.
Luna: Tranquillity Bay Colony, March 2045
"Cyrano de Bergarac? Are you serious, Mackie? That sounds dull."
Carlos Delgatto's question didn't divert Mackie as the young scientist dragged his friend into the theater. Mackie rolled his eyes at the ceiling. Dull- this from a man who deals with subatomic particles for a living. "Trust me Carlos. I was told the show is quite good. You'll like it. It's a great play."
Mackie pushed his friend into a seat. "Besides, if you didn't come, Helena McConnell would have taken the other seat, and you know what she's like." It was common knowledge that Dr. McConnell didn't care two wits for Mackie's marital status- she wanted him bad.
"Alright, but you owe me," his friend grumped back. Carlos liked McConnell, but she wouldn't give him the time of day.
Mackie took an instant liking to the show- the opening scene with Cyrano's insult contest always had him smiling. He was eight again, reading through his sister's library and using his mind to picture how the scenes appeared.
Then she stepped onto the stage and out of the mists of his past. He couldn't believe it, but he was certain that no one could be that perfect a duplicate. He spent the rest of the show in a state of shock till the last moments before the end. Then he rushed backstage to meet her.
She was standing with one of the show's producers, toasting him and celebrating the show's brilliant opening night. He walked up to her and gently touched her shoulder after she didn't turn at his call of her name.
"Nene." He looked in those brilliant green eyes and knew it was her.
"I am sorry, you seem to have me mistaken for someone else. I am Anastastia Petrovic," a short bow, "and you are?"
"Mackie Stingray, I'm here for the Symposium."
"Ah, yes, I have read some of your papers, Dr. Stingray. But I must be going now," she smiled as she turned and hurried away. I don't care who you say you are, he told himself, I know it's you Nene.
Mackie pulled the kitbashed cipherpick out of his pocket and inserted it into the slot. Amazing what you can make in a school electronics lab with what you can find out in the neighboring computer lab.
Seconds later the box beeped and he entered the residence of one Anastastia Petrovich, 17 year old grad student (according to the records he had pilfered) and the sole surviving member of the Petrovich family. Recent Lunar citizen and scholarship winner.
The room looked like that of any grad student; printouts piled high on the desk with textbooks for company and all manner of clutter scattered around the room. His search was precise and cautious- after all, he had trained under the best when he had been growing up. Sometimes, even the good guys have to do a little B&E, he reminded himself.
He was about to give up, and was pacing around the room when he found it. He had leaned against the wall beside her locker and something clicked. He looked at the arm outside the locker, and slowly placed the other inside. Then he pulled the clothes within to one side as he searched for some manner of catch.
It didn't take long to find and disarm the alarm and open the concealed door. What he found made him catch his breath in surprise and shock.
Anastatia, or Anna to her friends, stood on the stage and cued up the Holoprops one more time. This time only a 1/4 of the set was out of focus. She sighed with frustration and picked up her datapad to look over the control setup one more time.
"Try realigning the emitter len's controls to a tighter beam," a voice called from behind her.
"Ah yes, that seems to have done the trick. Thank you very much.... Dr. Stingray," she finished as she faced him.
"It's me, Nene. Mackie. You don't have to hide from me."
"I am not this Nene person that you think I am, Dr. Stingray." She turned away before her face could betray her. "I've never even been to Japan . I was born in..."
"... Paris, to Russian emigre parents. They were killed in '37 in a shuttle accident and you were turned over to a guardian till you turned 15 and applied for Lunar citizenship so that you could study here." He paused before continuing, "I pulled it from the campus computer system. A good story, but you missed one little fact that kept it from being perfect."
"And pray tell what is that?", she asked with a humoring expression.
"This." Mackie held up the pink hardsuit helmet. She looked from it to him. They both knew that the lie was over. The stage lights highlighted the fracture that ran from the front to back, and Mackie had seen the blood inside. He had seen the helmet in his nightmares for years. She sighed and looked up at him.
Anastatia Petrovich, seventeen-year-old grad student, scholarship winner and student actress, was gone. In her place stood Nene Romanova, Mackie's first love.
"Hello Mackie, Long time no see," she said with gallows humor. She sat down and patted the bench beside her. "Have a seat. We have to talk."
"How can you be alive?" he asked. " I watched the hit you took and saw the explosion engulf you. Nobody could survive that."
"An Immortal can, Mackie," she answered and told him about what she had become. Mackie listened only half believing what she told him- his thoughts were on other things.
"Sis is going to be glad to know that you're alive," he said as a smile spread across his face. "So will the others. I can't wait to-"
She cut him off with a curt slash of the hand. "Mackie, you can't tell them."
".... But Nene..."
"Not ever, Mackie. They saw me die that day and dead I am going to stay to them." She swallowed nervously before continuing. " It wasn't easy, but I had to leave and start over. You and the others went on about their lives; I can't just walk back into their lives and expect no questions. I can't go back now, despite what your wishes to the contrary."
"Why not!?" He stood and paced angrily before turning to face her. "Just tell me that, Nene.Why not? Do you know what we went through after that damned night? Sis pulled into a shell and I still have to fight to get her to come out and interact with others, and Priss --she crawled into a bottle for almost five years..."
"Do you think that last ten years were a cakewalk for me? That only you suffered?" She cut him off suddenly, a black rage on her face that he had never seen before. "What about me? I lost everything. My life, my job, everything I ever loved or cherished, friends, family..." she stopped and turned away from him, her shoulders heaving from the tears, "....you..." She turned around a looked at him, all the strength gone from her voice, "I'm thirty, Mackie, and still look seventeen or less. Don't you think people would notice that I didn't change?"
"Nene, we could've ...."
"What?" she asked, an ironic on her face. "Moved around every ten years or so? You, growing older till people think you are my father, then my grandfather while I stayed young? Me, wondering if I could handle watching you grow old an weak and waiting for you to die while I carry on. Forever. You, wondering if I will be killed some night by another Immortal eager for my Quickening? Me, worrying that you would be used by an Immortal as bait tobring me in, maybe even killed to hurt me?" She shook her head grimly, "No, Mackie. I loved... love you. I couldn't pay that price then, and I won't pay it now." She reached up and delicately touched his face, as if he was made of the most fragile glass, and finished in a husky whisper, "You mean too much to me. It just wasn't meant to be, my love."
Mackie stood there as she walked out off the stage and thought about what she had said, before walking out to the deceptively young woman that stood outside the theater, looking at the Earthrise overhead. He wrapped his arm around her and gently turned her around to face him. She was crying and he felt sorry for the misery that he had caused by his selfishness.
"I won't tell anyone, Nene, I promise," he told her as he handed her the helmet.
"Not even your wife?" she asked with a bittersweet smile.
"Not even her," he said, suddenly blushing. "Nene, it just sort of happ-" She stopped him with a touch of her finger to his lips, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him one last time.
"I understand, Mackie, really I do. I want you both to be happy, it's just..." She looked away before finishing, "I wish that it was me. Kind of petty isn't it?"
Mackie couldn't help but smile. "No, it's not."
She strolled down the hallway and gathered her gear into the helmet, and stopped at the doorway for a second.
"Goodbye, Mackie."
She never looked back as she walked out of his life again.
He wiped the tears from his eyes and had to force his throat to open enough to reply in a hushed whisper. "Goodbye, Nene-chan."
Back on Earth, Mackie looked at the moon from his window, as his wife wrapped her arms around his waist.
"You're kind of quiet tonight, Mackie. What are you thinking about?"
"A promise I made to a friend, dear."
Goodbye, Nene-chan, he said to the starlit night.
MegaTokyo, 13 August 2056
Mackie had left an hour ago to give a lecture, and left the two to talk things out. Sylia and Nene had used the morning to catch up on the years. They told each other about the changes and trials that they had gone through.
Sylia had sunk into a funk for a while over lunch, trying to think on how to approach the matter that was on her mind. Nene looked at her, reading some of the thoughts that were going on in her mind. Finally she put her fork down and confronted her.
"Okay, spit it out Sylia. You want to say something, but you think that I won't like what you have to say."
"You have to tell the others, Nene."
"I can't. You know that."
"No. The moment that you came back into my life all your reasons went out the window. Maybe Mackie can with live that lie," she was surprised at the amount of willpower her brother had used to keep that promise for over ten years, "but I won't."
"Why? All it will do is open old wounds that are best left closed and forgotten."
"Those 'old wounds' are just scabbed over, Nene, and it is time that you set about truly healing them. Priss took your death pretty hard..."
"I know, I sort of kicked her onto the short and narrow 15 years ago when she was in Paris."
Sylia arched an eyebrow but continued undaunted by the admission. "...and you need to tell Linna also-"
The wineglass snapped in Nene's hand. She never had that type of temper before, Sylia thought as she reached over to Nene's bleeding hand, "...to heal the wounds that you carry, before they consume you..."
Nene looked into the deep blue eyes of Sylia Stingray and saw the same wisdom that Warren had shown years ago... on one night when she was drunk and rambling... and he had said nearly the same thing... She sighed and wiped the blood off of her already healed hand, and nodded.
"Alright, I'll talk to Priss." Sylia looked at her patiently till she gave in. "....and Linna, too."
MegaTokyo, Hot Legs, 13 August 2056
Priss sat on a stool in the center of the empty stage, playing some of her favorite classics from the 20th and 21st centuries. Blues, Jazz, Metal, R&;B, Fusion, all types of music. The type of stuff that she rarely heard these days outside of her collection or in the few jam sessions that she had with her band. Helps me think and find my center, to fugue through the old masters, she thought as she paused to retune the old Gibson.
She owned Hot Legs and kept it running for the young up and comers to have a place to play. She hadn't played live here in years. She kept the memories of her gigs here alive by playing from time to time and telling herself what it was like. She started up a new song as she relaxed and tried to think of the next direction she would take her music in. She sighed irritably. It wasn't working this time. Not that she would ever need to cut another record; she had plenty socked away from the years as a Superstar on the rise. Not like the money that she had spent all over the place as a Knight Saber.
She looked at her watch. Sylia had said that someone would be by to see her soon. She had agreed to meet this old fan of hers as a favor, but itwas getting a little late and she had a flight to catch for New Orleans later in the night.And she wanted to visit Linna before..
Just then someone walked in and disturbed her train of thought. She was slim and had long hair tied off in a french braid, and wore shades into the darkened club. Priss turned and started to pack her gear and slid the Gibson reverently into it's case.
"'Bout time you got here," she said as she picked up the case and turned to look more closely at the approaching form- there was something... She continued, on her guatd. "Sylia said that you saw my early performances here. Which ones did you see?"
The mysterious woman spoke. "A lot of them, mostly between '31 and '36, just before I left Japan for a while. I saw your show on Luna too. There was one particular gig back in '33 that I liked." Priss could have sworn that she had heard that voice before.
"Which one?" she asked, more to get the younger woman to keep talking as she approached.
"December 21st, in the ADP building."
Priss turned cold at the date. She stalked towards her visitor with rapid steps. She hadn't performed that night, she was too busy trying to keep boomers from destroying the ADP building that night. The only people that had heard her sing that night were Knights. She tended to sing when she was fighting, Sylia had given her hell about it several times.
"Who the hell are you..." she asked as she ripped the shades off and looked into the smiling face of a woman who had been dead for 20 years.
She looked at Nene for long seconds before she could talk again. "I've finally gone around the bend, you can't be alive, I saw you die..."
Nene took her by the hand and walked her over to the bar and sat her down before replying. "It's me Priss. Nene. Alive and well," she said to the singer gently, still holding her hand. "Sylia found me out last night and she made me tell you tonight."
"How could you be alive and so..." she looked at Nene, "so young? You haven't aged a day."
"A secret I discovered that night on the roof of the Genom lab. I'm not like you Priss. I am Immortal. There have been others of my kind from the first days of pre-history. After we die for the first time, we come back to life. Then and each death after, always frozen in age after our first death." She pulled a saber from her coat. "Last night I took on a C-series boomer with nothing other than this. It beat me to within an inch of my life- in fact I died in the back of Sylia's car. Do you see a scratch on me?"
Priss sat and listened as Nene told of how she had adjusted to her new life and moved on with it. Then a figment of memory caused her to interrupt. "No, uh Nene, I have a question. Was it you that I talked to at Jim Morrison's grave back in '41?"
Nene smiled. "Yes, it was."
Paris, France, 24 December 2041
Priss stumbled into a kneeling position beside the grave, cradling the bottle of brandy with exaggerated care. She looked up at the sky, it was cloudy and stormy but no rain as yet. Perfect weather, she thought moodily as she sipped another shot from the bottle. She had finally scored a couple good hits in the Underground circuit of MegaTokyo, but hadn't made the big time. Genom had blacklisted her, and even the other labels wouldn't risk that much to make the kind of money that she could bring in. So, she had taken her bike and the money that she had left from her records and the Sabers and left Japan to see the world.
Somewhere along the line, she had discovered that she hated herself.
All the failures over the years had weighed on her shoulders like a plummeting shuttle. The roar of the crowd wasn't enough to keep the faces of her failures away anymore. She had tried liquor, but it didn't stop them from coming to her in dreams. She looked at the headstone. You figured it out, didn't you? she asked silently.
Fame wasn't worth the price that she had paid. Too many lives ruined. Sho's mother and Sho himself trapped in an orphanage where she couldn't get him. Sylvie and Anri, both losses to her own incompetence. Nene. All of them had died, while she-the failure, had lived on. Not after tonight though, she promised herself as she looked at the flash of lightning just outside the cemetary. It raged for long seconds as she drank heavily from the bottle. Too bad I won't go out with such a bang, she told herself as she pulled the blade out of her jacket and tried to muster the courage to push it home.
Nene staggered away from the body, trying to keep from collapsing from the aftereffects of the Quickening and her wounds. She had't really wanted to fight Owen, but he had to pay for killing Warren. She smiled at the thought that her mentor's life and power resided within her now. He would at least be remembered as a good and honest man for as long as she lived. She wished that she could have loved him like he had loved her.
She staggered into the graveyard, holding her stomach wound with one hand and her sword with the other. She had to get clear of the battle site before the police or others found the body. Doubtless Owen's Watcher was even now filling out his final report.
Now, Nene, don't be bitter about the little busy-bodies, she told herself as she staggered into the shadows of the graveyard looking for a good place to hole up and heal before getting the hell out of France for good. Too many Immortals like Paris, and one of them will be wanting the head of a five-year-old Immortal who had taken Owen Glaskill's head.An eight hundred year-old Immortal... What was I thinking when I called him out? She slid her saber into it's hidden shealth.
She stopped just short of a grave site to her left. Someone was there and she didn't want to be seen. She was about to move on when she recognized the woman lying by the grave mumbling drunkenly. It was Priss. She stopped and listened to her friend's drunken ramblings, saw the knife and acted instantly. Instincts and reactions developed over the last five years had her by her friend before she could stop herself. Priss brought the knife with shacking hands to her breast, and placed it over the heart.
"This time, I'll get it right for once." She told herself steeling herself against the pain.One more second and it will be all over... Just before she could plunge the knife home, someone grabbed her hand and applied pressure to her thumb to make her let go. It hit the ground with a noisy clatter and she fell awkwardly to the ground. Rough hands lifted her up and shook her.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Priss? Things getting too hard, so poor little Priss is going to end it." The hands let go and she fell to the ground roughly. "That's not the Priss I knew. Wake up and get on with your life, woman! You have talent. Use it."
Priss looked up groggily at her assailant, and cried in disbelief. Another face from her past failures had come back. Nene Romanova looked down at her angrily, and Priss couldn't take it anymore. She fell forward and grabbed her dead friend in a hug .
"I tried so hard, all those times, Nene. I tried to save you all. Sylvie, and Anri and ... you." Tears streamed from her eyes as she continued, "but I couldn't get it right. I always blew it." Nene knelt beside her and looked her in the eyes sternly.
"You didn't fail me, Priss. You couldn't have saved me. I was dead the minute the pulse blast punctured my suit," she raised a bloody hand to eyelevel, "and you know that Anri and Sylvie were doomed from the second Largo... Mason... manipulated them into escaping to freedom. You saved them by helping them stay free. Do you want to help us, Priss?" Priss nodded, too scared to speak as Nene continued, "Live. Get on with your life. Go home to Japan and find that man of yours and show those bastards that they can't keep everyone quiet and SUCCEED. Forgive yourself, most of all." Priss slumped as if a great weight had been lifted and Nene eased her to the ground to sleep it off. She wiped her hands on her jeans and put one to her sleeping friends face. "Live, Priss. All that I ask is that you don't give up on life..." She slipped into the mists without another word.
MegaTokyo, Hot Legs, 13 August 2056
"I had always thought that it was just a dream, or a vision, brought on by the booze", Priss told Nene as she poured herself an orange juice. She didn't drink as much now, trying to keep that monkey, as well as cigarettes, at a distance. When she had awakened that next morning in the graveyard, it was like having been reborn, and she knew that she wouldn't get a third chance. "You know that I wrote 'Fallen Angel' thinking about you."
"I kind of suspected that. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you then Priss. It's just that I died in front of you all and every Immortal that I know has told me that it wasn't good to try and go back to your old life afterward. Too much karmic baggage, so to speak." She stood and held out a hand, "Friends?" Priss took it and pulled her into a hug, then watched as Nene turned and made for the door.
"Nene?" she asked. The younger woman turned. "Don't take another 20 years to come and see me again." Nene smiled and nodded as she walked out the door.
Priss thought about how much her old friend had changed. She might be a young face, but her soul was centuries older than anyone Priss had ever seen. "Oh, I do understand, Nene. After all, who wants to live forever?"
Nene walked about six blocks from Hot Legs before she came to a stop at an acceptable vidphone. The camera was busted and the screen was spraypainted over with a variety of gang logos. She dialed the number and waited for the connection to be made.
"Joe's Place, what can we do for you?"
"I was wondering what a White Russian and a Virgin Mary would cost?" she asked casually for the benefit of any listeners.
"That will be 23.25 ma'am," came the reply just as smoothly.
"Thank you," she said and hung up. She checked her watch. Forty seconds total, definitely not enough for a trace from a random phone. Now to do some shopping for her job.
MegaTokyo, Spaceport Hilton, 13 August 2056
She walked into her hotel room, pushing the door closed behind with a kick. She had hit several different places; six clothes stores, a couple of electronic stores and at least two grocery stores. She put all the gear on her bed and started to separate them according to type. The gowns were of a particular synthetic fiber, and along with the eight kilos of sugar, the biggest part of her haul. The electronics and batteries were all small and easily carried.
She moved into the bathroom with the sugar and put it into the tub, filling it with hot scalding water afterwards to help the sugar dissolve. The gowns, batteries and electronics all went in also. Then she took her earrings off and clipped them to one of her rings before adding them to the witch's brew in the tub.
Triggered by the heat and fueled by the abundance of sugar in the water, the nanites set about constructing newer and more complex nanites as per the programing she had given them. In a few hours, those nanites would come online and start moving according to their own programming. The items she needed would be made within twelve hours. She checked her watch, and walked out of the bathroom. Pausing to grab her coat and phone, she walked out the door and headed outside.
Twenty minutes later, in a park picked at random, she pulled out the phone and slipped a specially designed chip into it. She dialed another number from memory and waited for the satphone to connect. The second that it connected, she started her countdown.
"Joe's Place"
"It's me; I will be ready to go in thirty-six hours," she told her contact quietly as she counted the seconds.
"Why the hell that long?" came the reply.
"I have some unfinished business that I need to settle before I can do the job." Ten seconds, she told herself as a frustrated growl came over the line.
"Thirty-six hours, and then you do the job as we planned, regardless of your 'business', understood?" The line went dead before she could reply.
She hammered the phone into the concrete edge of a nearby fountain.Why is it that I always wind up dealing with the rudest Watchers in the world, she asked herself as she watched the secure phone melt like ice in the summer sun. Times like this she missed Annabelle, her first Watcher, with a passion. She also regretted that she couldn't tell Sylia that she was finally going to finish the job on Project: Lazarus. Twenty years after it killed her the first time, she hope that it didn't do it again. Too many lives counted on it. The Game itself counted on her success, not to mention everyone in this city.
MegaTokyo, Tiny's Pool Hall, 13 August 2056.
Sylia walked in to the smoke filled bar/pool hall and felt suddenly like she had stepped back in time twenty years. Fargo was playing pool in the corner by himself, a bottle of beer on the small table nearby, still wearing the same nasty gray suit but with hair to match now. He looked up as she approached and a genuine smile appeared on his face.
"Long time no see! How is the best customer I ever had doing, now she's out of the big game?", he reached over and took a pull on the long neck. "I thought I saw the last of you back in, oh... '36 or '37."
"I heard that you had retired too, Fargo. Why are you still working the same dives that you did way back when?"
"Oh, mostly for nostalgia," he smiled broadly, "and to keep the hand in the pot, so to speak. I still do the odd job every now and then but mostly I'm retired and happily teaching economics in a nice little school on the good side of town. So, Doctor, what can I do for you tonight?"
"I need you to do some checking on a name, actually two names; and see what you get for the last twenty years. The subject is known to have spent time on Luna and in Paris, but don't limit yourself to where you look. The material is in there." she slid the envelop across the table and started to leave before turning to ask one last question: "Aren't you going to make a pass at me?" Fargo was the eternal tease in the old days and had always flirted with her.
"No, I learned my lesson a long time ago. You're too much woman for me."
He smiled. "I'm married and the wife is insanely jealous of me sharing my gifts with other women." The smile faded. "I will have what I can to you as soon as possible." With that Sylia walked out of the pool hall and vanished into the night.
Fargo pulled out the pictures and data that was included with them. He looked over the files for a time, pausing to sip his beer on occasion. Anastatia Petrovich and Nene Romanova were the names. The two pictures looked to be surprisingly similar but there was one difference. This Nene Romanova had to be at least forty now, and that would make Petrovich her daughter. Why did Stingray want to know about these two, he asked himself as he walked out of the bar and into the street to put his worker bees to the task. Ah, at least with Sylia each job was definitely going to be interesting.
MegaTokyo Net, 13 August 2056
Nene sat by the marker in the Net. It represented a marker placed on Luna. Annabelle Cooper, it read. She smiled at the holo image that stood beside it. Anna had been a good friend and her first Watcher. She had discovered Anna after leaving France. The young woman was determined to follow Nene no matter where she went. One day while they were still in quarantine she had spotted the girl's tattoo and waited until later to confront her. Over the years that followed, the two had become good friends and shared a lot. It had been nice to have someone that knew her secret and would keep it forever. Anna had been fearful of the other Watchers at first. There was a faction that liked to interact but they tended to get pounded pretty hard by the senior watchers, but Anna finally learned that being on Luna gave her a degree of immunity to that type of persecution. There weren't any other Watchers on Luna permenantly when Nene was there. Few had any desire to be either.
She thought of all the discussions and debates that they had on the Prize and the Gathering. It had been a good time, till Nene and her had been caught in a blowout. She tried hard to fix the leak before the air ran out, had given Anna the emergency airbottle and finally asphyxiated while hoping that her friend would survive till help could arrive.
It did, but not in time. She awoke to find that Anna had placed the bottle on her and quietly died. So that Nene could stay on Luna without any miraculous ressurection to be explained away.
She had been lucky, the doctors told her. They must have arrived within five minutes of the air running out. She knew otherwise. Anna, knowing that she was going to die for sure, had sacrificed herself to keep Nene's secret.
She hadn't figured out exactly who her new Watcher was, but she wasn't really looking either. One friend dying for her was enough. Soon. She punched out of the net- time to check her gear.
MegaTokyo, Shining Light Condoplex, 14 August 2056
Nene stopped nervously at the entrance. Why am I doing this to myself, she asked. Because you promised that you would, she replied. She closed her eyes and steeled herself for the coming confrontation. One part of her wanted this meeting more than anything that she could think of, while another hated the very thought of going into that apartment and seeing her best friend after twenty years. Especially considering what had happened in that time.
Nene was confused and terrified, more so than she had been since she had first become an Immortal. She could still remember the day, twenty years ago, when she first experienced Rebirth. It had been the most terrifying day of her life- until today.
The ruins of Genom Research Facility #3 13 August 2036
Nene sat up gasping with pain, only to discover that it was only a fading memory. She tried and was rewarded by a stab of real pain in her leg. She noticed as she tried to stay awake that she had a half meter long shard of steel sticking through her leg.
When the room finally quit spinning, she reached down with her eyes closed and in one swift motion pulled it out with the help of her hardsuit's enhanced strength. Her scream of pain rang off the metal beams and pipes above her, but the pain faded with astounding rapidity.
She took stock of her wounds, and was surprised to see that the terrible wound to her stomach was gone. There was a layer of dried blood where it should be and she could feel skin and burnt skinsuit through the front and rear of the suit. She pulled off the leg sheath to check the wound, worried that it no longer pained her. The last thing I need is to go into shock from blood loss, she told herself giddidily.
She wiped away the blood on her leg and was surprised to find that she had only a small puckering scar where the spike had been only minutes before. I must be seeing things...
She tried to stand in the suit and failed due to the immobile weight of it. She cued a diagnostic and waited for the battered suit to reply. What she got back was bad, even worse than she thought. The artificial musclature that made the suit so strong and mobile was for the most part shot beyond the capacity to be repaired, as was most of the communications systems. In fact, when the final tally came up, about the only things remaining functional to any degree were the laser, computer and multiprobe with a 60% margin of power remain at current system status. That was about half a day with the current system load. She would need to tear out what she didn't need if she expected to use the suit.
She popped the suit and started stripping armor plating, taking a good long look at the holes in the lower torso, and a slash that ran up the outer right leg. I shouldn't be alive, but who am I to complain? The myomers and exoskeletal systems of the legs and torso went next. She kept only enough power lines to ensure that she would be able to keep the remaining systems running. The right arm was already done for and the only reason that she hadn't had her arm crushed in it was that it had been almost completely torn free somewhere in the fall. That went into the growing pile of unsalvageable junk. The sheath systems were also done for, but most of them were based in the suit's armor anyway and she knew that she couldn't carry them.
Next came systems that she couldn't fix or wouldn't need. Radio was a wash; everyone of her circuits were fried and the countermeasure systems that she would have loved to use in the case of boomers also joined the pile of junk. Most of the computer was still sound, but she had her doubts on it remaining so. The laser and multiprobe were bundled together on the framework of the left arm's powerclaw and she packed the remaining useful powerpacks into the torso. The bad ones were put on the pile.
She donned the kitbashed suit and cued a revised system diagnostic. The arm and chest plate registered good for about 60 to 80 hours not including any use of the laser. That would eat power faster than anything else in the suit. Her helmet was added so that she could use the cracked inner display, and she looked it over before putting it on. There was a fracture in the top that covered over half the helmet and the outer face plate was half gone.
She fingered the corresponding gouges that ran above and below the shield and didn't want to think how close she had come to losing her head. She pulled up the suit's lowlight and turned to find her way out of the ruins of the research facility.
She sat down and looked at her autocompass entry, trying to make sense of them. The building's collapse had been as nearly complete as Sylia had wanted, and the old map was next to useless in the tangle of pipes, beams and fallen walls. The blast had been planned to tear the bottom out of the ground floors and let the entire building fall within itself. There were extensive sub-basement facilities and she was most likely several levels down for the surface.
It was then that it happened. A soft roar of silence that rubbed across her like a harsh summer wind and set her nerves tingling... She stood up and looked around, and discovered that she could sense a source to the mysterious sensation. She took a bearing and started to follow the feeling- only to have it suddenly cease. She sat down and rested trying to think on what she had just felt, when it happened again only closer this time. She ran toward it, knowing without knowledge that there would be an explanation in what it was and why she felt it.
She found the security door when close to the source of her feeling, and stopped short. The thing was huge and with no power available in the complex hard to open. She was about to try one of her probable routes when she thought that she had heard something else inside the room. A shout of pain. That settled it for her and she started pulling the door's locking system apart.
An hour and a half later, she inserted the tip of her multi-probe and prayed as it wriggled through the melange of wires and fibers. When the green light came up on her helmet display, she pushed power into the link and keyed in the unlock command. The lock hissed open. She cut power quickly, grabbed the door and pulled with all her strength. It was ten minutes before she had huffed and puffed the heavy blast door open enough to slip in. What she found was bad. The lab had been occupied during the blast. Evidently Sylia's sources had been wrong on that count, even if the rest of the facility was vacant. Almost everyone had been crushed with the collapse of the back wall. Another body was on an examining table with a good meter and a half of rebar impaled in his chest. It hadn't been a clean or quick death from the looks of it. Nene swallowed back the taste of bile and looked around some more, pausing by the body to check it. It was still warm. She must have heard this poor man's death screams. She eased the eyes shut and wrenched the bar from his chest and threw it aside then covered the body with a cloth.
Turning away from the man on the table and taking care of the bodies that she could reach in the rubble, she then looked over what she could find in,the lab system and their print outs. Most of it was way above her head and involved DNA sequencing studies of a test subject- presumably the poor man on the table- and how they could replicate his DNA in another subject. Why would you want to do that, she wondered as she leafed through the notes.
Suddenly she felt a surge- like being immersed in cold water- or a low current of electricity being sent theough her body- or like nothing she had ever experienced before. Nene was sure only of one thing- Behind me...
She turned just in time to see the dead man sit up on the table and look her way. She slid to the floor in a near faint as the man got off and held out his hand.
"Colin Waters at your service, my lady," he said with a broad smile and a courtly bow. She put out her hand and he kissed it gently. Nene could feel the blush crawling up from her neckline.
"Nene Romanova", she stammered. "Glad to meet you, Colin. By the way, can you tell me what the hell is going on? Like why everyone isn't staying dead anymore?"
Colin laughed heartily and shook his head merrily before sitting down beside her.
"Not everyone my girl, just you and I. You see, Nene, we are special." He leaned in close and gave her a conspirator's wink as he paused for dramatic effect. "We're Immortals." Nene's eyebrows shot up in utter confusion, at which Colin laughed again. "I will explain while we look for something to eat. Okay? I'm famished and I sure you are too."
Nene's stomach growled at the mention of food and she nodded as they stood to look for something to eat. Colin continued as he pulled open cabinets and drawers in all the offices adjoining the central examining room. "What you felt when I revived is The Quickening. It is the very life force of an Immortal and all those that he has slain..." It seemed like hours passed as Colin told her of the Game, the Immortals, the Quickening, the sanctuary of Holy Ground and the Gathering. Finally he put down the instant ramen that he had been eating and looked at her. "You are taking this quite well, Nene."
She shook her head. "No, I'm not taking this well at all. But till I can come up with another explanation it will have to do." A thought occurred to her. "Are you planning to take my head when we get out of here, Colin?"
Colin looked genuinely shocked. "Goodness no, girl. I owe you my life and if I had the talent for it I would take you under my wing and teach you myself. Instead, I'll recommend you to a friend of mine by the name of Warren Bath." Better him than Connor, Colin thought to himself. The Highlander always had a weakness for redheads. "But for now, we need to concentrate on finding a way out of here, yes?"
Nene looked up from the cut in the door; with only half a visor she tended to go blind for a time after the cut until her eyes healed enough to regain vision. Luckily, Colin had remembered an elevator that he had been brought down when he was first capture by Genom boomers. He had explained the whole purpose behind Project: Lazarus and it made her angry to think of the lengths that someone would go to to cheat death. But then, who am I to criticise, she thought.
She blinked and her vision swam back into focus. The hole was big enough for them both to enter now and she led the way in looking carefully for dangers. The shaft was filled with debris but seem on the whole to still be stable. She looked at Colin and he nodded grimly. It would be a long climb, the sign on the elevator door refered to this as sub-basement 14. She did a mental count. Twenty-plus stories is quite a fall.
They took their time working upwards, cautious of possible dangers. They didn't want to risk falling again, it might bring the entire tunnel down on them and neither like the idea of reviving in the not so kind hands of Genom sometime in the future. They were halfway up when it happened. A beam shifted, swatting Colin and her off it and into the middle of the shaft. Colin plummeted like a rock and she only barely caught herself on a jutting beam for a second before falling to the bottom. Her landing cracked ribs but slowed her fall. She landed clumsily, the remains of her hardsuit were unbalanced and unwieldy, and pulled herself to her feet.
"Colin, are you..." she started as she looked for him. What she saw was worse than anything she had ever seen. The beam had fallen on top of the Englishman and decaptiated him. His body still twitched out blood to a head that was no longer there.
Suddenly her attention was diverted from the body. The feeling- what Colin had called the Quickening- was all around her and rising to levels that she had never dreamt of. It was a wild and furious thing that called to her very being. She turned to face the storm of energy that rose from Colin and cried out as it surged to envelop her.
Whether she was in agony or ecstasy, she was never really sure, but the fury that she had become a part of had both in it. She was only dimly aware of the bolts of power that arced from her body, striking the twisted metal around her and setting of crescendoes of sparks, or the miniature tornado which whipped up the depris around her and set it spinning through the air. She was washed over with the feeling of years passing by, even though only seconds passed; scenes of faraway times and places rushed through her mind-
...Colin in a breastplate and a pike
fighting in a battle...
...Colin sparring with another man for the fun of it...
...the soft kiss of a beloved woman..
.
-all this and more than she could hope to remember passed through her. Lifetimes of experiences; loves, rages, hopes, and everything that had been the man Colin Waters passed by her eyes, brushed her fingertips, entered her mind.
Then it was gone, stored deep within her, never to be far from her thoughts again. She collapsed to the ground, as the lightning subsided and the fires and dust settled around her. One thought remained of Colin's life, as she pushed herself off the ground.
"In the end, there can be Only One," she said as his gentle voice echoed within her, and tears ran down her face. "Now I understand, Colin." Only it was too late to share it with him.
Nene looked down the slope of the hill overlooking the ruins, and wiped a tear away. Colin lay buried at the bottom of the shaft in a rough grave of concrete and steel. She watched as the laser and power cells she had left behind went critical with a loud roar, and the shaft fell in on that grave.
Now, Genom will have to find another test subject, she whispered to the man's spirit. She put her helmet, one last symbol of her past life, under her arm and walked away. She had much to do and might as well get on about it. Warren Bath had a studio in MegaTokyo's Starlight district. She needed to tell him that Japan was no longer safe for Immortals and that Colin Waters was no more.
MegaTokyo, Shining Light Condoplex, 14 August 2056
She stepped out of the elevator and paused, bringing thoughts of Colin to her mind. The Englishman's legacy to her had been a center and balancing element that had allowed her to go on over the years when she thought it would be impossible to do so.
Give me a little of your calm, she asked his shade deep within her. I have one last thing to before I can let go of my old life. She smiled as the ghost of his laughter passed through her, and she felt her center strengthen.
She stopped at the door and keyed in the combination that Mackie had given her. She pushed the door open and walked in, trying to keep the bitter thoughts out of her mind. It was hard, but she had dealt with them for almost twenty years. Mackie smiled as she walked in.
"She's on the terrace. I told her that an old friend was coming by for brunch and that you would like to see her." Nene nodded in response, she was too busy fighting her inner demons to think of a verbal answer. Mackie took her through the living room and into the terrace outside.
Linna Yazaki Stingray looked up from her notes and smiled at her husband as he brought her out to the table. She doesn't see me, Nene realized, all she sees someone with HER HUSBAND. Nene crushed the jealousy and pushed it into a corner of her mind. Her fists balled with the effort and she willed herself into a more relaxed posture as Linna looked at her for the first time. The older woman paled and her hands shook.
"Nene?" Tears rose to her eyes. She rushed over to the Immortal and twirled her around in a tight hug. Her best friend was glad that she was alive, and she couldn't even force herself to return the embrace. Selfloathing rose up and burned in the pit of her stomach.
"God, I missed you so much, Nene-chan. It seemed that when you died, a part of all of us passed on too." Linna finally released her and looked at her closely. Taking in all the small details of her appearance, and shocked by the agelessness of her. "How?" Linna asked. She knows, thought Nene. She was always able to read me like an open book.
"I .... didn't stay dead, Linna." Forgive her, whispered Colin and Warren in the still center of her soul. "There is a lot that I need to tell you." She sat down and looked at her friend- life had been kind to her. She went on a told the story of her rebirth and the Immortals one last time.
She watched as her best friend cried at the death of Anna and Colin and could see the worry and understanding as she told her story.
Then they just talked, about nothing in particular over the meal. Sylia was right, she told herself as she stood up and made ready to leave. It was a wound that needed to be healed, before it consumed me. Just as she opened the door to leave, a small red bundle of speed sprinted by her only to be caught and held up high by Linna.
"Hey, is that anyway to greet a guest, little girl?" Linna put a four-year-old girl on the floor. "Now say hello to your Aunt Nene before she leaves." The red haired girl bowed quickly.
"Hello. My name is Nene too. Mama said she named me after her bestest friend. Are you bestest friends with mama?"
Nene knelt and hugged the girl, tears streaming from her eyes as she looked at Linna. In that instant, her remaining vestiges of anger and jeralousy dissolved. "Yes, dearie, we're bestest friends for ever and ever." Any doubt as to why she was doing this was removed as she held the small child. It was for the future.
Linna felt Mackie wrap his arms around her as she watched Nene climb into a cab and drive away. She smiled as he kissed her on the neck. "I always knew she was alive, especially after the conference on Luna." Mackie frowned. "How could you have known?"
Linna smiled slightly. "You stopped having the nightmares." The smile vanished as she shifted in his embrace. "But why is she here, Mackie? There was something that wasn't right about what she did..."
"Like?" He had learned to trust her hunches as much as the data he dealt with on a regular basis. He knew science, she had learned about people.
"Like she was setting her affairs in order, saying her good-byes," she turned to look at her husband, "like she knew she was going to die and didn't want to leave anything unresolved. She's involved in something, Mackie, and we have to find out what it is before she get herself killed."
"Sis had some of the same thoughts as you. She's been looking and asking around. Priss told Sis the same sort of thing too. She said she was staying in town till we could figure out what is going on."
"Now what do we do?"
"We wait, Linna, and hope that Sis can figure it all out before it is too late."
Before Nene dies again, they both added silently.
Nene watched as the Condoplex retreated from sight, and then sat back on the seat with a long sigh. She hadn't intended to reveal herself, but she couldn't get over the feeling that she had done it unintentionaly so as find a way to end things on a positive note. Warren had always said that you had to be ready to face death with all your regrets behind you to truly stand a chance of winning. She could see the wisdom of those words now.
She gathered the gear from the hotel and started her work. She had less than thirty-six hours to be in position and she had to get there with the best possible speed.
MegaTokyo, Space Port Hilton, 14 August 2056
Sylia slipped the passkey in her jacket before moving into the room with swift sure movements, checking for all manner of devices. Nene had been her best student among the Knights when it came to countermeasures. The few that she found were easily eliminated.
She looked through the trash, pulling the receipts and noting what was bought. Except for the sugar, it was just about what any tourist would buy. She moved on the the bathroom and was stopped short by what she had found.
The entire bathtub was covered by a thick viscous gray paste that she recognized from long experience. Inert Nanotechnology. Whatever she built, it and Nene are long gone. Sylia had this sinking feeling that thing were rapidly getting out of hand, and that someone would have to end this soon.
She stayed long enough to take a large core sample and the reciepts. She pulled the phone up as she drove away.
"Mackie, tell the others to meet me in the office in about 3 hours, okay?
I need to talk to them after I check some things out. I'll need your help there also." This looked to be getting out of hand and she was sure that Nene was into it up to her neck.
The Genom Tower, MegaTokyo. 15 August, 2056
Nene sprayed a wide circle on the darkened blast door and waited as the dissemblers activated and went to work. She checked the suit's chronometer. It was just after midnight and she was already a little behind the timeframe that the others had set her. Luckily for her, she had been conservative in her estimates from early on in the planning stage. The sprayed area of the door turned a dull grey as the nanites did their chore.
She waited for a few minutes past the five-minute active lifespan of the nanites. After she was sure they were dead, she kicked the grey section hard. The metal crumpled and then fell to the floor as the brittle metal broke apart. She edged through the hole, taking care to avoid the edges. I know the nanites ought to be dead, but I don't want them eating my suit and me if I'm wrong. From here on in, she reminded herself as she boosted the suit's sensors to maximum gain, she was only going to be going deeper into the belly of the beast.
Sylia's Apartment, MegaTokyo. 15 August, 2056
Mackie looked up from the display and turned to face his sister. He gratefully accepted the offered cup of coffee and took a long sip. Sylia waited patiently as he put the mug down and keyed up a section of the display.
"This is possibly the most interesting sample I have ever seen. The culture is composed of several dozen discrete types of nanites. There are assemblers, collectors, disassemblers, and several different types of manufacturers. As well as this little stranger." He pointed to another nanite that he had highlighted. "I can't help but think that I have seen or heard of something like this before, but I can't for the life of me remember where." Sylia looked closely at it sharing the same gut instinct as her brother.
"It could be an Architect," she said refering to the theoretical nanite that would allow for coordinating different types of nanites. Extremely sophisticated, such an overseer/coordinator type had eluded all attempts to feasibly design to date. The biggest problem was coordinating several different architects to work together as a whole. "What is the final product supposed to be?"
"I'm not sure, but the portion that you brought back built this when I activated it." The screen switched over to a show a section of arm and shoulder. "The cloth is a synthetic variant that is quite a bit better then kevlar, and the electronics that I added to the mix were broken down and incorporated them into the weave. I've seen this circuit and emitter array before, I know it."
Sylia stiffened. "You have, Mackie. It's an upgraded version of the stealth field that we put into Nene's old suit. Why would she create a stealth suit? What is she up to?"
Her train of thought was interrupted by the trilling of her phone. She stepped aside and talked for several minutes before hanging up and turning back to her brother. When she finally signed off, Mackie could tell that she was shaken by what she had heard. He walked up to her as she looked out the window at the sunset.
"That was Fargo. One of his associates had a meeting with Nene. She payed the man over 500 million yen for various plans and schematics."
Mackie's mouth went dry, and it was several seconds before he could ask the question that troubled him. "Where?"
She turned and looked at him. "The MegaTokyo Tower. She's going after Quincy. We've got to stop her, Mackie, before she ruins everything that we have done over the last twenty years."
The Genom Tower, MegaTokyo. 15 August, 2056
Nene sighted in on the back of the boomer's skull and waited till it had turned and started back down the corridor before firing the compressed air weapon mounted on her shoulder. The dart hit the base of the skull and immediately started burrowing into the boomer's neural circuitry. In seconds the entire synthetic nervous system siezed up. The dart also uploaded a small bundle of code that altered the interface with the OMS and told the control systems that it was still on patrol.
She pulled the boomer into the shadows and set the suit's scavenging systems to work. Pseudo-metal probes slid into the boomer's inert form. Muscles and servos writhed and twisted as the nanites took control, reforming portions of the boomer and positioning them over the skin suit.
Long minutes passed as she scavenged the boomer, and she concentrated on the suit's display. Her skin tingled as the heat build up grew. The scavengers were efficient, but she had to cut corners to make the suit work on the short notice that she had been given. This meant their work was very heat intensive, and she had not been able to design an efficient heat sink system that would be small enough.
Finally the process was complete, and she took a deep breath and stood in a new hardsuit. The myomer and armor were a comfortable weight and the ion cannon was fully active on her left arm. She flexed her right arm and was rewarded by a comforting `snick' as the case hardened blade locked into place.
She retracted the blade and powered up the suit's stealth systems. The sweat ran down her face as she pulled the cover off the air duct and entered. The healing tingle of her body repairing the burns intensified as she keyed up the schematics and mentally plotted her course. She stopped by a communication trunk and extended a probe line into it. Tense minutes passed as she hacked her way into the computer system. Several layers of intrusion countermeasures later, she set the flags in place and then uploaded the special program that she had been given by her allies.
The program was very specific, it had taken almost six months to recode to her specific tasks. It spread out and worked its way into the background systems. She watched as it shimmered and then vanished. It would work to keep the active security systems thinking no-one was there as long as she didn't get too overt in her actions.
Sylia's Apartment , MegaTokyo. 15 August, 2056
Priss and Linna listened intently as Sylia related all the information that she had found and her ideas. Her investigation had been thorough and she plotted the path of Nene's life after she had become an immortal. Fargo's sources had been very fast and effient in the last day and a half, and she had learned a great deal. Then she started to tell them about the hotel room and the suit that had been constructed. Priss stood and looked out the widow at the setting sun.
"You know, none of this would have happened if we had killed the old bastard in '33."
"You can't use his methods, Priss," Sylia said quietly. They had gone through this argument many times over the years. Priss locked eyes with her for long seconds before finally relenting.
"I hate it when you're right." Priss growled as she sat down.
Linna stirred in her husband's arms. "There are a couple things that we have to remember. Physically she's twenty years younger than any of us, and has something that we don't. A head start and a hardsuit." Linna stopped and looked at her sister-in-law. She was smiling quietly.
"You have hardsuits," Priss cut in breathlessly. Sylia nodded as she cued the display. A series of very familiar suits came up. She started the second part of her briefing as the displays flashed up particulars.
"Several years ago, I started using some of my father's ideas along with a few of my own. I was developing a new form of DNI, Direct Neural Interfaces, that would not become imprinted or require rewiring the user's entire nervous system. I used the biological profiles that I had on us as a base template. A hardsuit seemed to be the best possible testbed for the system."
"Oh, come on, Sylia," Priss laughed. "Admit why you really rebuilt them- you couldn't stand destroying such cool tech."
Sylia looked up to her friends before continuing. "I never intended for them to be used in combat. I could use all your help, but I wouldn't presume to-"
Priss and Linna smiled as Mackie cut her off. "Sis, you know that we wouldn't leave you in a crunch. Let's get Nene out of there before she gets in more trouble."
The Genom Tower, MegaTokyo. 15 August, 2056
Nene called up the taps into the security system. The penthouse was empty except for her target and his bodyguards. She sprayed the last of her disassemblers on the duct panel at her feet, and deployed a grapple line as she waited to the nanites to go inert. It had taken almost twenty hours to get this far and she had disposed of no less than twenty boomers in that time. Not bad for the weakest Knight Saber, she thought to herself as she readied herself for the coming battle.
She took inventory and jumped onto the effected spot. Her increased weight and gravity did the rest. She dropped through the airduct like a rock, and started firing as soon as she cleared the ceiling. The darts flew fast and furious towards the boomers. She detached the grapple and landed on the floor with her saber fully extended. The displays fed her data as she turned to face the two charging boomers.
She was ready to meet the first's attack when an ion blast to the back from its partner felled it. She smiled; the traitor virus was more effective than she had hoped. Using her saber to pop the access port open, she extended a probe into the lock's control system and set the suit's computer to breaking the security while she instructed the main systems that the boomers' security alert was a malfunction. As the two systems competed, she waited covered in a cold sweat. Finally the suit's computer won the battle and the blast doors hissed open.
She and her boomer took covering positions as they moved into the bedroom, as the doors locked in place. The suit's display showed her target's position as being right in front of her, but all she saw was an empty room.
How, she started as she looked around the room. A suspicion started to creep into her thoughts as she looked over the room again. No, she thought as she desparetly tried to think of any possible mistake she could have made. There was nothing that she could see as a mistake. Then she heard them behind her and she turned as a chill ran up her spine. "He's gone, Nene," she heard a voice- through the familiar distortion of a hardsuit speaker- say as she looked into the foyer. The boomer turned to follow her gaze. The long pent up frustration and her anger over this new betrayal threatened to wear away her control.
"You shouldn't have done this," she said to the two hardsuited women. "You don't understand what's going on here. You're not part of this."
Linna and Priss took covering positions on the other side of the room as Nene and the boomer stepped out of the bedroom. Although she couldn't see their faces she knew that it was them; the suits' color schemes were the same even if they were newer and of a different styling.
"You can't do what you were planning, Nene," Linna said quietly. "We don't kill in cold blood. I can't let you take that step."
"You don't understand the situation. It's either Quincy or us," she yelled angrily. How could they do this, she asked herself, this isn't their affair. "Get out of my way, or I'll go through you."
"You can try, Nene," Priss growled.
Nene didn't reply; her rage washed away the cold control that she had been maintaining. She moved. The ion cannon spat out a blast and Linna rolled out of the way. Nene's blood howled with her uncontrollable rage as she charged her old teammate and friend.
As she rolled out of the way, Linna lost sight of Nene's bizarre suit. The chameleon field, she told herself. Nene's gotten a lot more aggressive. The dancer continued her roll and finished up with a backflip that barely got her out of the way of another ion blast.
As Linna landed, she scanned the room for an indication of her opponent. The ion blasts had burned through room's paneling and there was smoke from the burning insulation underneath. She stepped backwards into the smoke and looked for a sign of movement that would indicate her foe's approach. Her suit's active sensors were next to useless against the chameleon field; she would just have to wait and use her own eyes.
The smoke wavered and moved with no apparent cause. Linna fired the suit's lasers. At almost the same instant, she was hurled backwards by an ion blast. She staggered, only barely able to keep her balance. There was a shimmer and then Nene appeared. Sylia had been right- the suit couldn't sustain the field in direct combat.
Nene growled as the shimmer of the chameleon field failed and pushed the pain of her burning skin out of her mind. The suit struggled to repair itself and disperse the heat from the lasers. Linna tried to fire another blast at her, but Nene knocked her outstretched arm out of the way and snapped off a backhanded slash at her. Linna blocked the attack with her arm and stepped back in surprise.
Linna stepped back as she tried to get an idea of how to face this Nene that
she didn't know. She was at a disadvantage in several ways. She hadn't done any real fighting in years, and Nene had apparently gotten a lot more experienced- not to mention the fact that Nene fought with a near beserker rage almost impossible to behold. What happened to you, Nene-chan? How could you have changed so? She backflipped into the bedroom away from a slash and dropped into a crouch, setting herself up for one last desperate attack.
Nene stepped into the bedroom after Linna, watched with a calculating eye as the dancer flipped backwards and crouched. Here it comes, she told herself as she braced herself for the attack. The ribbon-cutters deployed and flashed out with incredible speed. You haven't changed a bit, Nene thought derisively. She had seen this attack many times before and had learned a counter from their battle with the DD battlemover.
Nene caught the ribbons with her suit's power claw. She held on tight and pulled her foe off balance. Using her suit's superior strength, she slung the hardsuit hard into a convient column before hauling Linna in by the ribbon-cutters.
Nene grabbed her by the neck and lifted the suit high up, blocking a kick to the head as she did so. The pleading scream of terror from the depths of her soul at what she was about to do was drowned by the unbearable howling in her head. Linna looked on helplessly as Nene's blade rushed up and pierced the front of her suit, continuing almost unhindered all the way through.
"I'm getting too old for this shit," Priss growled through gritted teeth as she blocked a punch. The boomer dodged the follow up kick with distressing ease. Twenty years of program advances had made the boomer's instincts a lot better in combat, not to mention the fact that she hadn't been in the game for just as long.
She slapped a shaped charge into her palm and ducked under it's punch. The charge clamped down on the boomer's belly plate. She continue moving forward and triggered her jump jets just as she cleared the boomer. She landed on the other side of the cavernous room as the charge went off with a thunderous boom that shattered all the glass in the room. She looked at the boomer; the blast had nearly cut it in half.
"Linna, I'm clear," she called as she ran into the bedroom. "How are things going on your- end..." What she saw stopped her short in shock. The room was empty except for a large pool of darkening blood. Panic surged up. "Linna!!!"
Somewhere in MegaTokyo, 16 August 2056
Linna sat up with a gasp. The last she remembered was the rasping of Nene's blade as it rubbed across her ribs and pushed through her chest. That chest throbbed horribly and burned with every breath, but someone had treated her injuries and bandaged her ribs. A bottle of blood plasma hung beside her bed.
"Awake at last, I see," she turned to look over at the direction that the voice had come from. Nene. The redhead was sitting close by, and Linna was shocked at the burns that covered the Immortal's body. She had also been crying.
Nene smiled bitterly. "The suit isn't terribly efficient at heat management and your last couple blasts weren't any help. I had to take some shortcuts to meet my deadlines. Lucky for you that I set up this base station in case I had to bring someone back for care." Her eyes clouded. "Sorry about the wound."
Anger flared in Linna's wounded breast. "Why, Nene? What possessed you to do it? You've changed. The Nene I knew wouldn't have ever thought of killing a man in cold blood, even one such as Quincy." The Nene I knew wouldn't have run me through with a polycarbon blade...
Nene turned away as she stood up and muttered something inaudible. "What?" Linna asked her.
"I said that he didn't give us much of a choice." Linna could hear the frustration in her voice. "Of all our options, this was the least destructive."
Linna's eyebrows arched. "Us? Who else is involved in this insanity? What do you mean by least destructive?"
Nene sat down with a frustrated growl. "How about dropping two thousand tons of nickel-alloy steel on the Tower from orbit? They had a nice rock picked out in the belt for just such a purpose. Or there was the little virus that they dug up that had somewhere around a ninety percent fatality rate. Maybe a couple tons of shredded ceramic fibers from orbit, that would reduce the city to a pile of gravel." Linna shivered at the pictures that her mind conjured of the devastation. Nene continued relentlessly, "How about parking a couple of good old fashioned nukes at the Tower's front gate? Say, somewhere in the neighborhood of about two or three hundred megatons. That ought to do the job nicely. I convinced them I could do it with nowhere near as much collateral damage."
Linna was even more confused. "But why, Nene?"
Nene looked her directly in the eyes. "He's been hunting us, Linna. Project Lazarus was to discover what made immortals tick. Every immortal that we have talked to has agreed that Quincy can't be allowed to succeed." She scratched her face absentmindedly; in the minutes that had passed it had visibly healed. Almost completely. "He's too powerful already. Could you imagine what he would be like if he had a shot at The Prize? Boomers hunting down other immortals and killing them in his presence. Do you really think that he would even give lip service to the rules of the Game? We'd go out with a bang in a short span of years, and then mankind would never be out from under the thumb of Genom."
Linna gasped. "Nene, you can't seriously think that he could become immortal through this project of his?"
"No, ...Not really, but you have to realize that Immortals have existed for centuries without revealing themselves to mankind at large. Could realize what would happen if someone could come out and prove beyond a doubt that we exist. Witch-hunts beyond anything else in history."
"Couldn't they do that right now? I mean from what you have been telling me that they have been studying immortals for almost two decades. They have all the proof that they need."
Nene merely smiled and held up a data cartridge. "Had. The second part of my mission was to eliminate all evidence. There are a couple hardcopies left out there somewhere, but I left enough shred and destroy orders in the boomers in the tower to ensure that by now this is the only copy left in existence." She crushed it in her hands. "Now, there are none left."
"What are your plans now?" Linna asked.
Nene told her.
Sylia's Apartment, MegaTokyo. 16 August, 2056
Mackie looked at the resting man and pushed down a thread of anger. Quincy slept as peacefully as he had since they had snatched him from the Tower. He marvelled that the man, as he considered the depths of subterfuge and manipulation that he was capable of. He had killed Mackie's father through Mason. And they were protecting him from the woman that he had first loved. Possibly with our lives, he added as he looked at the remains of Linna's torso plate. He turned at the light touch on his shoulder. Sylia took his hand and walked him back into living room.
"She's alive, Mackie. Nene would have left her behind otherwise."
"We can't be sure of that, Sylia. She's changed. Priss said she went berserk when they confronted her. Does that sound like the Nene that we knew all those years ago?"
"Mackie, we don't know the whole story."
He sighed and nodded. "Any news?"
"Not yet, but I expect to hear from her at anytime now."
"What do we do then, Sis?" He couldn't hide the frustration and anger from the woman that raised him as a child. She started to say something when her terminal beeped. She typed in a command and read the display as the letter was delivered. She looked up at Mackie with a smile.
"Linna is alive. Nene sent a message asking for a meeting to explain her side. We are to bring Quincy, and all us are to come. No hardsuits." "Are we going to do it?"
"We'll do everything she could ask, except for handing Quincy over. I won't let her kill him."
Priss slapped the barrel back and caught the bullet as it was ejected. She popped in another clip and racketed the next round in. She slid the gun back into its holster and patted it and the spare clips in her jacket to make sure they were secure. She was surprised at the ease with which she had slipped back into her old habits. She looked up as the Stingrays walked into the room, and fell in behind them as Sylia signalled her. Time for action.
The Kanto Memorial Park, 16 August 2056
The threesome stood waiting with a very reluctant Quincy. He leaned on his cane and waited with them only with the assurance that Sylia wouldn't allow any harm to come to him.
They watched as the autocab pulled up and stopped. Two figures got out and walked into the other side of the clearing. One stopped the other just short of the clearing.
"Send Quincy into the clearing." Nene called to them as she stepped forward. Sylia started to reply but was cut off as Quincy gasped. She watched as he scrutinized the red head as she walked into the clearing with Linna. Nene looked at Quincy, suddenly surprised, then deadly grim. So he is, she thought as she pushed Linna towards Mackie and pulled her saber out from under her coat.
"I am Nene Romanova," she told him as the weapon came clear. It had the sound of a ritual greeting to Sylia. "How long have you known?"
Quincy smiled as he twisted his cane and pulled the head off to reveal a concealed blade. "I suffered a massive heart attack two weeks ago, and when I awoke I knew. I had read all the briefs from Project Lazarus. It helped to explain why I never had any children and couldn't engram my mind into another body."
Nene smiled ferally as she advanced, and Quincy had a similar look on his face. They circled the clearing, Quincy moving with surprising grace and agility. Sylia moved to stop them, but was stopped by Linna. The younger woman shook her head grimly.
"This isn't about us, Sylia.", She sighed bitterly, "It's about their damned game." All they could do was watch and wait.
Nene met the slash with her saber and a smile. She pushed the bloodlust back and concentrated on the rhythm of the older man's swordplay. She fell into the tempo and matched it. Quincy smiled over the blade. "I take it that this is how you fools expect this... Game should be played?", he asked her as she blocked his lunge. "And this Prize... is it all true?"
"It is," she said through gritted teeth. He was good; possibly he had practiced swordsmanship to keep himself in shape.
"I look forward to gaining this Prize."
"How? By having your machines track down and bring you every immortal for an easy kill? Sorry, it isn't done that way."
Quincy sneered. "Why? Because it doesn't fit with the rules of your precious game, child? And who is going to stop me?" His blade bit hard into her arm and she screamed in pain as he twisted the blade. "You won't be."
Despite the pain, she pushed forward and wrapped her hand around the blade and held it in place. She pulled the elderly tycoon forward and thrust her own blade deep into his gut and wrenched it to the side before pulling it out. He fell to his knees and she pulled the blade out of her arm and tossed it to one side.
"Don't be so sure of that, old man," she whispered as she raised the saber high and brought it down on his exposed neck. There was a brief shock of impact as metal met flesh and bone, before the head rolled away from the body.
She closed her eyes and lowered her sword as the body tumbled down onto the grass. She tensed as the smell of ozone and the crackle of electricity signalled the beginning of the Quickening. Here it comes.... The first shock hit her hard and she screamed as the rapturous feeling ran through body and soul.
The four friends stood by and watched. They looked on in horror and shock as lighting coursed from Quincy to Nene. Wind gusted from nowhere. The lights of Kanto Memorial popped and exploded. Nene was lifted into the air by a vortex of light. Suddenly as quickly as it began it was gone and Nene fell to the ground stunned and senseless.
Nene pushed herself up from her knees and swayed dizzily. A hand was there to steady her before she could fall back down. She looked up to see Sylia offering her a hand up. Nearby, Priss picked up her sword. She licked her dry lips as she leaned her on old friend's shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Sylia,-" she started.
Sylia cut her off gently. "Later."
Sylia's Apartment, MegaTokyo. 16 August, 2056
Nene rested her elbows on the terrace and looked up into the night sky. She had spent most of the night explaining why she had done what she had done, and notifying the other immortals that Project Lazarus and Quincy were no longer a problem. Immortals and Watchers all over the solar system were resting much easier. The status quo had been restored and the Game could continue without fear of interference.
She didn't turn as the soft footsteps approached her. Didn't look back, didn't have to. Sylia's quiet presence radiated itself like a beacon. Seconds passed before either woman could muster the courage to break the silence.
Finally Sylia spoke. "Why did you leave the party, Nene?"
Nene sighed and turned to look at the elder Stingray. "I couldn't take the stares when you all don't think I notice. Like I would draw my saber and start hacking away at the furniture or one of you." She looked at Sylia, "I wouldn't do that, you know. Not any more."
"I... We all know that, but- it's one thing to have you tell us about your world..."
Nene finished for her. "...and another to see the impossible up close."
Sylia's eyes darkened. "Then there is the rage that you have been barely able to control. What you nearly did to Linna."
Nene nodded grimly and tried to come up with the words for her explanation. "Sylia, I can't tell you what I was thinking when I shoved two and a half feet of carbon steel through the chest of my best friend. You can't begin to understand what it is that goes on when you take the Quickening of another immortal. It's like..." she paused as she struggled with the words-
attempting to describe the experience of the Quickening in mere speech seemed almost profane- " the ultimate rush, and the drug is LIFE itself. You see- no, live everything that the Immortal has ever done, seen, felt or been in seconds. You never come out of a Quickening the same way you were before." She paused again, casting her mind back. "Fifteen years ago, I killed the Immortal that killed my mentor, just before I met Priss in Paris. He was eight hundred years old, and fought with a berserker rage. It was imparted to me in the Quickening. It has haunted me for years, and took a large portion of my willpower to keep it from consuming me."
"And now?" Sylia asked
"It's gone. I finally mastered it in the battle on the Tower." She lowered her head in shame. "It just about cost Linna her life."
The two women looked out of the night time sky for long minutes. Neither was sure of what to say next. Nene finally broke the silence. "I'm going back to Luna."
Sylia was shocked. "Why?"
"I have a life there, Sylia. All I have here is the past." Not even that- just the ghosts of the past. She looked back into the apartment and watched Linna and Mackie play with their daughter. "I envy you people. I would sell my soul to have that type of legacy."
"You don't have to go, Nene."
"Yes, I do. What do I have to hold me here? Just you four, you're all the family I have left. A job? Lost that 20 years ago." She looked back at Mackie and Linna before continuing quietly, "I still love him, you know. Should I stay here and let the jealously of what they have eat me alive. No. I don't need to look at them and see what I can never have." She looked at Sylia and saw the sly smile. "What?"
"I think I could make it possible for you to have a child. Or at least, contribute genetic material towards that goal. From what you told me, an outright clone is impossible, but I wonder if it would be possible to selectively comb through your gene structure and use chimeric gene splicing to add some of your genetic structure to a fertilised ovum from a donor. " She looked up to the stars before continuing, "It should be possible, but finding the correct gene sequences could take years to find. Interested?"
Nene couldn't believe what she was being offered. A chance at the impossible. "Hell yes, I'm interested. What do you need ?"
"You to stay for a while." She grasped Nene's arm tightly, as if the wind would blow her away from them again. "Stay here with your family, Nene, and don't run away again. Besides, I could use someone that is young and resilient to help me as a troubleshooter. It could take years to quietly take Genom apart. Deal?" Sylia held her hand out to her.
Nene thought. Where could she go from here? She could return to Luna and teaching, or go to Mars to participate in the Terraforming project. Perhaps return to Paris and reopen Warren's dojo and teach swordsmanship- maybe even wander the Earth not staying in any one place long enough drop roots.
Or she could stay here and be a part of her adoptive family's life while hoping that she could one day hold a child that was some little part of her own. It's not really that hard a choice, she decided as she took the offered hand.
"Deal."
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