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Mackie thrashed around
in his bed, his head ringing with pain, and finally got free of the sheets. The
room swam in and out of focus as he reached around for the bottle. It was just
out of reach and he fell to the floor with a dull thud. He picked up the
bottle. It was empty. There would be more in the den, he told to himself. Half
crawling, half walking, he made it to the door. On his hands and knees he
pushed through the door and staggered down the hall only to fall short of the
den. Something made him look up. A bottle swam into focus.
“Is this what you are
looking for?” a voice asked. Linna.
“Thanks.” Mackie reached
for the bottle only to have it snatched back at the last second. Linna threw it
across the room and grabbed his wrist in a lock. She pushed him across the room
roughly, and grabbed him just as he started to fall. Another shove sent him
reeling across the room and into the pool. He landed in the pool and went under
with a loud splash. Rough hands pulled him up by his shirt. Linna scowled at
him as she shook him roughly.
“Why take the slow way
out Mackie? How about just finishing it real quick right here?" She shoved
him under and held him down for several seconds before bringing him back up.
“Ready to die?” Mackie croaked incoherently as she shook him violently, before
throwing him onto the side of the pool.
He threw up, then passed
out.
Linna looked at him and
sighed. The thing of it was that she had similar desires, ever since the last
job she had wanted to wash the screams and blood away with a bottle. She sat
down by the younger Stingray and pulled him into her lap. She wiped off his
face- even passed out his pain showed clear. Tears blurred her sight as she
pulled him close. “I miss her too, Mackie, but we got to keep going. She would
have wanted it that way.”
Leon lounged by the
gateway and kept an eye open for his target. The flight from LA arrived on time
and he spotted her as she debarked with the rest of the first class passengers.
Her smooth stride and grace jived with the Saber he was looking for. He fell
into step beside her as she walked by.
“I need to talk to you.”
She looked at him over
her glasses. “What can I do for you, Detective McNichol?”
They both knew what he was
there for, but they had to play the game through first. Or so the woman
thought; Leon was past that. It had been two long months and he was tired of
butting heads at every turn. “Look, Doctor Stingray, we both know why I am
here.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to a halt in the middle of the
terminal.
Sylia Stingray looked
into the eyes of the detective, and found that she couldn’t lie to him. Not
about this. “I will be home tonight.
Come by and I'll tell you the whole story.” She pulled free of his grasp and
disappeared into the crowd. Leon watched her go, and didn’t even bother to
follow. Years of investigative work taught Leon how to read people, and what he
saw in the retreating woman was very surprising from he had read on her. She
was running from something, and that wasn’t what he had expected of Sylia
Stingray.
Priss stumbled out of
the bar and tripped over a knocked trash can. She tumbled clumsily to the
ground cursing. She sat up and picked up her bag. The bottle fell through the soggy
paper and shattered on the concrete. “Shit!,” she screamed in rage at her luck.
She needed that bottle really bad and now she would have to go buy another one
before she went home. The Dream would come tonight, she could feel it. Not that
it wasn’t hard; it had been haunting her most nights for the last two months.
She struggled to her feet and staggered down the alley. ‘Should have been me.
Why does everyone that I care for die?’ she asked herself as she ambled into
the night.
Leon pushed the intercom
button and opened the door as it was buzzed open. He took the elevator up and
entered the penthouse. Sylia was sitting at a table by the pool with a bottle
of wine beside her. She motioned for him to take a seat. “Would you like a
drink?”
He sat and waved aside
the offered glass. “What I want to know... is she dead?”
“Yes, she is.” Sylia
looked away, guiltily, and sat there looking out at the city.
“She was a Knight Saber
wasn’t she? You were the one were we called Swordsman. It took me a while to figure
it out, but then I wasn’t really looking to figure out who the others were
after I discovered Priss’ identity. I
should have figured it out sometime ago, she was always hanging out with Priss,
after all.” He looked at her, and saw again the guilt and sadness that she
struggled to hide from the world. “The guilt is eating you alive, Sylia. Tell
me how it happened.” He took her hand and looked into her terrified eyes.
She took a deep breath
and stood up. “I think you deserve to that. Come on, I will show you how it all
happened. From the beginning.”
Sylia looked at her
team, as the display finished up. The others looked nervous and eager at the
same time. “Pre-mission jitters’ she
told herself as she watched them go through their motions, just like the
butterflies in her own stomach.
Priss was lounging back
with her feet up. Cool and collected, Sylia envied that quality in her. Linna
talking about her new boyfriend while Nene sat in Mackie’s lap listening. Her
brother and Nene had hit it off quite well in the last two years, and Sylia
knew that before long she would be adding Nene to her family in a very official
way. Her brother had grown up well, and she was sure that her parents would be
proud of him. Linna and Priss had done
quite well in the last year or so, and from what she had been hearing they
would be getting the recognition that they wanted, and soon. She had known that
the day would come when the Knights would go their separate ways.
This would most likely
be the last mission that the whole team participated in. Surprisingly, she
wasn’t too upset. The Knights had become her family in many ways and she wasn’t
really ready to risk them in the feud with Genom any more. She watched as Priss
and Linna teased Nene and Mackie. It was time to move to a new battle plan. She
cleared her throat loudly, and broke the mood. “Time to move out folks.”
Sylia watched as the
team pulled on their suits. Nene had gone into the complex an hour before, with
her new suit's enhanced camouflage suite and ECM she should be close to getting
ready. She sat by her brother at the front of the plane. “Where is she?”
“She should be in place
soon.” Mackie glanced at the computer screen by his knee. “Everything is still
green.”
The radio hissed loudly
for a second, then Nene’s voice came in loud and
clear. “This is Nene.
I'm in.”
Sylia picked up the
microphone and replied. “We’re on our way in.” She put down the mike and looked
at Mackie with a smile. “This won’t take long.” She stepped into her Motorslave
and coasted out into the moonless night.
Priss rolled backwards
and came up shooting. The boomer took several of the hits to it’s chest and
went down. Linna flipped over hers, slamming her fist as she went. It’s head
exploded as the knucklebomber detonated on impact.
“Mackie where the hell
are you?” Priss screamed as she shot off a burst of rounds towards the two
boomers that landed just in front of her.
“I’m coming in now,”
came the reply as the Knightwing dropped into the courtyard with it’s wing pods
unloading on the boomers. She and Linna grabbed Sylia and all but carried her
into the bay. She had taken a big hit to her suit and favoured her right arm
and leg. Mackie lifted off as soon as they got in. Nene’s alternate route was
to leave by the roof. She came through the rooftop door at full speed. “Nene,
move your ass!,” Linna yelled over the radio. Her suit’s sensors showed a squad
of boomers right on her tail. 20 yards to go before they could grab her and leave.
“Coming moth......”,
Nene started, but only to be cut off by a blast to the back. Everyone in the
jet screamed as the she dropped to the ground with a smoking hole in the back
of her suit.
“Speak to me Nene,”
Priss said. “Tell me where you are so we can come and get you.”
Seconds passed before
the radio hissed and Nene replied. “Forget it Priss, I’ve got a hole in my suit
from back to front and..” a terrible hacking sound interrupted her for a second
before she continued. “Leave me.”
The finality of it
shocked everyone in the plane. Priss ran into the back of the plane and was
heading for the hatch. “No! I won’t do it.” The rocker screamed as she got
ready to leap into the battle once more, only to be knocked backwards into the
plane as the front of the building exploded and the blast knocked the plane
away from the landing zone. Priss screamed in anger and rage as she sat up,
“What the hell are you doing, Nene?” There wasn’t a place to land now.
“Saving your ass for a
change,” Nene replied calmly, but her voice started to break as she continued,
“Mackie, I love you.... and I’m sorry.” Then the radio cut off. The plane
rocked violently as Mackie switched to autopilot and ran into the bay for his
suit. Sylia grabbed for him and missed. “Linna, Priss stop him!” Linna grabbed Mackie and slammed him to
the floor. Priss jumped on him and help hold him down.
“Let me go, damnit! She
going to die if I don’t ....”
Priss cut him off
angrily, tears in her eyes. “Mackie, she’s already dead.”
“NO!”, he howled and
tried to wriggle out from under the two women. The building erupted into a
cloud of flame and smoke and slowly fell into itself. “NENE!”
Sylia set the glass down
with a shaky hand as the playback finished, and looked over at Leon. Tears ran
from her eyes as she spoke. “Now, you know the whole story.”
“How’s Mackie handling
it?” Leon had known the younger Stingray for over a year from meeting him when
he came to get Nene for a date.
“Not well at all. He’s
taking her death very hard, and I think that he blames me for it.”
“Do you think it’s your
fault?”
Sylia looked away, and
Leon already knew what she thought. “No... Yes.” She whispered, “I was the one that sent her into that
building, but she was the only one of the team that was capable of breaking the
computer security system. I didn’t make the call lightly, and she knew the
risks.” Leon listened to the woman as she tried to convince herself that she
had done the right thing. Still, the woman was sure that she had killed Nene.
She looked up at Leon.
“I need to ask something of you, Leon.”
“What?”
Sylia sat down and
started to explain the situation and what she needed to do.
Mackie woke up with a
throbbing headache, a result of his drinking binge and the sedatives that Linna
had given him. She was asleep in a nearby chair, apparently she had spent the
day watching over him. He pulled a comforter off the bed and tucked it around
her, and the walked quietly out of the room. He was tired of the pain. Linna
was right, he had to move on with his life.
‘It’s just so hard’ he
kept thinking about Nene and his loss. He walked up to the terminal in the den
and typed in a query. He read the screen for a few seconds, then quickly walked
to the elevator and rode it down to the workshop in the sub-basement.
The elevator opened into
the staging area. He smelled the oily smoke before he entered the storage area.
What he saw made him stop short. The three remaining Hardsuits and the
Motorslaves were all in their bays- smoke boiling out of them. A quick check on
the monitors showed that the charging systems had been over-amped and the
resulting powerload was too much for the sensitive electronics and motive
systems.
Mackie felt like crying.
Six years of his life had just been destroyed. What was worse was that the
Knight Sabers were finally done for. It would take a year or more to rebuild
and millions in money to do it.
He walked into the lab
beyond. The two new testframes in the center of the room were in a similar
state. His sister sat in a chair in the center of the room watching countless
hours of work burn itself out. He stopped at the door and looked at her. “Why’d
you do it sis?”
Long seconds passed
before she replied. “I can’t lose any more of my family Mackie. I just can't do
it any more.” She turned around to face him. “I won’t sacrifice anyone else in
my war with Genom. I won’t let them take anymore of my family from me.” Tears
flowed down her face, and Mackie finally understood what Nene’s death had meant
to her. She was terrified that she was becoming as cold as those that she had
fought.
He wrapped his arms and
held her as she cried. All his life, Sylia had been there for him. She had been
his mother and father, even before his father's murder. She had taught him all
he knew in engineering and helped him grow up. She had held him when he had
nightmares and told him what to say and do when his feelings for Nene had
finally made sense. Now it was his turn to give comfort as she cried in his
arms. It was the least he could do.
October 17th, 2036
The captain looked up
from the papers, tears showing from his eyes. “It’s really her?”
“Yes, the bridge
collapsed during a running battle with a boomer about two months ago,” Leon
replied. “Apparently she was taking cover on the way to work when a blast
shattered the bridge supports. Death was instantaneous. The repair crew were a
little behind schedule and they only reported finding the bike and her body
last night.” Leon paused. ‘First time I’ve ever seen him speechless,’_the
captain mused. “Ah- I was wondering, sir....”
“What?”
“Would you mind if I
notified the girl’s family for the department? She was a friend.”
The captain frowned.
Technically he was supposed to do it, but Leon had done it before and the
captain really didn’t like that part of the job. He nodded and waved the
detective out of the office. Sergeant Romanova was a well-liked part of the
department, and maybe it would help Leon get over her death if he made the
notification to the parents. He hoped that it would give Leon the time he
needed to let her go. He watched the detective walk out of the office and
waited till the young man had walked out of the wardroom before picking up the
phone and dialling a number.
“Yes, is Lisa Vanette
there? This is her uncle Todo, I have to talk her if she is available. Yes, I
will hold.”
Leon stepped out of the
elevator and walked into the parking garage. He walked past the Road Chaser
that was his assigned vehicle and continued over the visitor section. He opened
the door of the antique Mercedes and slid into the passenger seat. Sylia looked
over at him, and waited for him to speak.
It had been two hard
days for both of them. She had gotten a body that fit closely to Nene’s and in
the proper state of decomposition. Leon had provided the site, and she had
hacked into the proper sites to ensure that the girl’s medical data and Nene’s
meshed.
“I appreciate you
letting me come along Leon.” She looked at him. “This really means a lot to
me.”
“Yeah, well you were
just as involved in her life as I was.”
‘Maybe more,’ he thought bitterly to himself.
Sylia laid her hand on
his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “I considered you for the Knights,
Leon. You were simply too visible a figure in the ADP to be recruited. I picked
Nene because she was a skilled programmer and her job made her almost
invisible.” She started the car, and pulled out of the parking space.
Lisa sat at her desk for
almost a minute before she realized that her uncle was still on the line. She
took a ragged breath in and answered his question.
“Yes, uncle. I’m fine,
just a little surprised. Nene was a good friend, I wish that we had more time
to see each other. Yes, I will be there if I can. I have to go now, but I
promise to keep in touch. Bye.” She put down the receiver and got up from her
desk. She muttered something to her editor as she walked out of the newsroom
and headed out onto the roof.
She looked out into the
night and tried to push the face of the intense young lady that she had know
out of her mind. And failed. Tears ran down her face as she pulled out the
picture that she had kept concealed on her for the last three years. It was
only one of two in existence and she made sure that no one else had ever seen
it. With it she could have broken the Knight Sabers and revealed their secrets
to the world, but in the end she had given the other copy and disc with the
original to Nene.
After all she owed Nene
her life, and after much soul searching had come to the decision that sometimes
the truth should be concealed. If nothing else than to protect those who had to
have some amount of anonymity. She had gotten a part time job on the
Metro/Crime desks from the power of her article on the assault on the AD Police
tower, and from what her editor told her she would have a full internship after
she graduated from college in a few years. She had always meant to thank Nene
for saving her life, but the right moment had never come up. Now she would
never get the chance. She put the picture back into it's hiding place and
looked at the skyline. ‘It’s so damn unfair, I never got to tell her how I
felt.’
“Goodbye Nene-chan,’ she
said as the tears streamed from her eyes.
Leon sat and watched as Sylia
held the sobbing woman in her arms. Nene’s mother had not taken the news well,
and had fallen apart almost as soon as he had started to tell her. Nene had
been the only child of two professionals. She had run away from home when she
was a teenager because they had not given her a second of privacy, but over the
last year she had contacted them and tried to work towards a reconciliation.
According to Sylia, she was planning to bring Mackie by the week after the
accident and spend the afternoon with them.
Leon sighed as he
continued with the story on Nene’s death. He hated lying to them, but what else
could he do? At least this way, they had a body to bury.
Leon slid the chair back
in the car. Sylia started the engine and pulled out of the complex's parking
garage. Long minutes passed in silence as she drove back to the AD Police
plaza. It was only as they pulled up to the entrance did she speak.
“It never gets easier,
does it?”
“What- telling the
family, or living with your mistakes?” Leon asked as he looked at her. They
were much alike in many ways, willing to die but not to sacrifice others. He
shook his head grimly as he opened the door. “No, and if it does there is
something wrong with you."
It was a quiet rainy
day. _More than a little appropriate to the occasion,_ Sylia thought. The body
was lowered into the ground and the appropiate words were said over it. Linna
and Mackie stood close by as she dropped a handful of moist dirt into the
grave. ‘I’m sorry that it ended this way
Nene. Priss leaned against Leon looking miserable; no doubt she blamed herself
for this. The singer was as hard on herself as Sylia, and Leon had told Sylia
that she was drinking hard now. ‘It’s all falling apart,’ she told herself as
she gave her condolences and left.
Priss and Leon left
together. He had taken it upon himself to spend as much time as she would allow
him. Sylia hoped that having someone to confide in would help her through the
quilt. Mackie performed the same role with her, though she still felt the guilt
it wasn't as bad. ‘Maybe, one day I will even be able to stop looking in the
mirror and seeing a killer in the reflection.’
December 29th,2039
Linna let Mackie seat
her and take a seat beside her. She took the opportunity to look the younger
man over. She had know him for almost 10 years and they had grown close in the
last few. He had grown up from the hormone crazy peeping tom to a good man.
After a lightning trip through college- he did possess the legendary Stingray
genius- Mackie had retreated into a quiet research partnership with his sister
and the occasional class that he taught at the university.
He and Linna had become
friends in the time that she had spent with him after Nene’s death, and
something more had grown up between them. Somewhere down the line, she came to
the realization that she loved him, and he loved her. She had been in Sydney
doing a dance performance with Vision on her world tour and Mackie had flown
out to meet her. That night, under the stars on a beach overlooking the
Pacific, they had confessed their feelings to each other. She smiled at him
across the table, he was nervous and apparently was trying to say something.
From long experience,
she knew it was best to wait and let him work it out himself. Finally, he gave
up trying to say the words and pulled a small box from his jacket and held it
open to her. The ring's diamonds glittered in the subdued lighting of the
restaurant. She was stunned for seconds as the realization of what it meant
dawned on her.
“Yes, oh god, yes.” She
said through tears as he slid the ring on her finger.
December 24, 2041
(Paris, European Union)
She spun and twisted the
descending blade out of the way, before she snapped out a quick double slash to
his abdomen. ‘Have to finish this quick, I’m bleeding like a stuck pig,’ she
grimly noted. Owen staggered backward, using a hand to hold his stomach in. ‘At
least I won’t have to worry about anymore of those two-handed smashes.’
She pushed forward and
refused to let him recover. ‘Always
take the space that an enemy yeilds,’ Warren’s voice whispered to her, ‘use it to your advantage.’ Owen’s style was all strength and power, she
had to rely on speed and skill. Closing the distance denied him the edge. She
slashed out and cut his legs out from under him. ‘It’s over now.’ She raised
the sword and Owen looked up at her.
“Damn you, Romanova,” he
growled as he struggled to rise, “It can’t end like this!” he screamed to the
sky. “I can't loose to a stripling like you!”
“Yes, it can Owen,” Nene
said as she brought the sword down and his head fell to the ground. She looked
down at the fallen immortal and drew in a shaking breath, the wind was already
picking up. ‘There can be only one,’ Warren’s voice whispered through her mind
as the first strike of the Quickening engulfed her. It was a cold comfort to
know that.
To know in the end you
will be alone... or dead.
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