Synchronicity 13
F.E.A.R.!AU And we are out of the Talon blacksite by the end of this chapter. This is mostly combat porn. Also, introducing Sombra as Paxton and Jesse as Point Man. Jack's dissolution of reality is really fun to write. On the other hand, the most tedious (and secretly entertaining) thing is keeping track of his inventory.
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(...)Lips pressed against his back, just below his neck; a thumb lazily rubbing circles into his arm; their legs tangled together.
Something skitters on his palm and Jack flicks it off absentmindedly.
“Have you ever thought about later?” (...)
***
(…)
A man with a grudge and a case
A man with intent on his face
And if a man walks into place
Let it be known I won't hesitate
(…)
The mechanical hiss makes him glance over the makeshift cover – one of the hatches in the ground opens giving way to the rising black matte container – big enough to contain a human, barely. The coffin. That’s how they call it. He can feel the visceral knowledge claw at his insides, the acidic panic, the claustrophobic pressure on his mind.
It stops with a jerk. Jack tightens his grip on the Seegert.
The container opens slowly, agonizingly so, and from the inside stumbles out a masked figure dressed in a strangely familiar uniform yet nondescript enough he cannot place the affiliation. There is an ‘S114’ printed on his left breast in bold white letters. The man almost trips and then straightens, his posture undergoing a complete shift in the split second between the actions.
Jack has his eyes on the rifle held ready in the enemy’s hands, waits for the barrel to swing away from his position as the man scans the room. There is only a slim window for action, growing even smaller with two other hatches activating.
He climbs over the wall in one fluid movement and launches himself at the enemy, sending them both sprawling to the ground, twisting his pistol to the man’s neck and firing several times, lets go of the grip and grasps for the rifle, tears it away from the twitching fingers.
“Enemy sighted.”
Shit. Jack clenches his teeth and ducks behind the coffin offering close to no protection. They will flank him, it’s the basic maneuver. Any movement will put him in the line of fire, and even this cover is fleeting, the whole container shudders when the lid closes, and it starts to sink back underneath the surface of the training range. Inhale.
He dashes to the right, not bothering with blind cover fire, to lean against the concrete partition. Ignoring such risks as negligible is well within the usually calculated simulation parameters. Soldiers like this are expendable. Exhale.
The rifle, Patten – he smirks, lines of it fluid under his touch, not their usual loadout, but he’s familiar with it – should have the full magazine in. Thirty rounds. Good stopping power, moderate armor piercing capability. Bad news if the others are armed with those, still more of a fighting chance for him.
Inhale. Listen. A crunch to the left. Around ten paces back. His hands are wet with sweat. Visualize the height and the posture. Reconstruct the room. A sound of fabric from the right side. Build the replica in your mind. Exhale.
Inhale, prepare, rise up. Hold your breath. Shoot. The man jerks back and breaks in half when the bullets from the short burst impact with his mask. Chips from the concrete brush Jack’s cheek. Duck behind the cover. Exhale.
His heart is thudding in his chest. Close, too close. Again, the whirr of the machinery, two more coffins. He won’t last here long. There is a touch of hysteria to those thoughts, he knows, but knowing is different from managing. His fingers are becoming jittery, spasming on their own without control. The Beast grips his left wrist. Grounds him.
“Remember, Sunshine,” the oily sound coils itself around his mind. Inhale. The magazine should have around twenty-six bullets now. Three targets. Exhale. Accumulate the tension in the muscles. Prepare. The sound of the coffins popping open simultaneously. Inhale.
“Flanking.”
Jack springs out of the cover to the left, keeping low. The sound of the gunfire chases him as he moves in a semicircle. He passes the body on the ground and flings himself behind another partition. The dead soldier lies halfway out of the cover, he grabs his leg and hauls him closer with a strong jerk of his arms. He snags the two grenades, pulls the pin on one, counts down, and throws it over the cover blindly. The other one follows just as the dust brought up by the first explosion flows over the concrete to his side.
“Compromised. Need reinforcements.”
This gives him the time to eject the magazine from the dead man’s rifle. Around fifty-six bullets now. Two targets. Inhale. Jack leans out of the cover. He can see one enemy, crawling on the ground, one leg torn off above the knee, the other just a bloody mess under the ragged fabric. Lucky throw. The second soldier is hidden from his view now.
The man manages to lift his gun with one hand, the other bracing for purchase on the ground. Fuck. Do they even feel pain? Do they even register it? Jack cannot wrap his mind around the concept. Exhale. Shoot. One bullet through the mask. Fifty-five left, rough estimate. He notices three more black shapes in the gaps between the obstacles, at least two of them already open. No time to panic. Need to change position. Four targets now, minimum. Inhale.
He maps out the layout, the explosions still ringing in his ears. Exhale. Move on the outer rim of the range, sprint along the wall, pass the car. Inhale. He moves with the purpose, changing position, in the open…
“Target sighted.”
With the electronic voice comes the impact. It feels like a jackhammer to his side, then a short blackout as he topples down. Desperately, he drags himself forward. Hyperventilating. He rips off the helmet – his head is buzzing, his vision swims – the thing is dented where the bullet hit.
Every breath hurts. The vest held on the chest. His left side is numb and cold. Don’t look. He traces his fingers over the hole, its ridges already wet. He’s going to die here. Jack cranes his neck down.
“Don’t look, Sunshine,” the voice stops him, ghostly fingers rest over his hand. Don’t look. Might stave off the shock. It’s still numb, does not bode well. He’s behind the damned burned out car frame, it offers little protection. He grasps for the dropped rifle. His hand is slick with blood. “Hold your breath.”
He can hear them converging on his position. He’s going to die here.
The screen on the wall, he can see it from here, and there is a movement that catches his eye, a swath of color, purple, violet, pink? The person – woman – stops before the nightmarish chair holding the misshapen twitching human. There is a snap of neon lines in the air and the creature is literally ripped apart into pieces that fall separately around the contraption raining blood.
His lungs begin to burn.
“Exhale,” the Beast orders and Jack does as he is told to do. The next breath comes slowly, unfurls in his chest at the same time the pain in his side slowly comes into focus, stabbing, living. Good. Pain means time.
“My Los Muertos, they dared, they dared to belittle them with… with this!?” The woman’s voice booms over the speakers. Jack pulls himself up a bit, to look back through the window of the frame. No, he won’t question why the soldiers now just stand in place, swaying lightly, like dormant hanging marionettes with no-one to pull their strings. “This fake?”
“Feeling obsolete, bitch?” Another voice, thick with the accent, joins in. His head snaps to the side, searching against reason. McCree.
“Oh. I’ll show you obsolete and shove it up your ass, dear brother. But first,” she turns to the screen, her movements somehow birdlike in how her limbs snap into place viciously, “you killed them, but now you will die because they are with me as they should be.”
“Proceed,” comes from behind before the hail of bullets rips into the car. Jack curls on himself. Bullets perforate the brittle metal, something singes his cheek. Metal shavings bite into his skin. He’s going to die here, there’s too many of them. There is a new side of aggression in their offense. No space to act.
“Do you remember your training, Sunshine?” The Beast whispers insistently, but the training won’t help him now. Only the rifle, almost two magazines. Last stand. Force down the panic. You’re going to die, take them down with you. All soldiers are is lambs led to slaughter. A future banquet for worms. “Remember your training, Sunshine,” the Beast paces restlessly along the old gnarled tree. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not.” Jack feels the calm descend upon him, like a blanket, his breath slowing. His heart stills inside his chest. “You will take me with you when you go, won’t you?”
“It makes it easier, Sunshine,” the Beast smiles with all its fanged mouths, dark tongues lolling out in mirth. Clawed hand cups his bleeding cheek and for a moment Jack looks into crimson eyes. “You are always with me, and I, I am always with you.”
He glances to the side, at the bullet slowly sailing by his head, the air behind it stretching the prismatic luminosity in its wake, metal fragments exploding in points of unexpected brightness. All sounds distort and dampen. Jack inhales even as the wet stringy darkness tugs at the corners of his vision. He stands up with Patten braced against his shoulder.
Six targets total. Two shots per each, accuracy and precision. Watching the impact, the strange whiplash as he hits the targets – their bodies jerked violently with enough force to rip them apart at seams – is strangely satisfying. He feels the passing bullet ruffle his hair.
“This is it, Sunshine, this is how we are together, this is how we were meant to be, always,” the Beast coils between his fingers, nips at his neck, breathes the words into his ear, and he listens. “The hatch on the left,” its voice points out and Jack turns, runs, slides over the gravel and slips into the opening, his back contorting when he hits the lowering coffin. When he tumbles to the cold floor, the time and reality slam back into existence. Jack curls over the rifle, hands clutching at his side, the vicious stabs of pain bringing tears to his eyes. He feels saliva gathering in his mouth in reaction, and whimpers. No. Swallow even if it hurts only to think. He is dehydrated and bleeding. He cannot afford to… “I know, Sunshine,” claws rest on the nape of his neck almost non-threateningly, but the points dig into his skin deep, “you can’t rest here. You have to go.”
Yes. He can’t stay here, there are black coffins stacked on one another along the sides of the corridor, one of them actually being moved along the transportation line above him. It snaps into place below the hatch he used to escape the training range.
Jack moves to his knees, his grasp on the rifle faltering, and small whines of pain making it past the clenched teeth. With difficulty, he heaves himself up, left hand clasped over the bullet hole, and unsteadily follows forward. Each step burns. His breath shortens.
“You… you will take me with you… won’t you?” The darkness creeps into his vision as his right leg almost sinks under him. He manages to stabilize himself, leaning on the wall.
“I am always with you,” the Beast whispers back when he sinks into the grass, into the smell of a warm sunny afternoon – the richness of the green and the earth soothing in their onslaught. Lips pressed against his back, just below his neck; a thumb lazily rubbing circles into his arm; their legs tangled together.
Something skitters on his palm and Jack flicks it off absentmindedly.
“Have you ever thought about later?”
“You’d miss it.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Too broken and too intertwined to ever find another way, yet here, in this place, at this time, perfect and content, wrapped in each other, breathing in and out in symmetry to the music of the buzzing insects. Jack closes his eyes.
“Turn around.” The voice, it’s wrong, doesn’t belong here – wherever and whenever here is – sends shivers of cold down his spine. Nails sink into the skin of his arm. “Turn around.”
“…no,” he answers, the word breaking in half on the hitch of a breath.
“Remember your…”
“No, please, don’t make me do this, don’t take this from me,” Jack pleads with the inevitable. His fingers dig into the dirt, into the clumps of roots below, into things slithering under the surface. Cold hands close around his throat.
“This does not belong to you,” his doppelganger snarls at him spitting blood. “It never did! It never will!”
No, this is not his, and when the pressure lessens he opens his eyes to artificial light and the smell of cordite and ozone in the air along with the stink of burning plastic and circuitry, and something else he cannot place due to the strange haze that makes his fingertips tingle. Railing, he’s leaning against the railing, on a slightly raised platform over the rest of the chamber, and to the left, there is a half empty IV bag hanging, hooked to the metallic balustrade, the needle feeding its contents into his arm. By his side lies an emptied field kit, bandages and tape strewn around, some stained with blood.
Jack clenches his hand and starts. Morphine syringe. Used.
His vest is open. He lets go of the syringe and cautiously feels around the wound. It’s dressed. The touch makes him inhale sharply in pain. Past the threshold. Movement is going to be troublesome. Slowly, hissing under his breath and bracing against the railing, Jack stands up. The strange alien tug inside his stomach… the bullet is still in.
Now he can see the bodies below and still-smoking remnants of a powered armor.
“Do you understand now, Sunshine?” The Beast purrs snugly pressed against his chest. “Together, we are unstoppable. We will bring about the end.”
His hand hovers for a moment over the blinking console. No other time than now. He touches the prompt and looks up when he hears the grind of machinery. The enormous hatch in the ceiling opens raining dust and the platform starts, then laboriously moves upwards.
He can hear the feedback from his comm unit grow stronger.
“I’ll just find…” Lena. She stutters. “Jack!? That bloody you?”
“Yes. I think so.” He can’t keep the weary smile out of his voice.
“Bloody hell, you daft bugger, I was getting bloody worried…!”
“Lena.” It’s Winston, still calm and composed. “If anyone was going to get out of there on their own it was Morrison.”
“Bloody fucking right, Papa Winston.” Jack can hear the gears in her head turning. “I managed to hail Bunny, she’s working on bringing the meat wagon around but it’s the bloody apocalypse out there and traffic is killer. GPS is dead as fuck, but I dare say you’ll find the bloody stadium, right?”
“We will tear, we will rend, we will feast, together,” the Beast chortles, its maw pushing against his cheek in a needy way, and his hand pets it eliciting little whines of contentment. “Nothing will stand in our way.”
“Yes,” Jack confirms.
