Crisis

Intro

“Crisis, what the fuck are you doing here?” he spat, blood falling from his mouth and onto his lips and chin. Explosions had been sounding all around them for hours. Poison had already contaminated the water system and soon they would all have been exterminated, “I told you to leave hours ago, god damn it!”

Crisis lifted Black7’s head and placed it onto her lap. Her hands were bloody from all the dead bodies she’d encountered upon her re-entry of the small, government hideout. She pushed off her protective, biohazard mask and looked over the features of his face, sure this was the last time she would see him.

“I came back for you!” She shouted over another explosion. This one had shattered the wall to her left. She used her body to protect him from the pieces of debris that began to rain down on them. He looked bad. He looked real bad. None of them had been fighters. This wasn’t where they were supposed to be, “You told me you were getting out, Blackie. Why the fuck are you still here, huh?”

“You caught me.” He laughed, more blood coming up from his punctured lung and out his mouth. The piece of metal that had gotten its way stuck into his side was a shard from one of the explosions that had gone off. They were hidden in metal containers all over the base creating deadly traps for the lot of them, “You always could tell when I lie, Crisis.”

“Don’t call me that. You know me better than that, Blackie.” A tear fell down her dirty, pale cheek. She closed her eyes when he lifted his hand to brush long strands of black hair that had stuck to her sweaty forehead back behind her hear and smiled. She hated when he smiled. It was her only true weakness.

“Jay.” He used her childhood nickname.

They both reminisced for just a moment. Two children jumping around the scrap yard just blocks from their school. Regularly they’d found themselves ditching. Nothing important came from grade school. It was just preparing the masses for a lifetime of slavery as far as they were concerned. Having developed early in their digital skills, they had always known what they were meant to be.

When another explosion went off, this one shoved them both into the wall opposite and just behind a large cart tipped onto its side. While it hurt going over, she knew it would be a safe area for them to hide while the explosions continued to eliminate the targets; them.

Crisis jumped up and ran over to Blackie who had been fading in and out of consciousness now. His eyes were beginning to droop and breathing was starting to slow. She could tell from his cold skin and similar pale complexion he wouldn’t last much longer. Another hot tear fell down her cheek as she refused that conclusion and slapped his face hard to the right with the back of her hand.

“Stay with me, jerk! When we entered into this we said it was the two of us against the world no matter what! Why would you lie to me? Why would you just leave me like this?”

“You deserve better.” She heard him say after several moments of struggling to breathe. Crisis shook her head and lifted him onto her lap again. He held onto her side but was weak and barely grasped the loose clothing she wore.

Crisis shook her head rapidly and started to rock him in her lap, “That’s bullshit! We deserve it, Blackie. We worked hard! We created this! This is our revolution! I cannot do this without you!”

An unfortunate silence fell over them as Blackie’s eyes finally fell and his breathing stopped altogether. With another explosion nearly tilting the cart onto them, Crisis pulled his dead, heavy body away from the range of the transport and screamed so hard her lungs hurt. Tears washed down her cheeks like waterfalls and the heat of her body in pain felt like she was on fire.