I grunt and push up on the vent, seeing Mundy peer her head over. "Hey, Mundy, baby. Can you open this?" She and Scout grunt and fall to the floor when they pop the vent open. Ten gives me a shove, and I claw my way out of the vent. I look down and pivot my hips. "Okay, now I know what Cole goes through when she tries to pull herself out."
"There you are!" Con whispers as he extends his arms. I grab onto him and grunt as he pulls me out, then helping Ten when I grab her bloodied hedge clippers. I help Triple-A out and hold him in my arms, getting some blood on my suit. "What did you guys see?"
"Old friends," I huff. "We've gotta get out of here."
"Everything's pretty much set up. We just need to lure Cole into the Cafeteria."
"I can do that," Ten volunteers.
"Ten, no, let me do it," I try to argue with her, but she interrupts me.
"Morbid, go get your oxygen tank," she sighs. "I know it won't do us any good, but go get it." She furrows her brows and walks over to the bed where Jimothy sits and sits next to him, bringing him into a tight hug. Con takes Scout and hugs him, too, giving him a kiss on the forehead. I hug Triple-A closer to me and beckon Mundy as she hugs my leg. Ten presses her lips and eyelids shut, burying her blood-speckled face into the crook of Jimothy's shoulder. Con takes off his hat and puts it on Scout's head, not saying much but letting Scout knows that he loves him. Ten sets Jimothy down on his feet. "Go, Morbid."
I hold Mundy's hand as I still have Triple-A on my hip, Scout and Jimothy following after me. I stand on the lift and wait for the purple and blue kids to get on with me before going down. The shaft feels cold and desolate. This'll be my last time going down, I know it for sure. Once we're at the bottom, I take the four of them to one of the pods and set Triple-A down as I grab undergarments from Battery's locker and find a new suit for him. After I shove him into the bathroom, I lift the three of them up to Crow's bed. Mundy frowns as she looks at me. "Mama, what's going on?"
"Ah, well," I shrug as I look up at her. "I'm not too sure myself."
"Why was Mommy sad?" Jimothy asks.
"She just loves you a lot, Jimothy. Like how your papa loves you, Scout, and how I love you so much, Mundy," I chime in as joyous of a tone I can muster.
"What are we doing down here? It's not bedtime, Ms. Morbid," Scout runs his hands down his cheeks. "It's boring down here, I don't like it."
"I know, Scout. We just need you guys to wait here while we go and take care of some things. I'll be back soon to come get you," I lie, knowing that this is the last time I'll see Mundy. I bend my hands to motion for Mundy to lean over to me, and I kiss her on the cheek as she gives me a kiss on the forehead before I hug her. Triple-A comes out of the bathroom, and I pull him aside to talk in private in a whisper. "Triple-A, you know what's going to happen to you, right?"
He nods. "I'll be okay."
I take a deep breath and hug him, and he hugs me back. "Can I ask you a favor?"
"What is it?"
"Can you protect your friends if Cole or It comes?"
"Yeah," he agrees. "I can do that."
"Okay, thank you, Triple-A," I smile at him as I pat his shoulders. "Just know that your mama loved you lots."
"I know," he says. "Mommy said it all the time, so I know."
After I lift him up into the pod, I close the curtain. I can't say goodbye. That's too hard for me to do. If I say goodbye, then I'm admitting defeat. Defeat that would ultimately be a win in the long run. I grab my oxygen tank and helmet from the Resupply Rack. Getting back on the lift, I look up and see Con and Minty exiting Admin, both walking toward me. Minty holds her hands out. "Your PDA."
"What about it?"
"Give it to me," she insists. "I need your PDA, it's the last one." I pat my chest, my PDA missing. "Morbid don't tell me..."
I check my satchel pulling out the PDA I pulled from the vents. "It's not mine, but it should work."
"What do you mean it's not yours?" Con inquires, confused. I see caterpillars crawl around under his skin, and he scratches right on top of it. "Who's PDA is that?"
"A crew member from a different mission." I turn it on, the screen having trouble with displaying formation. "This is... DoodleBees from mission Simon-Twelve. She wrote crew notes."
"What do they say?"
I scroll, gentle with the screen so I don't break the device. "'It's already inside, you may as well die.'"
"Lovely," Minty digresses as she takes the device from me. "Final touches to commence contingency, stay here."
She runs back to Admin by herself, and I turn to Con, swaying back and forth on my heels as I unclip my helmet. "Con, are we going to die?"
He exhales as he looks to the ground. "No matter how you look at it, yes. This is the only way, Morbid." He scratches the bugs under his skin again, a red blister forming on his chin until it bursts with brown, sludgy pus and a centipede crawls out and down his neck into his suit. He's unbothered by it. Minty speed-walks around the corner and stands behind me, Con crossing his arms. "They should've been back by now."
"Cole's a handful, so she's probably being difficult intentionally," I say. "I'll go get her."
"No need to!" Cole triumphantly announces as she drags Ten in by the foot, leisurely making her way into the room. Minty draws her gun and points it at Cole with her finger ready on the trigger. "Whoa, hey! She's not dead. Yet."
"What did you do to her?" I ask.
"Nothing!" Cole reinforces as though we're all joking about, but her face drops like a hat. "Yet." She drops her leg and stands, arms akimbo. "Go ahead, press the button. Might as well make our last moments together official." Con reaches behind him, but she makes noises to stop him. "Uh-uh, I want Morbid to do it. For antagonistic self-righteous reasons. I still have an ego status quo to fulfill, y'know."
My bottom lip pushes upward, as I glare at her. So be it. I turn and slam the button with my fist.
"Emergency Meeting initiated. Immediately cease all tasks and activities and head to the Cafeteria for a rendezvous."
Cole waltzes over to the side of the table as Con and I go to help Ten, only to find that she's dead from a snapped neck. Cole chuckles. "Whoops, I lied." We reconvene at the table, Minty and Con on either side of me as we look across at Cole by herself. "Three on one hardly seems fair."
"Why are you doing this, Cole?" I ask. "Why is It doing this?"
"It would take too long to explain why It wants me to do this, and I personally have no interest in Its motives. I mean, c'mon, dude, the fuck do I look like, a history book? So why am I doing it?"
"Yes," I sigh. "Why are you doing this?"
"Cuz I wanna," she shrugs with a smile. "That's really it. I just want to. Causing chaos is enough of a reward, but in space where we all knew we were going to die to begin with that's offset by the false hope of being the special one? That's where the real satisfaction hits." She smirks when I squint at her. "You look so surprised as if this is a new development. Menace on a mission, Morbid, remember?"
"It just doesn't make sense," I huff. "It is what's controlling you, Cole, so what do you mean you want it?"
"Because I'm Cole and I know what I want, duh!" She snickers and puts the tips of her gloved fingers to her lips. "Wow, you're getting kinda stupid, Morbid."
"And what is it that you what, Cole?" Minty questions.
Cole flicks her eyes up the cracked ceiling and puts her fingers to her chin as if she's really thinking hard about it, finally looking back down at us as a spike juts through her stomach and cracks the table in front of her with the force of its exit. "Death :)."
"Well, I wanna fucking leave here, but we don't always get what we want." Con argues as we back up.
"But I do," she snarls. Minty shoots her three times in the head before her bullets run out, Minty grunting and picking the remaining bullet off of my hat to use it. Con turns around to go and make a break for Medbay to hopefully get to anything as a weapon. The doors shut, and Cole steps onto the table. "We're here, gamers, we've made it!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" I stand by the wiring panel.
"The finale," Cole laughs, holding her hands out and laughing at the tentacle in the ceiling. "All of your hard work was for nothing in the end! Everyone's dead! They're all dead, and there's nothing you could have done about it! The perfect Imposter, that's who I was. I killed Nakii, I killed Runky--"
"She's off her rocker," Minty whispers as she pulls Con to her. "Go, now."
"The fuck you mean, she's gonna merk me!" Con uses both of his hands to motion toward the crazy woman cackling while standing on a table.
"She's in a state of hyper-inflated grandiose to marinate her god complex that's already lathered in superiority, Con, you'll go unnoticed," I support, gritting my teeth.
"--And none of you suspected a thing! At the end of the day, I could've pinned it all on Morbid since we did nothing but stay together the entire time, isn't that right, Morbid?" She calls upon me, and I ball my fists as I watch Con cautiously walk backward to the trash chute terminal. "I just had my accomplice do all of the dirty work like corroborate my story! Imagine if you all listened to her during our first meeting, then we probably wouldn't be standing here since you'd have then gotten rid of the biggest threat in the room, how about that? Huh?"
We don't answer her and all worriedly watch her as the front side of her face bursts from the emergence of teeth and a large tongue flops out in the center. She growls, spits at Minty, and takes steps forward to step down onto the floor again. Looking at Minty, a sharp projectile is embedded in her skull, her head pinned to the wall. My oxygen tank hits the metal door. She's advancing toward me. I step away from Minty's body, running to the window to take her in a circle since the doors haven't opened. The spike in her abdomen becomes gelatinous and moves like a snake, much like Triple-A's tentacle.
"Con, hurry up!" I yell.
"I'm trying, I'm trying!" He shouts back, Cole diverting her attention from me to Con. She clicks and roars, charging after him as he tries to fiddle with the panel faster, but she catches his foot with her tentacle and pulls him back to her. I take my oxygen and whack her over the head with it, no effect but a now angry parasite demon having its sights set on me. Backing up, I hear the vent creak open, Triple-A crawling out and challenging Cole by opening his stomach and baring his body teeth.
"Triple-A, no, go back!" I deter him as I get my oxygen tank back on and pull on my helmet. "It's not safe, get out of here!"
He still drives his bioweapon through Cole's chest despite my warning, closing up shop afterward and retreating to the vent. Cole huffs and curdles nastiness onto me as she turns to me and shrieks, hands out and stumbling toward me with the spike sinking back into her skin. She rasps before she goes silent. I get to the Admin doors when I hear that blessed voice.
"Ejection process underway. Airlock opening and to be held open for ten seconds."
I salute Cole to be cheeky only for her to catch up to me and grab onto my shoulders, plunging her spike into me. I shudder, moving my hand down to my wound and panting as I lean over into her grasp, hanging my head and feeling the blood run up my throat. She pulls me closer into a hug, widening the gaping hole in my chest. She gurgles and gently pats my back. "I'm sorry."
Everything is quiet, and we go flying across the room, pulled out into the cold. It's dark. Cole still holds onto me as she thrashes around in the void, trying to breathe. I hug her back, feeling death creep in and fill my entire body. It's better to die together than alone. I don't know why I came aboard the SKELD. It was inevitable. We were going to die, and now we are doing that right now. I made friends, though, even if was in haste and fear. If we were back in our wings. I'm sure that Ten and I would be good friends. Cole would be my friend as well, I just know it. At the very least, I hope we would have. We die here together, and so may it be.
My fingers grow weak, and I can't hold onto her anymore. Blood floats in my helmet. I can't see anything. Con, if you're out there, more power to ya bud.
There isn't much more I can say.
Nothing much more I can do.
My lungs tighten, and I gasp for air. It's futile, my suit is compromised.
Such is how it ends.
C'est la vie.
C'est la vie.
C'est la vie, c'est la guerre, c'est la pomme de terre.