“You’re insane! You’re bloody mad! You’re trying to kill yourself—“
I snarled aloud, my voice echoing in the massive, empty space, to get him to shut up for five minutes! I had to focus on getting up, and there was only one way I knew how to do that. My arms were burning from holding me up—even for the short few seconds I was hanging there, and tried to wretch my left arm free from where it was lodged in the railing.
“Ugh. This view would make me sick if I were human.” VOCOM said in a low tone. She was too angry at that moment to offer any support or advice. So much for teamwork.
I glanced down and quickly looked back up. I couldn’t afford to lose any time gawking over my hanging above nothing. I swung my right arm over to a railing bent at an adjacent angle to my left arm, hooking it there and still trying to break my left one free. I grunted stressfully, my upper body strength beginning to give in. I fought harder to release my arm, and it only came free after sapping my strength and energy.
Breathing hard, I aimed the Trans Shooter downwards, whipping out a beam of light horizontally beneath me. With exasperated sighs of relief, I let go of the railing, landing firmly on the safety of the light-bridge. I immediately started running up the bridge, it not staying in one spot for too long before dissipating, making it by whipping the Shooter about in front of me as I went along.
I ran perpendicular to the catwalk until I was at a high enough altitude to turn and run towards it. At the right moment as I was about to go over it, I jumped, landing on the solid lattice nestled against the same wall that the aperture was still glowing on. Breathing hard, I pressed myself up against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut and trying to quiet my shuttering heart.
I tried to relax and calm my tense muscles. I had been put in precarious situations before, but none of them had me literally dangling over an edge like that before. I was certain my body wasn’t too happy with that little stunt, and already I could feel that it was going to be a very long day.
I waited for a bit, needing one to rest and two, Quintley to get his butt down where I was. I took a few more deep breaths. If Benlark knew about our presence, why wasn’t he coming after me? It was obvious he was waiting for me to go to him, and I had no choice but to fall into his simplistic, overly-obvious “trap”. Maybe even by then I’d think of a counterattack.
“Well, you’ve landed in a very good spot.” VOCOM informed me. “Benlark is very near your location. Hurry up, you Briton.”
“I’m waiting on her!” came his annoyed voice. “Vera, what now?”
Trying to remain stable on shaky legs, I eased over towards the edge of the catwalk I had been struggling on, its sketchy sturdiness still very susceptible to giving away at a moment’s notice. I couldn’t see the light from the hole, oddly enough, but I knew that it was directly above me.
“Hang on,” I yelled up. “I want you to jump on the beam I’m sending up.” I instructed, hoping he could hear me. “You’ve done this before and you know how this works.”
“Yes, of course, of course. Mhm, yeah. You send it up, and I’ll be right down.” His faint voice was hard to decipher between seriousness and sarcasm. Sometimes I wanted to laugh at how he basically talked to himself. It was probably self-assurance, but I didn’t care enough to ask.
I unstrapped my Shooter so I could focus the aim completely with Gala’s. I aimed upwards and released a steady stream of the light. I was surprised with how well Gala’s unused gun worked despite years of neglect.
“Do you see it?” I called.
“Yeah, yep—there it is!”
“When it gets to as high as it can without dissipating, jump!”
“Did you say ‘jump’?”
“No, you're supposed to fall into the hole!” VOCOM snapped.
“Alright, alright!” he snipped in return.
“Quintley, don’t miss! There’s a bad chance I can’t save you if you fall!” I ordered.
“Well, that’s encouraging.”
“Quintley!”
“Ok!” he paused. “Jumping! Jumping . . . now!”
I waited for the vibration indicating weight upon the light, but felt none. Shit. His screaming met my ears quickly and I moved to devise a new plan. I aimed the gun slightly below me instead, shooting the light in a circular motion and keeping the bridge locked into a giant, disc-like patch that, hopefully, was over far enough to catch him on.
Fear surged through me, causing another spark of confusion to envelop my mind as I thought of losing Quintley right then. I couldn’t afford his death at that moment, and I couldn’t count on him to nimbly land in the aperture below. If I lost him at that moment, all that we had been through would have been in vain.
“To the left—left!” he shouted.
I obeyed immediately, hoping my left was the right direction. My eyes frantically wanted to search and see if I could spot him, but I knew that if I looked up, I’d lose my concentration and possibly him as well. His scream had quieted, but I knew he was close.
Within a flash he appeared, landing flat and hard against the light with a loud and disheartening “Ohw!” My eyes widened and I became frantic. Surely he had known to at least try and land on his feet.
“Hey! Hey, get up! I can’t hold this forever!” I yelled out. He only stirred slightly. “Get up!”
“Hey you monkey, get up already.” Came VOCOM’s voice, throwing me off with her sudden speaking. “You don’t want to die in front of her, do you? You’re just going to hinder her if you don’t get your ass up.”
That got him up and it made me wonder why she stuck out like that. Wasn’t it only the day before that she had choked me over letting him warm my emotions? I didn’t fully believe she did it for our sake, but rather her own—just to get the Benlark situation over with. She was smart enough to know that Quintley would, in fact, be a hindrance should something happen at that moment.
I watched as he shakily stood, eying me for direction.
“Ok, ok . . . .” I spoke to myself, trying to calm down. Already my body was handling too much excitement for such a short period of time. “Quintley, I’m going to lead you over to that wall right there.” I pointed behind him, where the ruins of yet another wall stood in crumbles.
He turned to look as I reached for my Trans Shooter, Gala’s still humming around my wrist. Being at an odd angle, I reached over my shoulder and moved the first aperture closer to where I was, so he wouldn’t have to jump over an empty space onto the catwalk. Then I turned back to face him.
“Thanks,” I whispered to VOCOM. She only quietly growled in response. I closed the second aperture and re-opened it on the wall he was facing below. He watched for a few moments, to my irritation, marveling at the small, electric light sphere widening into a shapeless blob of burning color and moving particles.
“Move,” I ordered, starting to form a bridge in front of him.
He stepped forwards carefully, knowing not to stay in the same spot for too long. I led him to the aperture, and he almost hesitantly reached it with caution. I could just see the back of my lower half from the hole below. It was still a sensation I couldn’t get used to, seeing myself like looking in a mirror, only in two places at once.
I looked over my shoulder quickly to see him nearing me, as if he were approaching from behind on the catwalk. He was staring at me like I was a fallen alien from space, so I turned back to see his progress. He was walking awfully slow, taking the wrong moment to appreciate the physics-bending technology I had created. He finally stepped through, and I checked behind me to see him standing on the catwalk behind me, safely and completely—save his left leg that he left hanging in the air backwards, and he was giggling like a kid.
I released the light and turned to see what he was laughing about.
“Look! It’s my bloody leg—look! Goodness I still can’t believe something so . . . so amazing! I’m still wondering at the actual physics to this, like how did you actually do this? Is it . . . no nevermind, I’ve got no clue what I’m trying to say. But look! It’s . . . like a dream, really! Or a funhouse. Y’know, at a carnival—or magic show! You could make money off this, should you ever end up with a traveling circus. I mean, not that you belong in a circus or anything—”
I raised an eyebrow at his amusement, feeling things being back to semi-normal with his incessant blabbering, and glanced back towards the second aperture. From his knee down, his leg was visible where he was waggling it back and forth through the lower aperture, just visible from where we were standing. I stared back at him, giving him a pointed stare until he cocked a ridiculous grin and pulled his leg in to meet the catwalk. I closed both apertures before he got any more bright ideas, and took a deep breath.
“Ok, shall we continue on, then?” he ran his hand through his thick hair, trying to stifle more laughter.
I nodded, taking immediate lead. The adrenaline was only slightly calming in me, and yet still I was just ready to get the fight over with. As we headed along the wall on the catwalk, taking various turns and hopping over broken chunks of it, I took the chance to check on the nasty cut I had received.
There was only a very small rip across my shirt and a thin bloodstain surrounding it to match. It was stinging smartly, and I could only hope that rust hadn’t come in contact with my blood too much. This was nothing but a bruise compared to my recent wounds.
Around us was nothing but dead silence save the low, dull thud of my boots and the noisy racket of Quintley following behind. The place was in terrible shape, and I was rejoicing at every ruined crumb of it. I smiled slightly at the obliterated destruction around me. Nothing remained; nothing! I had to keep my little celebration quietly to myself, because I knew the happier I was about Kortan being ruined, the angrier VOCOM was.
“What would happen if you closed the apertures before going all the way through?” he suddenly mused from behind me.
“Let’s not find out.” I mumbled, pondering then at his question—which was one I had only vaguely considered yet didn’t bother to try out. I hadn’t the time for extra risks.
“I’d bet Lisa’d love to test on that! Y’know, maybe on some volunteer or dummy or—“
“I can hear you.” VOCOM responded.
“I know. Just uhh . . . makin’ a statement.”
I kept walking without fault in my step, there being miles of catwalk to plausibly traverse. I didn’t know if the one we were on would end abruptly or actually lead me somewhere. It was difficult to recognize exactly where I was since everything was no longer in existence.
We eventually came upon a sudden turn in the catwalk that led into the wall and into dark, unlit corridors—if any of those were left.
“I can’t tell you what’s still intact,” VOCOM voiced my thoughts aloud. “But I can tell you which direction you’re headed in.”
“We’ll have to make do, either way. If need be, I’ll blow another hole through all this rubble—“ I replied.
“Don’t even think about it!” she snapped. “Go right.”
Our feet stumbled on hard cement, the floor of the corridors, but I could see absolutely nothing. I hesitated, Quintley standing right next to me.
“This is rather sketchy.” He added.
I gave him the “duh!” look. “Do you happen to have a flashlight?”
He returned my look with an odd, confused one. “Why would I carry around a flashlight?”
I had been mocking him, remembering that day he had busted me out of Suspension and we ended up in the bottom pits of Kortan—his only weapon being that flashlight. I shook my head, deciding not to touch back into that memory aloud.
I stepped ahead a few steps, nearly tripping over chunks or cracks in the floor, and let my eyes adjust enough to see that further ahead the entire right side had been destroyed, with an unexplainable, dull light source giving dim luminescence into the corridor. I whipped out a beam of light, hopping on the bridge and signaling to Quintley to do the same.
We moved forwards at a brisk pace, and the light from the Shooter allowed me to see various patches of the floor missing beneath our feet. Of course, it seemed only satirical that the broken, dangerous, destroyed corridor led to Benlark, while the other corridor—perfectly intact—led in the exact opposite direction—and rather cliché. But it wasn’t a poetical matter; it was a serious business that really did show the clear line that distorted what was commonly fiction and reality. Unfortunately, I was a major part of it, and should I have told my story to any outsider, they’d have never believed me, perhaps even calling me a fantastic storyteller with a vivid, creative imagination.
“Just a head’s up,” VOCOM suddenly spoke as we continued to make our way down the extended corridor. “He’s waiting for you, and he’s not bothering to block his signal. I think he’s even aware of mine. Either he’s doing this on purpose, or something is deadly wrong—or he just might be entirely useless. Just be on your guard.”
That warning could only mean we were still on the right path; that and she would’ve said something like a master to his dog, which was what I almost felt like at that moment. I struggled to recognize my surroundings, this part being better intact than the outer section we had just come from. It was hard without the pristine, wood floors, thick, ugly red carpets, portraits of Benlark and “PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE WINDOWS OR WALLS,” signs everywhere, but I could just barely see it in my mind. I had a gut feeling they belonged in that section, and that we were standing in the once-office of the secretary “MARY FELLOWS”. Perhaps I was even standing where her desk once was, where that deep memory rooted within me seared into my conscious and brought back Benlark’s sneer like I was a failure of a test subject. Where he had told me . . . my parents . . . .
“Hey,” Quintley’s light hand on my shoulder shook me out of my reverie.
I blinked a few times, the desk and younger versions of both Benlark and myself disappearing and fading into the dull gray color that greeted my eyes. My head came unwillingly back to the present, and I realized I was standing on what was comparable to a cliff. The floor in front of me ended suddenly, dropping off into nothingness. The whole wall before me no longer existed, and I was presented with a fantastic view of what was a gray, darkened valley. Before me stretched valleys of chaos and ruins, mountains of buildings and depths of corrupted structures. It was like looking out over a city that had been burned to the ground, and I felt literally on top of it.
I swallowed and turned to look into his chocolate eyes—the only color besides gray, black and that strange, faint glow from the light I couldn’t find the source of. It looked like sunlight filtering in through fathoms of water, in steady, slow streams of faerie lights. It dawned on me the peril I caused—and that I had let in sunlight, something the inside of Kortan hadn’t seen in its whole existence.
“You alright?”
I quickly nodded. “Just remembering something . . . .”
He left it alone at that, smart enough to at least know my troubling thought patterns.
But then I saw them. Just around him, behind him. The two doors that led to him stood, dented, gray and steel with a small, square window covering the top of each. It had once been his grand, majestic, plush office, and I hadn’t seen his domain ever since he was incorporated into an AI. Yellow and black-striped warning labels were faded in strips along the bottom. One door hung off its hinge and the right one was bent slightly into the frame, but they both still stood; they were thin barriers between me and Benlark.
“Oh,” he mumbled, turning to see what I was staring so intently at.
The room behind that cracked, dirtied glass was illuminated by natural light, perplexing me. How long had it been since Benlark had seen natural sunlight? Kortan had used that resource as their main power source, but it made me curious as to whether he was actually enjoying it. Perhaps he was even feeding off of it. I would just have to find out when I went in. I didn’t understand how the ground had caved in that much to let sunlight—actual sunlight—penetrate the darkness of Kortan.
I noticed Quintley nodding from the corner of my eye. “Alright, well, this is where I begin my job.”
He stared at an old computer that had somehow miraculously survived. It was strange seeing the thing, sitting in a corner, dark, abandoned and dusty; it was as if Kortan had wanted me to survive, as if it was rooting me forwards to try and restore what small glory it had in the right of things. It was cheering me on against the monster that branded us all. The only problem would be if it didn’t work, which I doubted. There was no way it would still work.
I stood rooted to the spot, clutching both Trans Shooters tightly and staring towards the doors. I felt strangely emotionless, as if my mind couldn’t decide how to feel at that moment or how to make me respond.
“Vera, what are you waiting for?” VOCOM asked, startling me. Quintley looked towards me, silently asking the same question.
“I . . . I’m finally going to do it.” I breathed. “Kill him.”
He nodded. “Yes. But, you can do it. I know you can.”
“There’s no doubt in her ability,” the AI responded, somewhat in a pacified manner with a hint of positivity. “Just push her into that room already.”
“No need for that,” came a bold, strong, masculine voice that I knew all too well. I froze as the silkiness of its virility became dark and haunting. It was gentle yet yielding a darker, toned quality. “Why don’t you just come right in?”
His taunt sent several cold chills down my very core, and I watched in horror as the doors I had been so furiously staring at creaked open, being pushed on by a metallic arm. I gasped with realization that it was just like KASNA’s had been: thick, strong, extendable and with a claw-like hand on the end. When the doors were fully opened, the arm gestured in a welcoming manner, ironically enough.
It disappeared back into the room, making my darkest fears resurface. He wanted to mock me by welcoming me back? As he was probably expecting, that angered me, yet that feeling couldn’t push up past my solid fear. But what was I afraid of? He had no weapons, no means of demise like I had, or KASNA did, even.
“Alright. Alright, now, Vera, don’t be scared.” Quintley stood in front of me, placing both his hands on my shoulders. He was serious; all his cheery optimism had settled into hard-set determination. Perhaps he feared for me, and I couldn’t deny it. I just didn’t want to face it; there was no point in getting my hopes up for us if there was still a possibility of me dying. I wanted to tell him the same thing, but VOCOM’s anger muted me.
I nodded loosely, knowing that I was ready, despite my frozen fear. My biggest worry was not seeing the daylight again, outside on the surface. Another was that Quintley wouldn’t be able to get out without me. VOCOM couldn’t help him, and probably wouldn’t.
He drew my attention back to him and the concern in his eyes made me want to sink into the floor in defeat. I couldn’t have him worry. If he worried, I’d worry. And if I worried, I’d get killed. It was a stupid way to get killed, so I didn't want to take a risk that way. I needed to put his feelings for me aside and ignore my own.
“Don’t-don’t--” I started, shaking my head. I swallowed. “Don’t worry. Please.”
“I have to,” he said quietly, his hands moving to cup my face delicately. “This is huge. Immaculate! It’s something that’s going to determine whether both of us get out alive.”
Right, put all the pressure on me. My expression gave my thoughts away.
“No- no, wait! I didn’t mean to say that.” His eyes darted around. “I meant . . . uhm . . . .”
“It determines a lot of things,” VOCOM added in with a brisk tone. “Just get the hell out alive.”
I breathed in relief, almost smiling. If she had that much faith in me, then I had utter confidence. That rude statement was her way of discreetly encouraging me, and that alone was fulfilling.
Quintley nodded in agreement, giving me a small smile.
“I’m waiting,” rang out the impatient voice of Benlark.
I clenched my jaw before relaxing again. I had to remain focused. Quintley leaned to me in the next moment, giving me no time to think as his lips met mine feverously. He pulled me tightly to him, and I willingly let my defenses fall, like I had the previous night, locking my arms around his neck in turn.
I couldn’t believe his audacity, especially after what happened, but I was secretly grateful for his thoughts over me. It gave me something small to live for, and I could only imagine what that small bloom could blossom into once this was all over with. I was just happy that he hadn’t taken my decline of advancing offensively, but rather, to heart. It kept me optimistic in the way that he still had faith in us.
He turned his head just enough to whisper into my ear. His body was pressed tightly against me, and I swelled with lustful thoughts. “Stay alive. We’re backing you. I believe in you.”
It was simple, common advice, but it nearly made me cry out in anguish at the passionate break I was going to have to make by entering that room alone. I knew he’d rather keep me by his side or vice versa, but what had to be done had to be done. I nodded, mostly to myself in assurance.
He kissed me again, making me want to stay lost in the warmth of him. Then was a horrid time to recollect on the previous night’s emotions.
“Vera,” VOCOM warned gruffly, snubbed by our signs of affection.
I kept myself locked onto Quintley for just a few more seconds before breaking away, begrudgingly. His arms stayed around my waist comfortably, his eyes staring at me in pure fear. I let myself get lost in those orbs, those comforting, familiar irises of muddy yet clear light. I hesitated before nodding once.
He let go and stepped back, ready to watch me make my way into the fate before me. I turned with an inhale, ready to go. I couldn’t vacillate for a second longer; I was allowing no more hesitation.
I stared at those open, grim, welcoming doors for a few moments, then moved my feet forwards without wavering.