Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Mind Games

"This ends here," Renegade said, the words lost immediately to the swelling roar of battle.

Before her, standing strong against the swarm of bodies, Angel Ramirez stood, feet planted hard against the churned red earth. His body was entirely obscured by armor, vaguely reminiscent of SE armor worn by Admiral Vir, but not quite so intimidating. Either way, she didn't need his face to know him. A part of her could have picked him from a crowd simply by his walk: long strides leaned lazily back into his hips, languorous but confident.

She hated it.

She hated how well she knew him.

She hated that she knew him well enough to make it clear she had once cared about him.

"Care." The voice in her head corrected

Renegade snarled, gritting her teeth together hard. She hated THAT even more: she hated the construct part of her: the part of her she could not accept, the part of her that had betrayed herself to make merry with the very people she had loathed so much, the people she bowed to.

"And that right there is your problem. I didn't bow to them. You don't BOW to friends." Renegade bristled, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Her back ached where the spidery limbs of the creature protruded from her body. The void creature, mostly silent these days, clung to her body like a wet shroud, and though it was not visible, she could feel the way it wrapped itself around her.

She hated it.

She hated who she was, who she had been, and what she was now. She hated having three voices in her head, three habitations in her body.

She hated it.

She hated it.

She hated it.

But she took a deep breath. Now was the time to get rid of them, take control, and finally be at peace.

She turned her head back to the marine, standing still as stone upon the battlefield before her. His weapon was raised, but he was weak, and his prior knowledge of her body and the sentience therein was too much.

He couldn't shoot her.

It would make killing him almost laughably easy -- even with his weapon.

"Then why haven't you done it yet?" There was that infernal voice again, nagging at the back of her head, the thing that called itself Maverick, the thing that wanted more than anything to return to a life of pointless servitude to people who didn't even appreciate her, the thing holding her back.

All these thoughts ran through her head in a matter of milliseconds as she made her decision. Maverick was right, she hadn't killed him yet. Angel Ramirez was the last and greatest representation of her weakness, and once he was gone, she would be free.

And in a moment of rage, she acted, racing forward over the cracked and bloodstained earth to where the marine waited silently for his death.

Her feet did not touch the ground dangling some feet above the earth as the spidery protrusions bore her across the open field. It was they who would deal the final blow.

It would be easier that way.

Easier not to do it with her own hands.

Easier to rely on the void creature than to rely on her treacherous self.

She towered over him now, silhouetted against a rust-orange sky as artillery rockets whistled overhead, impacting the ground with great and trembling eruptions that rattled up through her body, and into her bones.