Memento Mori

4.13 - THE RABBIT AND THE TRUTH

I SHOULD PULL THE TRIGGER. Whoever said real evil doesn't have a face was dead wrong. I'm staring at it right now.

Nothing good will come of letting this fae freak try to swindle me with her words. Even if she's not lying through her teeth, the atrocities she's committed to become an Executor of the most infamous crime syndicate in the Sections are unimaginable. She is evil in a way a bullet can never fully stop. Like a dark thought that flickers through the mind, gone the next moment, yet planting a seed of something worse. And I know it in the very core of my being. But the temptation she planted with her words remains.

She is a liar. But I know people. And I know, against everything I want to believe, this monster is not lying to me.

Whatever the truth she offers might be makes my entire body go cold. The buzzing of the plasma torch fades in my ears. The desk draws me with a black hole grip. Inexorable. One step crosses the event horizon. The data slip is cool between my fingers as I pick it up and slot it into my JOY. Cyan projector light ignites between me and the Executor. Her orange-gold eyes burn through the screen as I let the files run.

There is no stream. Just sound. Two voices talking through a JOY call. One an airy singsong that wends between masculine and feminine with no care for the difference between. The other is tired. Heavy with guilt. And intimately familiar to my ears.

"Tomorrow at dusk," Ulysses says. "Sarah will be at the reception dock for the Two Heavens. She'll be stowing away on a foodstuffs transport."

"No..."

He speaks quietly, roughly, breaking my heart one word at a time. "She intends to use a series of ancient tunnels built into the city superstructure to navigate up to your office. I suggest intercepting her before then."

"I will leave the details to my warriors," the Executor replies. "But before we part, know this, young man. No one has ever crossed me twice."

"No..." I repeat, shaking my head in disbelief. "He... Ulysses wouldn't. He-"

"She'll be there. You have my word." There's a long pause before Ulysses sighs again. "Our bargain is struck, then."

In front of me, the Executor silently mouths the words that her own recording speaks. "Quite. With this Sarah Morninghawk's fate as an example, the rest of those pauper gangsters will crumble rather swiftly under the correct fulcrum of pressure. I from without, you from within. As agreed, you will take command of half of their remnant, mhm? The rest shall go to Dynasty." She preens in the cyan light. "You have made the right choice, Ulysses."

One half of the call clicks out, but Ulysses' end remains. Silence, as he continues to sit at his desk. Then an unfathomable choking sound. A muttered regret; maybe a doubt, maybe a prayer. Or maybe just a digestion of the life he just spent.

My gun falls slack at my side. My face becomes a mask of grief, blankly discomprehending. Denying at first, then slowly, inevitably realizing that the last rock I've been clinging to for hope in this neon hell has already dropped out from beneath me.

"He betrayed me," I whisper through glassy eyes.

I knew there were holes in that night, and I ignored them. Inconsistencies I glossed over because I trusted him like the father he was to me. Ulysses is Sarah's closest friend. How many years has he nurtured me, guided me, watched me grow into a woman? All for this. I don't understand. I could sneer at the Executor and yell that she's lying, pull the trigger before the rest of the dataslip plays, but the growing hole inside my chest knows the truth.

That night I called him, after Sarah died. He was surprised I called. Not because I was calling him instead of Sarah, but because of those very first words he said. You're alive?

Everything I thought I knew, everything I thought I was fighting for, peels apart in front of me.

It was a dream destined to die from the start.

The Executor picks her nails, saying nothing.

Ashen faced, I slump back as the second file plays. A groan rises from within me when I recognize the faint sounds of that foot-taping oldTech beat that played while he poured me Sarah's favorite drink. Mere seconds after he promised to send me to the overcity. After he'd lied to my face while I told him what happened the night she died. He swore he was trying to do right by her, even though he'd just stabbed her in the back. Why? They were friends of forty years. Through thick and thin, through the worst days in their lives.

And he gave her up to die.

"...this farce has played out long enough, Ulysses. Where is the girl?"

"Mori isn't a part of this. She's just a child."

"She has interfered with my plans on three different occasions, and continues to be a thorn in my proverbial foot. She cannot be allowed to continue to roam free. Not when the rest of the rats could rally behind the legacy of her dead mentor."

His voice sinks to a growl. "You would lie and break our deal."

"Lie is a dangerous accusation, young man. The agreement was Sarah Morninghawk for the future of the Vents. This girl was never one of the terms, mhm? Nor will she become one of them." The Executor's voice takes on a lethal edge. "One life is not worth the future of your Vents, Ulysses. Or is it?"

"...She'll... she'll be in my office for the rest of the night. Please, don't let her suffer."

Metal pops and melts in the wall behind me as the plasma cutter finally breaks through. The projection screen fades with a gasp. By now, salty paths carve through the blood dried to my cheeks. The gun hasn't moved from my side. What would I even aim it at? Where would I even go if I did? I have been forsaken. Just like Sarah.

The Executor defies gravity and drifts up from her stool, floating towards the door. She pauses beside me, lingering shoulder to diminutive shoulder.

"Funny thing, the best way to get rid of rats," she coos. "It's a bit like killing ants."

And then she's gone. I just stand there, shellshocked staring at the half-petaled lily, Ulysses' echo circling in my head. When I finally turn, I'm staring at the end of the line. A firing squad of enforcers forms a wedge before the door. A familiar black-white revolver at their head. Reflected in the Armiger's unwavering face, a darkened city, a halo of fire, and a girl who stands at the brink of an opening Abyss. Betrayed, deceived, and alone. Just like her mother.

I didn't even hear the shot.

Just turn to see the smoke rising from the Sixer's barrel. Feel the shudder of my body as white-hot heat blossoms in my belly. I stumble backwards towards the open dropoff, mouthing an airless regret. The 6-Teba falls from my hands to clatter against the floor. Back another step. Good arm not working now, whole body not working, empty lungs croaking. The plunge to the Abyss looms behind me, the maw opening, the infinite darkness waiting to be fed another broken soul. My foot slips against the edge of the window. Gravity reaches up to take me with open arms.

And I fall.

In the silence that follows the clang of chains, a lone man in armor strides carefully through the scientific tomes until he stands where the girl last did. A face of black glass peers over the dropoff, down into the Abyss. Hundreds of meters of inverted towers slowly taper down to skeletal points against a backdrop of black nothingness. A foreign man in this vaunted city, he does not understand the nature of the infinite dark, but he understands its place.

His boots creak as he crouches down on his haunches, bone-white cape pooling across the carpet. One gloved hand reaches down and carefully gathers her fallen weapon. A simple revolver, smaller than her mother's, trigger five times as light. As he holds it, the black steel begins dissolving into nanolines like sand between his fingers. The last of the particles flutter off to join the embers on the horizon. He flicks them away and rises.

Part 5 continues on Saturday, per the normal posting schedule. Thank you for rating and following!