Memento Mori

5.1 - THE LIE

WHEN THE TRASH HAULER breaks my fall, I think I'm dead at first.

Seven stories of negative acceleration abruptly ends with me slamming into a snowdrift of trash at lethal velocity. Half-dead, I plunge through the hauler's open roof right as it pulls out from one of the Orange's lower docks. The impact shatters me.

Miraculously saved from a fall into the Abyss, I don't even have the life left to be thankful for the cushioning. Bottles and debris puncture and lacerate my exposed skin with hundreds of tiny wounds. Greasy filth oozes over me. Rot and decay overwhelm every sense. Insects scatter, then begin investigating my flesh. A shattered chunk of a whiskey bottle stabbed through my cheek halfway through my mouth. Iron blood starts pooling under my tongue. I can't pull it out.

When the hauler rattles and begins to ascend, the trash rises in front of me like a wave and I tumble backwards with it, buried in moments. Unable to breathe, unable to comprehend, I watch through gaps in the hauler's roof as the lights of the Orange slowly drift downwards and the fires of the street war replace them. Again the hold shifts around me. Cold, rancid liquid spills down my legs, between my thighs. Slime and grease cakes me in a second skin. Solely on instinct I feel around for my JOY, it is gone.

Twice more there are stops for more mountains of trash. Slowly I'm being crushed under the weight. My broken wrist screams at the slightest effort to move. Whole body throbbing from the hundreds of cuts. And the Armiger's gutshot. I can feel the bullet from the Sixer burrowed deep in my stomach, killing me slowly but surely.

I am dying.

Buried alive, trapped in an endless loop of pain, my mind has nothing to do but reel and fixate on the man who put me here. Ulysses betrayed me and Sarah both. I still can't comprehend why. Why he would compromise with the syndicate and its killers when they're the ones poisoning our home. Why he would do that to Sarah. Her death, the shot that echoes every time I close my eyes, might as well have been his finger on the trigger; not the Armiger's. And then to me, too. Why. Why. Why.

How much of my life was spent under his wing? Those years of stories, lessons, and cautions. If Sarah was my mother, he was the closest thing I ever had to a father. The care in his eyes when we talked over drinks was no lie. He loved me. How could he ever do such a thing? Kill Sarah, deceive me so easily because I trusted him, then give me up too?

In Sarah's absence, I never realized how much I was relying on the surety of Ulysses. He was the wall I could always plant my back against. Now that wall is gone.

I don't know what to do. I'm lost. Alone, dying, and scared. I have nowhere else to go. No more plans. No more heroes. Everything I thought I could do, I failed. Matthias is dead because I thought I could change something. But the game was rigged from the start. Or maybe I never had a chance at all.

The stench of the rot becomes so overwhelming my body can't even process it in tandem with the pain. My stomach lurches as the hauler finally begins its ascent towards the overcity in earnest. Shivering in a cold sweat, I cry out and force myself to crawl up and up through the refuse until at last the top half of my body surfaces and I flop onto a pile of aluplast cans. There I lay. In the dark, atop the trash, coiled around the horrible pain that spreads from my stomach, crying while the hum of the engine drowns out my weeping.

"I'm sorry..." I croak. "I'm sorry..."

I have nothing left but tears. I sob and writhe until at last my eyes waver open and I realize I passed out at some point along the ride. The hum of the hauler's engine is twice as loud in my ears, the pressure of the ascent now gone. Pale light leaks through the closed roof. Bumps and jostling reverberate from the landing struts as the hauler settles down. For a moment, I numbly wonder if someone looked back into the hold and saw me, forgetting that these things are entirely automated. The only place we're headed is an incinerator in the heavy industry district.