Humanity Endures

Part 13 - Epilogue | Chapter 1

"There is no organized crime; there is only the Ministry of Espionage."

— Popular Human Idiom

***

The Present

Falmenec, sequestered in the mostly-intact room that had been designated as his quarters, and his sorrow-laden heart wearily pounding, viewed Korthekar's helmet footage yet another time; in the space of a few instants, he then watched, as if through his own eyes, while Korthekar reduced the alien wearing the face of his old friend Dentor into a bloodied smear. Weakly raising his left hand to wipe away yet more tears from his bloodshot eyes, and shooting a glance to his loaded, table-bound sidearm but a few feet away, Falmenec reached for a nearby bottle of 99% with his free hand. The shower he — and any others who still lived — had taken may have freed him from the odor of sweat, but it was hopeless against the stenches of alcohol, and of unremitting sorrow.

As a half-liter of the substance flowed down his parched throat, Falmenec repressed the urge to then drink from the nearby intoxication suppressant — if he could not get drunk and he could not use MECS, what defence would he have from grief? If there was one thing that the intoxicated Falmenec believed would see him through his pain, and help him cope, it was drunkenness. Falmenec raised his bottle to his lips again.

It was 23:56 Galactic Standard Time, according to his implant's clock, yet Falmenec had more important things to do than sleep — after so much loss, he had to mourn, or when he was needed to act once the Placeholder exited the Remnant, he would be incapable of doing so. Tears leapt from his aching eyes as he re-watched the recording of Korthekar smashing the alien Dentor into a pulp with his armored hands, along with many more formerly-human people who had once been Falmenec's friends and colleagues. After Light's End, after the Cesspit, and after the harrowing battle in the Remnant, Velan's crew had been numerically devastated and emotionally annihilated; Falmenec had not escaped this fate, and in fact, he had suffered from it more than most.

Falmenec raised his bottle of 99% to his stinging lips once more, though no liquid came from the mouth of the bottle; wearily allowing the recording to finish, and looking through his own eyes for the first time in some time, Falmenec then saw that the bottle was thoroughly depleted. Cursing vigorously, Falmenec wiped his face with his sleeve and shakily placed the expended bottle on the floor, next to five others just like it; even without a bottle of alcohol to keep him company, Falmenec, not hesitating, played the clip again. He had been replaying it for the past hour, and when one had mental implants, viewing such a clip took only a moment — Falmenec had re-watched the final death of his friends more than two thousand times, and he still had yet to fully come to terms with it.

Falmenec was so inebriated that he had been rendered a sorrowful cripple. When the door to his chamber burst open unexpectedly, his first reaction was to clumsily turn in his static chair towards the noise, his feet hitting and knocking over all five of his bottles in the process — two of them violently shattered, scattering fragments of glass across the now-damp floor, though the sound was scarcely heard by either Falmenec, or she who had just entered his room. As Falmenec clumsily grasped for a nearby, nearly-full bottle of intoxication suppressant, his other hand desperately reached for his sidearm lying on a nearby table; a moment later, his barely-functioning eyes locked into gaze with the person who stood in his doorway: Ralthina.

His hands finally clutching both his intoxication suppressant, and his sidearm, Falmenec quickly raised the bottle to his lips and consumed half of it, while he hesitantly raised the sidearm towards the woman entering his room; his weary eyes struggled to make out the poor condition of his colleague, but even his intoxicated mind recognized what was wrong. Ralthina's face was a pale white, her grey military-issue suit stained a dark red; her right arm was clutching her left forearm, and as she limped forward, Falmenec noted that her hand covered in blood — black blood.