Post by Admin on Aug 8, 2009 8:48:13 GMT -5
That Dam Thread
Rian:
Rian loped back the way they'd come. Loping had to be his favorite gait in wolf morph. It was just so calm and relaxed. Wolves could do it for hours at a time and not get tired. Perseverance, endurance, good qualities to have right now.
His ears caught the sound of voices ahead of him but they passed through one ear and out the other. If he had taken the time to think about them he might have assumed they were Ember's and Luce's voices, assumed that the two were talking to each other.
But he didn't take that time. He was on autopilot. They were in the home stretch now and all he could think of was the finish line. Blow dam, go home. Have party. That no morphing thing was a pretty good idea. No morphing. Not like anyone will have the energy to anyway.
Suji's voice broke into this thoughts. <<Rian! There's a Controller ahead, and I think they might have the drop on Ember and Luce! Ember is trying to explain that what we've done can't be taken back. Fuck, I'm getting out of this morph.>>
<<What?>> He began paying attention and caught the last of what Ember said and then what Luce said after. <<Shit.>>
He ducked behind a turbine which Suji had already been smart enough to do and peaked his head out to get a better look. The wolf could tell him what was going on from sound and smell alone but he was still human and still used to relying on sight.
And what he saw did not look good. Ember and Luce were standing by the last turbine and a woman was holding a dracon beam on them.
<<Suji, you have a dracon beam right? Back me up, but this should be easy,>> he said, lapsing into the over confidence of a teenage boy. The controller wasn't watching, he was a wolf, the conclusion was foregone.
He shot out around the turbine and covered the distance between them faster than most humans would have thought possible, especially ones not used to being attacked.
Luce:
But Luce was used to being attacked and she spotted the wolf out of the corner of her eye before anyone else did. She didn't really think about what she was doing. She never consciously chose Sedra over Rian, she just saw the wolf leap and acted.
Her body collided with the warm, thick fur of Rian's morph and knocked him off target. She hadn't used finesse when jumping at him, just took a flying tackle and they both landed hard. She pretty much landed on top of him so if she was winded he had to be.
Ember:
Ember could have flattened Luce with her look of total shock at what the woman said. It was just so cold, and yet casually indifferent. They were all going to die anyway? What the hell? When had Luce turned into someone so callous? And now of all times, when they were facing the barrel of a dracon beam together, she was making quippy remarks instead of helping Ember talk Sedra out of killing them!
Her nerves were shot, frayed past the point of mere exhaustion, when all at once everyone moved. Like someone had shouted GO and a sick game of tag had started. ember saw Luce jump first, then saw the Wolf leap out, recognizing the form as Rian's signature. She half had his name on her lips before they collided. Her feet, though, had already moved, spurred on by the sudden jolt of momentum.
She couldn't let him be hurt again. Luce must have seen something she hadn't... but Sedra had the gun, she had to get Sedra! She was the one who would hurt Rian! In the split second it took her to tackle the controller woman, the logic seemed to make sense. But Ember hadn't caught her off guard, and her weight wasn't enough to take her down. So she grappled for control of the gun instead, trying to get some advantage without really thinking it through... and soon it was clear that she was not winning this fight.
Suji:
Suji didn't have time to answer. She only just regained her human form completely in time to see Rian leap. And then she stared, dumbstruck, as Luce blocked him. Luce saved that Controller. Why? Was she afraid that Rian's collision would cause her to fire? But now both Rian and Luce were out of the count, and the Controller had an even clearer shot at Ember...
Her brain chugged away, a bike with a loose chain, no traction, nothing to grip...
And then a strange idea, so strange that she couldn't turn away from it, began to form: was Luce a traitor? Had she gotten infested when they weren't looking? Impossible. No Yeerk would allow them to set these charges, under any pretext.
But maybe there's more than one way to be a traitor, a cold voice said in the back of Suji's mind. She tugged out the dracon gun which had been tucked into the back waistband of her morphing suit. No. Luce was not a traitor. There had to be an explanation for this. But the Controller was already consolidating her position against Ember in a grappling contest, and Suji didn't trust her aim enough to hit the Controller and not Ember.
And she'd have been hard pressed to fire even if she had a clear shot, with so much fucking C4 around.
Sedra:
The both of them turned around, and Sedra's eyes momentarily flicked to the bag Ember had set down, then back to the two Animorphs. Her whole body was tense, ready to react if either of them decided to attack her. It's too late. The Dam's going to blow. What could I do now? This whole situation had already been out of her control, and now there was no going back. The bombs were set, the dam would blow. More controllers would probably die. She could feel Catherine's guilt at this, her host's uneasiness at this whole situation. Sedra didn't care for the pity anymore. It was fake.
Sedra pointed her dracon beam at Ember--She had been avoiding looking at Luce for the time being, knowing how it would mess her up. Her expression was glassy as Ember spoke, but she stiffened when she took a step forward, finger tightening around the trigger. "Back off." Sedra knew she would kill Ember, that was a given. Ever since she had laid eyes on the girl walking up to her in the park--acting so cocky and pushy--Sedra had really disliked her. But what about Luce? She didn't know what to think, how to react, what she was willing to do when it came to Luce anymore.
Sedra's dark blue eyes shifted to Luce at the sound of her voice. Her lips were pressed into a tight line as she listened to what Luce said, expression darkening at her words. "No thanks to you all." But there was hesitation creeping into her body language now. She could shoot Ember, she could shoot Luce. Or could she shoot Luce? What was stopping her? She felt her chest tighten, felt her pulse quicken slightly.
Maybe it was the stress and horror from seeing the dead corpses in the pool, or maybe it was the whack to the head she had gotten earlier, or maybe it was Luce's voice or the familiar, soft curve of her lips, the expressions and body language Sedra knew so well--but Sedra's voice held just the tiniest trace of vulnerability, uncertainty. It was unusual. "What does it matter? What does it matter? I can't let you do this. I have to stop this, I have stop you all. I--" but it was gone, suddenly.
The stony demeanor was back, and Sedra had taken a step forward. Her finger was pressing down on the trigger--ready to fire--when suddenly everything seemed to happen at once. A wolf jumped out from behind one of the turbines, and Sedra swung her dracon beam to the side where the animal was. In the same moment, Luce moved to attack... the wolf? Out of reflex, Sedra's finger had pulled the trigger, and she had to twist her hand away to force the shot to miss Luce. It went wild, burying into one of the nearby concrete walls and shattering a chunk of concrete off.
She didn't have any time to think about what had just happened when Ember leapt at her. If Sedra hadn't reacted to Rian's attack, Ember would have thrown herself straight in front of the dracon beam and gotten her innards blown out. As it was, the gun was turned away when Ember started grappling for it. Sedra aimed a punch at her gut, while trying to twist the gun away from her hands. The attack was a mistake on the Animorph's part. Ember was close enough to get a hold of now. Sedra grabbed a handful of hair and yanked Ember close roughly.
In the next second the cold muzzle of the dracon beam was shoved against Ember's temple. Her other hand had grabbed Ember's arm, fingernails digging into the flesh of her arm, holding her close. Her voice was a shout, rising above the turbines.
"Remove the bombs or I'll shoot her head off!"
Rian:
Rian landed painfully. His wolf form let out a yelp and then was silent as his head hit the hard concrete floor and he was momentarily dazed. He wasn't sure at first what had happened. He had been jumping towards the controller, he had seen the small rise and fall of the blood pumping through the arteries in her throat and could almost feel his teeth ripping into them when he had been knocked violently off course.
His paws scrabbled for purchase, his claws scratching the concrete and making an unpleasant noise that reminded him of the scarab beetles in the Mummy movies as he struggled to stand up and throw the body that was on him off. He didn't need to get a good look to know it was Luce, his nose told him that well enough as it took in her familiar scent. What he was wondering was how and why Luce was on top of him.
<<Luce..?>> he began when Sedra's voice rang out in the empty, abandoned corridor of the power plant. "Remove the bombs or I'll shoot her head off!" The demand was greeted only by silence, the only sound the soft whirring of the turbines that would soon be blown.
Rian whipped his head around and spotted Ember. She looked...frightened. God, how had this happened? He looked down at Luce who he was standing over to see her looking at Ember too. No, not Ember.
Suddenly his mind made one of those intuitive leaps he was always reading about but, as of yet, had not managed to pull off. He remembered Luce's absence in the mission to area 51, and then her insistence on saving this specific controller. He had thought she was mad at the time but he hadn't given her actions any serious thought. And he should have, especially after Ray had come back with his reports about what had happened when they had gone after the bombs. Again this controller had shown up and again Luce's involvement in the affair had been suspect. But Luce, while intimidating and cold at times, had always demonstrated the fact that she was a soldier and loyal to their cause.
So he had let it slide, he had trusted her. And a part of him had been too afraid to confront her on it, afraid that she would just laugh at him, show him how little control he had over her.
<<Luce,>> he said, not yet believing what was starting to be clear to him, <<tell me you didn't.>> It was a stupid thing to say. She obviously had. He had been knocked off course by someone and here she was.
He began to panic. What could he do. Sedra had Ember and she had a gun to her head, worse than a gun, a dracon beam. Ember would be gone before he could even think about moving. He thought of pleading with her. Anyone but Ember, please, she, we just-" but he knew it would have no effect. What did controller know of love?
"Luce is fraternizing with the enemy!!" Ember's slip from weeks ago came back to him. <<You better hope she-I swear to God Luce,>> he said in private thoughtspeak as he turned on her.
<<Let her go,>> he broadcasted, turning his head so that he could see Sedra. <<Or,>> he said turning back to face Luce, fangs bared and a low growl escaping his throat, <<she dies.>> His yellow eyes glittered in anger and something akin to hatred. A wolf's jaws could clamp down with a bone crushing 1450 pounds of force per square inch, twice what any domestic dog could do, and he had killed more than one controller by ripping their throat out. Could he do that to Luce? He didn't know, but neither did Sedra.
Ember:
Ember's breath caught in her throat. In an instant her entire world came crashing to a stop as the cold metal pressed against her temple.
She couldn't think, her muscles froze halfway in motion with her heart pounding away at her chest, beating too fast, out of control, but with no blood being pumped through. It had all drained away, leaving a numb sensation of uncomprehending fear. This was it. This was the end... again. Only, she'd lived through everything else somehow... Even with the gun right up against her skull she still had that hope. She wasn't dead yet. She could be, but she wasn't. Sedra was using her as a hostage so she had a few precious seconds of life, if she could just get her brain moving maybe... there had to be some way out of this.
She couldn't die in front of Rian's eyes.
Ok ok ok ok calm down, oh god, ok. Think! Ember swallowed. Her body still felt like she was in a crashing air plane, helpless and panicked with uncertainty, but not beyond rational thought. Dammit think...! She started to sift through the martial arts maneuvers she'd been taught. If Sedra was distracted for just a moment then she could use something to get out of danger, clear the way for Rian and...
Luce She saw her best friend attack Rian and now? What had she been doing? Why did she not try to take down Sedra instead? The controller had been closer it didnt... didn't make any...
Ember suddenly heard Rian's thought speak as both of them put the pieces together at the same time. Luce was protecting Sedra, and now Ember was going to get killed for it. She groaned, knowing that she helped Luce and hid her secret from Rian, making him vulnerable when all she'd wanted to do was keep a promise to a friend. But she didn't think in a thousand years Luce would actually choose Sedra over her own faction... over her closest friend and ally. Ember felt Sedra's grip tighten and bit her lip to keep from wincing in pain. How had it come to this? What had she done to deserve this? To be murdered, just like that, just because she'd trusted too deeply... been gullible and blind... and tried to blur the lines between love and war.
In the middle of her maddening spiral of guilt and fear of death, Ember heard Rian's counter threat and looked up. "Rian! No, you can't-!" Putting Luce in that position may have bought her more time, but it had made the situation ten times worse. He couldn't kill her, not really. Sedra would know that! ...un- unless he, but no that was, impossible. Not even with her life at stake would Rian... But she'd heard his voice in her head and seen the look in his wolf's eye. Oh god... what was happening?
Suji:
Suji was the only one on the outside of the situation. She had to choose.
Had to choose who to throw her lot in with.
Threaten to blow the dams and all of them with it? One half-assed dracon shot could probably send all the charges off--it was only a stroke of dumb luck that the one that had streaked out of the conflict just now hadn't done that.
Defend Luce? Suji stared at the woman that was probably her closest friend in this war. Luce wasn't a traitor. Not in any conventional way. It had to do with this Controller. The fact that Rian was threatening to kill Luce, and that that should have any effect on the Controller's decision whether or not to shoot Ember...
Suji's eyes narrowed. Oh Luce, she thought coldly, bitterly. She might have thought that she would feel an impossible distance open up between her and the woman on the ground. It didn't; instead... instead it seemed that Luce was too easy to see, too easy to understand. Like her friend was naked, exposed in the worst way, and Suji felt both embarassed for her and sickened by her.
It probably crept up on you so easily, didn't it? Suji thought, venomously. The good soldier. Follows orders. You probably didn't have a fucking chance. She was disgusted: one of the only people she thought she could count on in this war to be like her, to make the right sacrifices because being a soldier was about sacrificing what you cared for... and Luce had betrayed her in the same fell swoop that she betrayed Ember and Rian.
So this is how it feels, Suji thought, realizing that she was only person she knew, in this whole fucking war, who didn't have something she'd sacrifice the cause for. No person, no noble call to pacifism, nothing. The only one who was ready to sell her soul (and the souls' of others) to win. This is how it feels to be completely alone.
Hatred rose like bile in her throat. How dare Luce. How dare she. After all that Suji had become, how dare the one person she could possibly relate to decide to do this?! And the worst of it was that Suji knew that the hatred she feel eating away at her like acid, from the inside out, it wasn't even for Luce.
It was all for herself.
"He won't kill her." Suji's voice rang out, and she walked slowly over to Luce and Rian. She kept her dracon gun lowered at all times, never raised it against Sedra. "You won't kill her," she repeated, addressing the wolf. Her veneer was glacial, unreadable, reptilian for all its expression. There was not anger, or strain in her voice, only pure-cold-hard matter-of-fact. Suji lifted the dracon gun slightly, so that the barrel was aimed at Luce's head. No way to miss from this distance. She flicked the intensity scale from its lowest setting to the highest setting.
"But I will." Suji looked Luce dead in the eyes.
Quieter, almost as an aside, she spoke while looking her friend in the face. "I'm sure Raven told you as much, didn't she, Rian?"
Luce:
Luce scraped her elbows against the floor trying to get up as she heard Rian's claws click against the concrete. She had only managed to sit up though before Rian was standing over her but he wasn't looking at her he was looking at...
Luce saw Ember, saw Sedra and heard Sedra's threat. Her stomach felt like someone had dropped ice into it. What had she done? She hadn't thought-No she hadn't thought at all, she'd just reacted. There had just been too much death today, she couldn't stand by and watch Sedra die too.
Maybe if she had thought it through, considered the implications of letting Sedra live she might have been able to-She stopped that train of thought as she realized that she was lying to herself. She wouldn't kill Sedra and couldn't let her be killed if there was something she could do to stop it.
How had this happened? How had she gotten to the point where she would choose a controller over her team. A controller for Christ's sake! Why should she care? Why should she care about the fate of a slave owner, a tyrant, just one more alien who had taken her home and taken her life.
But she did. She cared and it was terrible. She just wanted to let her die, it would be easier. It would be easier if she could kill her herself. It would mean she hated them all, that she could just dismiss them as the enemy and kill the ones put in front of her. It would mean she never had to care and never had to face what had happened to her, what had been taken from her. And that would hurt less.
But a part of her didn't want to be dead inside anymore. She didn't want to continue on feeling little and showing less. She wanted to be alive again, to care about things again. So she held on to the one thing she did care about with a death grip and wouldn't let it go because that made her human, that meant she wasn't irredeemable. And if she wasn't maybe one day, after this, she could have a life again, a home again, a family.
God it hurt to hope for those things, to want them.
And she wanted Sedra. And she wanted to get out of her alive damnit and just go home with Ember and Rian and Suji. She wanted it all and she inwardly berated herself for acting like a child. She couldn't have everything she wanted and she may have gotten a friend killed trying to get it.
She might have gotten herself killed trying to get it she thought as Rian voiced his threat. Looking into his eyes Luce wasn't sure if he could do it. She knew how he felt about Ember but she didn't know what he was capable of. Could he kill a team mate?
Perhaps not but when Suji added her own threat Luce realized that her chances of making it out of this alive had just dropped below Ember's.
She looked into Suji's eyes searching for some indication that she was bluffing. Suji wouldn't...she...
She looked away and in that moment she gave up. She didn't care anymore. She was tired of trying to balance conflicting loyalties. Let Rian, Suji and Sedra work out her fate between them. She'd been stupid to hope for more anyway.
Rian:
<<Perhaps she did,>> he said just as quietly, <<but you shouldn't have had to. Her traitorous faction member,>> he spit out the word traitorous like a curse, <<her responsibility. Hold the dracon beam on her please.>>
Rian turned to look at Sedra and couldn't help staring at Ember. But he looked away quickly. He couldn't allow himself to think about her, to see her, to fully feel the danger she was in. It would get inside him, make him panic, confuse his thinking. And if he wanted to get her out of here alive he had to think clearly because he was making a desperate gamble based on an intuition he had no proof for.
<<You really want to take this chance Sedra?>> he asked as he began to demorph. He did it quickly and smoothly since the wolf was so familiar to him and he didn't pause as he reached his human state, his next morph blending into his demorph seamlessly.
He stood over Luce who was still on the ground. "Suji, can I have the dracon beam?" he asked holding out his hand though he didn't take his eyes off Sedra's. "Luce, stand up," he ordered in a much harsher tone.
Sedra:
<<Let her go, or, she dies.>>
Besides a small curl of her lip, Sedra didn't react to the wolf's threat against Luce. She couldn't let herself, not in front of them. Even so, it was hard to believe that these humans--desperate, running around in their tight outfits and trying to gain a shaky foothold in an already crumbling ground--would kill one of their own just to save another. They wouldn't do it. Sedra was sure of that, she knew humans too well. But the situation had taken a very wrong turn for her.
"Remove the charges. Now." She tightened her fingers around Ember's arm as the girl spoke, then hissed in her ear. "Shut up and don't move."
Dark blue eyes shifted back on the wolf. "You? Kill one of your own?" There was a trace of amusement in her voice. He had to be lying, and Sedra wasn't a fool to be tricked like this. "Then, do it." There was a pause. "Kill your team mate." The words stung in her mouth, but her expression was icy. "But you won't, will you? You are too easy to predict."
Sedra had to be right. They were humans after all. They valued the lives of their loved ones over common sense at the worst times. It's what Sedra could read from Catherine's own thoughts, and what Sedra understood from Catherine's shock at the Animorph's threat. Yeerks were that way; Yeerks killed their allies, they murdered their subordinates. But they had no ties to each other--there was no desire or reason to connect with one another, besides to better yourself. Most Yeerks were always trying to step over the one above them. It was life, it was the world Sedra lived in and fought in.
The other Animorph--some girl Sedra had never seen before--spoke up suddenly and began walking towards them. She only seemed to validate what Sedra already knew. The wolf wouldn't kill Luce. None of them would. However, a bit of surprise crept into her when the girl, too, threatened to do it.
Sedra's eyes shifted to the dracon beam the Animorph was holding. She leveled her gaze on Suji's face, looking her straight in the eyes. There was no reason to believe this girl was any different from the wolf. "Right." The muzzle of the dracon beam pressed harder into Ember's skull, and Sedra's finger tightened around the trigger. It would be too easy to twitch her finger and blow the girl's head off completely. But she needed her alive. For now.
"You are both absurd, you are using one of your own to threaten me. Why would you humans think that she matters?" It wasn't showing, but Sedra was becoming unnerved by their insistence and by the confidence in their words. When had she ever given any sign of caring for Luce? Had she betrayed herself in some way to them? Involuntarily, her eyes slipped to Luce, searching for some kind of hint that would give them away. There was nothing. Did Luce believe they would do this to her? Or was this some kind of plot to trick Sedra? She couldn't tell anymore.
<<They fight for their lives everyday, Sedra. They fight, and die, and kill for survival. You can't underestimate them. You've done it before and look at what's happened.>> Catherine's voice was quiet in Sedra's head. There was a only slight reaction on the outside. Her jaw clenched. <<And you care for Luce, you know that as much as I can feel it.>>
Even hearing it from her host, she didn't want to believe it. That couldn't be right, could it? Who was Luce, to Sedra? Another escaped host? An Animorph, the enemy? The ex-host of another Yeerk?
...Somebody she cared for?
Jals. What about her? Jals was long dead. Sedra was alone, Jals was gone, Eva was gone. Nowadays, it was painful to think of them. It wasn't something she let Catherine know, or even let herself dwell on. Any remainders of the past were gone--when things had been happier, intoxicating, passionate, so new and different--when she had discovered what love had meant, what it meant to hold a child in your arms or wait eagerly for someone to come home. It was gone now; replaced by monotony, by anger, by death and killing. Emptiness.
But Luce had come back. The moment Sedra had laid eyes on her back in that cell at Area 51--when she had been parading around as Jals, no less--Sedra had felt that pain evaporate. She had been filled with that old excitement and energy from before. It hadn't faded away after she had learned of Jals' death, and Sedra was starting to realize she felt something every time she saw Luce. It was confusing, maybe even a little upsetting. She could acknowledge the fact that Luce was a free human--an Animorph no less--but that didn't seem to stop her from having these strange feelings. What was Sedra thinking? Was she insane?
She didn't know how to respond to her host. So she pulled up that wall, let it fill the gap between their two minds. She didn't need to listen to her host. She didn't want to. <<You don't know anything.>>
Sedra's assumption about what the Animorphs was being chipped away by her own growing uncertainty. The expression on her face was still, but inside it was eating away at her. She tore her gaze away from Luce on the ground to the wolf. Rian's voice filled her head and she narrowed her eyes at him, watching his demorph. Her next words were perhaps the only indication of her anxiety, the only indication that she did hold some kind of stake in Luce's survival.
"You are both lying." Her voice was cold, but as she spoke her heart was thudding in her chest. She needed to call them on it. She needed to hear it, to know that she was right and she wasn't getting Luce killed. That she had some sort of control over this situation. She was the one with the hostage. The moment Ember was free, the Animorphs would kill Sedra. She needed to keep the girl close to get out of this, or to even have any chance of saving this whole dam project. To redeem herself for not being able to save all the dead Yeerks in the pool from being boiled alive.
"So. Remove the bombs." She pushed the dracon beam harder against Ember's head, tilting the girl's head to the side slightly. "Or she will die."
Ember:
Ember couldn't stop herself from feeling the fresh wash of fear that came with that small movement. The simple push of her head to one side and the cold voice telling her she was going to die. There was no way to morph herself out of this, there wouldn't be enough time or enough of her head left to try and heal the wound away. She was trapped, and more scared and alone than she ever thought she could feel.
And she didn't care. Or, at least the part of herself that wasn't the primal self-preservation instinct, didn't care. It was the small voice, the one that spoke up when everything else was in chaos and cut through and speak exactly what you'd known all along but had skirted around like an idiot until you'd driven yourself mad. That voice. That was what was paying attention to what was really going on, and right now it was the only thing Ember was paying attention to. Because it was the only thing that was going to help both of them live through this. Screaming and crying and struggling, on top of the thousand other reactions she wanted so desperately to give in to were the things she had to resist and hold herself back from. And if Luce's life wasn't in danger as well as hers, she might have let herself fall into that pit...
But as it was, she gritted her teeth and spoke these words under her breath directly to Sedra. "Don't kill me. Don't even think about it." Ember's body was shaking, coiled with frantic energy, but her voice stayed steady. "You don't know him like I do. You don't understand what Rian has been through..." She looked at him, and then Luce, watching as the strongest woman she'd ever known, gave up.
It only made her decision easier to make. "He's not lying. If you kill me, you'll be killing her." Ember took a breath, smothering that primal desire for life, and waiting for some miracle that Sedra would hear her.
Suji:
Rian demorph, and Suji kept the dracon beam on Luce. When Sedra spoke to her, disbelievingly, Suji shrugged--cold. "I've killed an Animorph before. Less than two weeks ago, even; that's why I'm here. My faction leader couldn't stand the sight of me, was probably more than ready to get rid of me. But I did what had to be done." Her black eyes glanced to Sedra's blue. Perhaps this Controller was only seeing human limitation: only seeing a girl that was barely out of her childhood by past human legal standards. "Your kind didn't exactly invent ruthlessness, you know."
Rian continued to demorph, for what seemed to Suji like longer than was normal, but she didn't focus on that. There were too many other variables in play.
Then he wanted the dracon gun. Suji did not react immediately. If anything, she sized Rian herself... as if unsure if he was capable of doing this. After all, her past two leaders had been pacifists. Even if Rian thought he could do this, could he really? Could she take the chance? She didn't want to undermine him in from of a Controller, but at the same time...
Ember started talking. Apparently she was convinced that Rian would shoot Luce. Suji was not. But there was a decent chance: shooting someone, after all, was not messy. Even as this short distance, it wouldn't be difficult. Suji'd killed Toby with a razor across the throat, and then spent the next few hours cleaning up his blood. She'd murdered Sophia by burying a knife so far in the girl's skull that she hadn't been able to pull it out again: the thin hilt had gotten lodged in the bone. Perhaps Rian could pull a trigger--it would be physically easy, in an instant of emotion.
But this couldn't be about emotion. Eye for an eye left everyone blind. Violence was a means to an end, not an end itself.
Suji regarded Ember. In a way, she was in a similar position as Sedra: trying to figure out just how far Rian could go with this. Luce was standing now, as par Rian's order. With her left hand she leaned closer to Luce and drew the knife that the woman kept tucked away. In her right she spun the dracon gun in her hand so that the butt of it faced outwards, and she held the gun to Rian. Though not done simultaneously, Suji made sure that there was no point at which she was weaponless.
After the exchange was made, she held the knife to Luce's throat instead. "This is what we humans like to call a zero sum game. In the end, these bombs are going off." Suji eyes locked on Sedra's, judging, trying to place her. She had no reason to believe than a Controller would care about Luce's death--but Rian and Ember seemed to be convinced that that was the case. And if Luce was stupid enough to risk this all for a Controller... Suji pushed her mind away from that thought.
"You shoot Ember, Rian probably shoots you in a fit of anger before he bothers shooting Luce, I cut Luce's throat. In any case, you die, along with some of us. But there are more of us, and I doubt you could kill us all before we could dispatch you. Magical healing powers and all of that." Her voice was perfectly even, explaining in the clearest logic she knew how: simple cause and effect.
"The bombs are going off. Whether they're detonated or triggered by random dracon fire, whether one of us or two of us or all of us end up dying in this room, they are going off."
Suji shifted her weight minimally, the blade not pressed to Luce's throat, but certainly not far from it. "I don't really give a damn about whether or not you think Luce's life is worth saving. The subject of a Yeerk's ability to care about anything is philosophizing that I don't indulge in. But I can tell you, personally, this mission will go according to plan." Her jaw set tight. "Give or take a few casualties."
Sedra:
Sedra almost couldn't hear the words from Ember's mouth over the gentle hum of the turbines. Now even her hostage was babbling about Luce being killed by Rian, who Sedra assumed was the male in the group. Ember's words didn't change anything at all; if anything, it had the opposite effect. Sedra's body visibly stiffened, and she leaned her face close enough to Ember's ear. Her voice was a low hiss.
"You're not listening, I don't give a shit what you think. I told you to stay still and shut up." As Sedra spoke, her arm slowly snaked around Ember. The girl seemed convinced that this Rian was willing enough to kill Luce. It was more likely she was trying to mix more doubt into Sedra's mind. She couldn't believe this. "I've killed your kind before, sniveling little children that don't know when to keep their mouth shut." Her arm was now slung around Ember's chest, trapping her against Sedra's body. "So. Stop wasting your breath." Carefully, keeping the dracon beam pressed neatly against Ember's head, Sedra took a step back. The grip on Ember would force her to take a step back as well.
Her attention settled back on Suji. The callous way the girl shrugged off her own little story was laughable. There was no telling if the Animorph was really telling the truth or not, or just trying to play some sort of convincing story that supported their threat. Sedra's expression hardened. "Sad. I'm sure your teammates enjoy having a murderer parading around with them."
Sedra took another step back, towing Ember along with. Behind her was one of the turbines, loaded with C4. As Sedra spoke, she was trying to figure out what to do, running all the options through her mind. Part of her trusted that Luce was safe, and that the two Animorphs didn't have the ability to kill one of their own. Another part of her had a small bit of doubt in that trust.
Rian requested the gun, and Sedra watched silently as the two Animorphs exchanged weapons. Suji's words seemed slow to sink in. The fact that the bombs were going off was something Sedra, deep down, knew would probably happen--even if she didn't want to acknowledge it. The dam project was doomed, and the thought came to her that she might not even make it out of this. Sedra was trapped and fighting a losing battle. The only reason she probably wasn't dead already was because of the hostage she had in front of her.
<<This is your fault.>> Catherine had been following Sedra's line of thought, and her tone had shifted from sympathy to bitterness. <<You've gotten us both killed. For what? What did you think you were going to do down here, Sedra?>> Sedra's fingers tightened around the dracon beam's grip.
After Suji finished speaking, Sedra tilted her chin up a little. "Maybe I can't kill you all. But if I die, this girl will die with me. That is certain." Maybe that would do something, maybe not. Slowly, she took another step back. This time the heel of her boot bumped against the turbine, and she felt its vibrations traveling through the floor. What now, what now. She couldn't shoot Ember without getting herself killed at the same time. And if she were to believe what the Animorphs were saying, Luce would die as well. The dam was going down.
But they hadn't shot Luce yet, had they? That thought pushed some of Sedra's doubts away. They hadn't shot Luce yet. They were just talking so far--stalling? hesitating?--hoping that Sedra would believe them. Did they even believe that Sedra cared for Luce? How could they even know? Sedra's eyes strayed, just for a moment, to Luce's face. Then rested on Rian, who was holding the dracon beam.
"If you were going to shoot her, then you would have done it by now."
Rian:
When Suji gave him the dracon beam he pointed it towards the floor. He wanted to point it at Sedra but that would have meant pointing it at Ember. And more than that it would have meant pointing it in the direction of the turbines strapped with C4 behind the two women. Well, one woman, one alien.
As the talk continued Rian began getting nervous. He knew just how much time wasn't on their side here. Any minute now Drake and Stevert could lose the battle for the entrance and then they'd have controllers pouring in here. They were panicked now but if someone got them organized they still outnumbered the animorphs almost 100 to 1. More without Drake and Stevert....
He had hoped that Sedra would back down. He had known it was a long shot and he'd known that he was basing it on a silly romantic notion but it had been his last hope. And hearing her disbelief and her unwillingness to let Ember go Rian realized that he now had a choice to make.
He could shoot Luce and maybe get Ember out alive but there was just as much of a likely hood that she would die too, that they would all die. And if he shot Luce...he would be hurting one of his own. Rian was confused about a lot of things he was beginning to realize. He wasn't sure where he stood in this war anymore, what was acceptable and what wasn't. He felt like he was in the middle of a storm, lost, while the world raged around him. And not knowing scared him. With Matt everything had been easy. He had trusted Matt to know what to do, to know the right thing, and all Rian had had to do was follow his lead.
But since coming to Vegas he had been obsessed with how to win and had given little or no thought as to why. What were they fighting for and what was he willing to sacrifice to get it? He wasn't sure but he knew what he wasn't willing to sacrifice so as Sedra showed clearly that she wasn't backing down and was willing to kill Ember Rian's eyes hardened.
"Fine, we've given you a chance." He turned to Luce and lifted the dracon beam. His fingers brushed over the trigger to turn it down and noticed it was already on the lowest setting. So Suji wasn't as callous as she seemed Rian thought as he turned the setting up and fired.
Luce:
Luce listened almost dispassionately as the talk swirled around her. She stood up when she was ordered to, getting to her feet, every motion listless. For a while she couldn't even manage to raise her head to meet the eyes of anyone around her. She didn't want to see the scorn in Suji's eyes, the hatred in Rian's, the desperation in Ember's. More than anything she feared what she would see if she looked at Sedra.
She had just shown very clearly how much she still cared for the woman. It was something she had wrestled with over the past couple of months. She had fought it for a while, and then she had denied it and, finally, she had accepted it. But she had promised herself that she wouldn't let it hurt her faction, that she wouldn't let it affect her decisions. She had been foolish enough to believe she could cut herself off from it all the time not realizing that there was a part of her that didn't want to be cut off from it. She almost sympathized with Rian right now. It was terrible to realize that there was a traitor living inside you.
But when Suji put the knife to her throat she lifted her eyes and stood up with as much dignity as she could manage. It didn't matter that a part of her, almost all of her, was screaming at her right now demanding to know why she had been so stupid. She would face the consequences of her actions, stand by her choices, even if that meant death right now at the hands of someone who was supposed to be on her side.
As Sedra backed up towards the turbine Luce looked at her and caught her eyes for a moment. She didn't know what she saw there and Sedra quickly looked away. Luce found herself wanting to catch her gaze again, if only for a moment. She wanted to explain things, to have her understand, to try to understand her.
But before that could happen Rian's voice spoke into the silence. "Fine, we've given you a chance." He turned to her and her eyes fell onto his face a moment before the flash of the dracon beam went off and Luce felt a burning pain.
Sedra:
"Fine, we've given you a chance."
The Animorph turned and aimed the gun at Luce. Before Sedra could even suck in a breath, he had pulled the trigger. The screeching sound of the dracon beam going off exploded through the silence that had followed his words, forcing Sedra to jump with surprise. Her stomach turned and suddenly the air was thick with the scent of burning flesh, of hot blood--of Luce's blood. It took a moment for her to realize what had happened, for the thought to process.
He had shot Luce.
It was impossible. The shock of it was so sudden, that Sedra's arm had loosened slightly Ember's body. It was only luck that the finger she had pressed around the trigger hadn't twitched with the sound, and blown Ember's head off. Instead, Sedra had jerked forward slightly, stopping short of moving to where Luce had fallen. The movement was quick, almost instant, leaving a small opening in her hold on Ember.
Ember:
The controller wrapped her arm tightly against Ember's chest and she couldn't help but move with her. She'd hoped that maybe, something, anything would have gotten through to Sedra. She'd meant every word of what she'd said, although she wanted to believe that Rian wouldn't shoot... there was still something in him. Something dark. She'd known it since the first time she'd met him, it was what prompted her to ask about his past even thought she'd only just introduced herself. He hadn't ever answered her, and after awhile, she'd decided that she didn't want to know.
Now, as she looked at his eyes, she felt it stronger than ever before. And somewhere deep inside herself she knew it was because of her. Because her life was at stake, and because he would do anything to keep her safe. Which is why, when he spoke those quiet words she felt the life being ripped from her, as if she had pulled the trigger herself.
Then Ember felt it. The opening. Sedra's drop in defense...
And she took it. Not because she mentally thought through how lucky it was for her to survive this far, or that now was her best chance to get free and leave Sedra unguarded for their victory. It wasn't even because her friend had just been shot. No, the reason she broke free by elbowing Sedra in the stomach, then catching her wrist in a side swipe which knocked her gun away, was because the love of her life had shot an unarmed woman at point-blank range in order to save Ember's own life.
"RIAN!" Ember cried out, rushing forward. Finally free, but more frightened than she'd been with a gun to her head.
Suji:
"Sad. I'm sure your teammates enjoy having a murderer parading around with them."
Suji smirked. We're all murderers here, she thought, but held her peace. After all, she didn't need to explain herself to a Controller. But if she believed Suji would murder her own, well, fine enough.
Rian shot. Suji heard the drop in his words, knew (maybe even before he did, depending on just how calculating he was) that he was going to pull the trigger. She pulled the knife away from Luce's throat as the shot struck Luce: she was close enough to smell her flesh cooking, hair singing. The heat washed over her.
But it wasn't a shot to kill. The intensity was higher than she'd left it (turning it down just before she handed the gun to Rian), but it wasn't a killing blast. Luce's head wasn't gone, and Suji was close enough that she saw the point of impact (and hopefully even blocked a bit of the view from Sedra). But even before Luce had had time to react to the hit, Suji was moving.
Ember dodged forward, somehow free, and Suji saw the dracon gun that had been in Sedra's hands also come loose. It hit the concrete flooring was a cracking sound, but remained in tact--Suji sprung forward, diving for it. Her hands closed around the metal, still warm from Sedra's grip, and her elbow bore the brunt of the fall (which didn't exactly tickle). Suji rolled as best she could, trying to keep the momentum, and though it wasn't exactly graceful to watch, it wasn't an absolute mess.
She was back on her feet fairly quickly, though her left arm had gone completely numb from how hard she'd hit her elbow. That was fine. She trained the gun on Sedra with her right hand, and moved to stand between Rian (and now Ember), and the Controller. Blocking fire between them, in case Rian got trigger happy.
Slowly Suji stepped forward: her aim was lowered towards Sedra's gut, rather than her face or chest--reducing the likelihood of missing and hitting the C4-equipped turbine.
And now what will you do, Suji?
Eliminate the Controller because she was the enemy? Because she knew their faces? Best of all, because she'd somehow had a hand in making the only other person Suji had trusted to stay loyal to the cause into a traitor, if only for a moment?
What now, indeed?
Her mind darkened, and she felt that vaguely familiar, and wholly unwelcome sensation of being watched.
Luce:
Luce dropped to her knees as the dracon burnt through her shoulder. Her hand went up instinctively and found a hole, an actual hole through her body about the size a golf ball would make if it had gone through her shoulder.
Her eyes were tightly closed but a few tears managed to escape them anyway as she clenched her teeth against the pain. Her whole body was shaking and she tried to get it under control but she couldn't.
She looked up through watery vision and saw Rian standing above her, dracon beam still pointed at her, face unreadable. Seeing him standing there, seeing a boy young enough to still be in high school standing there like some statue impassively watching her pain, the cause of her pain, was too much.
She wouldn't even be here today if it wasn't for him and she had risked her life over and over again today for him. This was the third or fourth time she had been injured today...because of him.
Those weren't concious thoughts running through her head, it was just an overwhelming feeling of hatred and resentment.
Her leg lashed out and swept his feet out from under him. He may be the one armed but she had been in this war before he'd known there was one.
As he landed she lunged forward and wrapped the one hand that still worked around his throat and began to squeeze. Somewhere in her head she heard laughing. Was it her own?
Rian:
Everything seemed to slow down as his hand pushed the trigger. A part of him was screaming at him. What was he doing? How could he do this? Hurt a faction member, a friend, one of his own? But, sadly, it was a small part. Luce had gotten them into this situation and so she would have to be the one to get them out. And if that meant she paid a bit of a price so be it.
She dropped to her knees and his hand instinctively followed her down keeping the weapon trained on her. For a moment he just stood there, frozen, not sure what to do next as she looked up at him. But then the decision was taken out of his hands, or to be more specific, he was taken off of his feet.
He landed hard on his back and his head hit the concrete of the dam as he fell. His teeth slammed together painfully and he felt like his head was going to explode. He was dazed for a moment as he heard Ember call his name somewhere close by and Luce's hand closed around his throat and began squeezing with strength he wasn't much surprised at since he had trained with her.
His hands went up to try to pry her's away but he was still holding the dracon beam in one of them. He pushed the dracon beam into her gut and choked out, "Luce, let go. Now."
Luce:
Luce held on for a moment longer but almost as quickly as the anger had come it was gone. Her shoulder was throbbing and bleeding and it was the drops of blood falling onto Rian's face and neck more than anything else that broke the spell the emotion had put her under.
She hadn't meant to attack him anyway. No matter what she thought about him he was still her superior and now certainly wasn't the time to undermine his authority. That thought was pretty insane considering how they had gotten into this situation but her first act of betrayal just made her determined not to commit another.
She let go and sat back. She looked around and saw that Sedra was now disarmed and Ember was free. So his little play had worked. Good for him.
She cradled her shoulder and for a second didn't do anything more than that. Then she closed her eyes and began to concentrate on the nighthawk for the third time today. Morphing would heal her. The physical wounds at least.
Rian:
Rian sat up, his empty hand massaging his throat and the pressure marks left there before he wiped away Luce's blood. He took a moment to look at it and remember that Luce wasn't the only one who had committed crimes against her faction today. Then he stood up and turned around to see what had happened while he had been on the ground.
He found Ember free which for a moment was all he could concentrate on. He felt his anger and panic draining away and felt a desire to just hold her and not let go. He had come so close to losing her so many times today and he felt that if he could just hold her then it wouldn't happen again. It was an instinctual feeling and one that didn't make much sense but it was very real and very strong.
But they weren't safe yet, not by a long shot. And looking at Sedra, even disarmed as she was, he felt like he had only caught a tiger by the tail and that this day would come back to haunt them all.
Suji had a dracon beam trained on her though thankfully she had been intelligent enough not to have it pointed where it might hit the C4. He brought his own dracon beam up and aimed it at her, also avoiding the C4, as he watched Luce begin to morph out of the corner of his eye.
<<Em?>> he directed to her privately. It was only her name but it implied everything. He was asking her if she was ok. He was telling her how worried he had been, how much he cared. Not for the first time he was glad it was hard to lie mind to mind, possible, but hard.
"Suji was right," he said addressing Sedra, "this plan is going to go through and this dam is going to go. We are leaving and if you want to live I suggest you come with us," he said motioning towards the power plant entrance as he said it with the hand holding the dracon beam briefly before pointing it back at her.
But even as he spoke he knew he was lying. She had seen their faces. In fact, he was pretty sure this was the leak from the Bomb's mission and now he knew how she had gotten away the first time he thought his eyes briefly flashing down to Luce and seeing she was about half way through her morph.
But she couldn't be allowed to escape this time. She would have to die and he would have to kill her he thought with a sinking heart. He just couldn't do it here, too much of a chance of hitting the C4. But once they were clear...
This is what he had become. A person who could stand here and plan the cold blooded murder of another creature. Where was that kid who had sat with Matt in the forest and marveled over a free, living dear, a deer's who's DNA he had been honored to carry from that day on.
He remembered thinking that day that he was some type of warrior for his planet, for nature itself. He had wanted to fight the yeerks for what they had done to Earth, kick them off the planet. But he had never wanted them all dead and had never given a lot of thought as to how he was going to convince them to leave.
Was this how it was done? Kill so many, terrorize so many that they finally decided it was too dangerous to stay on Earth? And kill the few who would mess up that plan whether they were directly threatening him or not. Is that who he wanted to be? Did it matter if it wasn't if that was what the world needed him to be?
Sedra:
The moment had been long enough, and Sedra let out a small umph as Ember elbowed her in the stomach. At the same moment, the dracon beam was knocked out of her hands, and suddenly she found herself without her hostage and weaponless. Seeing the dracon beam fall to the ground, Sedra sprang forward to try and grab the dracon beam--but was too late. Suji had been faster, and she had it pointed at Sedra now.
Sedra stood upright, shoulders straight and arms relaxed, and looked Suji in the eye. Her expression was hidden. Inwardly she was feeling fresh dismay, and she could hear the sound of her own heart thudding in her ears. Was this it? If the mangled and torn up bodies on the dam were any indication, the Animorphs would be happy enough to kill her because she was a controller.
Her voice came out steady, level. "You kill me and you will be killing my host."
As she spoke, Catherine's fear was bubbling up in her mind, distracting. It never seemed to matter with the Animorphs; a Yeerk's host just got tangled up in the fight, ending up as a causality that was thrown away and forgotten. There may as well have never been the human in the first place, for all they were worth to the Animorphs. And even if they were these cold-blooded killers they touted themselves to be, Sedra's host seemed convinced that hearing those words would change something. "Or perhaps that doesn't matter. You kill humans and Yeerks heedlessly, as I understand it."
Behind Suji, there was a sudden noise, a thud. Sedra's eyes flicked down to where Luce had fallen, and felt a small bit of relief rush through her. Luce was alive. At the same time, it looked like Luce had attacked the male for a second time. Sedra just stared as he fell to the ground and was pinned by Luce. What was going on? Stiffly, silently, she watched as Luce kept her grip on him, then finally released him. Her shoulders dropped just a little.
Rian spoke, and Sedra's gaze returned to him. Her eyes were cold. "Leave with you? You will kill me the moment I step away." Even as she said it, she knew it wasn't really an option to stay here and be killed by the explosion. There were too many bombs, and no one to stop them anymore. Maybe if she went with them, she would have more time to think, more time to gather her thoughts away from her host's voice buzzing in the back of her head. After a moment, her jaw clenched and she glared at Rian. Then she took a step forward, cautious of the dracon beams pointed at her. "Fine."
Suji:
"Not heedlessly. But if it's a choice between killing your host and getting one of my own people killed, I don't pretend that it's going to be a tough decision." Sedra's eyes were no longer on her though: they were focused behind Suji. Suji couldn't turn to look, though she heard the scramble, and then heard Rian speak. Whatever it was, it was settled for now.
But there was no doubt that Sedra felt something while she watched the display. That must have been clear when she'd jerked forward when she thought Luce had been shot--and now there seemed to be tiny, still almost hidden signs of relief. Whatever this Controller was to Luce, Rian and Ember had bet correctly in thinking that it was at least partially mutual. Suji wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't been a part of this herself.
"Rian, you handle Luce and Ember. Get them out, and start priming the detonator." Maybe that was a questioning of his authority, maybe it wasn't. It depended on how he wanted to take it. All Suji knew was that apparently there had been a scuffle behind her, and she doubted it had been between Rian and Ember. If Luce needed to be watched, then Rian couldn't do both things at once. And Suji didn't know Ember well enough to know how she was going to react to all of this. Rian's duty as a faction leader was to his faction; Suji's was just to make sure this went off smoothly.
"Try to grab the others if you can. We need to get off of this dam." She kept the gun trained on Sedra.
Ember:
Ember ran to Rian and Luce, glad that neither of them had been killed, but was startled when Luce suddenly attack him again, wrapping her hands around his throat for a brief moment. A strange noise escaped her as she lunged forward, ready to pull the woman off, but she had already regained control of herself.
What... what could she do now? Ember looked to Rian, scared, and feeling her nerves fragmenting even as she tried to pull it all together. Luce was her friend, but he had... shot her. But she had attacked him? She had put Rian in danger, she had put everyone in danger, she'd almost gotten Ember killed and now? Now? Who should she support? Would Rian have killed her if Sedra hadn't reacted? Would he have killed Luce? Could she have gotten him killed if things had happened differently? ....and Rian, so dark...
Then she heard his voice in her head. <<Em>>
Tears welled in her eyes, hearing all of his raw emotion encompassing her insignificant name. "Rian, I'm sorry..." She moved closer to him, speaking in a low voice so only he could hear. Everything else faded away when she was close to him. Sedra, Suji, the bombs not two feet away. "Are you ok? I'm so sorry, I never wanted you to-" She stopped, unable to say anything more. Instead she wrapped her hand in his, holding his gaze and feeling everything fall into peace. Her heart that had been trying to rip her chest apart was finally quieted.
But before she'd fully felt the moment come, it was gone. She turned away and let her hand slip free with an aching regret. "Luce, are you alright? Here," Ember patted her shoulder, "Get on, we've got to go. It's over." She waited for the nighthawk to dig into her skin, grimacing at the pain, but reminded that yes... she was alive still. Luce didn't respond back, but that gesture was enough. The Vegas faction was back together on the same side, and even Sedra was going to make it out alive. It was time to back out while they could and finally... finally end this.
Rian:
Rian loped back the way they'd come. Loping had to be his favorite gait in wolf morph. It was just so calm and relaxed. Wolves could do it for hours at a time and not get tired. Perseverance, endurance, good qualities to have right now.
His ears caught the sound of voices ahead of him but they passed through one ear and out the other. If he had taken the time to think about them he might have assumed they were Ember's and Luce's voices, assumed that the two were talking to each other.
But he didn't take that time. He was on autopilot. They were in the home stretch now and all he could think of was the finish line. Blow dam, go home. Have party. That no morphing thing was a pretty good idea. No morphing. Not like anyone will have the energy to anyway.
Suji's voice broke into this thoughts. <<Rian! There's a Controller ahead, and I think they might have the drop on Ember and Luce! Ember is trying to explain that what we've done can't be taken back. Fuck, I'm getting out of this morph.>>
<<What?>> He began paying attention and caught the last of what Ember said and then what Luce said after. <<Shit.>>
He ducked behind a turbine which Suji had already been smart enough to do and peaked his head out to get a better look. The wolf could tell him what was going on from sound and smell alone but he was still human and still used to relying on sight.
And what he saw did not look good. Ember and Luce were standing by the last turbine and a woman was holding a dracon beam on them.
<<Suji, you have a dracon beam right? Back me up, but this should be easy,>> he said, lapsing into the over confidence of a teenage boy. The controller wasn't watching, he was a wolf, the conclusion was foregone.
He shot out around the turbine and covered the distance between them faster than most humans would have thought possible, especially ones not used to being attacked.
Luce:
But Luce was used to being attacked and she spotted the wolf out of the corner of her eye before anyone else did. She didn't really think about what she was doing. She never consciously chose Sedra over Rian, she just saw the wolf leap and acted.
Her body collided with the warm, thick fur of Rian's morph and knocked him off target. She hadn't used finesse when jumping at him, just took a flying tackle and they both landed hard. She pretty much landed on top of him so if she was winded he had to be.
Ember:
Ember could have flattened Luce with her look of total shock at what the woman said. It was just so cold, and yet casually indifferent. They were all going to die anyway? What the hell? When had Luce turned into someone so callous? And now of all times, when they were facing the barrel of a dracon beam together, she was making quippy remarks instead of helping Ember talk Sedra out of killing them!
Her nerves were shot, frayed past the point of mere exhaustion, when all at once everyone moved. Like someone had shouted GO and a sick game of tag had started. ember saw Luce jump first, then saw the Wolf leap out, recognizing the form as Rian's signature. She half had his name on her lips before they collided. Her feet, though, had already moved, spurred on by the sudden jolt of momentum.
She couldn't let him be hurt again. Luce must have seen something she hadn't... but Sedra had the gun, she had to get Sedra! She was the one who would hurt Rian! In the split second it took her to tackle the controller woman, the logic seemed to make sense. But Ember hadn't caught her off guard, and her weight wasn't enough to take her down. So she grappled for control of the gun instead, trying to get some advantage without really thinking it through... and soon it was clear that she was not winning this fight.
Suji:
Suji didn't have time to answer. She only just regained her human form completely in time to see Rian leap. And then she stared, dumbstruck, as Luce blocked him. Luce saved that Controller. Why? Was she afraid that Rian's collision would cause her to fire? But now both Rian and Luce were out of the count, and the Controller had an even clearer shot at Ember...
Her brain chugged away, a bike with a loose chain, no traction, nothing to grip...
And then a strange idea, so strange that she couldn't turn away from it, began to form: was Luce a traitor? Had she gotten infested when they weren't looking? Impossible. No Yeerk would allow them to set these charges, under any pretext.
But maybe there's more than one way to be a traitor, a cold voice said in the back of Suji's mind. She tugged out the dracon gun which had been tucked into the back waistband of her morphing suit. No. Luce was not a traitor. There had to be an explanation for this. But the Controller was already consolidating her position against Ember in a grappling contest, and Suji didn't trust her aim enough to hit the Controller and not Ember.
And she'd have been hard pressed to fire even if she had a clear shot, with so much fucking C4 around.
Sedra:
The both of them turned around, and Sedra's eyes momentarily flicked to the bag Ember had set down, then back to the two Animorphs. Her whole body was tense, ready to react if either of them decided to attack her. It's too late. The Dam's going to blow. What could I do now? This whole situation had already been out of her control, and now there was no going back. The bombs were set, the dam would blow. More controllers would probably die. She could feel Catherine's guilt at this, her host's uneasiness at this whole situation. Sedra didn't care for the pity anymore. It was fake.
Sedra pointed her dracon beam at Ember--She had been avoiding looking at Luce for the time being, knowing how it would mess her up. Her expression was glassy as Ember spoke, but she stiffened when she took a step forward, finger tightening around the trigger. "Back off." Sedra knew she would kill Ember, that was a given. Ever since she had laid eyes on the girl walking up to her in the park--acting so cocky and pushy--Sedra had really disliked her. But what about Luce? She didn't know what to think, how to react, what she was willing to do when it came to Luce anymore.
Sedra's dark blue eyes shifted to Luce at the sound of her voice. Her lips were pressed into a tight line as she listened to what Luce said, expression darkening at her words. "No thanks to you all." But there was hesitation creeping into her body language now. She could shoot Ember, she could shoot Luce. Or could she shoot Luce? What was stopping her? She felt her chest tighten, felt her pulse quicken slightly.
Maybe it was the stress and horror from seeing the dead corpses in the pool, or maybe it was the whack to the head she had gotten earlier, or maybe it was Luce's voice or the familiar, soft curve of her lips, the expressions and body language Sedra knew so well--but Sedra's voice held just the tiniest trace of vulnerability, uncertainty. It was unusual. "What does it matter? What does it matter? I can't let you do this. I have to stop this, I have stop you all. I--" but it was gone, suddenly.
The stony demeanor was back, and Sedra had taken a step forward. Her finger was pressing down on the trigger--ready to fire--when suddenly everything seemed to happen at once. A wolf jumped out from behind one of the turbines, and Sedra swung her dracon beam to the side where the animal was. In the same moment, Luce moved to attack... the wolf? Out of reflex, Sedra's finger had pulled the trigger, and she had to twist her hand away to force the shot to miss Luce. It went wild, burying into one of the nearby concrete walls and shattering a chunk of concrete off.
She didn't have any time to think about what had just happened when Ember leapt at her. If Sedra hadn't reacted to Rian's attack, Ember would have thrown herself straight in front of the dracon beam and gotten her innards blown out. As it was, the gun was turned away when Ember started grappling for it. Sedra aimed a punch at her gut, while trying to twist the gun away from her hands. The attack was a mistake on the Animorph's part. Ember was close enough to get a hold of now. Sedra grabbed a handful of hair and yanked Ember close roughly.
In the next second the cold muzzle of the dracon beam was shoved against Ember's temple. Her other hand had grabbed Ember's arm, fingernails digging into the flesh of her arm, holding her close. Her voice was a shout, rising above the turbines.
"Remove the bombs or I'll shoot her head off!"
Rian:
Rian landed painfully. His wolf form let out a yelp and then was silent as his head hit the hard concrete floor and he was momentarily dazed. He wasn't sure at first what had happened. He had been jumping towards the controller, he had seen the small rise and fall of the blood pumping through the arteries in her throat and could almost feel his teeth ripping into them when he had been knocked violently off course.
His paws scrabbled for purchase, his claws scratching the concrete and making an unpleasant noise that reminded him of the scarab beetles in the Mummy movies as he struggled to stand up and throw the body that was on him off. He didn't need to get a good look to know it was Luce, his nose told him that well enough as it took in her familiar scent. What he was wondering was how and why Luce was on top of him.
<<Luce..?>> he began when Sedra's voice rang out in the empty, abandoned corridor of the power plant. "Remove the bombs or I'll shoot her head off!" The demand was greeted only by silence, the only sound the soft whirring of the turbines that would soon be blown.
Rian whipped his head around and spotted Ember. She looked...frightened. God, how had this happened? He looked down at Luce who he was standing over to see her looking at Ember too. No, not Ember.
Suddenly his mind made one of those intuitive leaps he was always reading about but, as of yet, had not managed to pull off. He remembered Luce's absence in the mission to area 51, and then her insistence on saving this specific controller. He had thought she was mad at the time but he hadn't given her actions any serious thought. And he should have, especially after Ray had come back with his reports about what had happened when they had gone after the bombs. Again this controller had shown up and again Luce's involvement in the affair had been suspect. But Luce, while intimidating and cold at times, had always demonstrated the fact that she was a soldier and loyal to their cause.
So he had let it slide, he had trusted her. And a part of him had been too afraid to confront her on it, afraid that she would just laugh at him, show him how little control he had over her.
<<Luce,>> he said, not yet believing what was starting to be clear to him, <<tell me you didn't.>> It was a stupid thing to say. She obviously had. He had been knocked off course by someone and here she was.
He began to panic. What could he do. Sedra had Ember and she had a gun to her head, worse than a gun, a dracon beam. Ember would be gone before he could even think about moving. He thought of pleading with her. Anyone but Ember, please, she, we just-" but he knew it would have no effect. What did controller know of love?
"Luce is fraternizing with the enemy!!" Ember's slip from weeks ago came back to him. <<You better hope she-I swear to God Luce,>> he said in private thoughtspeak as he turned on her.
<<Let her go,>> he broadcasted, turning his head so that he could see Sedra. <<Or,>> he said turning back to face Luce, fangs bared and a low growl escaping his throat, <<she dies.>> His yellow eyes glittered in anger and something akin to hatred. A wolf's jaws could clamp down with a bone crushing 1450 pounds of force per square inch, twice what any domestic dog could do, and he had killed more than one controller by ripping their throat out. Could he do that to Luce? He didn't know, but neither did Sedra.
Ember:
Ember's breath caught in her throat. In an instant her entire world came crashing to a stop as the cold metal pressed against her temple.
She couldn't think, her muscles froze halfway in motion with her heart pounding away at her chest, beating too fast, out of control, but with no blood being pumped through. It had all drained away, leaving a numb sensation of uncomprehending fear. This was it. This was the end... again. Only, she'd lived through everything else somehow... Even with the gun right up against her skull she still had that hope. She wasn't dead yet. She could be, but she wasn't. Sedra was using her as a hostage so she had a few precious seconds of life, if she could just get her brain moving maybe... there had to be some way out of this.
She couldn't die in front of Rian's eyes.
Ok ok ok ok calm down, oh god, ok. Think! Ember swallowed. Her body still felt like she was in a crashing air plane, helpless and panicked with uncertainty, but not beyond rational thought. Dammit think...! She started to sift through the martial arts maneuvers she'd been taught. If Sedra was distracted for just a moment then she could use something to get out of danger, clear the way for Rian and...
Luce She saw her best friend attack Rian and now? What had she been doing? Why did she not try to take down Sedra instead? The controller had been closer it didnt... didn't make any...
Ember suddenly heard Rian's thought speak as both of them put the pieces together at the same time. Luce was protecting Sedra, and now Ember was going to get killed for it. She groaned, knowing that she helped Luce and hid her secret from Rian, making him vulnerable when all she'd wanted to do was keep a promise to a friend. But she didn't think in a thousand years Luce would actually choose Sedra over her own faction... over her closest friend and ally. Ember felt Sedra's grip tighten and bit her lip to keep from wincing in pain. How had it come to this? What had she done to deserve this? To be murdered, just like that, just because she'd trusted too deeply... been gullible and blind... and tried to blur the lines between love and war.
In the middle of her maddening spiral of guilt and fear of death, Ember heard Rian's counter threat and looked up. "Rian! No, you can't-!" Putting Luce in that position may have bought her more time, but it had made the situation ten times worse. He couldn't kill her, not really. Sedra would know that! ...un- unless he, but no that was, impossible. Not even with her life at stake would Rian... But she'd heard his voice in her head and seen the look in his wolf's eye. Oh god... what was happening?
Suji:
Suji was the only one on the outside of the situation. She had to choose.
Had to choose who to throw her lot in with.
Threaten to blow the dams and all of them with it? One half-assed dracon shot could probably send all the charges off--it was only a stroke of dumb luck that the one that had streaked out of the conflict just now hadn't done that.
Defend Luce? Suji stared at the woman that was probably her closest friend in this war. Luce wasn't a traitor. Not in any conventional way. It had to do with this Controller. The fact that Rian was threatening to kill Luce, and that that should have any effect on the Controller's decision whether or not to shoot Ember...
Suji's eyes narrowed. Oh Luce, she thought coldly, bitterly. She might have thought that she would feel an impossible distance open up between her and the woman on the ground. It didn't; instead... instead it seemed that Luce was too easy to see, too easy to understand. Like her friend was naked, exposed in the worst way, and Suji felt both embarassed for her and sickened by her.
It probably crept up on you so easily, didn't it? Suji thought, venomously. The good soldier. Follows orders. You probably didn't have a fucking chance. She was disgusted: one of the only people she thought she could count on in this war to be like her, to make the right sacrifices because being a soldier was about sacrificing what you cared for... and Luce had betrayed her in the same fell swoop that she betrayed Ember and Rian.
So this is how it feels, Suji thought, realizing that she was only person she knew, in this whole fucking war, who didn't have something she'd sacrifice the cause for. No person, no noble call to pacifism, nothing. The only one who was ready to sell her soul (and the souls' of others) to win. This is how it feels to be completely alone.
Hatred rose like bile in her throat. How dare Luce. How dare she. After all that Suji had become, how dare the one person she could possibly relate to decide to do this?! And the worst of it was that Suji knew that the hatred she feel eating away at her like acid, from the inside out, it wasn't even for Luce.
It was all for herself.
"He won't kill her." Suji's voice rang out, and she walked slowly over to Luce and Rian. She kept her dracon gun lowered at all times, never raised it against Sedra. "You won't kill her," she repeated, addressing the wolf. Her veneer was glacial, unreadable, reptilian for all its expression. There was not anger, or strain in her voice, only pure-cold-hard matter-of-fact. Suji lifted the dracon gun slightly, so that the barrel was aimed at Luce's head. No way to miss from this distance. She flicked the intensity scale from its lowest setting to the highest setting.
"But I will." Suji looked Luce dead in the eyes.
Quieter, almost as an aside, she spoke while looking her friend in the face. "I'm sure Raven told you as much, didn't she, Rian?"
Luce:
Luce scraped her elbows against the floor trying to get up as she heard Rian's claws click against the concrete. She had only managed to sit up though before Rian was standing over her but he wasn't looking at her he was looking at...
Luce saw Ember, saw Sedra and heard Sedra's threat. Her stomach felt like someone had dropped ice into it. What had she done? She hadn't thought-No she hadn't thought at all, she'd just reacted. There had just been too much death today, she couldn't stand by and watch Sedra die too.
Maybe if she had thought it through, considered the implications of letting Sedra live she might have been able to-She stopped that train of thought as she realized that she was lying to herself. She wouldn't kill Sedra and couldn't let her be killed if there was something she could do to stop it.
How had this happened? How had she gotten to the point where she would choose a controller over her team. A controller for Christ's sake! Why should she care? Why should she care about the fate of a slave owner, a tyrant, just one more alien who had taken her home and taken her life.
But she did. She cared and it was terrible. She just wanted to let her die, it would be easier. It would be easier if she could kill her herself. It would mean she hated them all, that she could just dismiss them as the enemy and kill the ones put in front of her. It would mean she never had to care and never had to face what had happened to her, what had been taken from her. And that would hurt less.
But a part of her didn't want to be dead inside anymore. She didn't want to continue on feeling little and showing less. She wanted to be alive again, to care about things again. So she held on to the one thing she did care about with a death grip and wouldn't let it go because that made her human, that meant she wasn't irredeemable. And if she wasn't maybe one day, after this, she could have a life again, a home again, a family.
God it hurt to hope for those things, to want them.
And she wanted Sedra. And she wanted to get out of her alive damnit and just go home with Ember and Rian and Suji. She wanted it all and she inwardly berated herself for acting like a child. She couldn't have everything she wanted and she may have gotten a friend killed trying to get it.
She might have gotten herself killed trying to get it she thought as Rian voiced his threat. Looking into his eyes Luce wasn't sure if he could do it. She knew how he felt about Ember but she didn't know what he was capable of. Could he kill a team mate?
Perhaps not but when Suji added her own threat Luce realized that her chances of making it out of this alive had just dropped below Ember's.
She looked into Suji's eyes searching for some indication that she was bluffing. Suji wouldn't...she...
She looked away and in that moment she gave up. She didn't care anymore. She was tired of trying to balance conflicting loyalties. Let Rian, Suji and Sedra work out her fate between them. She'd been stupid to hope for more anyway.
Rian:
<<Perhaps she did,>> he said just as quietly, <<but you shouldn't have had to. Her traitorous faction member,>> he spit out the word traitorous like a curse, <<her responsibility. Hold the dracon beam on her please.>>
Rian turned to look at Sedra and couldn't help staring at Ember. But he looked away quickly. He couldn't allow himself to think about her, to see her, to fully feel the danger she was in. It would get inside him, make him panic, confuse his thinking. And if he wanted to get her out of here alive he had to think clearly because he was making a desperate gamble based on an intuition he had no proof for.
<<You really want to take this chance Sedra?>> he asked as he began to demorph. He did it quickly and smoothly since the wolf was so familiar to him and he didn't pause as he reached his human state, his next morph blending into his demorph seamlessly.
He stood over Luce who was still on the ground. "Suji, can I have the dracon beam?" he asked holding out his hand though he didn't take his eyes off Sedra's. "Luce, stand up," he ordered in a much harsher tone.
Sedra:
<<Let her go, or, she dies.>>
Besides a small curl of her lip, Sedra didn't react to the wolf's threat against Luce. She couldn't let herself, not in front of them. Even so, it was hard to believe that these humans--desperate, running around in their tight outfits and trying to gain a shaky foothold in an already crumbling ground--would kill one of their own just to save another. They wouldn't do it. Sedra was sure of that, she knew humans too well. But the situation had taken a very wrong turn for her.
"Remove the charges. Now." She tightened her fingers around Ember's arm as the girl spoke, then hissed in her ear. "Shut up and don't move."
Dark blue eyes shifted back on the wolf. "You? Kill one of your own?" There was a trace of amusement in her voice. He had to be lying, and Sedra wasn't a fool to be tricked like this. "Then, do it." There was a pause. "Kill your team mate." The words stung in her mouth, but her expression was icy. "But you won't, will you? You are too easy to predict."
Sedra had to be right. They were humans after all. They valued the lives of their loved ones over common sense at the worst times. It's what Sedra could read from Catherine's own thoughts, and what Sedra understood from Catherine's shock at the Animorph's threat. Yeerks were that way; Yeerks killed their allies, they murdered their subordinates. But they had no ties to each other--there was no desire or reason to connect with one another, besides to better yourself. Most Yeerks were always trying to step over the one above them. It was life, it was the world Sedra lived in and fought in.
The other Animorph--some girl Sedra had never seen before--spoke up suddenly and began walking towards them. She only seemed to validate what Sedra already knew. The wolf wouldn't kill Luce. None of them would. However, a bit of surprise crept into her when the girl, too, threatened to do it.
Sedra's eyes shifted to the dracon beam the Animorph was holding. She leveled her gaze on Suji's face, looking her straight in the eyes. There was no reason to believe this girl was any different from the wolf. "Right." The muzzle of the dracon beam pressed harder into Ember's skull, and Sedra's finger tightened around the trigger. It would be too easy to twitch her finger and blow the girl's head off completely. But she needed her alive. For now.
"You are both absurd, you are using one of your own to threaten me. Why would you humans think that she matters?" It wasn't showing, but Sedra was becoming unnerved by their insistence and by the confidence in their words. When had she ever given any sign of caring for Luce? Had she betrayed herself in some way to them? Involuntarily, her eyes slipped to Luce, searching for some kind of hint that would give them away. There was nothing. Did Luce believe they would do this to her? Or was this some kind of plot to trick Sedra? She couldn't tell anymore.
<<They fight for their lives everyday, Sedra. They fight, and die, and kill for survival. You can't underestimate them. You've done it before and look at what's happened.>> Catherine's voice was quiet in Sedra's head. There was a only slight reaction on the outside. Her jaw clenched. <<And you care for Luce, you know that as much as I can feel it.>>
Even hearing it from her host, she didn't want to believe it. That couldn't be right, could it? Who was Luce, to Sedra? Another escaped host? An Animorph, the enemy? The ex-host of another Yeerk?
...Somebody she cared for?
Jals. What about her? Jals was long dead. Sedra was alone, Jals was gone, Eva was gone. Nowadays, it was painful to think of them. It wasn't something she let Catherine know, or even let herself dwell on. Any remainders of the past were gone--when things had been happier, intoxicating, passionate, so new and different--when she had discovered what love had meant, what it meant to hold a child in your arms or wait eagerly for someone to come home. It was gone now; replaced by monotony, by anger, by death and killing. Emptiness.
But Luce had come back. The moment Sedra had laid eyes on her back in that cell at Area 51--when she had been parading around as Jals, no less--Sedra had felt that pain evaporate. She had been filled with that old excitement and energy from before. It hadn't faded away after she had learned of Jals' death, and Sedra was starting to realize she felt something every time she saw Luce. It was confusing, maybe even a little upsetting. She could acknowledge the fact that Luce was a free human--an Animorph no less--but that didn't seem to stop her from having these strange feelings. What was Sedra thinking? Was she insane?
She didn't know how to respond to her host. So she pulled up that wall, let it fill the gap between their two minds. She didn't need to listen to her host. She didn't want to. <<You don't know anything.>>
Sedra's assumption about what the Animorphs was being chipped away by her own growing uncertainty. The expression on her face was still, but inside it was eating away at her. She tore her gaze away from Luce on the ground to the wolf. Rian's voice filled her head and she narrowed her eyes at him, watching his demorph. Her next words were perhaps the only indication of her anxiety, the only indication that she did hold some kind of stake in Luce's survival.
"You are both lying." Her voice was cold, but as she spoke her heart was thudding in her chest. She needed to call them on it. She needed to hear it, to know that she was right and she wasn't getting Luce killed. That she had some sort of control over this situation. She was the one with the hostage. The moment Ember was free, the Animorphs would kill Sedra. She needed to keep the girl close to get out of this, or to even have any chance of saving this whole dam project. To redeem herself for not being able to save all the dead Yeerks in the pool from being boiled alive.
"So. Remove the bombs." She pushed the dracon beam harder against Ember's head, tilting the girl's head to the side slightly. "Or she will die."
Ember:
Ember couldn't stop herself from feeling the fresh wash of fear that came with that small movement. The simple push of her head to one side and the cold voice telling her she was going to die. There was no way to morph herself out of this, there wouldn't be enough time or enough of her head left to try and heal the wound away. She was trapped, and more scared and alone than she ever thought she could feel.
And she didn't care. Or, at least the part of herself that wasn't the primal self-preservation instinct, didn't care. It was the small voice, the one that spoke up when everything else was in chaos and cut through and speak exactly what you'd known all along but had skirted around like an idiot until you'd driven yourself mad. That voice. That was what was paying attention to what was really going on, and right now it was the only thing Ember was paying attention to. Because it was the only thing that was going to help both of them live through this. Screaming and crying and struggling, on top of the thousand other reactions she wanted so desperately to give in to were the things she had to resist and hold herself back from. And if Luce's life wasn't in danger as well as hers, she might have let herself fall into that pit...
But as it was, she gritted her teeth and spoke these words under her breath directly to Sedra. "Don't kill me. Don't even think about it." Ember's body was shaking, coiled with frantic energy, but her voice stayed steady. "You don't know him like I do. You don't understand what Rian has been through..." She looked at him, and then Luce, watching as the strongest woman she'd ever known, gave up.
It only made her decision easier to make. "He's not lying. If you kill me, you'll be killing her." Ember took a breath, smothering that primal desire for life, and waiting for some miracle that Sedra would hear her.
Suji:
Rian demorph, and Suji kept the dracon beam on Luce. When Sedra spoke to her, disbelievingly, Suji shrugged--cold. "I've killed an Animorph before. Less than two weeks ago, even; that's why I'm here. My faction leader couldn't stand the sight of me, was probably more than ready to get rid of me. But I did what had to be done." Her black eyes glanced to Sedra's blue. Perhaps this Controller was only seeing human limitation: only seeing a girl that was barely out of her childhood by past human legal standards. "Your kind didn't exactly invent ruthlessness, you know."
Rian continued to demorph, for what seemed to Suji like longer than was normal, but she didn't focus on that. There were too many other variables in play.
Then he wanted the dracon gun. Suji did not react immediately. If anything, she sized Rian herself... as if unsure if he was capable of doing this. After all, her past two leaders had been pacifists. Even if Rian thought he could do this, could he really? Could she take the chance? She didn't want to undermine him in from of a Controller, but at the same time...
Ember started talking. Apparently she was convinced that Rian would shoot Luce. Suji was not. But there was a decent chance: shooting someone, after all, was not messy. Even as this short distance, it wouldn't be difficult. Suji'd killed Toby with a razor across the throat, and then spent the next few hours cleaning up his blood. She'd murdered Sophia by burying a knife so far in the girl's skull that she hadn't been able to pull it out again: the thin hilt had gotten lodged in the bone. Perhaps Rian could pull a trigger--it would be physically easy, in an instant of emotion.
But this couldn't be about emotion. Eye for an eye left everyone blind. Violence was a means to an end, not an end itself.
Suji regarded Ember. In a way, she was in a similar position as Sedra: trying to figure out just how far Rian could go with this. Luce was standing now, as par Rian's order. With her left hand she leaned closer to Luce and drew the knife that the woman kept tucked away. In her right she spun the dracon gun in her hand so that the butt of it faced outwards, and she held the gun to Rian. Though not done simultaneously, Suji made sure that there was no point at which she was weaponless.
After the exchange was made, she held the knife to Luce's throat instead. "This is what we humans like to call a zero sum game. In the end, these bombs are going off." Suji eyes locked on Sedra's, judging, trying to place her. She had no reason to believe than a Controller would care about Luce's death--but Rian and Ember seemed to be convinced that that was the case. And if Luce was stupid enough to risk this all for a Controller... Suji pushed her mind away from that thought.
"You shoot Ember, Rian probably shoots you in a fit of anger before he bothers shooting Luce, I cut Luce's throat. In any case, you die, along with some of us. But there are more of us, and I doubt you could kill us all before we could dispatch you. Magical healing powers and all of that." Her voice was perfectly even, explaining in the clearest logic she knew how: simple cause and effect.
"The bombs are going off. Whether they're detonated or triggered by random dracon fire, whether one of us or two of us or all of us end up dying in this room, they are going off."
Suji shifted her weight minimally, the blade not pressed to Luce's throat, but certainly not far from it. "I don't really give a damn about whether or not you think Luce's life is worth saving. The subject of a Yeerk's ability to care about anything is philosophizing that I don't indulge in. But I can tell you, personally, this mission will go according to plan." Her jaw set tight. "Give or take a few casualties."
Sedra:
Sedra almost couldn't hear the words from Ember's mouth over the gentle hum of the turbines. Now even her hostage was babbling about Luce being killed by Rian, who Sedra assumed was the male in the group. Ember's words didn't change anything at all; if anything, it had the opposite effect. Sedra's body visibly stiffened, and she leaned her face close enough to Ember's ear. Her voice was a low hiss.
"You're not listening, I don't give a shit what you think. I told you to stay still and shut up." As Sedra spoke, her arm slowly snaked around Ember. The girl seemed convinced that this Rian was willing enough to kill Luce. It was more likely she was trying to mix more doubt into Sedra's mind. She couldn't believe this. "I've killed your kind before, sniveling little children that don't know when to keep their mouth shut." Her arm was now slung around Ember's chest, trapping her against Sedra's body. "So. Stop wasting your breath." Carefully, keeping the dracon beam pressed neatly against Ember's head, Sedra took a step back. The grip on Ember would force her to take a step back as well.
Her attention settled back on Suji. The callous way the girl shrugged off her own little story was laughable. There was no telling if the Animorph was really telling the truth or not, or just trying to play some sort of convincing story that supported their threat. Sedra's expression hardened. "Sad. I'm sure your teammates enjoy having a murderer parading around with them."
Sedra took another step back, towing Ember along with. Behind her was one of the turbines, loaded with C4. As Sedra spoke, she was trying to figure out what to do, running all the options through her mind. Part of her trusted that Luce was safe, and that the two Animorphs didn't have the ability to kill one of their own. Another part of her had a small bit of doubt in that trust.
Rian requested the gun, and Sedra watched silently as the two Animorphs exchanged weapons. Suji's words seemed slow to sink in. The fact that the bombs were going off was something Sedra, deep down, knew would probably happen--even if she didn't want to acknowledge it. The dam project was doomed, and the thought came to her that she might not even make it out of this. Sedra was trapped and fighting a losing battle. The only reason she probably wasn't dead already was because of the hostage she had in front of her.
<<This is your fault.>> Catherine had been following Sedra's line of thought, and her tone had shifted from sympathy to bitterness. <<You've gotten us both killed. For what? What did you think you were going to do down here, Sedra?>> Sedra's fingers tightened around the dracon beam's grip.
After Suji finished speaking, Sedra tilted her chin up a little. "Maybe I can't kill you all. But if I die, this girl will die with me. That is certain." Maybe that would do something, maybe not. Slowly, she took another step back. This time the heel of her boot bumped against the turbine, and she felt its vibrations traveling through the floor. What now, what now. She couldn't shoot Ember without getting herself killed at the same time. And if she were to believe what the Animorphs were saying, Luce would die as well. The dam was going down.
But they hadn't shot Luce yet, had they? That thought pushed some of Sedra's doubts away. They hadn't shot Luce yet. They were just talking so far--stalling? hesitating?--hoping that Sedra would believe them. Did they even believe that Sedra cared for Luce? How could they even know? Sedra's eyes strayed, just for a moment, to Luce's face. Then rested on Rian, who was holding the dracon beam.
"If you were going to shoot her, then you would have done it by now."
Rian:
When Suji gave him the dracon beam he pointed it towards the floor. He wanted to point it at Sedra but that would have meant pointing it at Ember. And more than that it would have meant pointing it in the direction of the turbines strapped with C4 behind the two women. Well, one woman, one alien.
As the talk continued Rian began getting nervous. He knew just how much time wasn't on their side here. Any minute now Drake and Stevert could lose the battle for the entrance and then they'd have controllers pouring in here. They were panicked now but if someone got them organized they still outnumbered the animorphs almost 100 to 1. More without Drake and Stevert....
He had hoped that Sedra would back down. He had known it was a long shot and he'd known that he was basing it on a silly romantic notion but it had been his last hope. And hearing her disbelief and her unwillingness to let Ember go Rian realized that he now had a choice to make.
He could shoot Luce and maybe get Ember out alive but there was just as much of a likely hood that she would die too, that they would all die. And if he shot Luce...he would be hurting one of his own. Rian was confused about a lot of things he was beginning to realize. He wasn't sure where he stood in this war anymore, what was acceptable and what wasn't. He felt like he was in the middle of a storm, lost, while the world raged around him. And not knowing scared him. With Matt everything had been easy. He had trusted Matt to know what to do, to know the right thing, and all Rian had had to do was follow his lead.
But since coming to Vegas he had been obsessed with how to win and had given little or no thought as to why. What were they fighting for and what was he willing to sacrifice to get it? He wasn't sure but he knew what he wasn't willing to sacrifice so as Sedra showed clearly that she wasn't backing down and was willing to kill Ember Rian's eyes hardened.
"Fine, we've given you a chance." He turned to Luce and lifted the dracon beam. His fingers brushed over the trigger to turn it down and noticed it was already on the lowest setting. So Suji wasn't as callous as she seemed Rian thought as he turned the setting up and fired.
Luce:
Luce listened almost dispassionately as the talk swirled around her. She stood up when she was ordered to, getting to her feet, every motion listless. For a while she couldn't even manage to raise her head to meet the eyes of anyone around her. She didn't want to see the scorn in Suji's eyes, the hatred in Rian's, the desperation in Ember's. More than anything she feared what she would see if she looked at Sedra.
She had just shown very clearly how much she still cared for the woman. It was something she had wrestled with over the past couple of months. She had fought it for a while, and then she had denied it and, finally, she had accepted it. But she had promised herself that she wouldn't let it hurt her faction, that she wouldn't let it affect her decisions. She had been foolish enough to believe she could cut herself off from it all the time not realizing that there was a part of her that didn't want to be cut off from it. She almost sympathized with Rian right now. It was terrible to realize that there was a traitor living inside you.
But when Suji put the knife to her throat she lifted her eyes and stood up with as much dignity as she could manage. It didn't matter that a part of her, almost all of her, was screaming at her right now demanding to know why she had been so stupid. She would face the consequences of her actions, stand by her choices, even if that meant death right now at the hands of someone who was supposed to be on her side.
As Sedra backed up towards the turbine Luce looked at her and caught her eyes for a moment. She didn't know what she saw there and Sedra quickly looked away. Luce found herself wanting to catch her gaze again, if only for a moment. She wanted to explain things, to have her understand, to try to understand her.
But before that could happen Rian's voice spoke into the silence. "Fine, we've given you a chance." He turned to her and her eyes fell onto his face a moment before the flash of the dracon beam went off and Luce felt a burning pain.
Sedra:
"Fine, we've given you a chance."
The Animorph turned and aimed the gun at Luce. Before Sedra could even suck in a breath, he had pulled the trigger. The screeching sound of the dracon beam going off exploded through the silence that had followed his words, forcing Sedra to jump with surprise. Her stomach turned and suddenly the air was thick with the scent of burning flesh, of hot blood--of Luce's blood. It took a moment for her to realize what had happened, for the thought to process.
He had shot Luce.
It was impossible. The shock of it was so sudden, that Sedra's arm had loosened slightly Ember's body. It was only luck that the finger she had pressed around the trigger hadn't twitched with the sound, and blown Ember's head off. Instead, Sedra had jerked forward slightly, stopping short of moving to where Luce had fallen. The movement was quick, almost instant, leaving a small opening in her hold on Ember.
Ember:
The controller wrapped her arm tightly against Ember's chest and she couldn't help but move with her. She'd hoped that maybe, something, anything would have gotten through to Sedra. She'd meant every word of what she'd said, although she wanted to believe that Rian wouldn't shoot... there was still something in him. Something dark. She'd known it since the first time she'd met him, it was what prompted her to ask about his past even thought she'd only just introduced herself. He hadn't ever answered her, and after awhile, she'd decided that she didn't want to know.
Now, as she looked at his eyes, she felt it stronger than ever before. And somewhere deep inside herself she knew it was because of her. Because her life was at stake, and because he would do anything to keep her safe. Which is why, when he spoke those quiet words she felt the life being ripped from her, as if she had pulled the trigger herself.
Then Ember felt it. The opening. Sedra's drop in defense...
And she took it. Not because she mentally thought through how lucky it was for her to survive this far, or that now was her best chance to get free and leave Sedra unguarded for their victory. It wasn't even because her friend had just been shot. No, the reason she broke free by elbowing Sedra in the stomach, then catching her wrist in a side swipe which knocked her gun away, was because the love of her life had shot an unarmed woman at point-blank range in order to save Ember's own life.
"RIAN!" Ember cried out, rushing forward. Finally free, but more frightened than she'd been with a gun to her head.
Suji:
"Sad. I'm sure your teammates enjoy having a murderer parading around with them."
Suji smirked. We're all murderers here, she thought, but held her peace. After all, she didn't need to explain herself to a Controller. But if she believed Suji would murder her own, well, fine enough.
Rian shot. Suji heard the drop in his words, knew (maybe even before he did, depending on just how calculating he was) that he was going to pull the trigger. She pulled the knife away from Luce's throat as the shot struck Luce: she was close enough to smell her flesh cooking, hair singing. The heat washed over her.
But it wasn't a shot to kill. The intensity was higher than she'd left it (turning it down just before she handed the gun to Rian), but it wasn't a killing blast. Luce's head wasn't gone, and Suji was close enough that she saw the point of impact (and hopefully even blocked a bit of the view from Sedra). But even before Luce had had time to react to the hit, Suji was moving.
Ember dodged forward, somehow free, and Suji saw the dracon gun that had been in Sedra's hands also come loose. It hit the concrete flooring was a cracking sound, but remained in tact--Suji sprung forward, diving for it. Her hands closed around the metal, still warm from Sedra's grip, and her elbow bore the brunt of the fall (which didn't exactly tickle). Suji rolled as best she could, trying to keep the momentum, and though it wasn't exactly graceful to watch, it wasn't an absolute mess.
She was back on her feet fairly quickly, though her left arm had gone completely numb from how hard she'd hit her elbow. That was fine. She trained the gun on Sedra with her right hand, and moved to stand between Rian (and now Ember), and the Controller. Blocking fire between them, in case Rian got trigger happy.
Slowly Suji stepped forward: her aim was lowered towards Sedra's gut, rather than her face or chest--reducing the likelihood of missing and hitting the C4-equipped turbine.
And now what will you do, Suji?
Eliminate the Controller because she was the enemy? Because she knew their faces? Best of all, because she'd somehow had a hand in making the only other person Suji had trusted to stay loyal to the cause into a traitor, if only for a moment?
What now, indeed?
Her mind darkened, and she felt that vaguely familiar, and wholly unwelcome sensation of being watched.
Luce:
Luce dropped to her knees as the dracon burnt through her shoulder. Her hand went up instinctively and found a hole, an actual hole through her body about the size a golf ball would make if it had gone through her shoulder.
Her eyes were tightly closed but a few tears managed to escape them anyway as she clenched her teeth against the pain. Her whole body was shaking and she tried to get it under control but she couldn't.
She looked up through watery vision and saw Rian standing above her, dracon beam still pointed at her, face unreadable. Seeing him standing there, seeing a boy young enough to still be in high school standing there like some statue impassively watching her pain, the cause of her pain, was too much.
She wouldn't even be here today if it wasn't for him and she had risked her life over and over again today for him. This was the third or fourth time she had been injured today...because of him.
Those weren't concious thoughts running through her head, it was just an overwhelming feeling of hatred and resentment.
Her leg lashed out and swept his feet out from under him. He may be the one armed but she had been in this war before he'd known there was one.
As he landed she lunged forward and wrapped the one hand that still worked around his throat and began to squeeze. Somewhere in her head she heard laughing. Was it her own?
Rian:
Everything seemed to slow down as his hand pushed the trigger. A part of him was screaming at him. What was he doing? How could he do this? Hurt a faction member, a friend, one of his own? But, sadly, it was a small part. Luce had gotten them into this situation and so she would have to be the one to get them out. And if that meant she paid a bit of a price so be it.
She dropped to her knees and his hand instinctively followed her down keeping the weapon trained on her. For a moment he just stood there, frozen, not sure what to do next as she looked up at him. But then the decision was taken out of his hands, or to be more specific, he was taken off of his feet.
He landed hard on his back and his head hit the concrete of the dam as he fell. His teeth slammed together painfully and he felt like his head was going to explode. He was dazed for a moment as he heard Ember call his name somewhere close by and Luce's hand closed around his throat and began squeezing with strength he wasn't much surprised at since he had trained with her.
His hands went up to try to pry her's away but he was still holding the dracon beam in one of them. He pushed the dracon beam into her gut and choked out, "Luce, let go. Now."
Luce:
Luce held on for a moment longer but almost as quickly as the anger had come it was gone. Her shoulder was throbbing and bleeding and it was the drops of blood falling onto Rian's face and neck more than anything else that broke the spell the emotion had put her under.
She hadn't meant to attack him anyway. No matter what she thought about him he was still her superior and now certainly wasn't the time to undermine his authority. That thought was pretty insane considering how they had gotten into this situation but her first act of betrayal just made her determined not to commit another.
She let go and sat back. She looked around and saw that Sedra was now disarmed and Ember was free. So his little play had worked. Good for him.
She cradled her shoulder and for a second didn't do anything more than that. Then she closed her eyes and began to concentrate on the nighthawk for the third time today. Morphing would heal her. The physical wounds at least.
Rian:
Rian sat up, his empty hand massaging his throat and the pressure marks left there before he wiped away Luce's blood. He took a moment to look at it and remember that Luce wasn't the only one who had committed crimes against her faction today. Then he stood up and turned around to see what had happened while he had been on the ground.
He found Ember free which for a moment was all he could concentrate on. He felt his anger and panic draining away and felt a desire to just hold her and not let go. He had come so close to losing her so many times today and he felt that if he could just hold her then it wouldn't happen again. It was an instinctual feeling and one that didn't make much sense but it was very real and very strong.
But they weren't safe yet, not by a long shot. And looking at Sedra, even disarmed as she was, he felt like he had only caught a tiger by the tail and that this day would come back to haunt them all.
Suji had a dracon beam trained on her though thankfully she had been intelligent enough not to have it pointed where it might hit the C4. He brought his own dracon beam up and aimed it at her, also avoiding the C4, as he watched Luce begin to morph out of the corner of his eye.
<<Em?>> he directed to her privately. It was only her name but it implied everything. He was asking her if she was ok. He was telling her how worried he had been, how much he cared. Not for the first time he was glad it was hard to lie mind to mind, possible, but hard.
"Suji was right," he said addressing Sedra, "this plan is going to go through and this dam is going to go. We are leaving and if you want to live I suggest you come with us," he said motioning towards the power plant entrance as he said it with the hand holding the dracon beam briefly before pointing it back at her.
But even as he spoke he knew he was lying. She had seen their faces. In fact, he was pretty sure this was the leak from the Bomb's mission and now he knew how she had gotten away the first time he thought his eyes briefly flashing down to Luce and seeing she was about half way through her morph.
But she couldn't be allowed to escape this time. She would have to die and he would have to kill her he thought with a sinking heart. He just couldn't do it here, too much of a chance of hitting the C4. But once they were clear...
This is what he had become. A person who could stand here and plan the cold blooded murder of another creature. Where was that kid who had sat with Matt in the forest and marveled over a free, living dear, a deer's who's DNA he had been honored to carry from that day on.
He remembered thinking that day that he was some type of warrior for his planet, for nature itself. He had wanted to fight the yeerks for what they had done to Earth, kick them off the planet. But he had never wanted them all dead and had never given a lot of thought as to how he was going to convince them to leave.
Was this how it was done? Kill so many, terrorize so many that they finally decided it was too dangerous to stay on Earth? And kill the few who would mess up that plan whether they were directly threatening him or not. Is that who he wanted to be? Did it matter if it wasn't if that was what the world needed him to be?
Sedra:
The moment had been long enough, and Sedra let out a small umph as Ember elbowed her in the stomach. At the same moment, the dracon beam was knocked out of her hands, and suddenly she found herself without her hostage and weaponless. Seeing the dracon beam fall to the ground, Sedra sprang forward to try and grab the dracon beam--but was too late. Suji had been faster, and she had it pointed at Sedra now.
Sedra stood upright, shoulders straight and arms relaxed, and looked Suji in the eye. Her expression was hidden. Inwardly she was feeling fresh dismay, and she could hear the sound of her own heart thudding in her ears. Was this it? If the mangled and torn up bodies on the dam were any indication, the Animorphs would be happy enough to kill her because she was a controller.
Her voice came out steady, level. "You kill me and you will be killing my host."
As she spoke, Catherine's fear was bubbling up in her mind, distracting. It never seemed to matter with the Animorphs; a Yeerk's host just got tangled up in the fight, ending up as a causality that was thrown away and forgotten. There may as well have never been the human in the first place, for all they were worth to the Animorphs. And even if they were these cold-blooded killers they touted themselves to be, Sedra's host seemed convinced that hearing those words would change something. "Or perhaps that doesn't matter. You kill humans and Yeerks heedlessly, as I understand it."
Behind Suji, there was a sudden noise, a thud. Sedra's eyes flicked down to where Luce had fallen, and felt a small bit of relief rush through her. Luce was alive. At the same time, it looked like Luce had attacked the male for a second time. Sedra just stared as he fell to the ground and was pinned by Luce. What was going on? Stiffly, silently, she watched as Luce kept her grip on him, then finally released him. Her shoulders dropped just a little.
Rian spoke, and Sedra's gaze returned to him. Her eyes were cold. "Leave with you? You will kill me the moment I step away." Even as she said it, she knew it wasn't really an option to stay here and be killed by the explosion. There were too many bombs, and no one to stop them anymore. Maybe if she went with them, she would have more time to think, more time to gather her thoughts away from her host's voice buzzing in the back of her head. After a moment, her jaw clenched and she glared at Rian. Then she took a step forward, cautious of the dracon beams pointed at her. "Fine."
Suji:
"Not heedlessly. But if it's a choice between killing your host and getting one of my own people killed, I don't pretend that it's going to be a tough decision." Sedra's eyes were no longer on her though: they were focused behind Suji. Suji couldn't turn to look, though she heard the scramble, and then heard Rian speak. Whatever it was, it was settled for now.
But there was no doubt that Sedra felt something while she watched the display. That must have been clear when she'd jerked forward when she thought Luce had been shot--and now there seemed to be tiny, still almost hidden signs of relief. Whatever this Controller was to Luce, Rian and Ember had bet correctly in thinking that it was at least partially mutual. Suji wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't been a part of this herself.
"Rian, you handle Luce and Ember. Get them out, and start priming the detonator." Maybe that was a questioning of his authority, maybe it wasn't. It depended on how he wanted to take it. All Suji knew was that apparently there had been a scuffle behind her, and she doubted it had been between Rian and Ember. If Luce needed to be watched, then Rian couldn't do both things at once. And Suji didn't know Ember well enough to know how she was going to react to all of this. Rian's duty as a faction leader was to his faction; Suji's was just to make sure this went off smoothly.
"Try to grab the others if you can. We need to get off of this dam." She kept the gun trained on Sedra.
Ember:
Ember ran to Rian and Luce, glad that neither of them had been killed, but was startled when Luce suddenly attack him again, wrapping her hands around his throat for a brief moment. A strange noise escaped her as she lunged forward, ready to pull the woman off, but she had already regained control of herself.
What... what could she do now? Ember looked to Rian, scared, and feeling her nerves fragmenting even as she tried to pull it all together. Luce was her friend, but he had... shot her. But she had attacked him? She had put Rian in danger, she had put everyone in danger, she'd almost gotten Ember killed and now? Now? Who should she support? Would Rian have killed her if Sedra hadn't reacted? Would he have killed Luce? Could she have gotten him killed if things had happened differently? ....and Rian, so dark...
Then she heard his voice in her head. <<Em>>
Tears welled in her eyes, hearing all of his raw emotion encompassing her insignificant name. "Rian, I'm sorry..." She moved closer to him, speaking in a low voice so only he could hear. Everything else faded away when she was close to him. Sedra, Suji, the bombs not two feet away. "Are you ok? I'm so sorry, I never wanted you to-" She stopped, unable to say anything more. Instead she wrapped her hand in his, holding his gaze and feeling everything fall into peace. Her heart that had been trying to rip her chest apart was finally quieted.
But before she'd fully felt the moment come, it was gone. She turned away and let her hand slip free with an aching regret. "Luce, are you alright? Here," Ember patted her shoulder, "Get on, we've got to go. It's over." She waited for the nighthawk to dig into her skin, grimacing at the pain, but reminded that yes... she was alive still. Luce didn't respond back, but that gesture was enough. The Vegas faction was back together on the same side, and even Sedra was going to make it out alive. It was time to back out while they could and finally... finally end this.