Aetheral Space

Ruth's head twitched just slightly, her brain hesitantly transmitting the command to her nerves to look behind her, to look towards the source of that voice.

"Don't," said the voice softly - and yet the voice was still harsh, like scraping steel. "If you look at me, you will die."

It was a struggle even to gulp. It was as if she was an ant who'd only just noticed the boot hovering above her. The grim reaper was standing behind her - and she could tell from his voice that he was no liar.

"You've heard my voice," the man went on - and as he did, Ruth could hear him walking towards her, his footsteps heavy and metallic upon the floor. "You know my name. You are already in grave danger. But so long as you don't look at me, you can still survive this situation."

Ruth scoffed with bravado she didn't feel, even as she continued to stare straight forward. "You think I'm scared of you?"

She felt cold air on the back of her neck.

"Yes," the Citizen breathed.

It wasn't true. He was lying. She was tricking him. She wasn't scared of anything. After all she'd seen, how could she be scared? Bones dripping with plasma, a flayed corpse against a post, Ruth in pieces on the floor.

No, no. She shook her head. That last image … that hadn't happened. The situation was just messing with her head. If she just … if she just turned around, took this guy on, she could break this spell he'd put over her.

The Citizen chuckled, the reverb in his voice lending the laughter an odd echo. "You struggle valiantly against yourself, little girl, but that isn't always enough. You must be aware of your nature, your limitations, as I am."

"My … limitations?" The seemingly-friendly advice was so unexpected that she couldn't help but respond.

"Your limitations," the Citizen repeated. "You are only human. You must understand that."

She clenched her fists. "Of course I understand that," she growled.

"Of course you do. That is why you do not turn around. You understand that - although we are both human beings - we are not at the same level. Dispatching me is beyond your current capabilities. You are wise to recognise this. I ask only that you ensure your wisdom persists."

Defiant words came to her lips, almost just for the sake of it. "Even if you kill me," she said. "This place is surrounded. You won't get away."

Another hollow chuckle. "Surrounded? Surrounded by who? Shooting Star Security Solutions? Those people outside are already dead."

A chill ran down her spine. There had been hundreds of people guarding the entrance. He couldn't have…

"You're lying," she snapped.

"I am not," the Citizen's voice was calm as ever, as if he were explaining something very obvious to a child. "I lie a great deal, yes, but not on this occasion. I have killed those people. They won't be an obstacle."

"I…" Even as her mouth wanted to continue arguing, her mind understood it could produce no more words to delay this.

"I am going to walk past you now," the Citizen whispered. "If you wish to live, close your eyes so that you do not see me. Otherwise, I will cut your head off as I pass you. The choice is yours.'

She heard another metal footstep and - as if it were an automatic reflex - her eyes snapped shut. An awful trembling went through her body, as if an invisible hand were shaking her as hard as possible. It was a struggle even to keep standing.

The Citizen chuckled - low, dark - and a metal gauntlet came to rest on the top of her head.

"Good girl," the Citizen said - and kept on walking past her.

Skipper had found himself in better situations, he had to say.

Dragan slung over his shoulder, he zoomed backwards through the hallway, letting loose countless Heartbeat Shotguns both to fight and to direct his momentum through the corridors. The sounds of explosions and raining metal was near-constant, but the impact on the reserve of drones zooming towards him was negligible.

The sheer number of drones was almost unbelievable - they were programmed not to fly into each other, but the amount of them stuffed into the hallway meant that their metal hulls were scraping together, sending sparks raining out. For each cluster of drones he took out, more flew in to take their place.

Skipper bit his lip as he went zooming around the corner, Dragan's legs flapping in the wind behind him.

Heartbeat Landmine would be much more suited to taking out a crowd like this, but he couldn't risk it in this situation. Dragan was far too close - there was a non-zero chance that letting loose an area-of-effect attack like that here would result in his death.

Going after Noel wasn't an option either. The last he'd seen of her, a group of her personal drones were lifting her away from the battle, even as she flailed and screamed threats at him. Every second put more distance between them that he simply couldn't take back.

Escape was the only good ending to this encounter, then. He'd have to fight the things off as he moved upstairs, back to the lobby, and shot himself out right into that security perimeter.

It would be a bloody battle, but he was sure the security forces had the firepower to take on these drones. Plus, it would give him a little breathing room.

"Sounds like a plan, huh, Mr. Hadrien?" he asked quietly, knowing that the unconscious Dragan couldn't answer him.

The drones began to get a little too close for comfort, the sounds of scraping metal getting louder. Not good. At a distance, he could maneuver his body to avoid the plasma that was coming down like rain - but any closer and that wouldn't be the case. He might have been able to dodge, sure, but getting Dragan out of the way was another story entirely.

Heartbeat Shotgun.

Another blast of sound accelerated their flight, sending them zooming through the corridors. As they flew, Skipper glanced upwards, as if he could see through the ceiling to spot what was happening all those floors up. He at least hoped Ruth was having a better time of things.

Heartbeat Shotgun. Heartbeat Shotgun.

As Skipper turned over in mid-air, he sent two shots zooming off at the ceiling directly in front of the drones' approach. There was a shatter of concrete, and stone came raining down - it wouldn't block the drones, but it would certainly slow them down.

Skipper came down to the ground, skidding to a halt as his boots kicked up sparks. He concentrated, felt the continuing heartbeat of Dragan. Okay, the kid was alright. Score one to him.

He needed to get outside the building, to get to the security forces - but making his way through the hallways like this just wasn't sustainable. He needed to fast track this somehow.

His eyes flicked over to a closed elevator door not far away. All the elevators had been deactivated, of course, so he couldn't exactly get in and push the button…

...but you didn't need to be in an elevator to use the shaft.

Skipper grinned.

Ruth kept her eyes shut as the Citizen passed by her, his footsteps heavy on the ground. Whoever he was, he was definitely wearing some kind of bulky armour - something metal, at the very least.

"I've seen your face," she heard Sait croak, speaking up for the first time in a while. "I assume that means…?"

"Yes." When the Citizen spoke, any traces of the genial friendliness he'd shown to Ruth were gone. His voice was cold, ruthless, empty. "Once you tell me what I wish to know, I will kill you."

Sait sighed - and it was if all the worries in the world were being exhaled along with it.

"Thank God…" he breathed.

"The names." There was no reason to even entertain the idea of a conversation here. Sait was already dead in the Citizen's eyes, Ruth realized. The only purpose he served before that was made official was this intelligence.

"Of course," Sait said hurriedly, eagerly - but before he could begin, the Citizen interrupted him.

"No. You will whisper it to me. If the girl hears, she will be killed."

"So?"

The voice was firmer. "You will whisper it to me."

There was a long moment of silence - save for the slightest inaudible whispering. Then, the creaking of metal as the Citizen stood up again. Every movement seemed like it put strain on whatever armour he was wearing. Ruth was sure she'd heard pieces of it snap more than once.

"How do I know you're not lying?" the Citizen intoned harshly, like steam burning at pipes.

Sait chuckled humorlessly. "Why would I lie? How would it profit me?"

"I imagine it's second nature for creatures like us. Still…" There was a sheen, like a blade being unsheathed - like a dozen blades being unsheathed. "I believe you."

Fire ran through Ruth's body. Go! she screamed at herself, as though she were trapped in a burning building. Don't just stand there! Do something!

Bones scorched by plasma. A bloody carcass, strapped to a post. Bones melting away to nothing. A skinless husk, ropes binding it in place. Bones aflame. Robin unrecognisable.

Ruth didn't move a muscle.

"Burn in hell," said the Citizen calmly - and then came the slightest groan from Sait. The sounds of slicing echoed through the office, for much longer than was necessary. Then, the footsteps came back towards Ruth.

"You did well not to open your eyes," the Citizen said. "I will be gone from this room in ten seconds. You may open your eyes then - and only then. Do you understand?"

Fuck you, her mouth went to say. Instead, though, she only meekly nodded. Like a student being scolded by a teacher.

"Very good."

And then he was gone - and Ruth was alone.

With her eyes squeezed so tightly shut, the only reminder of the outside world was the hot tears of frustration on her cheeks.

Skipper flew.

The blasts of sounds that had previously served as acceleration were now his only means of steering as he soared through the elevator shaft system, holding Dragan between his shoulder and his neck as he went.

For a big place like this, one or two elevators never cut it - and linear shafts wouldn't do the trick. The place that he was now travelling through was more like a network of interconnected tunnels, which elevators would zoom through both vertically and horizontally to reach their destinations.

Those elevators were frozen now, stuck in the middle of the network as obstacles - but obstacles could also be cover. Skipper blasted himself behind one of them just as the pursuing drones fired off another volley of plasmafire.

Nice. Nice nice nice. He was making good work of it, good progress towards the exit.

As the elevator melted under the sheer amount of plasma it had been drowned in, Skipper blasted off again, heading for the slightly wider tunnel that he knew would be built to house a slightly bulkier elevator - the kind of fancy one you'd want your guests to see when they came in from the entrance.

"Hang in there, kiddo," he muttered to the unconscious Dragan, trying to ignore the angry buzzing of the drones pursuing them.

This was the last stretch.

Ruth didn't really know how long she stood there, fists balled at her sides.

It was long enough for the flies to take interest - long enough for them to gather around the thing she knew was behind her. The corpse. She wondered what it would look like once she turned around. Not good. She hadn't seen what exactly the Citizen had done, but she'd heard enough to know it wasn't an easy death.

Her eyes were still closed.

She knew that, without a doubt, the Citizen was gone - but the fear inside her wouldn't allow her to be sure. There was a part of her certain that, if she opened her eyes, she'd instantly be cut to pieces by the man's blades.

What would Skipper think? He'd trusted her to get Sait. She'd let him down. She'd let everyone down.

Could… could she maybe chase the Citizen down? Make all this right again?

No. With that destination in mind, her feet wouldn't allow her to move. Cowardly self-preservation triumphed once again. Coward. Coward.

Ruth found her body wretch forward, and a spike of alarm ran through her head - only for it to crumble away into disgust when she realized that it was only a pathetic, silent sob. She'd let everyone down, and now here she was, crying out of self-pity instead of doing something about it.

Her ears twitched - footsteps were approaching, hurried footsteps. Someone was running here.

At the very least, it wasn't the Citizen - she was no Cogitant, but even she was sure that she'd recognize those heavy, metallic footfalls.

The door swung open, and the footsteps trailed off to a halt.

"Miss Blaine?" said Serena quietly from behind her, the worry evident in her tone. "Are you okay?"

Ruth opened her eyes.

The body before her - Sait's body - had been eviscerated. It was as if a thousand knives had suddenly and simultaneously been run through his body, revealing his contents for all to see. In death, the man probably covered more space than he had in life.

She felt sick.

"I couldn't do anything," she whispered, as if trying to explain herself. "I-I couldn't… he was here…"

Serena looked around the dark room uneasily, violet Aether crackling against her fingers. "Who was here?" she asked, cocking her head.

"The Citizen," Ruth growled.

"Oh," Serena put a worried hand to her mouth, still glancing around. "Well, what do we do now?"

Ruth could have laughed. After what she'd just seen, after what Ruth had just let happen, Serena was still looking to her for answers? She wasn't qualified to give orders. She had no idea what she was doing, clearly.

"We," Ruth began - but the word came out cracked and dry from her throat. "We head back out - meet up with Skipper and Dragan. We… figure out what we're gonna do next."

She had no idea what that would be - they'd failed, after all. They'd been told to kill the Citizen, and Ruth had just stood there shaking like a leaf as he did whatever he wanted. The mission was an undeniable failure.

Serena opened her mouth to say something more, but seemed to catch a glance of Ruth's anguished expression, and her mouth closed again.

In the end, she only nodded.

Dir thumped his fist against the ground, concrete cracking slightly from the impact.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

He'd gone from each body to the next - the ones that looked reasonably intact - looking for any signs of life. Nothing. He'd hoped, in his heart of hearts, that there would be at least one person he could save… one person he could bring back from this, but nothing. Always nothing.

Stuffing his emotions back down inside of him, Dir rose to his full height, clasping his hands behind his back. Just looking at him, there would be no sign of the inner turmoil that had been brewing in him only moments before.

Every single officer who'd been stationed here had been killed at the same time, by a shower of silver blades that had rained down on them from above. Those who hadn't been shredded by the assault had been killed by blades lodged into their eye-sockets, their throats… every death either instant or very nearly so.

He'd already contacted the other security team - they were on their way. The person who did this wouldn't get away with it.

Dir would take that. He had nothing else.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

His body stiffened as he heard the sound - like echoing gunshots, getting louder and louder, closer and closer. Was the attacker coming back? Dir reached down, picked up his massive stun cannon - and pointed it towards the hospital entrance.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Yes. They were definitely heading in this direction - the sounds shaking the windows outside. Dir's finger flicked off the safety on the cannon, readying a stun-shot that could fell a pure blood Pugnant.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

His men were dead. His mission in shambles. But this, at least, was something Dir could do.

He could point and shoot, every time.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Smash.

The front doors of the hospital exploded outwards in a shower of glass and concrete, rubble raining down on the square below - Dir sent stumbling backwards from the sheer force of the eruption. As he did, he looked up - and saw the source of the devastation.

Skipper had fired himself like a cannonball right through the front wall, and he had that kid Hadrien slung over his back. The idiot was missing an arm, and blood was running down his face to cover one eye. Seemed they'd had their own troubles on the inside.

The man came down - his flight had been at least a little majestic, but that sense of grace seemed to leave him as he fell into an undignified pile on the ground, Hadrien slipping from his back and falling limp next to him. For a moment, Dir stared at the pair in disbelief - then, duty taking over, he ran to them.

"Report," he barked, pulling Skipper up by his good arm. The fool blinked in the dim moonlight, eyes flicking around the square - taking in the bodies.

"What the hell happened here?" Skipper asked.

Dir shook him by the arm. "Irrelevant," he said, stuffing useless emotion down. "Report. What happened in there?"

A sense of urgency seemed to come back to Skipper. "Ah, shit," he said, whirling back around to face the ruined hospital entrance. "You may wanna take cover here, buddy! This is-"

Plasma - a veritable ocean of it - flew out at them from within the swirling dust. For a moment, Dir could only stare at it, mouth agape.

Then, though, old instincts kicked in - and Dir grabbed Skipper and Dragan by the shoulders and leapt behind one of the barricades in record speed. The plasma passed over them as they fell to the ground, melting the concrete where it hit. A shudder passed through Dir's body as he imagined just how quickly that would have melted them.

There was the buzzing of drones, too - a chorus of it, coming from within the hospital. It remained for a moment, the ominous buzz rattling Dir's bones, before fading away.

Skipper cleared his throat. "They think they got us," he said quietly. "Switching to patrol mode instead. Not too smart, huh?"

Cautiously, Dir picked himself up off the ground. Indeed, there wasn't a drone in sight - the hole Skipper had made in the entrance to the hospital was utterly empty. The man himself rose up next to Dir, face grave. His eyes flicked up to the second hole in the hospital - the one their attacker had made.

"Someone came here," Skipper said. "Killed all your men, and entered the hospital. That right?" Any trace of the buffoonery he'd earlier displayed was gone. This, Dir realized, was the assassin that had killed a President.

"That's right," Dir said quietly, nodding.

"I see. It's him, then." It wasn't a question - and if it had been, Dir wouldn't have been able to argue against him. He'd reached the same conclusion in his mind: this was the Citizen's work.

Skipper sighed, his breath leaving his mouth as a cold mist that rose into the night air. "Guess I'm going back in, then."

Dir's head snapped to stare incredulously at Skipper. The man had just uttered insanity. "Are you mad?" he said, losing composure for just a moment. "You saw what he did to my men! And those drones are still in there, too! You wouldn't last two seconds!"

A smirk played across Skipper's lips as he looked up at the hospital. "Me against a one man army, a six-hundred drone army and whatever goons are still hanging around?" His eyes were far away. "I've seen worse. I've got three kids in there, buddy. It's not even a choice. Keep Mr. Hadrien safe for me, yeah?"

And with that, he blasted off - twin shots of sound propelling him back into the hospital entrance as Dir looked on, disbelieving.

Insane. He'd just witnessed utter insanity, but… he couldn't deny it was just a bit magnificent.

The first thing Dragan became aware of was the pain all over his body. The second was the groan of pain that escaped his mouth as a result.

"So," said Dir, the burly security chief standing over him - silhouetted by the moon. "You're finally awake."

Dragan's groan went on for an admirable length as he sat up, put a hand to his aching temple. "What happened?" he said, words coming out slurred.

Dir's gaze shifted - to look at the entrance of the hospital. Dragan suddenly became aware that he was now outside: of course, that was obvious, but he'd clearly taken a blow to the head at some point.

"I couldn't tell you," Dir said grimly, glaring into the depths. "Your man Skipper carried you out and went back in - a cloud of drones were chasing him."

So Skipper had survived his fall, then. Of course, he'd expected that, but it was good to know all the same.

The last thing he remembered was firing off his Gemini Shotgun. A twinge of embarrassment crawled through his body when he thought of the name again: what had he been thinking? He must have been delirious from the pain or something, obviously.

Dragan picked himself up, legs wobbling beneath him. "I'm going back in," he forced out through gritted teeth - but as he went to take the first step, Dir's hand landed heavily on his shoulder and pulled him back.

The older man shook his head. "No," he said solemnly. "You wouldn't stand a chance against what's in there, boy, and neither would I."

Dragan furrowed his brow, uncomprehending. "What's in there…?" he mumbled - and then, finally, his gaze slid past Dir and he realized what was around him.

He really wasn't in his best mind.

Corpses. So many corpses, impaled and sliced and eviscerated. It was like the aftermath of some bloody battle.

Noel and her crew wouldn't have had the ability to do this - and the damage didn't fit the powers they had. Did that mean…?

Dir nodded again, clearly seeing what Dragan was thinking. "It's him. The Citizen."

"Fuck."

"Yes."

The burst of adrenaline that had fuelled Dragan for the last minute or so trailed off, and his traitorous legs sent him toppling back to the ground, leaning against a spare supply crate. He wasn't going anywhere.

Still, if nothing else, he could talk like a champ. "We can't just sit here and do nothing," he grunted.

"We can, and we will. That's the job. Orders from command should come in soon."

Dragan opened his mouth to argue further, to offer some token protest, but the words died in his throat. Instead, he looked up towards the hospital, face twisted into an anguished expression.

Come on, he thought. Come on, you idiot.