Akasha

I was jerked awake by my head hitting the hard ground after falling from somewhere. It took me a moment to remember everything, that I passed out on Marco’s back with Gaia while we were heading toward Marco’s ship.

I sat up and looked around. Marco was struggling to stand up after crashing through the window of a shop a few meters away, a large crater on his chest plate making him cough up bits of blood.Gaia lay down in a motionless pile next to the shop.

I attempt to stand up to get to Gaia, but fall down to the right. Confused, I look at my right leg to see what’s wrong with it, only to see no leg there, only a bit of torn flesh and a pool of blood growing.

“Arrrgh…” I muttered, starting to crawl toward Gaia. Marco said that Gaia would be fine, so I should survive this.

The ground, or rather the floor, beneath me had little grip to it, made even more slippery with the blood coating my hands, making it difficult to drag myself over to Gaia. I finally made it to Gaia, and Marco seemed to come to his senses. He must have been hit with a missile of some kind, enough to blow all three of us away, and tear my leg off.

I reached out to grab Gaia, wanting to reassure myself of our survival. Subconsciously, I already knew that Gaia was most likely beyond saving, she might’ve even been dead by now, but I held onto hope, onto Marco's words that he’ll save her.

Gaia’s eyes burst open, her mouth spitting out a mix of snot, spit, and blood. She started breathing heavily, coughing the contents of her lungs and stomach out onto the floor. I noticed a slight green glow enveloping her body, some of her lighter wounds closing up and the heaving ones attempting to heal themselves to no avail.

Her eyes darted to me, locked with my eyes. “Akasha,” she grumbled. “I, I’m not sure what’s going on.” she said while looking around at our surroundings.

“Y-yea?!” I shouted, surprised. “You’re alive!”

“Probably not for much longer.” She glanced at her larger wounds sustained from the missile blast, a hole in her stomach and parts of her left arm and leg missing. “Heh, I don’t know what happened.”

Marco stumbled through the formal entrance of the shop and took a step toward us. “Oh no, both of you, hrnng!” he exclaimed in pain. “Get over here, Gaia won’t last much longer if we don’t get her to my ship.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Yea Gaia! Marco said that his team can get you all fixed up!”

Gaia gazed into my eyes. I could see the pain in hers, how deep, hollow, and dark they were. “Marco,” she said, looking at him with those same eyes. “I’m Gaia, nice to meet you.” She nodded, and he nodded back solemnly. “Leave me here. You can see these wounds of mine, it’s practically a miracle I’m not dead right now, let alone talking to you like this. I’ll be dead in a matter of minutes. Get Akasha out of here and save her.”

“No.” he declined flatly while picking up our useless bodies. “I can't leave innocent civilians behind, especially ones capable of saving.”

Gaia, now held underneath one of his arms, opened her mouth to start protesting, but closed it, deeming it a waste of her energy. The green glow enveloping Gaia started to noticeably fade, causing Gaia’s eyes to droop. She looked to me, held under his other arm.

“Akasha, my time’s up.” She held her hand out, which I grasped with all the strength my body could muster. “Ahhhhhh, I… Urrgh, you were… a great… friend.” She blinked slowly a couple times, a smile forming on her face. The green glow subsided more. “Akasha…” she said, gripping my hand.

The light in her eyes shone beautifully and brightly. They may have been the most beautiful things I had ever seen. As the light in her eyes faded, so did the green glow around her. The glow concentrated in our gripping hands, enveloping both, where it finally dissipated, along with her life, and her oh so beautiful eyes.

I didn’t even have enough energy to scream anymore, not even enough to keep holding her slowly cooling hand, not enough to wipe the tears clouding my vision and staining my face.

The sound of the chaos consuming Kuroe never reached my ears. The explosions resulting from the fight between Marco’s invasion group and Kuroe’s defenses raged on in the background, unheard by me and Gaia, but likely not Marco. He was constantly glancing away from us, toward some battle in the distance.

After some time, we reached the edge of Kuroe. Marco used his suit to kick a solid steel door down easily, and we slipped into the backrooms of the structure.

“We’re taking a shortcut to the ship, most of the other civilians are being taken through a larger passageway.” Marco said to me.

Not many civilians got to see this part of Kuroe, it was reserved for scientists only, no one knew what this place was really for other than their experiments and keeping Kuroe up and running. We arrived at a small hallway that had a circular door leading to a much larger room containing many other civilians.

Marco ran through the area containing the civilians without injuries, then rushed into a room labeled emergency care. He laid me down on an operating table with my missing arm, which he must have grabbed after the missile. He then took Gaia to a room further in the medical area. After a second and a half, Marco comes out and jogs over to me.

“I’m heading back out into Kuroe, there's more… civilians to save,” He says, knowing damn well I know he means he’s going back out to ‘clean up’ the surviving scientists.

I avert my eyes, my brows furrowed and my mouth slightly quivering. After a small moment of remorse, Marco turns and runs back to Kuroe. I stare up at the ceiling of the emergency room, trying not to think about anything, focusing more on the pain of my severed arm than anything else.