Chapter 25
Neither a Heart nor a Soul
“I’ll go,” Tara’s simple proclamation stopped both Ethan and Ronald from putting the slices of apple that they’d picked up into their mouths. Instead, they stared at her with parted lips, confused. Ethan had just relayed a part of Elijah’s identity and shared that they’d need to go on a supply run that Ethan couldn’t go to, and she volunteered without a second word.
“... you’re fucking with me, right?” Ethan said.
“No,” she replied simply. “Elijah already told me everything.”
“Everything?”
“Not just about you,” she elaborated. “The poor kid’s been pushing down his feelings for God knows how long. All he needed was a motherly touch and he spilled everything out.”
“Aha, aha. And who gave him this motherly touch?”
“...”
“...”
“What’d he say?” Ethan asked, moving past the silence left in the wake of his ‘joke’.
"His mother got killed on the day of the Descent," Tara said. "And his sister got paralysed waist down because of a decision his father made. A decision he was forced to make because of Elijah. Anyway, their bond chilled, as you can imagine, his sister tried to kill herself so they doped her off on meds, and nobody wanted anything to do with him past giving him a hard time. He said he was pretty sure the kids would have killed him if you hadn’t shown up.”
“... rough.”
“Yeah, rough,” Tara rolled her eyes.
“What did you mean that you would go, though?” Ethan asked.
“I’m a woman,” Tara said. “They probably won’t ask more than two questions before just letting me enter the city. Not to mention I’m young and, dare I say, kinda pretty?”
“Ronald?” Ethan turned toward the young man who glared at him for a brief moment before replying.
“Yeah, pretty. Real pretty.”
“Oh wow, thanks, that sounded so sincere,” Tara scoffed. “Anyway, the point is that I can get into places by doing what women have been doing for-fucking-ever: letting some poor schmuck think he has a chance.”
“Wow. That’s dark.”
“Hey, if he thinks he’ll get laid just because I found one joke of his funny, he can go fuck himself.”
“Somehow I have a sinking feeling that wasn’t a random thought.”
“The problem isn’t getting in,” Tara said. “But taking what we need and getting out.”
“Plus, there is a whole you get impossibly weak if you’re too far away from me for too long.” Ethan said.
“Yes, there’s also that. Which is just amazing.” Tara sighed.
“There’s just one thing you forgot.” Ethan commented, smiling faintly.
“What?”
“Inventory.”
“...”
“...”
Ronald and Tara both sunk back into the couch, sighing in defeat. They truly had forgotten–not forgotten that they had an Inventory, a pocket dimension where they kept things stored, a completely mind-bending thing that changed their lives, but they forgot it had more applications than just everyday storage. Unlike when Ethan and Ronald went to the city and the nature by which they had to thieve and steal and carry in their arms, this go-around would be much simpler. So simple, in fact, all the planning was unnecessary.
“Both of you will go,” Ethan said. “Tara will walk in through the front gates and then help the kiss-ass here sneak in. How you guys do it, I don’t care. I won’t give you any advice, I won’t help you, and I won’t bail you if you get caught.”
“You will, though.”
“No, I won’t,” Ethan shook his head and both realised that he was no longer being the jokester-self but completely serious. “You will be stronger than anyone in that city by a mile. Faster. More durable. If you still fail, how can I expect you to eventually succeed when you aren’t the strongest and the fastest? There is more to enduring the world than beating a hole open and burying the weaker ones in it. It’s easy to flaunt big muscles, but what use are they if someone shows up with a bazooka and blows a hole through your chest the size of your head?
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“The most enduring survive, always and every time. Not the cleverest, not the strongest, not the richest–the most enduring. You can’t stand out, you can’t draw attention to yourself, and, Tara, you can’t, can’t, save people.”
“...” the young woman winced for a moment, holding back a twinge of anger.
“Let it be your test of temptation.”
“... you saved someone.” She commented.
“No, I kidnapped someone.”
“Then I can kidnap people?”
“If you think I won’t behead them the very second they come here.”
“...” both Tara and Ronald swallowed a mouthful. They’d forgotten, in their silent hubris, and due to Ethan’s otherwise lazy persona, that above all other things, Ethan Flynn was a sociopath. He cared for little past himself and Layla, and they'd forgotten. His speeches about heralding a better world, building a better future for Layla, and growing fond of the two of them masked for them the monster that was always there. Because, they knew, he was not joking. He was not making a witty comment on Tara's poor choice of who she would save. He was not being charming or in some odd, bizarre, and moronic way supportive. He was serious. If she did bring someone back, he would kill them–whether they were young or old, crippled or healthy, weak or strong, smart or stupid.
“Sometimes,” Tara said. “I forget that you made me piss myself the first night we met.”
“You can’t put that rep on me,” Ethan’s cold face cracked and a smile floated to the surface. There, both exclaimed inwardly. It was unnatural–inhuman, even, the transition. It was as though two distinctly different people lived inside one body, and they came up to the surface at random. “It’s your bladder, kiddo.”
“... for the sake of saving the world,” Tara scoffed. “I won’t save anyone. There. Better?”
“You’d make a godawful doctor, you know that?” Ethan sighed, shaking his head.
“Well, takes one to know one.”
“...”
“...”
“Wow, that was actually good. Holy shit,” Ethan exclaimed, actually applauding. “That, like, cut into me for a moment. Man. Just for that, I’m giving you an extra onus.”
“...”
“An extra task. A difficult task. I thought you went to college.”
“Bite me.” Both Ronald and Tara exclaimed at the same time.
“There’s a woman called Sarah McLock in the city somewhere.”
“...” Again, his mood shifted–for the first time, Tara and Ronald felt that Ethan was… genuinely angry. The treble of his voice arose, and the look in his eyes darkened. Their hearts stopped for a moment as they waited for the remainder of his thoughts.
“Kill her.”
“...” though they knew, even shallowly, that it wasn’t an order, that if they felt uncomfortable doing it they didn't have to do it… the tone of his voice, the depth, the cold, brutal, indignant desire for death in it was like a flood that overwhelmed them. They shuddered, hairs raising, sweat coalescing into frost that raced down their backs, one drop in a hurry to overtake another, searching for an exit. "W-why?" Tara managed to stutter out. However, as Ethan's gaze shifted over toward her, she quickly looked away. The red eyes were like a pool of blood devouring the world. Inhuman. Full of ice.
"Because if you think I'm a monster," Ethan's voice calmed and turned even once again. "You'll find yourself lacking a word for what she is. I'm gonna go for a walk. Discuss a plan between yourselves."
Ethan had to get out–he feared that if he stayed inside for much longer, he might have taken it out on the kids. He hadn’t been angry in a long time–but a memory evoked was one that struck like a thunderbolt. A name buried in the deep recess of his mind, locked away in a coffin of humanity that he thought he’d buried forever, surfaced. He trembled and shook, taking deep breaths to calm down. Who was Sarah McLock? He wasn’t exaggerating when he said that the kids would lack a word for her.
For now, she was likely just an ordinary woman of some rank in the military, from what he recalled. But in a year, she would be publicly hung and boiled and tortured for eighteen hours until finally being given the death sentence. Ethan wasn’t the one who suffered under her–but hundreds, if not thousands, did. No matter the age, no matter the circumstances, no matter the pain–those who would enrobe themselves as Gods and concoct their concoctions from the flesh and blood and bones of others would always be born.
Soon after the principality of the Awakening would become known in the military, she would be made head of HUMAN–Humane Understanding of Mutating Awakened and their Negation, a department of the military that eventually sparked the conflict that burned down the U.S. government to the ground and beyond.
Though killing Sarah likely wouldn’t prevent the existence of HUMAN, it would prevent her from heralding it into the areas that it should have never gone to. It was one thing to draw blood from the Awakened and examine it or inspect the DNA changes and alterations to their genome. It was entirely another to force-Awaken virtual newborns and dissect them from head to toe in pursuit of whatever made them change.
“Fuck,” he grumbled, coming up to a tree and crouching down. Images flashed through his head, one by one, in the symphony of hell. Absolute hell. The worst things he’d ever seen in his life came in the first year when he stupidly opened that folder and looked through it. Nothing after–not watching people he cared for be disembowelled in front of him, not watching the humanity thin out by the millions year after year, not even watching his own guts spill out onto the ground while struggling to breathe… nothing came remotely close to breaking him as much. No, that folder broke him completely, over and beyond. In the grand scheme of things, that was the day he became this–a paradoxical duality existing within a singularity. A thing resembling a human that once was. A thing that held faith that the good would always prevail, that a united front was all the people needed in order to endure.
He forced himself to forget, to erase those images from his head once again, to lock them away in the depths of his soul and never look at them again. No good would come from opening up the wounds stitched closed with pins and needles; the anger would consume him, and it was not the anger that he needed in this life. When anger reigns, the kings and queens bleed, the lands burn, the children scream, and the mothers wail. And in the heart of it all, the light ends… and in darkness, rue is born.