CHAPTER 62 - SABRA
Sabra raced through the dark of SHIVA’s catacombs, and the shadows deepened. Revenant beamed a map to her HUD, a path to the heart of the machine. She tried not to focus on it, but rather on the motions of her limbs, and the thread of déjà vu that’d led her here. She existed in the space between thought and action and instinct and, in that sense, may not have existed at all.
Perhaps not catacombs, Sabra thought. Sekhmet’s helmet provided her with unobstructed vision, even this far underground—she caught the strange geometries of an imprinted design, the eerie symbols whose meaning danced on the tip of her tongue, the weird, obvious beauty of whatever great work had taken place here. It was an inhuman combination of needs and aesthetics, and perhaps there was no difference.
Perhaps not catacombs. Perhaps a tomb or a crypt, and perhaps neither. Perhaps Blueshift had been right, and this was a temple and corpse both. Perhaps there was no word to encompass such a monumental thing, built for a purpose long since forgotten.
But who had built it, and why? Where had they gone? Sabra thought she had something of an idea as she led the way across an obsidian bridge that spanned a vast, impossible chasm. Great shapes—pillars and monoliths—poked out of the depths, reaching toward a ceiling she couldn’t see.
And then SHIVA twitched and crimson light flared through the intricate lines of the bridge, but only for a moment. It was like someone taking their first breath after a long sleep.
“Christ and Allah,” Sabra whispered, pausing mid-step. “It’s starting.”
The light was already fading. The mind of the mountain had stirred to life for one single moment, one powerful pulse that proved it wasn’t dead, but only partially—only somnolent.
“We have to move, Sabra,” Revenant said. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
Sabra shook her head. “No, I’ll protect you.”
“The knight in shining armor routine—”
“It’s not about that! Listen, even if we take Monkey down it won’t mean a thing if SHIVA finishes waking up. I’m passing you the ball and I’m going to run interference. I’ll keep Monkey busy while you find some way to shut this thing down.”
Her gunmetal-and-gold gaze met Sabra through the mask.
“SHIVA’s processing capacity vastly outstrips my own,” she said. “If it is online, a direct interface may result in... damage.”
“I think we all knew this was a one-way trip, babe,” Sabra replied, smiling sadly. The image of Pavel there, lying on the ground, smoke rising from his torso, crashed into her thoughts.
“I won’t let SHIVA take you,” she said. “But whatever happens in there, you do not come and help me, understand? Our job is to stop SHIVA—nothing else matters. I’ll buy you as much time as I can. Promise me.”
Revenant nodded. “I promise.”
She let her awareness float just outside of her body, let the abyss of the future lap at her. They were halfway across the bridge and Monkey lay on the other side. Wherever the future led, there couldn’t be any more hesitation, any more fear. All that remained was to see it through to the bloody end, and whatever lay beyond.
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They found Monkey again in the middle of a vast, open space. Flat, featureless, circular with a domed ceiling that reached so high that even Sekhmet’s helmet couldn’t read the height. Inlays flowed through the walls, angular and beautiful, and the crimson pulse was more frequent now, but still not quite steady.
There was still time.
Monkey stood before a featureless monolith, his hand upon it. Sabra advanced on him while Revenant slipped into the shadows at the edge of the sanctum. The game was simple; that monolith was what Revenant had to reach to score.
She had to draw Monkey away from it. And she had to do it right, or not bother doing it at all.
“Elias Hawthorne!” Sabra roared, stalking forward. “There’s nowhere to run. Stand down immediately, or I will destroy you.”
Monkey turned slowly, like he was playing for an audience that didn’t exist. He brought his staff across his shoulders, relaxed and confident. Green light pulsed through the weapon in time with SHIVA's waxing awareness, sparking and popping around the head of it, and the same light danced within his eyes.
Sabra readied herself, turned her shoulder to him, and brought her fists up. The simple act of curling her fingers within her gauntlets filled her with prescient vertigo, twisting visions into memories. Adrenaline hummed through her and, beyond it, that chime of resonance in the deep.
“I won’t ask again, Hawthorne.”
Monkey stepped closer, bathed in crimson flashes. He was tall and broad-shouldered, muscular—but that only made the grievous wounds inflicted on him by Sam’s firepower all the more apparent, where something had stitched him back together.
“Do you think I’m scared of this little routine?” he asked. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard it?” He laughed. “I’ve defied much greater things than you by coming here, walking where even heroes fear to tread. In minutes, the entire world will know that I, and I alone, have outsmarted heroes, men, and gods.”
He still wasn’t far enough away. Sabra focused on him. It was like there was something clinging to his shadow, a heaviness that drew her floundering awareness, like a spinning marble towards an infinite depth. A malefic shadow with a dead-star tripartite gaze.
He’s using-
“He’s using you,” Sabra said, repeating words she’d never said. “You’ve carried a piece of him right to the heart of this place. You’re just a tool, Hawthorne, as trapped in this as we are. I bet Jack would ask you why The Engineer wouldn’t do this himself.”
She threw the name like a knife, nailed the flaw in Monkey’s ego. His smile twisted into a furious frown. He stepped away from the altar, towards her, and began to pace a circle. He drew his staff down and turned it about him as he went, the tip of it leaving a trail of glittering viridescence in its wake.
“You turned him against me,” Monkey said. “We climbed up from nothing with a dream to change this fucked up world. But people like you won’t let it change, will you? It can’t be done, not without the power to wipe it clean.”
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Was this what Blueshift had been looking for in her? Monkey wanted to change the world, but didn’t know what to replace it with, maybe didn’t care. Monkey wanted revenge. He wanted to place himself at the head of the table instead of overturning it. His problem was not with the injustice of the world, it was that the injustice was visited upon him.
“I’m not fighting for the world as it is, Hawthorne, but the better futures you’ll take away.”
Monkey scoffed. “You’re like a dog that thinks she’ll get to sit in the master’s chair. The game is rigged, hero. Always has been, always will be.”
“Rigged or not,” Sabra said, “I play to win. Do you know what you are, Hawthorne? You’re nothing but an ape with delusions of grandeur. You’ll be nothing but a footnote. You climbed up from nothing, and you’ll leave this world with nothing, and you will not be mourned.”
Monkey bared his teeth, face twisting. Underneath that practiced, egotistical charisma was a beast of pure id. The pattern was so easily read. The fight was here. Sabra closed her eyes and let the abyss wash over her and subsume her. She thought of her parents, and of Pavel, and of her friends, and Mike, and Jack, and Sam, and Revenant. She was because they were.
Monkey charged.
I made this decision.
She inhaled the desert wind and tasted fire and ash and blood at the back of her throat.
Monkey leapt, whirling his staff.
I embrace the consequences.
There was no Sekhmet, there was only her. It was the part of her that burned hotter than the Sun and colder than the grave. It was the part of her that hated losing more than it loved winning. It was the part of her that was already soaked in blood, and didn’t care. It was the whisper that the world wasn’t a contest of morality, but a struggle to the death to determine whether there was a future at all.
Someone like Elias Hawthorne would take it away. The future was not set in stone, no fate was set before her. Sekhmet wasn’t just a goddess of destruction, but one of healing, too. Her fear had already cost Pavel his life. It was time to stop being so afraid of her own shadow. What survived was what survived, and her soul was worth less than the body of the world.
And I am not afraid.
She brought her arms up and caught his staff in the x of her vambraces. The blow rocked her back, through her armor, and they circled for supremacy.
“I know how the Wukong story ends, Hawthorne,” Sabra seethed. “But I haven’t come here to bring enlightenment, but a sword.” She kicked out, hard, and sent him flying. He landed hard, rolling to his feet.
She caught him before he could pull any tricks. He drove her back with a jab to her sternum; the armor denting. He was strong, stronger than she thought. But she could match him strength for strength, even overpower him—but that was the danger. Put before the choice of victory with trickery and defeat without, he’d choose the former. She had to press him, but not too hard.
Not until the time was right.
She met Monkey in a whirling dance, striking again and again, and he deflected or blocked all of her killing strikes. She fell into that space that had allowed her to defeat Taurine and fight Revenant to a standstill, into her onslaught step, that place between instinct and thought where Sekhmet paced. She caught Monkey’s staff, dragged him in, and lashed him with a right hook. He stumbled back, spitting bloody teeth, growling and incensed.
Sabra banged her gauntlets together—her mauling paws—and strode towards him. Monkey’s gaze went away from her, settling on another target, eyes widening as he shouted, “No!”
There was Revenant, sprinting for SHIVA’s altar.
Monkey turned from Sabra, raising the staff, emerald light building for a shot.
Sekhmet tore her shoulder armor free and hurled it at Monkey, spinning end over end, catching his arm just as he fired and throwing his shot wide. She crashed into him then, throwing punches. An uppercut to the chin, a combination to his middle. Mauling him with someone else’s fists.
This was it. All or nothing. Do or die. Better you than me.
The knot of the future wrapped around her, a whirling riptide of possibles, probables and certainties. She stood at the head of an army, at the fall of an empire, at the end of the world. She was a goddess; she was a prisoner; she was incandescent and terrifying beneath the eye of God. She was Sabra she was Defiant she was Sekhmet she was disassociating and she is drowning.
Only then, did she wonder about the possibility of knots—of how they could settle around her neck. That the trap could’ve been for Revenant, or her, or Monkey, or all of them.
A glimpse of Revenant hacking open the monolith and reaching inside, ripping glowing, pulsing cables free, jamming them into the slots and ports on her headpiece, her head jerking back and up, mouth opening like she was screaming—
SHIVA’s pulses flickered, fell out of rhythm.
Sabra nailed Monkey with a haymaker, hard enough to send him flying, and he rose up, roaring, and hurled his staff like a thunderbolt. She skipped past it, and then she was on top of him again, riding her furious whirlwind. A fistfight for the end of the world and what lay beyond. She found Monkey’s left arm, twisted to break his elbow, and let Sekhmet take him by the jaw and force him down, to trap his neck in the crook of her elbow, so she could just twist—
This was it. That tranquil feeling of being exactly where she had to be. Every step she had ever taken had led her to this spot, to have a man’s neck in the crook of elbow, and all of her strength ready to break it. The future revealed itself to her in a flash: the fall of Geneva and the destruction of the city and everyone in it, and she is there, angelic figures clad in purple and silver and descending to stop her, and she is there, and the dim gunmetal eyes of a familiar corpse at her feet, and she is there, her vast wings stretching before the gates of Heaven, her entire existence a mere mote in the eye of an angry god, thrashing and drowning in the infinite deep, a fragile little dandelion blown apart, and she is there—
Destroyer, came the screams, Destroyer!
It was her. It wasn’t Monkey, and never had been. It was her.
She paused. She hesitated. The only thing her victory required was acceptance of everything that would come to pass in its wake. Or, if not that, then acceptance of the one thing required to escape it. Like Promethea had said. Her elbow slipped loose.
Monkey’s staff crashed into her as it returned to his hand.
The trance broke. Sabra fought to recover, but her haymaker ripped through nothing but air, and Monkey caught her on the chin with his staff. Dazed, Sabra fell back, and Monkey hammered at her, again and again.
She went down to one knee, and Monkey struck at that, and caught her on the side of her helmet. She let the momentum carry her away, rolling with it, but Monkey stayed on her, and he had reach. The head of the staff became a spear, and he caught her in the gap between helmet and cuirass, glowing tip piercing that vulnerable point. It grazed her neck, so potent that she didn’t even feel it.
If she moved, she died. Monkey’s boot settled on her chest, and his hooting laughter echoed. His body was battered and crushed and bloody, but every time the staff pulsed, something flooded through him and pushed things back to where they should’ve been.
Monkey drew his arm and spear back. Just the few inches he needed to finish her with one final blow.
But his arm remained where it was, held in stasis. Monkey’s attention was on the entrance to the temple, surprise shifting into a welcoming smile. Sabra already knew the reason for it, but hoped she was wrong, even as she turned to look.
Jack lurched his way across the temple floor, revolver in hand, face and gaze hidden behind his helmet, and she was caught in the time between transition and revelation, caught in the moment that allowed choice. The future pressed in on her, crushing her. This was the crucible, the fulcrum point. Her final chance to defy Sekhmet’s wrath and the inferno it would light.
Do the right thing, please, Jack.
There was still one way—one final way—to escape the fire and ash.
It just wasn't her choice to make.
I need you to stop me.