Guinevere…

Guinevere had been trying very hard to make an excuse as to why Jace came back the way he did.

It was very hard.

It was difficult to even write it all off as Jace going crazy. At least she could warp her head around that. It was as if he came back with a completely new outlook on life. He wasn’t babbling nonsense to himself while the world moved on around him, he was preaching nonsense to a world that he thought needed to move ahead with him.

Guinevere did not care for his preaching.

But she cared for him, right? That was a question Guinevere was starting to wrestle with.

She rubbed her temples and stared down at her keyboard, as if the answer might reveal itself in the keys. No matter how long and how hard she thought about Jace’s condition, there was really only one question that needed to be answered: would he still work for her plan?

Guinevere had to care about Jace, right? She was sure she did. She was certain. What kind of person would she be if she didn’t?

But Guinevere was starting to wonder if she cared about her goals more.

She was getting tired.

She let out another too-long sigh, much to the displeasure of her new guard dog.

“Listen lady, I hate to be that girl about this, but wouldn’t your work go faster if you, you know, worked? Believe it or not, I have a few more duties other than just hanging out with the ‘woe is me’ researcher.”

Guinevere kept her eyes on her keyboard. If a God existed, this was a pretty easy way to communicate, right? God could guide her fingers or light up a certain key or maybe even just cause one of her stray hairs to land on a miracle message.

But no divine message had come, and Guinevere was starting to think she would have to do everything herself, “No one’s forcing you to stay.”

“Ukko’s orders.”

“And Ukko is?”

She didn’t respond and instead continued to lean back in her chair and pick idly at her teeth with her pinky.

“Dying Bonnie, the answer is that he’s dying. Maybe you should all focus on who’s going to be in charge instead of keeping an eye on me.”

“He’s not dead.” She said the line as if she were just correcting Guinevere’s mistake.

“He’s been locked up in that MAC for three days now. We can’t open it, he can’t open it, and all we do know is that we’ve heard him groan inside of it maybe two or three times since we picked it up from the forest. It’s not like he has food or water hidden away in there. He’s dying. End of story.”

“He’s not dead.” Bonnie said the words matter-of-factly once more, as if she was just stating the truth and waiting for Guinevere to accept it.

Guinevere gave up on talking to the guard. She was one of the two remaining personal guards for Ukko. She cared about him the same way the other Stragglers did: he was an effective leader that they didn’t want to lose. They were being delusional and simply hoping that he would spring back up and keep guiding them onward. It was almost laughable.

Ukko was definitely dying though. There was no question about it. And that fact put a time limit on Guinevere’s plan. She wasn’t going to let that bastard die on his own.

The Trahir system… it was finished. It was outfitted into the Vice Admiral’s machine. Ukko planned to use her machine after it was installed, so more than a few modifications had been made, but Guinevere didn’t care about the weapons or armor. It didn’t concern her. Jace had been hooked in for the past three days, trapped in about the same sense as Ukko. The only difference was that Jace was choosing to be trapped. He wouldn’t leave. Meals were brought to him, but he rarely even ate. It was odd. The numbers Guinevere was getting back from him were odd as well.

Jace’s mind wasn’t deteriorating no matter how much stress they simulated for the machine. It was truly a miracle in MAC technology.

Theoretically, from the stats Guinevere had been looking at for the past few days, the pilot could live a completely normal life under regular usage of the MAC. She took an aggregate of combat data from the other MACs to simulate stress. Only in extremely taxing battles, battles that no normal pilot would get into, would the machine begin to act… strange. Guinevere couldn’t quite pinpoint what specifically happened in these situations, but the pilot would likely die after that kind of encounter or at least after a few of them. She just decided to consider it a built-in safety mechanism against the overly ambitious.

Guinevere had also been researching a way to guide the pilot’s mind for her purposes of revenge, a sort of cognitive suggestion program. It wasn’t foolproof and she couldn’t exactly test it, but it should be enough for her to make Jace do as he’s told. Though it would likely add quite a bit of danger to the seemingly safe system.

The question that had been forcing her to look to a God she didn’t believe in for answers was simple: should she set the Trahir system loose as planned and possibly break Jace in the process?

Or does she try to convince herself that Ukko’s current situation is revenge enough?

No… it was simpler than that. Guinevere realized, deep down, that the question was literally as simple as they come: did Guinevere care about Jace as more than just a tool? Did she care about anyone like that?

She always thought she did. She enjoyed being around him. She enjoyed holding him. She enjoyed the future she planned for them in Atlantis. But Lionel’s words seemed to stick in her mind in all the worst ways ‘the only thing you seem to care about is this city’.

She was starting to think he was right. But she was trying very hard to convince herself that he wasn’t. That was why she hadn’t pressed the button that fully activated the Trahir system. That was why she was sitting around while her target of revenge died. That was why she was trying her best to care about Jace as a person rather than as a tool.

A loud rumble broke into her thoughts as Bonnie stood up and patted her stomach, “Welp, that’s lunch, and I’ll be damned if watching you stare at a keyboard is going to make me miss another meal. Get up and walk.”

Guinevere did. Maybe, she hoped, a fuller stomach would clear her mind.

They walked out of the impromptu research truck and made their way to a tent where they were serving some sort of soup. There were no longer enough soldiers to keep the Atlantis researchers completely isolated and locked up, so Guinevere and Lionel ate with everyone else these days. The fact it was only Guinevere and Lionel may have also been part of the reason for the extra bit of freedom. All the other researchers who were captured had tried to run at some point or another. They were either killed or lost in the mountains or forests somewhere.

It was clear from the haggard faces of the men and women staring angrily at the hot water with a few chunks of ‘something’ that The Stragglers were on their last legs. The Stragglers without Ukko were truly falling behind. It was almost poetic.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The faint chill on the wind was made worse by the increased humidity and the fact that the sun had been hiding behind gray skies all day. It rained all too often out here and trekking through the mud that seemed to always be dragging parts of the convoy down into it was more than what anyone wanted to deal with.

The only light in the darkness for this troupe of murderers was the smell of the ocean. Nobody found the smell itself pleasant, but everyone knew it meant their task was nearly done. Some of the recovery team members that went out to find Jace and Ukko couldn’t shut up about how close they were.

But that was three days ago. Convoys move rather slowly, especially in these conditions.

“Couple more days and we’ll be in the water, right Ki?” Bonnie tried to utter the words between her mouthfuls of soup that she pretended could pass as real food.

“Yeah, couple more Bon.” Ki, the other surviving member of Ukko’s personal guard, collapsed onto the table and closed his eyes. He was in charge of looking after Ukko’s machine and trying to rescue him. He hadn’t gotten many breaks.

Bonnie slapped him on the back hard enough to get a yelp and put him back in an upright position, “Come on Ki, be at least a little excited. It’s the ocean! Don’t tell me you already forgot all that talk about seeing me in a bathing suit? Just because you’re not in my strike zone doesn’t mean you should give up on your dreams.” She laughed as loudly as possible. It was forced. Guinevere had heard her forcing out that laugh for the past few days. This woman was probably the only one left with even a shred of hope.

But it was enough to raise everyone’s spirits. At least enough to keep them moving, “Shoot, how could I forget…” Ki flashed a smile nearly as forced as Bonnie’s laugh, “You’re gonna show off that six pack, right?” Ki’s eyes started to shut again. He was completely drained, “Every time I see you training…” he yawned, “nice stomach…” and with that his head fell back onto the table with a splash of soup.

He was a stereotypically attractive man. Well built, tall, dark hair that he looked after. He continued to wear a suit with slacks, even though the clothing was starting to look as battle damaged as the rest of the convoy. Of course, none of that was easy to appreciate with the gaunt look to his eyes and the fact that his face was now firmly planted in his bowl of meager soup.

The woman looked at Guinevere. She was olive skinned with short dark hair. She trained incessantly, so Guinevere was well aware of how muscular she was. Ukko’s guard didn’t seem to have any sort of uniform requirements other than a pilotka with a red star. Apparently, that was the Vice Admiral’s addition.

The woman’s name was Bonnie. She was recently pressed into service as a MAC pilot. Guinevere heard she was already showing talent for it. She wore the close-fitting pilot suit underneath an oversized jacket. The jacket itself was covered in rectangular chunks of overlapping kevlar that she’d picked up over the years. She’d been wearing the jacket open for as long as Guinevere had been around her, so Guinevere wasn’t sure about the effectiveness of bothering to wear it.

“So, a little bit of food doing anything for you?”

Guinevere glanced in Bonnie’s direction but didn’t pay her much mind. Guinevere was in the midst of an episode of self-hatred. Why couldn’t she just make the decision and be done with this? Press the button and use Jace for her revenge or give up everything she’s worked for to prove that she could love people. That she could be normal… that was all she had to do. Just decide.

“I guess you really do just operate in your own world, huh? Not quite what I look for in a chick, but if that’s what was popular in Atlantis then whatever I guess.” Bonnie turned her attention back toward her comrades. She continued trying to joke around with everyone, hoping to raise their morale at least a bit.

Or maybe she was just trying to convince herself. Guinevere wasn’t sure.

Guinevere’s attention only returned to the table when Lionel sat down across from her.

The man had always looked old, but now he looked positively ancient. Bags under bags and wrinkles on wrinkles. It was almost too much to look at. However, the most off-putting aspect of him at the moment was his smile that stretched from ear to ear, “Long time no see Guinevere, I don’t suppose you’ve finished up the Trahir system, have you?”

Guinevere turned her attention fully back to her cold soup, “No.”

“Well that’s a real shame. Truly a shame. I mean really, not having the system ready when The Stragglers are in need of power. If only,” he licked his lips, looking oddly crazed, “we had an alternative.”

Lionel had been hard at work on his research for quite some time now. Supposedly he had a usable version of his canisters a week ago, but he’d been hinting at making something far more powerful ever since Ukko became trapped. By the sound of his taunting, he’d finished.

“Huh, guess Ukko was on the money bringing both of you along. I was on the ‘one researcher is enough’ team.” Sometimes Guinevere couldn’t tell if Bonnie was trying to help the mood or just fill the empty spots.

“Well, I’d say Ukko was betting on the wrong horse. The newly updated canisters are far more powerful than anything Guinevere could have come up with. Of course, considering she hasn’t come up with anything I guess it’s not much of a competition.”

“Hmm,” Bonnie put her elbows on the table and rested her face in her hands while putting on a far too expressive thinking face, “Ukko usually isn’t wrong, and he always seemed to dislike those canisters. There was probably something bad about them. Or maybe your project just sucked?”

“Ukko was a fool! Ukko was afraid of them! He was-”

Before Lionel could finish, Bonnie reached out with one hand and grabbed Lionel’s neck. She stood up from the table and lifted Lionel’s frail little body with her, “Was? No, you mean is.”

“Very smart Lionel. Maybe don’t insult the warlord these people worship.”

Bonnie, still holding Lionel off the ground, looked at Guinevere, “Huh? Who gives a shit about that?”

Guinevere nodded at Lionel’s wriggling legs as he struggled in Bonnie’s grasp, “Seems like you do, considering you’re treating Lionel there like a rag doll.”

She laughed and dropped Lionel into a gasping pile of old man, “No no, you’ve got it wrong. I’m not some brainwashed cult member, none of us are.” She raised her voice for the whole tent to hear, “What I won’t allow are lies. Ukko’s alive. All the techno crap they’ve got plugged into his machine shows that he’s alive. You and this idiot lying about his death, that’s what pisses me off. I mean, I get it. The hostages are always going to hope for their captors to splinter apart and make for an easy escape, but The Stragglers aren’t done yet.” She sat back down and began to eat Lionel’s soup, “So, you know, tough luck.”

Guinevere was amazed. The miserable feeling that was just covering the whole tent seemed to dissipate. Not by a lot, but it was at least better than before. Maybe it was just enough hope to get them to all finish this contract of theirs.

There was something else Guinevere decided to take to heart. It was probably a long shot and she was probably reading too far into the situation, but… it seemed like Bonnie loved this inanimate group more than she cared for Ukko.

Yes, Guinevere was happy with that answer. Just because Guinevere didn’t really love people didn’t mean her love for her city was any less real.

Or any less valuable.

She decided. She would do it. She would use Jace.

His mind may be damaged in the process, but it was for a worthy cause.

Yes, Guinevere was fine with this.

She stood up from the table and ran back to her research lab.

Bonnie and Lionel both followed.

Bonnie caught up to her within moments and asked what she was doing.

Guinevere simply responded, “The Trahir system is ready now.” and continued running.

She threw open the door to the lab and sat down at her computer. She glanced through the window that overlooked the hangar bay where Jace sat in his machine.

She smiled. She was sure. This had to be the right decision. This was the last step for her.

She pressed the button that activated the Trahir system and implemented the cognitive suggestion program that Guinevere had designed.

It was the most important part of the system. At least as far as getting Jace to get revenge for her. Guinevere had used her own DNA in the machine’s systems. It would broadcast her desire for revenge to Jace internally. Since the Trahir system basically merged the mind of the pilot with the mind of the machine to better handle the stress of piloting, it was easy enough to add in a few extra lines of code to the machine that would carry over to Jace. Her thoughts would meld with the machine and the machine’s thoughts would meld with Jace. He would become the perfect tool to dispose of The Stragglers and finish Guinevere’s quest for revenge.

It would be hellish for Jace. The extra thoughts that were being implanted would severely impact his psyche. He may not fully recover when everything’s said and done, but he wouldn’t need to. He would return once the job was done and begin the self-destruct sequence for the system. The world would ultimately figure out how to rebuild the Trahir system, but Guinevere didn’t want to be around for that. Once this is over, once her revenge is done and the Trahir system is shown to the world, she could find her cliff.

She knew deep in her heart that it wouldn’t even matter… it wouldn’t matter if she showed up to that cliff all alone.

Yes, this was enough.

More than enough.

Jace’s machine began to rise out of the hangar as Bonnie shouted behind Guinevere. Lionel tried to say something through all his heavy breathing, but none of it mattered.

Guinevere’s world was moving again.