Chapter seventy three

       A couple of hours had passed since the battle had ended.

        I was laying down on the couch in the living room of my house and using Delilah's thighs as a pillow but there was nothing erotic about the situation. My eyes were red from hours of crying , I was shaking so bad that Delilah had covered me in a blanket. She was lightly stroking my hair as we saw the news on the television, the source of my grief.

        The final death count was five hundred and eleven people. Three hundred ninety nine men, ninety one women and twenty one children, all dead because I fucked up.

         I had talked to Mike about what had happened and he had informed me that the Atelli we had fought were unique among their kind, they were the only ones who were created as twins, they were known as Chelema and Mebrat , they were perfect compliments of each other and even though they were two different entities they couldn't survive without each other. When they infect a soul they had to keep a balance between their duality and unity meaning that they had to maintain their individuality while still being able to effectively control their new body. They achieved this by making a three head system, one head for each individual Atelli and a third communal head mostly used to perform the most basic tasks. When I shot the two heads I had done the equivalent of removing its higher cognitive function turning it into a rampaging monster driven purely by instinct.

           And thanks to my actions over five hundred innocent people were dead including two members of the Oslo police force. I felt like there was a knife in my heart. The worst part was that a crazy camera man had snuck back into the danger zone during the fight and recorded the whole thing. Now everyone was declaring that we were some sort of superheroes and every time they showered us with praise I felt as if the knife in my heart was twisting deeper.

           A cellphone started to ring right next to my ear startling me, Delilah took it out of her pocket and picked it up. She had a whispered conversation then handed it over to me, "Kazimir wants to talk to you."

          I took the phone and screamed into it, "I KNOW I MESSED UP! I KNOW THAT THIS IS MY FAULT! PLEASE....PLEASE...just leave me alone."

         Kazimir's voice wasn't angry like I expected, in fact it was kinder and softer than I have ever heard it before,"I know this is hard for you Sophia, I know that it hurts and this isn't the kind of pain you can heal away. I wish I could tell you that this isn't your fault, I wish that I could just sweep this under the rug and pretend it didn't happen but it did happen and you were responsible for all those deaths."

         "If you are trying to make me feel better you are doing a terrible job."

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          "Look it sucks, I know it sucks. Let me tell you a story, Back when I was still working for the KGB I was stationed in Iran. I was tracking a small time terrorist who we believed could lead us to the mastermind behind attempted attacks in southern Russia. In the end I had to choose between going after my main target or apprehending the small time terrorist who I knew was planning something. I decided to go for the bigger fish but the next day I found out that the man that I let escape had orchestrated an attack on a girl's primary school. Because of my decision over eighty little girls had died. I was devastated but you know what I did? I went after the bastard and caught him before he could do it again. What I am trying to say is that this probably won't be the last time innocent people will get harmed because of your fight with the Atelli but you have to consider the bigger picture. This monsters want to destroy the human race, that's billions of lives. Its a tragedy that all of these people died today but if you mop around and do nothing you will be responsible for making the fate of the human race something worse than death."

       "Then what am I supposed to do?"

        "The only thing you can do, pick yourself up from the ground , brush yourself off and go to your next mission."

        That perked my interest a little,"What mission?"

         "There is a very important project being developed and tested in the Nevada desert by Fairweather tech. They are pouring a quarter of their budget into this project but they have been commissioned to do it for a measly sum of money, mere peanuts compared to what they are spending on it."

          "Who commissioned the project?"

          "The European Organization for Nuclear research." I cursed violently when I heard his answer,"So you are interested? I will have a private plane waiting for you at the Oslo airport in an hour, I have fixed all the problems with Delilah's passport so everything is ready for your departure."

            Shit, this was probably something big. I got up from the couch and started to go to the toilet to take a shower. Before I was out of the room I turned to Delilah and threw her phone back to her,

         "Pack your stuff , we are leaving in half an hour."

          She looked confused at my sudden change in attitude , "Where are we going?"

          "Las Vegas."

  A.n. If any of you don't mind graphic descriptions of gore and sex you could checkout my side project - the ravings of a lunatic  http://royalroadl.com/fiction/6172