Paradox: The Last Day - Seymour's Story

by Rachel Charman

“This?”

  Seymour fingers the black choker on his neck subconsciously, and says quietly –

  “Just.. covers an ugly scar..”

  “Okay then… All right, Seymour. That should be enough for today. I’ll be back tomorrow to interview you before General Solari arrives. I have many more questions to ask you.”

  “Joy.”

  Training his eyes on the notepad pressed tightly against the doctor’s chest, Seymour says with a curious smirk –

  “… So, what’s your diagnosis this time?”

  The doctor stands, staring down at Seymour with a slight frown upon his elderly face, and exits the cell briskly without a word, once again submerging the dismal chamber in a dense cloak of mind-numbing darkness. Once more left to his own devices, Seymour dejectedly tosses the torn strips into the darkest corner of the cell, pulls himself up against the back wall, and closes his eyes wearily, feeling vaguely nauseated from the protracted conversation.

  |Do I remember? Heh.. Dear Doctor.. All I want is to forget…|

  … O fallen one, reclaim your life’s light. Bring forth Man’s end, and quell their fight…

  Seymour opens his eyes suddenly, awakening from a familiar, disturbing dream, to find the elderly doctor watching him intently through the shadows, which are cleaved only by a thin strip of light emanating from the partially open cell door, which is snuffed as a guard closes it promptly. Seymour reacts quickly, throwing his fist at Doctor O’Tiggs, but he grabs it swiftly with his desiccated hand, and looks into his eyes with a slight smile.

  “Glad you’re awake, Seymour.”

  “Son of a bitch… How long have you been watching me?”

  “About a minute. I just came here to wrap up your evaluation, since General Solari is on his way..”

  “So, you want to berate my sanity in my last hours of life?”

  “I simply have more to assess. Now take a deep breath, and calm yourself.”

  Reluctantly following the doctor’s orders, Seymour takes a slow, deep breath, but rather than calming him, it only serves to make him more agitated, as he suddenly remembers that he only has a short amount of time left before Solari comes to execute him, but as the doctor has come once again armed, his cell remains infuriatingly inescapable. The doctor takes his place once more in front of Seymour, sitting cross-legged on the dreary concrete floor, puts his pen to paper, and begins his tirade once amore.

  “Now then, let’s begin… First of all, you were talking in your sleep.”

  “What? Oh..”

  Already uncomfortable and nervous from having to spend his last hours conversing with the aged annoyance sitting before him, Seymour shrinks slightly in disgust at the mention of someone seeing him sleeping , and wishes not to carry on with the subject, but the doctor ignores his clearly uneasy expression and presses on in a cajoling tone.

  “Were you having a bad dream?”

  “… Mm.. Sorta.. It’s not really bad or good.”

  “What does the dream entail?”

  “Why do you care? It’s just a dream.”

  “Dreams mean more than you think. It might be worthwhile to discuss it.”

  “Oh… well..”

  The doctor pulls out a small flashlight from his coat, and holds it up to Seymour’s eye, but Seymour bats it away with an angered glare.

  “Look, I’m not sick, alright? Can’t you just go away?”

  “Well, with that display of reluctance to examination, I’d say this dream of yours is much more than just a regular dream. How often do you have it?”

  “… It varies. It’s not always the same, but it always happens in the same place.”

  “I see. So, can you tell me what the dream involves?”

  Seymour refuses to talk at first; he simply stares at the doctor irritably, knowing that every second he spends talking with the withered windbag is time he could be spending escaping before Solari arrives, but finally, he admits defeat, and says wearily –

  “… You’re not gonna let up, are you?”

  “I don’t get paid to give up, Seymour.”

  “Heh, I guess not.. Well, if you have to know..”

  Seymour leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, trying to remember as many details as he can, and after a few moments of silent contemplation, he starts to elaborate in a low voice –

  “In this dream… Everything is dark. I’m dead.. I’m being accosted and tormented by my own memories; burning under a black sun, and treading the silent streets of a sort of anti-earth… Watching projections of eerily translucent people pass me by... Spectres of people whose lives I’d taken.. They scream at me; horrid high-pitched wailing and crying.. Children’s faces melting away before my eyes.. Their liquefied eyes boiling their flesh in the harsh white rays of the black sun.. I can’t stand it anymore..”

  “… Go on.”

  Relishing the nauseated expression on the doctor’s wrinkled countenance, Seymour resumes regaling his revolving reverie in a low, serious voice –

  “I take cover within a huge clock tower that overlooks the city below, when a maiden suddenly appears before me. Her flesh is covered in scars and bloody welts, but behind all that, she is absolutely beautiful. She shields me from the assailing apparitions enclosing me, and offers me a choice; a deal. She says, ‘Complete a task for me, and you can return to your life. If you refuse, you and all the ones you love will be forced to bear this torture for eternity.’”

  “.. And what do you say?”

  “I beg her to let me return. She says that in order to accomplish my task, I must relinquish my heart, for the bearer of the burden she will bestow must be devoid of emotion and lusts in order to succeed.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I surrender my heart without a second thought. It is the most painful thing I have ever felt, and will ever feel.

  … And when I open my eyes, the cursed city lies behind a glassy barrier. The maiden, she sets my heart on fire, and I can hear it screaming in agony and fear. But I feel no fear myself. It was stripped from me, along with everything else. Dragged away, back into that horrid city…

  So now… Everything is light. I am alive. An eternity I spent within the place of punishment; though only moments I was gone from this world…

  I was dead. But no more… It was just a dream, it seems.”

  While Seymour has been explicating his disturbing dream, the doctor has ceased taking notes about halfway through, and completely abandons his professional resolve for a look of pure shock. Trying to keep composure, he clears his throat, and puts his pen on his notepad, though he writes no words.

  “… S-so, who do think this maiden was?”

  Seymour distractedly caresses the brand on his right arm with two fingers, deciding whether or not to answer the question, although eventually, he says with his gaze still fixated on his stygian stigmas –

  “… She called herself… Nyx.”

  “Nyx? So then, the task this Nyx bestowed upon you was…”

  Finally, Seymour tears his eyes away from his brands to stare straight into Doctor O’Tiggs’ stark face, and declares with all seriousness –

  “To kill. To kill everyone and everything.”

  The doctor stares shocked and wide-eyed at Seymour, who stares back, his eyes cold and stirring. The doctor slowly slides his hand into his jacket, attempting to pull out his revolver. Seymour senses his move, seizes his arm, and immediately crushes it under his immensely tight grip, breaking the bone in two, causing the pistol to fall from his slack grip. As the doctor falls to his knees, whimpering in pain at the sight of his grotesquely crushed arm, Seymour retrieves the fallen revolver, and points it straight at the weeping doctor’s forehead, a crazed smile stretched across his sweaty, ashen face.

  “So, it’s some dream, isn’t it, Doctor?”

  “Y-you’re a p-psychopath, Moreau… A-a demon…”

  “I’ve heard that before. But c’mon, doc, I’m dying to know.. What’s your diagnosis?”
>
  The doctor raises his head, his face ashen and stained with tears, but set and resolute. He stares straight into Seymour’s pale, vitreous eyes, and smiles sadly.

  “Incurably insane.”

  Seymour pulls the trigger, and the bullet pierces the doctor’s skull, splattering the cell wall with blood and brain matter. The guard outside of the cell hears the gunshot emanate from within, and quickly unlocks the door, pulling out his rifle in wary defense. The guard observes Seymour standing over the doctor’s bloody corpse, and takes aim with his rifle, but Seymour is faster, and shoots the guard through the throat, causing warm, crimson blood to spray all over the cell, copiously splattering Seymour’s face. The guard had failed to close the cell door behind him when he entered, and it remains open. Enlivened with the prospect of escape, Seymour wipes the blood off his face with the doctor’s coat, pockets the revolver, and exits through the open door into the harshly lit corridor. Remembering his tracer scan, he recalls that one of his comrades is within the DIV. 4 building. Dashing through the long, starkly-lit hallways, ignoring the various bangs and wails emanating from the numerous sealed cell doors, Seymour reaches a circular hub, with an information desk in the center, which is equipped with a P.A. system. However, a young, blonde, kind-looking nurse is sitting behind the desk. He approaches her tentatively, and she greets him with a curious smile. He pulls out his revolver, and slaughters her without a word. Hopping over the desk, and pushing the nurse’s bloody, lifeless body aside, he grabs the P.A. microphone, and presses the ON button. His voice echoes loudly throughout the corridors.

  “Attention everyone. This is Commander Seymour Moreau. If there are any patients by the name of Samantha Moreau, Elena Lias, or Sakura Yuki in the building, I need you to break out of your cell and return to me in the center wing by any means necessary. Kill anyone in your path.”

  After about a minute of silence, Seymour hears a commotion emanating from the eastern wing. He hastens down the lengthy corridor, and finds a group of guards trying desperately to subdue an escaped hostile inmate. She thrashes the guards effortlessly, her long, shoulder-length blonde hair dancing as she dodges the guards’ strikes. The one guard left standing fires an entire clip of rifle bullets in her direction. She raises her pale, blood-stained hands, and causes the bullets to stop dead in their tracks, in mid-air. The guard yells in terror, and tries to run away, but the girl is faster, and she repels all of the bullets onto their firer, killing him instantly. After the battle, the inmate turns to face Seymour. Her pretty young face is ashen and idle, even amid the carnage. Her eyes hidden by a thin black mask made of delicate, sinuous fabric, and her voice is lifelessly monotone. Seymour puts a hand on her shoulder with a wide smile, and says –

  “Heheh. I’m so glad you’re alive, Elena. And glad to see your Magnetic Force Initiators are working too.”

  “Commander Moreau, sir. Please forgive my actions. I tried to evade capture as best I could, but I was overwhelmed.”

  “Don’t worry about it. As long as you’re not hurt, it’s okay. But how did you end up here?”

  Elena falls silent for a moment, and she seems to be manually scanning her memory in an almost mechanical way until she finally replies prosaically –

  “Sakura and I were followed by the PRIME after we left you and Sam behind, sir.

  She managed to escape, but I was taken into custody.”

  “Well, what of the others? What about Sam and Sakura?”

  “They’re alive, last I saw. However, sir, I do not know where they are located.”

  “That’s okay, Elena. I have my tracer. We’ll find them, but for now, we need to escape this place. Are you able to keep fighting?”

  “I’m fine, sir.”

  “Perfect. Now then, shall we?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Seymour grabs two fallen rifles on the floor, tosses one to Elena, and together, they make their way towards the exit, while the remote-activated escaped inmate alarm blares on throughout the building. Within minutes, the squads of armed asylum guards amass in the darkened hallways, hindering Seymour and Elena’s progress very slightly as they pitilessly rip through their feeble defenses. After a tense hour of blood and bullets, Seymour and Elena find an exit to the streets at the end of a long corridor. However, the asylum guards must’ve predicted Seymour and Elena’s actions, for the entire hallway is packed with guards, all pointing their guns at the pair, and the glass door exit is barricaded with a thick, heavy gate made of solid steel.

  “Oh dear, Elena. It appears we’ve been caught.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Well, looks like you’ll have just have to show them who they’re dealing with..”

  Elena complacently raises her hands at the horde of soldiers, magnetically tears the heavy metal barricade at the end of the hallway out of the wall with the powerful MFI units embedded under her skin, and pulls it back through the corridor, sweeping through the bewildered guards, crushing and flattening every single guard under its massive weight. Once the barricade reaches the end of the hallway, Elena rips a hole open in the middle, and Seymour smiles, steps through the hole, and continues down the corridor, treading confidently through the expanse of lifeless guards. As Seymour reaches the end of the hallway, a guard, still alive, takes aim at Seymour’s head, but his focus slips, and he shoots Seymour in the leg by accident. Taken by surprise, Seymour yells out in pain, and grasps the bleeding wound tightly, while Elena angrily wrenches the guard’s rifle from his grip and shoots him in the face. Seeing that Seymour is unable to stand, Elena grabs hold of him quickly, and he takes her arm gratefully. She lifts him onto his feet, and together, the pair continues slowly through the opened doorway, and out into the streets of Mesa District.

  ~Santuc TerraDome: Mesa District~

  Once they are a fair distance away from the DIV. 4 asylum, and certain they aren’t being pursued, Seymour and Elena take shelter underneath the shadows of the massive freeway ramp vastly stretching on over their heads, while the sound of cars racing across its surface high above fills the smoky, polluted air. Checking carefully for any soldiers in the crowded street beyond the shadows, Seymour tentatively inspects his painful, bleeding leg with curiosity, while Elena sits down next to him with an impassive look on her ashen face.

  “Ahh.. The fucking bullet is still in there.. Damn.. Why couldn’t he shoot my left leg? That one’s not even real…”

  “I don’t know, sir, but you’re hurt. Let me help you.”

  “T-thanks..”

  Elena places her hand atop his wound, and magnetically siphons the bullet from out of the lesion. She reaches for the strips of fabric tied around Seymour’s brands, and he hesitates, but ultimately decides that his wound is more critical, and unties the pieces of fabric around his forearms. Elena takes one piece, balls it up, and gently pushes it within the gash, preventing further blood loss. She then takes the other strip of fabric, and ties it tightly around his wound. Testing the makeshift bandage’s strength, Seymour gives Elena a quick, reticent smile.

  “Huh.. Thanks.. That’s a lot better.. Heheh, good thing the PRIME stopped using lead for their bullets. Cheap bastards only use nickel for them now.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  Seymour looks up at the towering freeway ramp situated high above their heads pensively, while Elena stares off into the distance unseeingly, awaiting orders.

  “So… Now that we’re free and fully intact, where should we go?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Shouldn’t we look for the others?”

  “Yeah..”

  Pulling out his tracer, which remained mercifully un-confiscated during his incarceration, Seymour flips the cover over and studies the scarlet screen for a time, eventually scrolling over the projection of the warehouse he had been captured at the previous day. A single orange dot remains stationary within the building, and he says with a pang of surprise –

  “Whoa, they’re still in there? Crazy..”

  Seymour considers
the tiny orange dot curiously, the red light reflected in his thoughtful eyes, and utters distantly –

  “Hmm.. If whoever’s in there is trying to protect themselves, it would make sense that the building would be locked down.. But..”

  “But what, sir?’

  “But, I guess, now that you’re here with me, we don’t have to be in Mesa anymore.. Actually, it’s probably better if we put distance between us and this district, just in case an alert is called…”

  “I suppose, sir.”

  Suddenly, Elena seizes Seymour’s shoulder, and swiftly drags him behind the massive concrete support of the freeway, forcing him down on his wounded leg before whispering plainly –

  “PRIME soldiers, sir.”

  From the veil of shadows cast down by the freeway road, Seymour cautiously glances around the side of the support, and notices a score of crimson-jacketed PRIME Angels march past on the opposite side of the street, clutching assault rifles to their chests and shunting citizens out of their way as they proceed. As soon as they disappear down the congested street, Seymour moves off of his injured leg with a sigh of pained relief, runs his fingers through his hair nervously, and says to Elena seriously –

  “We can’t run the risk of being caught before we get back to Liberty, Elena.. We need some kind of disguise..”

  “It may not be much, sir, you can have my mask. They were using it to keep me subdued, and I would rather not wear it anymore.”

  Elena stiffly reaches up, and pulls off her black mask, revealing her eyes: they are a bright, beautiful shade of blue, though they are mired in a strange, unnatural cloudiness, and seem unable to reflect light.

  “Forgive me though, sir. Unfortunately, it only covers the eyes. But I think you should have it, sir. You’re much more sought after than me.”