Paradox: The Last Day - Seymour's Story

by Rachel Charman

  “Me? .. No, I think you should keep wearing it.. Besides, if you get caught, I might not be able to break into the warehouse without you. But if I’m caught, I can just bust out and find you wherever you go with my tracer.”

  “But what if they kill you before you can escape, sir?”

  Seymour chuckles quietly while he rubs his injured leg gingerly, and exclaims in careless voice –

  “They won’t, Elena. I’m too much fun to them. I mean, c’mon, since the war is over, who else does the PRIME have to hunt?”

  “That’s true, sir. Thank you.”

  Elena slips the black, eyeless mask back over her blonde head, once again completely shielding her eyes from view.

  “Can you see through that thing?”

  “Yes, sir. Though it fully conceals my eyes, the fabric is quite see-through.”

  “Alright, good.. So, what’s the fastest way to Liberty District?”

  The two fall into a cogitating hush for a time, while the cars race mechanically above them, and the people surge by prosaically all around them. Seymour grips his wounded leg tightly, though the pain does not keep him from devising a plan, and he opens his mouth to explain, but Elena cuts him off by suggesting robotically –

  “… Will the tram work, sir?”

  Seymour raises his eyebrows slightly at Elena’s sudden interjection, but realizes that her plan is actually a good one.

  “Er.. yeah.. Yeah, actually, that’s a good idea.. We’ll be exposed to the public, but I suppose we’d possibly attract more attention if we stole a car, and it’ll take too long to walk..”

  “You’re right, sir. So, we take the tram?”

  “Yeah, that seems the only way.. However, don’t be afraid to fight if we get discovered, yes? We have to make it to that warehouse by any means necessary.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Seymour nods, and tests his leg to see if it can support his weight.

  He manages to stay on his feet, though a bit unsteadily, and together, he and Elena emerge from the shadows of the freeway ramp, and continue down the muggy streets of Mesa, keeping their heads low amid the pushy crowds. Traipsing for hours through the dense, crowded streets of Mesa, the pair finally arrive at the vast, thickly congested Tramline station, where agitated people push and shove their way into the tiny tramcar sitting at the station, which on its destination marker, reads “LIBERTY”. Seymour signals Elena with a furtive flick of his head, and together, they subtly merge into the hastily jostling crowd cramming themselves into the Liberty-bound tramcar. They take seats side-by-side on the lower level of the tramcar, and sit in silence while the cramped car quickly fills. After another few minutes of loading, the tramcar lurches forward, along with everyone inside, beginning its non-stop voyage to the Liberty Tramline Station.

  After about ten minutes of unperturbed travel, all the while keeping his head low and dodging the many curious looks his ashen hair gets, Seymour glances at the upper level of the car, and is deeply surprised to find his brother Adrian sitting beside a young, brown-haired, spectacled man with only one arm, who is wearing a jade eXo PRIME jacket with the logo scratched off. Adrian’s eyes meet Seymour’s, but no look of shock or recollection emerges on his face. Seymour turns his eyes to his own interlocked hands, his mind working fast while Elena sits stiffly beside him, swaying lightly along with the jostling of the tramcar.

  |Is that really Adrian? … Of course it is.. I don’t know anybody else who looks like that… But how did he manage not to get caught..? And where’s he going now?|

  Seymour takes another quick, surreptitious peek at Adrian, and notices that his fingernails are all scorched and partially melted, and that reddish blots run all up the length of his arms. Detecting Seymour inquisitive stare, Adrian suddenly snaps his green-and-hazel gaze onto him with a slight frown, but doesn’t say a word. For a moment, their two eyes meet, and Seymour considers making contact with his brother for one unpleasant moment, but resigns himself to stay in his seat, and quietly continues in his train of thought.

  |Hm.. He was carrying someone out of DIV. 8 when I last saw him; a girl with black hair.. Wait… Could it have been… Sam? … N-no way..|

  Feeling as though he has run headlong into a brick wall, Seymour clenches his trembling hands together in his lap tightly, trying to keep his face neutral in light of his revelation, though he can’t stop a small, victorious smile to slip out of him, causing Adrian’s suspicious frown to deepen.

  |H-how did I not see it? She was right there, in his arms, and I didn’t even notice! How could I be so stupid? … Well, whatever.. What’s done is done… I guess if Sam’s not with him.. if I just follow Adrian, he’ll lead me to wherever he took her..|

  Without taking his eyes off of Adrian, Seymour leans to his left slightly, and whispers to Elena furtively –

  “New orders, Elena. We’ll tail Adrian before we go to the warehouse. I want to see where exactly he’s going.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Adrian turns from Seymour’s mystified gaze, and Seymour suspects that his brother doesn’t recognize him due to his white hair. A few more minutes pass while the tram chugs along its tracks loudly, and Seymour continues to sit in a pondering silence, when suddenly, Adrian is abruptly smashed up against the tramcar wall by a group of vicious-looking skinheads wearing black jackets; men who Seymour knows call themselves The Seekers of Peace. Taken aback, Seymour stands to investigate, when he and Elena are involuntarily forced to the back of the frightened, bewildered crowd as they struggle to flee as far away from the conflict as they can in the speeding tramcar. Seymour forcefully shoves his way through to the front of the horde of hastily retreating people, just in time to see Adrian pull out a syringe filled with a milky-whitish serum with a jolt of shock.

  |I-is that VENOM?! Where did he get his hands on that?|

  Watching from afar, his ears filled with the frightened yelling of the people pressing against him from all sides, Seymour observes in complete bewilderment as Adrian forcefully shoves the needlepoint into the side of his neck, and injects the serum straight into his external jugular vein. He watches in complete disillusionment as Adrian starts to twitch and tremble violently, then, without warning, grabs hold of the Seeker’s hand wrapped tightly around his throat, and breaks the thug’s fingers one by one, using his viselike grip. Yelling in pain, the Seeker backs away from Adrian, pulls out a pistol with his uninjured hand, and points it straight at Adrian’s head. Adrian stares wide-eyed at his assailants through the drug-induced haze, as the enraged Seeker pulls the trigger. Instantly, Adrian moves his head out of the way of the Seeker’s bullet. Ducking under the Seeker’s arm, Adrian slides up behind him, breaks his outstretched arm, pulls out his pistol, and shoots him in the back of his bald head. Adrian grabs the Seeker’s corpse by the arm, and throws it against the tramcar’s window; it breaks cleanly through the glass, and hits the wall of the tramcar tunnel. Shocked and enraged, two of the Seekers grab Adrian’s arms and hold him immobile, while the third approaches him with a jagged-edged knife, and prepares to strike. As the knife is poised just above his heart, Adrian inexplicably creates a sudden white-hot bolt of electricity from his hand, blasting the Seeker into the tramcar wall, which creates a massive indentation in its steel frame, breaking the window and cracking the Seeker’s skull upon impact. As the other inhabitants of the tramcar scream in fear, Seymour’s face drains of color, his eyes wide with shock, drinking in the sight of electricity flying bizarrely out of his brother’s flesh in total astonishment.

  |H-how.. Electricity…? H-how did he do that?!|

  The jade-jacketed, one-armed, spectacled man shoves his way past Seymour and breaks away from the crowd. He approaches Adrian cautiously, puts his hand on his shoulder, and Adrian unconsciously and heatedly sends a pulse of whitish-blue energy towards him. He ducks out of the way just in time, but the pulse flies straight at the stunned, terrified mob. Reacting swiftly, Elena seizes Seymour’s shoulders once more, just in time to forcibly pu
sh him to the ground below the surge of energy, yet she takes the full brunt of Adrian’s attack head-on. She falls lifelessly to the ground, her face stunned and motionless beneath her mask, as the mass of people around Seymour simultaneously collapse, having been lethally electrocuted. The corpses of the passengers topple down on top of Seymour, pinning him to the ground underneath their dead weight, and he struggles desperately to free himself, his heart racing with terror, feeling the warm blood leaking from the stranger’s slack mouth lying motionlessly on top of him drip onto his cheek. Choking for air under the crushing weight of the corpses, Seymour’s vision starts to darken from lack of oxygen, and he frantically attempts to shove the bodies that are pressing down hard on his chest, but they remain immovable, and eventually, his fingers go numb, his arms go dead, and he ceases to struggle, finally blacking out from the pressure.

  ~Santuc TerraDome: Liberty District~

  The tracks don’t go any further than the station.

  What?

  Perhaps the giant metal stoppers at the END of the tracks coming ever-closer should be a proper indication of the shit we’ve got ourselves into.

  We won’t be able to slow down in time to avoid a collision!

  Then we jump.

  I don’t think I would survive a jump from that velocity!

  Stop your thinking, Data. Would you rather have a small chance of survival, as opposed to none? And besides, if we let the tram crash, it’ll look like the people in here died in the crash, not by me.

  Fine, fine. We’ll jump, alright?

  Right.. Open the door, and brace yourself.

  Seymour inhales a massive, life-saving breath, the pressure suddenly lifted off of his chest, and opens his burning eyes slowly, dazed and nauseous, to find himself lying amongst the mass of dead civilians slaughtered by the hand of his brother, having been finally tossed off his body by the tramcar’s sudden increase of speed. His body aching from being crushed for so long, his hair blowing around wildly in the wind emanating from the open tramcar door, Seymour tries to gather his thoughts together, though his mind remains fuzzy from lack of oxygen, while the floor beneath him shudders violent. He raises his head slightly to find Adrian and the jacketed man called Data standing right in front of the open door, about to jump from the tramcar. From the severely increased speed of the tramcar, and the urgent way in which the two of them were speaking, Seymour can tell that all of them must be only seconds away from death. Shaking his head, trying desperately to focus his vision, Seymour spots Elena lying unmoving a ways away from him, her legs pinned down by a heavy corpse, while blood seeps slowly from her ears. Sensing the danger as the tram races uncontrollably down the tracks, he laboriously pushes the remaining cadavers off of his body, shakily gets to his feet, slings Elena’s motionless body over his shoulders, the pain in his wounded leg reaching critical levels, and weakly opens the emergency door at the rear of the speeding tramcar. He turns around to catch one last glimpse of Adrian, the image of him spontaneously creating lethal energy from his body burned into his retinas, then leaps from the emergency exit, and out onto the tracks. Seymour rolls roughly onto the hot metal tracks, taking care not to land on his wounded leg, and within seconds, the tramcar smashes into the giant metal stoppers at the end of the tracks, exploding violently upon impact, blanketing the station in dust and fiery debris. Using the cloak of the dust, Seymour regains himself, and limps out onto the main floor of the station, trying to blend in with the shocked civilians upon the platform, while hordes of eXo PRIME soldiers abruptly pour into the station, and upon finding the extent of the damage, begin to hastily evacuate the civilians, while others approach the destroyed tramcar cautiously, smashing the shut emergency exit door with the butts of their rifles. Once the soldiers break through, they immediately pour into the wreck. However, it is deserted, save for the piles of burning dead bodies lying all along the tramcar floor. A soldier emerges from within the wreck, and reports aloud that the fugitives inside have escaped, and that they will begin their pursuit. Seymour staggers a little under Elena’s weight, using only his left leg for support; with his mind whipped into a shocked frenzy, he hurriedly ruminates over the events preceding the crash, and the soldier’s out-loud proclamation.

  |He survived?! T-that’s impossible! Nobody could survive a collision of that magnitude!|

  Seymour dazedly watches the soldiers frantically evacuate the commuters from the tram station, coughing from the thick haze of dust hanging low in the air, and suddenly remembers that he was in pursuit of Adrian before the whole incident took place, however, he is nowhere to be found. He makes to leave the station, but his leg buckles under the weight of Elena’s slack body draped on his shoulders. Gritted his teeth in pain and frustration, knowing that he has to continue tailing Adrian, Seymour spots a lone soldier falling behind at the rear of the crowd exiting the nearly-empty station. Seymour quickly lays Elena’s body down on the debris-strewn floor, then, he dashes swiftly towards the soldier, and forcefully tackles him to the ground. Bewildered, the soldier pulls out his combat knife, and swings wildly at Seymour. Seymour wrenches the knife from his grip, and drives the knife straight into his opponent’s throat in retaliation. The soldier thrashes around horribly for a moment, blood oozing out onto the cold concrete, before becoming still; Seymour swipes his helmet, and dons it subtly. With the station now devoid of life, he resolutely drags the soldier’s limp, blood-drenched body across the tracks to a utility closet tucked away within a shadowy nook. He kicks the door open, and unceremoniously shoves the body inside. Hurrying back to Elena, he tears her mask off and beholds her white, shocked face, frozen in the pain of mid-electrocution; her bright blue eyes having become glassy and dim. Knowing that he won’t be able to pursue Adrian with her dead weight on his back, Seymour picks her up gently, and places her beside the soldier’s pale, bloody corpse. He brushes the hair off of her face, and breathes anxiously –

  “I don’t know if this’ll work, but… Direct command to all functioning units: Cease all conscious functions and initiate emergency hibernation mode in all vital operations until this specific vocal frequency is recognized. Preserve all autonomous life-sustaining functions and halt all outside stimulus recognition.”

  Without knowing whether or not his command is recognized, Seymour puts his trembling hand on Elena’s pale, slightly seared face, all too aware of the fact that if she had not forced him down on the tramcar, he would be dead now, though he knows he has no time to be grateful. Now able to move freely without the extra weight, he resolutely stands, closes the door swiftly, and dashes out of the empty station, out to the crowded Liberty District streets, where throngs of frightened and confused civilians surround a convoy of eXo PRIME vehicles. In the confusion, Seymour spots two APCs hastily driving away in pursuit of Adrian. His face still hidden by the pilfered PRIME helmet, Seymour spots a PRIME Personnel Carrier nearby, loaded down with soldiers, but with no driver. Scanning the area carefully for the actual driver, he furtively hops into the driver’s seat, guns the engine, and speeds off through the streets of Liberty District along the same snaking route as the other pursuing APCs. After a few minutes of winding hastily through the twisting, congested streets, Seymour’s truck finally catches up behind a large, speeding 18-wheeler freight truck being steadily pursued by the PRIME APCs. The PRIME troops in Seymour’s truck stand and fire at the freight truck, trying to hit its wheels. Seymour stands slightly in his seat to get a better view of the conflict, and spots Adrian leaning precariously out of the freighter’s passenger side window. Adrian sends a barrage of electrical energy at the marauding APC closest to their truck, which is directly in front of Seymour’s, causing it to stop dead in its tracks, while the 18-wheeler speeds away. Taken by surprise, Seymour quickly swerves, narrowly avoiding smashing straight into the stationary APC. His heart racing, he continues slowly down the narrow streets of Liberty, keeping a wary eye out for more obstructions, when another APC flies past Seymour’s vehicle, trying to catch up with the el
usive freight truck. The APC sidewinders Adrian’s truck, sending it crashing into a decrepit building. Seymour and the other troops’ truck stops just behind the APC, and the soldiers pour out. Seymour follows suit, just in time to see Adrian running down the streets under the cover of the smoke from the crash. Seymour attempts to give chase, but is held back by an angry-looking Sergeant.

  “I told you dumbasses: no physical contact! That Moreau kid and his accomplice Lias are extremely dangerous!”

  |Lias, you say? Hm..|

  “Don’t just stand around, soldier! Take a gun and shoot him!”

  The Sergeant forcefully shoves a loaded assault rifle into his hands. Seymour nods, and joins the other soldiers amassing around the entrance to a dark alleyway. However, when Seymour rounds the corner, and arrives at the alley entrance, he finds every one of the soldiers massacred, covered in electrical burns. Searching the area, Seymour finds an open manhole cover leading down into a dank, dark sewer, while young male voices emanate from within. He makes to descend into the sewer to assail Adrian, when another squad of eXo PRIME troops pours into the narrow, shadowy alley, shoves Seymour aside, drops into the culvert below, and covers the manhole, barring his entrance.

  “Well that was rude. But I don’t wanna get caught in a firefight down there.. Better find another way in..”

  Pulling out his tracer again, he activates the little red screen, which illuminates the dark alley. Upon it, there are still three tiny orange dots; one still stationary within the warehouse down the street. Gazing at the topographical features of Liberty District, Seymour finds that the sewer system runs right under the warehouse where Sam is incarcerated.