Paradox: The Last Day - Seymour's Story

by Rachel Charman

  “It means, Sakura, that we follow Gordon, and put him to good use.”

  Highly conscious of the curious, suspicious stares they garner from passers-by, Seymour hurriedly tucks his tracer away, flicks his head pointedly, and starts for a dark alleyway entrance branching from the left side of the street, but Elena holds him back with disbelief.

  “… What?! You can’t do that! He’s my brother, you can’t hurt him!”

  “Why would I hurt him? I need him.”

  “Okay, maybe not hurt him, but-”

  “This is what the Commander wants. You have no right to object.”

  Elena glares at Sakura’s blank, hazy-eyed face with anger, but Seymour dismisses her with a wave of his hand, and says quietly –

  “Quiet, Sakura. I respect your wishes, Elena, so if you can suggest anything better, then by all means do so.”

  Standing just outside the perimeter of shadows of the alleyway, Elena considers Seymour’s shaded figure seriously, her mind working fast. However, she spots a PRIME patrol rounding the corner at the end of the street, and beats a hasty retreat into the muggy alley, completely spent of alternative ideas. Following behind Seymour, she half-heartedly suggests, knowing full-well what his answer will be –

  “Why can’t you just use someone you don’t know, Seymour? Y’know, somebody off the streets?”

  “But I don’t know Gordon, Elena. He’s your brother, not mine.”

  “Yeah, but-”

  Suddenly, Sakura, having been silent the whole time, whirls around and smacks Elena round the face with force far outstripping her diminutive build. Her cheek reddened from the blow, Elena backs away from Sakura, her eyes wide with shock, and though her tone remains as lifeless as ever, the volume of her voice is that of a scream as Sakura exclaims –

  “Respect the Commander’s wishes!”

  Utterly nonplussed, Seymour seizes Sakura’s wrist roughly, and for a moment, a shadow of confusion flickers across Sakura’s pale face.

  “What are you doing, sir? She’s disobeying orders.”

  “You’re not to act unless I tell you to, Sakura!”

  “I… I understand, sir. I apologize.”

  Sakura shakes her hand free from Seymour’s grip, and declares prosaically –

  “I will go and make sure our path is secure, sir, if you permit me.”

  “Er, okay… Just don’t leave the alley, and make sure you stay at least a hundred feet away from Gordon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Sakura dashes off down the darkened alleyway, her dogtags jangling metallically while she runs, Seymour pulls Elena to her feet with a penitent smirk, which she returns with an icy glare.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Not sure.. Could’ve been a malfunction of the synapse response unit. Based on past experiences, the response unit might’ve just responded the way it believed I would in that situation.”

  “… And that doesn’t worry you?”

  “A little, but I’ve got bigger things to worry about. Come on.”

  Following in Sakura’s wake, meeting not a soul as they trek along their gloomy, clandestine path, Seymour and Elena travel in silence, their footsteps echoing quietly in the low-hanging, greenish smog alongside the distant rumbling of cars; Elena bites her dirty nails nervously, knowing that every step they take gets them closer to her estranged sibling, and, finally breaking the hush, she asks quietly –

  “Have you thought about how you’re going to persuade Gordon? He’s no pushover, y’know..”

  “Mm.. I have my ways.”

  Unsatisfied with his vague answer, Elena steps in front of Seymour, blocking his path, and says forcefully, her arms defiantly spread wide –

  “Come on, Seymour! Forget Gordon! Let’s just grab some random guy off the street! It’ll be easier that way!”

  “Only if that random guy happens to be exceptionally skilled in surgery and mechanics.”

  “Oh...”

  Seymour pats Elena on the shoulder, wordlessly asking her to move aside, but she remains rooted to the spot, her arms still spread wide. Sighing wearily, Seymour lays his hands on Elena’s stiff shoulders, and asks calmly, his face inscrutable –

  “You remember what you said to me in the medivac, right?”

  “Y-yeah..”

  “You said that you’d follow my path no matter what, right?”

  “Mm.. But-!”

  “Well, I never said what has to happen would be pretty. I happen to hold a lot of stock in your brother’s abilities, and I believe he is perfect for the job of being the fourth man. He fixed up my sister with more skill than anyone I’ve ever seen. Understand that if there was more time to decide, I would find someone else, but this is just the best option at hand. We can’t let him get too far, got it?”

  Elena nods sadly, and lets her arms fall back to her sides in a defeated sort of way. Seymour nods back curtly, gently pushes her out of the way, and continues down the alleyway in silence. Adamant about her feelings, she quickly pulls out the thin black mask she recovered from DIV. 4 out of her pocket, and slips it over her eyes, hiding them from sight completely. With a deep breath, she runs off down the alleyway, and rejoins Seymour. Upon seeing Elena’s masked face, he nods in understanding, and continues down the alleyway in silence. After about twenty minutes of unperturbed travel through the dark, narrow path, while Seymour carefully follows Gordon’s signature on his tracer, the pair finally catch up to Sakura at the end of the expansive alleyway. She is standing with her back against the grimy alley wall, fiddling curiously with her military ID dog-tags hanging from her neck, framed by the dull orange light streaming in through the mouth of the passageway, casting a somewhat sorrowful veil upon her. Seymour approaches her, apprehensive of her peculiar behavior, and asks tersely –

  “Sakura, did you hold onto that package I left with you in Trajit?”

  “… Yes, sir. It’s in my satchel.”

  “Er, alright.. Thanks.”

  Seymour reaches into the small brown leather satchel hanging from Sakura’s waist, hidden just under her worn blue PRIME jacket, and pulls out a small syringe with an impossibly long needle, and filled with a clear liquid in which eight small, iron-colored entities float serenely. Elena eyes the syringe with a shocked gasp, and shouts furiously –

  “Seymour, you’re not-!”

  “No, not you. This is for Gordon. You said it yourself: he’s not a pushover. So, well.. like I said… I’d rather not take any risks.”

  Pocketing the syringe, Seymour can feel Elena’s rage-filled glare burning from behind her black mask, but steadfastly ignores it, rechecks his tracer, and finds Gordon’s signature only a few feet away from the trio, resting on top of a splintery wooden cellar door with a corroded black iron handle. He pulls it open to reveal a rusty ladder leading down into the shadows below the alley. With a smile, he signals to Elena and Sakura with a tilt of his head, however, neither of them move.

  “What?”

  “You’re seriously going to use that awful shit on him?”

  “Uh, yes?”

  Elena folds her arms heatedly, fiercely radiating anger, and opens her mouth to retort, but Sakura suddenly cuts her off with a sudden quiet interjection –

  “… Sir, can I ask you something?”

  “Huh? O-oh, sure..”

  She approaches Seymour slowly, her hand still on placed gently over her dogtags, and from Seymour’s waist, she asks stonily –

  “… Are you ever going to make me a Lieutenant?”

  Blown away by Sakura’s brazen question, it takes him a few seconds to stammer out a response, while her face remains still.

  “… U-uh… T-that was a long time ago, Sakura, and we don’t belong to the eXo PRIME anymore.”

  “Then, why do you still wear your tags?”

  Seymour stares at Sakura anxiously, and puts a hand against his chest where his own eXo PRIME dog-tags hang in secret beneath his stained shirt.

  “I.. wear t
hem to remind me who my enemy is.”

  “Your enemy, sir? Are you saying the PRIME is your enemy?”

  Without elaborating, Seymour grabs Sakura’s dogtags, and roughly tears them from her throat. Holding them in front of her face, the light reflected from the streetlamp gleaming in her eyes, he declares forcefully –

  “You weren’t supposed to remember that, Sakura. Why are you acting this way?”

  “What way, sir? I merely want to become a Lieutenant so I can get back at the Aozora for what they did to my family. I told you that.”

  “But you already got your revenge; the Aozora was destroyed. We ended the Aozora War. But because we ended the war, we can never return to the PRIME.”

  Sakura wrings her hands together nervously, seemingly struggling with the words she wants to say, and it seems to take a great effort for her to declare –

  “But.. I want to return to the PRIME, sir. It is my home. It is all I’ve ever known.”

  “… You can never go back, Sakura. You have to stay with me, no matter what happens. Understand?”

  “… Mm.. Yes, sir. I understand.”

  With a nod, Seymour approaches a nearby grate, and drops Sakura’s tags through the holes without a word. Sakura’s expression doesn’t change; she merely turns away from Seymour and Elena, and, while facing the wall, quietly stems the small trickle of dark blood that starts to leak from her nose. Anxiously running a hand through his hair, Seymour feels the icy sting in the air emanating from his companions, and exclaims somewhat desperately –

  “Come on, you two! We need to catch him now, while we have him cornered!”

  “I’m not moving an inch unless you promise to hold off using that nanobot stuff, Seymour.”

  Gritting his teeth irately, he takes a deep breath, trying to compose himself before responding, and says to Elena as calmly as he can, though his hands are curled into tight fists as he speaks –

  “I’ll have a word with him before I resort to using it, okay? Now will you please move?”

  Elena sniffs irritably, but nonetheless descends the rusted ladder in silence. Relieved that the squabble has come to an end, Seymour follows in Elena’s wake, and with his head just peeking out over the edge of the cellar door, he orders Sakura fiercely –

  “Sakura, get over here now.”

  “… Yes, sir.”

  Having finally stemmed the steady trickle of blood seeping from her nose, Sakura tears her eyes away from the grate where her tags sink dejectedly into the fetid water of the sewer, joins Seymour on the ladder, and pulls the doors shut as she descends in a tense hush into the frigid cold of Data’s underground safehouse.

  ~Santuc TerraDome: Data’s Safehouse~

  After about a minute of descending through darkness, Seymour and the girls step off the ladder, and onto the top of a gloomy concrete staircase lit by a single lightbulb hanging loosely in its socket from the ceiling. The chamber is extremely cold, making their breath visible in the stagnant air, but nonetheless, they proceed down the long flight of flat, frigid stairs, until they reach an imposing steel door of considerable thickness and weight. Seymour touches the door lightly, then says over his shoulder –

  “He must be in there. Will you two do the honors?”

  Sakura and Elena nod simultaneously, raise their hands, and magnetically blast the door off its hinges, throwing it into the cramped circular room within, blanketing the inner chamber with dust and papers. Through the thick swirling dust, Sakura spots the silhouette of a lone figure inside, holding an assault rifle in its hand. She raises her hand, rips the gun away from him, and hands it off to Elena without a word. As the dust settles, Seymour and the girls enter the room. Elena and Sakura stand guard by the open door, while Seymour approaches Gordon, who is pressed against his desk in shock, his one arm covering his face with fright. Seymour smiles at him amiably, kneels down to his level, and says in a reassuring tone –

  “Gordon, I presume? Don’t worry. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

  Gordon uncovers his face hesitantly, and looks upon his assailants before resting his bespectacled gaze on Seymour, and quickly backs further into his desk.

  “You…! Y-you’re the one who shot me at the warehouse!”

  “I’m flattered that you remember me.”

  “You’re Adrian’s brother, right?”

  “Mm, yes.. That would be correct.”

  With a sweaty hand, Gordon straightens his cracked glasses, and declares succinctly, with a grin –

  “Hmph.. Insanity must run in your family.”

  Seymour nods to Elena over his shoulder, and she anxiously trains the rifle on Gordon’s head, instantly wiping the sarcastic smirk off of his stark face.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it? Once again, I am made the enemy in others’ eyes by that stubborn shit.. But if he knew anything-”

  “How did you find me?!”

  Taken aback somewhat by Gordon’s bravado, Seymour nonetheless regains himself with a slight smile, and continues as if there had been no interruption.

  “That’s not important. What is important is that you need to come with me.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because I need you.”

  Gordon’s verdant eyes flash suspiciously behind his broken spectacles, and he asks warily –

  “… Me? But I don’t know you. At least, not personally..”

  “No, but an acquaintance of mine does, and this person has told me about you.”

  “.. Adrian?”

  “No, somebody who’s opinion I actually value.”

  “Then who?”

  “Somebody you care about. Somebody who knows you better than anybody, and who misses you terribly.”

  A moment passes as he glares at Seymour in confusion, but then a look of comprehension slowly dawns on Gordon’s pale, sweaty face, but it is quickly quashed by apprehension.

  “… You can’t mean my sister.. She’s dead.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “T-then.. You’ve seen her?”

  “I have.”

  Abandoning all pretense, Gordon seizes the front of Seymour’s coat, and shouts excitedly –

  “W-where?!”

  “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  Despite Seymour’s offer, Gordon eases his grip on his coat slowly, his suspicious visage unabated, and yells indignantly –

  “… No.. You’re lying! I’m not going with you!”

  “Alright then. I tried.”

  Seymour grasps Gordon’s worn-out jacket, forcefully pulls him forward as he struggles, and shoves the syringe filled with clear liquid straight into the side of his neck, injecting the DAmIn-8 solution into his bloodstream. Instantly, Gordon’s face drains of color, and his shock seems to choke his scream as he ceases struggling and passes out from shock. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Seymour nods to Elena and Sakura, roughly throws Gordon over his shoulder, and makes to leave. However, he turns, and spots a security camera hanging from the ceiling. He points to the camera, and Sakura magnetically crushes it with a wave of her hand. Seymour nods with a smile, and leaves the trashed safehouse chamber, with Sakura right behind him, both unaware that warm, sorrowful tears are sliding down Elena’s concealed face as she reluctantly follows.

  ~Santuc TerraDome: Mesa District~

  Emerging from the ladder back into the darkened alleyway in Mesa with an unconscious Gordon in hand, Seymour orders Sakura to watch the pathway’s exit for any approaching soldiers, sits Gordon up against the grimy wall, opens his eyelid, and checks his pupils carefully. Elena looks down at Data’s immobile body through her black mask, and angrily scrutinizes the reddened injection point on the side of his neck as it leaks a small, but steady trickle of blood.

  “Hmph.. Good job, Seymour. Those were some intense negotiations. Sure didn’t take you long to get to plan B though.”

  Seymour sighs irritably through gritted teeth as Elena pulls off her mask, having no more use for it, and tosses it aside.
She sits down on the opposite side of the alley, and stares at Gordon’s unconscious body with a surge of anger and resentment.

  “Huhhh.. I just wish there was a way for him to help us without hurting him..”

  “Well, I did present the offer, but he wasn’t interested.”

  “Only because you freaked him out! How did you think he was gonna react? Gordon isn’t the kind to ever go quietly, certainly not when you’re claiming to be in contact with one he believes was killed..”

  While checking Gordon’s pulse, Seymour utters absently, his attention fully focused on his supine companion –

  “Yes, well, in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned you.. From what I’ve seen with Sakura just now, it seems like personal issues suppress the direct command units in the DAmIn-8 solution, and I’d rather not have a problem like that on my hands, even if the time lag does seem to be about a year.. Better to have him think you’re dead, to increase his window of efficiency.”

  “What the- T-that’s a terrible thing to say!”

  “I’m just speaking the truth. I never said it would be nice.”

  “Yeah, but, you’re talking about him like he’s a robot!”

  “Well, humans are basically just robots with a consciousness. I’ve taken away his ability to make conscious actions, so.. y’know…”

  Elena bites her lip in anger, biting back the furious retort that rests on her tongue, and falls silent. Taking her silence gratefully, Seymour resumes monitoring Gordon raptly. After a few minutes of awkward silence, he watches as the veins around Gordon’s eyes strain tight against his skin, and his pupils slowly begin to cloud over. Seymour stands, while Elena looks on with curiosity and trepidation, and puts a finger over his lips, signaling absolute silence.