“Yep.”
Elena angrily shoves Trace back, and declares heatedly –
“No, let me come with you! You shouldn’t go off on your own like that! Remember what happened last time?”
“Yeah.. But-”
“I’m coming with you, Seymour. You need help on this. Trace can look after himself.”
“Damn right, I can.”
“Alright, alright, fine! I don’t care who goes with who! Let’s just get this done, okay? We’ll all meet back here in an hour, got it, Trace?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it, kid.”
On that note, Trace dashes off down the darkened stairs towards the contraband vault on the underground B-4 level, making an unnecessary amount of noise along the way, while Seymour and Elena go up, towards the medical bay on the 7th floor. Along the way, the two of them remain in irritable silence while they gun down anyone along their shadowy path, lit only by the dancing scarlet flames of their flares, which cast eerie flickering shadows on the cold concrete walls. Once they reach the 7th floor door, Seymour slowly pulls it open, and exits the chilly stairwell into the pitch-black medical bay. He drags his fingers along the cool white walls, trying to recall the layout of the floor, and says distantly –
“… If I remember right, the cold storage room should be at the end of the hallway.. Doesn’t look like there are any soldiers on this floor.. There’re no flares lit.”
“So, the antivenom will be in there, right?”
“It should be. They keep it close at hand since they started testing on the Serpiente del Pecado snakes here at the headquarters.”
As they traverse the wide, empty corridor vigilantly, keeping their guns at the ready in case of any ambushes, Seymour’s pale, scarred hands shudder as he struggles to keep his rifle steady. Elena glances at him apprehensively, and says with uncertainty –
“… Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.. It’s just.. I think the VENOM is starting to wear off…”
“Oh.. Guess we’d better hurry then, right?”
“… No no, take your time, by all means. I’ll just sit here and.. wait for the heart attacks to start.”
Elena glances at Seymour irritably, put off by his bitter sarcasm.
“… I was just asking… You don’t have to be an ass..”
“… Hey, you have no idea how much this hurts.. Have you ever been poisoned and kept alive only by adrenaline? It’s not as wonderful as you might think..”
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t gone off on your own in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
Seymour stops in his tracks, and turns to face Elena with a hurt scowl.
“… That’s not fair. How was I supposed to know what was going to happen? It’s not like I asked for this…”
“That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t right about you going off on your own!”
Feeling his fingers steadily numbing with each passing second, Seymour decides not to argue, and says disconsolately –
“… L-look.. I know it must be.. frustrating to deal with me, but I’m trying my best to fix things… Just please.. be patient with me…”
“I am trying to be patient, but I’m.. just worried, you know? But, let’s just.. Let’s just hurry..”
“Fine by me..”
Approaching the heavy steel cold storage door at the very end of the hallway, Seymour pushes it open with all his strength, slips inside the frigid chamber after Elena, and closes the door gently. While his breath rises in the glacial air, he places his flare on one of the numerous tall shelves lining the long, labyrinthine room, and searches through the labels carefully with increasingly blurry vision, as the pain in the discolored scars on his hands quickly intensifies. Suddenly, however, the bright florescent lights within the freezing storage room burst back into life, along with the security cameras hanging from the ceiling. Seymour quickly raises a hand to shield himself from the abrupt flood of light, and nervously looks up into the security camera watching him from up above, fearing the worst.
“… Oh shit..”
“What?”
“T-they can see us.. They know we’re here..!”
Seymour hurries over to the storage room door, and tries desperately to pull it open, but it has been locked remotely by those looking in on them through the cameras. With a panicked look on his sickly, pale façade, he observes the wide vents at the side of the storage area, which begin to spew out thick clouds of whitish mist. The room temperature quickly drops to a devastating low, as the vials on the shelves begin to ice over, and Elena hurriedly makes to cover the vents, but Seymour holds her back.
“Don’t t-touch that!”
“W-why?”
“I-it’s liquid nitrogen vapour… T-they’re trying to f-freeze us to death… “
“Oh God! Wh-what do we do?”
“W-we need to f-find the antivenom be-before we die… If we c-can find it, t-then I c-can think straight… T-then I c-can think of a plan..”
“B-but there’s s-so many shelves… How are w-we gonna f-find it?”
“J-just look! You t-take the l-left, I’ll ta-take the right.. It’s a l-little black vi-vial with a n-needle tip..”
Elena nods as she vigorously rubs her shaking arms, and takes off down the left aisle, while Seymour unsteadily proceeds down the right, using the shelves for balance, his energy quickly fading as the VENOM wears off completely. Elena searches through the objects on the countless shelves through her pained, frantic tears, which instantly begin to freeze upon her face, but finds no black vial of antivenom. Desperate for warmth, she tries to pull a flare, but her hands are completely numb, and unable to close around the flare’s cap. While Elena sobs, watching in terror as her fingers start to ice over, the sound of choked coughing and glass smashing breaks the icy silence.
“S-Seymour?!”
Running out of the aisle, and through the main walkway, she finds Seymour in the last aisle of vials on the right side of the frigid chamber, kneeling on all fours, and coughing up copious amounts of blood onto the glass-strewn floor, his flesh reddened, partially iced over, and besieged with ever-growing cold burns. Elena gasps, and kneels down to his level, shaking him desperately by the shoulders. He slowly looks up into her teary face with glassy eyes, wipes the blood away from his mouth, and whispers –
“… Top shelf…”
“W-what…?”
“Antivenom… O-on the… top shelf..”
Elena nods, reaches up to the top shelf, and grabs a tiny vial of watery black liquid with a syringe tip attached to the rubber lid. She grabs Seymour’s freezing, lifeless wrist, pulls the lid off with her teeth, slides the syringe tip into his vein, and pushes the plunger down with her hand. After a few minutes of frozen, nerve-wracking silence pass, Seymour slowly raises his head off the icy concrete ground with a weak grimace. Elena breathes a constrained, shuddering sigh of relief as Seymour stiffly sits up against the wall, his eyes still closed, as the debilitating pain of the venom slowly fades. However, the pain of the intense cold remains in full force. Elena slides up next to him, and puts an arm around him for warmth. Seymour shakily pulls out a packet of flares from his back pocket, pulls three of them with his teeth, and places them in a row in front of them. Instantly, the area around them warms up in the ardent scarlet glow. Seymour pulls two more flares, and hands one to Elena, who stares at its flickering light with tears in her eyes.
“… So.. What’s the plan?”
“… Close your eyes.. and don’t move.”
As Seymour and Elena sit together in silence, waiting for the cold to tear through their flare defense, the sound of the storage room’s heavy steel door clattering open breaks the deathly hush. A squad of soldiers pour into the frigid chamber, and search through the aisles with their guns raised high, until they reach the row at the rear of the room, where they find Seymour and Elena huddled together, their eyes closed in submission amongst the flickering flares. Seymour opens his eyes, looks with dismayed hatr
ed into the group of gun-toting troops piling up at the end of the aisle, stands, and offers his scarred hands to them without a word, which are swiftly handcuffed. The soldiers approach Elena as the others take Seymour out of the cold storage facility, handcuff her without resistance, and stick a long, thin syringe filled with a clear sedative into her neck; she is too weakened to fight back. The soldiers drag her away from the bitter cold, and out into the warmth of the newly-lit hallway, where her consciousness slowly slips away. Left with no will to fight back, his skin still burning from the intense cold, Seymour is submissive as a soldier roughly pulls a blindfold tight over Seymour’s eyes, and shoves him out into the hallway in Elena’s wake, feeling rifle muzzles pressed daringly into his back.
While Seymour and Elena ascend to the upper levels of the military headquarters, Trace swiftly descends the shadowy stairwell alone, laughing heartily as he mercilessly guns down all who stand in his way, and reveling in once again being in the heat of combat.
|Ahh.. The smell of fresh warm blood on cold concrete.. Sure beats out cigarettes..|
Upon reaching the 4th basement level of the headquarters, he impatiently kicks the thin metal door off its hinges, and hears a commotion coming from a room at the end of the long, shadowy corridor, which is littered with dying flares. He treads lightly through the empty hallway, making naught a sound as he carefully puts an ear up to the door. Inside, the tumultuous din of bullets flying, people yelling, and blood splattering can be heard through the thick steel door. His curiosity getting the best of him, Trace pulls the heavy door open, cautiously slips inside, and shuts it with an echoing bang. The interior of the room is pitch-black; not a single iota of light to be seen, or sound to be heard, despite the fact that a veritable war could be heard through the door. Anxiously, Trace pulls a flare, and suddenly comes face to face with a girl, no older than fourteen, clutching a shotgun, and awash with blood. Upon sighting Trace in the light, she compulsively trains her gun on him, her eyes wide and bloodstained hands shaking from the rush of adrenaline.
“Whoa, whoa! Calm down, little missy! Don’t shoot! Man, am I glad I found you! And you’re alive too! Good.. That saves me awkward explanations…”
Trace attempts to get closer to Sakura, but she reflexively raises her gun higher, and demands nervously –
“Who are you?!”
“Huh? You know me! I’m Vars Trace, remember?”
“… I don’t know anybody by that name.”
“Oh, come on! You were with Seymour at DIV. 1 where I found you guys!”
Sakura’s eyebrows raise in surprise, but her grip on her gun remains tight as she asks suspiciously –
“… Seymour? Commander Moreau? You know him?”
“Well, of course I do!”
“Where is he? I need to speak to him!”
“Look, just lower your gun there, and I’ll explain everything, missy! I’m not gonna hurt you, I’m with Seymour..”
“Prove it! What’s my name and rank?!”
“Uh, you’re, uhh… W-well, I don’t actually know your name, but trust me, I know you.”
Lowering her gun a little, but keeping her suspicious glare fixed on Trace’s sweaty face, Sakura announces stoically –
“… It’s Sergeant Sakura Yuki of the eXo PRIME.”
“Oh, right.. heheh, well, I’m General Vars Trace, hater of the eXo PRIME.”
“Liar! General Vars Trace was killed in action five years ago! Give me your real name, and I’ll trust you!”
Knowing that he is wasting valuable time, Trace impatiently smacks the shotgun out of his face, and exclaims irritably –
“Look, missy, I am Vars Trace. Whatever the PRIME told you about me is a bunch ‘a bullshit. I wasn’t killed.”
“Then show me your tags! They’ll have your name on them, right?”
Trace reflexively puts his hand over his chest, swallows nervously, and says quietly –
“I can’t do that, girl.”
“Why?!”
“Look, I don’t have time for this bullshit! So fine, you don’t have to believe me, but you should know that Seymour and I came here to save you and the other kid… Uh, what’s his name? Oh yeah, Gordon, or something..”
“… Wait.. You know Gordon?”
“Yeah, I do, and let me tell you, we busted our asses to rescue you guys, so you should be damn grateful!”
Sakura considers Trace’s declaration for a time, her eyes gleaming in the crimson light of the flickering flare. After a protracted silence, she finally lowers her shotgun, and says apprehensively –
“… I see. I suppose I can trust you, at least until we get back to the Commander, if he’s looking for us… I need to tell him something important, anyway.. Just give me one second.”
Grabbing the flare from Trace’s hand without asking, Sakura steps over the dead bodies scattered throughout the unseen floor, and places it on a wide console jutting out from the wall covered in a myriad of buttons, switches, and gauges. Using the light of the flare, she nervously presses various buttons upon the console’s surface, and suddenly, the lights around them flicker on, swathing the entire area in a harsh white light. Trace blinks in the abrupt deluge of light, as the full extent of the carnage surrounding them is illuminated in the callous florescent glow, and yells out furiously –
“Why’d you do that?!”
“Because I had to. Now, let’s go.”
Shoving past Trace, Sakura steps back over the piles of bodies on the ground, and makes for the door; Trace holds her back roughly, his yellowed teeth gritted in rage, but Sakura merely shakes him off and declares defensively –
“Look, I don’t know why the PRIME detained me, but they were saying that they were going to execute me and Gordon.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, I asked to talk to Commander Moreau, but they just laughed and ignored me. I managed to escape them, but they pursued me through the facility. I tried to hide in this room where the district’s main power grid control console is, but they found me. I fought back, but one of the soldiers’ stray bullets hit the console, and knocked out the electricity. I’ve been in here trying to get the power back online, but their constant attacks have made it difficult.”
“B-but all their security systems were down! Why would you turn it back on?”
“Well, how am I supposed to find Commander Moreau in the dark?”
Trace roars in fury, and points his rifle at the control console, but Sakura quickly trains her shotgun on his head, and says menacingly –
“Don’t you dare.”
Trace scowls darkly at Sakura, but nonetheless, drops his gun to his side, and says under his breath –
“.. Ugh, fine, whatever. I suppose it would’ve been impossible to find Seymour’s cone thing in the dark..”
“Seymour’s what?”
“Look, you just shut it, okay? I’ve gotta go do something quickly before I take you back to Seymour, so move your ass.”
“… Fine.”
Sakura and Trace leave the control center in irritated silence, and head back to the stairwell, only to find its entrance completely blocked by a cordon of armed soldiers. The troops fire their rifles in succession, and Trace can’t react fast enough to retaliate. However, Sakura steps in front of him bravely, raises her hands, and stops the bullets in their tracks with her MFIs. Trace opens his eyes in confusion, as Sakura rebounds the bullets back upon their firers, slaughtering them all in one bloody instant, and continues down the corridor as if nothing had just transpired, treading confidently through her victims. His mouth agape, Trace tails her with disbelief etched into every line on his face. While the pair hurry down the now-illuminated stairwell, picking off a soldier every now and then, Sakura asks over the din of her shotgun that echoes off of the cold walls –
“Why are we going down? Is Commander Moreau down here?”
“I said I’m just grabbing something from contraband vault. Seymour’s upstairs with blondie somewhere.”
Sakura grinds to a halt, glaring angrily at Trace, and with her foot on the stair above her, she pronounces loudly –
“Well then, forget you! I can find the Commander by myself!”
“Hey, listen, missy! You’re no good to Seymour if you’re dead, so just stay with me for now, and I promise I’ll take you to him!”
“I don’t believe you!”
She starts to ascend the stairwell once more, but Trace fires a bullet into the wall a few inches away from her head, and growls menacingly –
“I said stay with me.”
“How can I trust you, when you won’t even tell me your real name?!”
“Well, how can I trust you?! You’re the one who destroyed the world!”
Sakura stops in her tracks, her face white with shock, and Trace looks back at her with a vindictive smirk.
“… E-excuse me?”
“What do you think those things on your hands are? Christmas decorations? They were designed to help Seymour rid the world of life! You had your hand in it, literally! What’d you do, block it from your memory?”
“T-that’s ridiculous! I’m a soldier of the PRIME! I work to preserve peace!”
“Oh, for God’s sakes, just drop the fucking Girl Scout routine! The PRIME is dead now! The war is over, so give it a fucking rest!”
In her fury, Sakura blasts a slug at the ceiling just above Trace’s head, causing concrete to rain on him. He shields his head from the debris furiously, and Sakura screams at him wildly –
“THE PRIME ISN’T DEAD! AS LONG AS COMMANDER MOREAU AND I ARE STILL ALIVE, THE PRIME WILL NEVER DIE!”
Paradox: The Last Day - Seymour's Story Page 19
