Authors: Joseph Picard
“
Sir?” Cassidy tilted her
head.
Colonel Nafim smirked. “And don’t call
me Sir. I think you just became immune to rank.”
Cassidy wandered back to the base,
carrying her new spear. As she walked in, she noticed the looks she
was getting; many curious about the beast spear, others looking
away from it.
Alan walked up to Cassidy on his way
out. He put his hands on her shoulders and nodded with a sad smile
before moving on without a word. She headed towards her bed.
Cipriana, Wanda and Maxine were in the ladies’ barrack.
“
Hey, Cip, hey Wanda, hey
Max, hey butterfly.” Cassidy jokingly waved at the butterfly design
on the wall behind Cipriana.
Maxine stared at the spearhead. “Damn,
Cass.”
“
New pokey poke?” Wanda
chirped.
Cipriana sat in her favourite pose,
eyes closed since Cassidy arrived. “No, old.” She corrected
quietly.
Wanda innocently asked Cassidy, “What’s
it for?”
Cassidy swallowed hard, and looked it
up and down. She sighed. “Killing badguys, I guess.”
“
Ha ha. But seriously,
what’s the deal?”
Cipriana held her tongue, leaving the
educational duties up to Maxine. “She’s right, that’s what it’s
for. It’s been that way for ages. When something happens like… like
what happened, the Grand Elder can lend this out for... well, for
justice. I don’t think Armil’s ever lent it out before.”
“
Lucky me.” Cassidy sat on
her cot, and allowed the spear to lean on her shoulder. “I think it
comes with some kind of promotion, or title or something too.
Armil’s Storms were treating me like a commanding officer or
something.”
Maxine stifled a scoff. “Cass. Crap
Cass, the person holding that thing is basically the closest thing
the Aguei beliefs have to an angel of death!”
That woke Cassidy up. She’d never been
compared to a mythological being before. “Woah. Um. Damn, what did
I sign up for?”
Cipriana opened her eyes, and spoke in
her typical calming tone. “To do right by Cheryl. And Marcus.” Her
breathing trembled very slightly.
Cassidy stared at length into
Cipriana’s brilliant emerald eyes. “You knew I’d take it, didn’t
you Cip. That’s why you didn’t take it, isn’t it?” Cipriana only
closed her eyes again, and resumed meditating. Cassidy gave her a
few more moments to reply, but gave up and moved on to the net
topic. “So, who do I talk to about requisitioning a
pistol?”
“
What the heck?” Maxine
blurted, familiar with Cassidy’s general distaste for
firearms.
“
Well, the way I see it, I’m
going to be running around looking for a killer, right? Sure, I’ll
have Armil’s Storms backing me up, but frankly, unless this spear
shoots lightning or something, I might need a sidearm.” What little
levity had been in Cassidy’s tone was now decidedly removed. “If
you’re going to do something, do it right.”
“
I guess I’ll take care of
it,” Maxine said after a long pause. “Do you have a
preference?”
Cassidy shrugged dispassionately. “One
that spits bullets.” She glanced over to Cipriana. At some point
Cipriana had opened her eyes, and was staring at Cassidy with an
expressionless face.
~~~~~
:::C /33
~~~~~
In front of the statue, Armil spoke to
the group from the other side of a simple casket containing Marcus.
Many of the attendees forced back tears, so Cassidy knew the words
Armil spoke had to be moving, but she didn’t hear them. She was
stuck in her own thoughts, which were primarily a void.
She was still within this world enough
to pay vague attention as Armil guided two of her colleagues in
placing two flags over the casket in a complimentary manner. One
was the flag of the Aguei; the other was the national Ayguolan
flag.
Cassidy made an effort to pay
attention. It was possible that Armil would mention her and that
old spear she had now. Whenever she managed to catch a few words,
they were about Marcus’ lovable and kindly attributes, and only
hinted at his ‘eccentric’ conversations with the statue that was
looking down at the group right now.
It wasn’t Armil’s style to bring up
hunting down a murderer at a time like this. Then again she didn’t
think it was his style to give out licences to kill murderers
either.
Pall bearers stepped up and lifted the
casket. They started to carry Marcus out of the temple, the final
destination being an out of the way spot to the side of the temple,
selected by Cipriana.
After the procession passed Cipriana,
there was a tangible fracture in the air as Cipriana’s aura of
peace shattered, and she collapsed to her knees. Maxine was by her
side in an instant, and most people took notice. It struck Cassidy
that Cipriana’s crying was like that of a widow. She may have never
even hugged Marcus, but a bond of some kind was there.
Out of the corner of her eye, Cassidy
saw one of the pall bearers, Jim, give her a glance of concern. It
was only then that Cassidy realized she was staring blankly forward
at the statue, past it. And it was only then she realized she was
trembling. She couldn’t stop it, she couldn’t move. She didn’t want
to look at anyone or acknowledge anything. She wanted to collapse
too, but she didn’t want to make a scene.
She forced herself to walk over to
where Cipriana and Maxine still sat. She slowly and carefully
negotiated her trembling to sit with them, and put an arm around
Cipriana. “Hi.” She said with a soft trembling voice, not able to
think of anything better to say. Cipriana didn’t reply, but grabbed
Cassidy’s hand tight. As glad as Cassidy was to be able to be any
form of support to Cipriana, it was unsettling to see her in such a
weakened state. Cipriana was supposed to be a gentle constant of
the universe. It was all so wrong.
“
Are you two going to…”
Maxine sat back to look them both in the eye. “Well… to where
they’re going to put him to rest, to be there when they
lower-“
Cipriana silently interrupted. She
stared into the ground as she shook her head no. Quick tiny little
shakes.
Damned funerals. Cassidy never got it.
Closure? More like rubbing salt in a wound. And she still had to
fly out to Cheryl’s family to go to hers. How the hell was she
going to handle that?!
“
I’m going to call in a
grief counselor,” Maxine said softly, flexing her new position as
second in command, “You two are going to be first in
line.”
“
What?!” Cassidy said, still
gripping Cipriana, and staring into the ground. “Keep the quack
away from me.” What the heck was Maxine thinking? She and Cipriana
had every right to be upset. They didn’t need any outsider to poke
into it.
“
Too bad.” Maxine said in a
comforting tone. “Deal with it.”
Brock wandered back from the burial
alongside most of the attendees. He went to the ceremony out of
respect, but he couldn’t get his mind off of the stupid
nanites.
They had been all over the place. They
waited in the sand around the helipad causing little windstorms,
some of them jumping onto new people who arrived. They got into
cameras, weapons, watches, and shut them all off when in the
temple. Very deliberate, but without any apparent ultimate
goal.
Maybe the system was malfunctioning.
Maybe it was supposed to do something, and it didn’t, so the
murderer came with his little wooden ‘shut off’ thing.
It didn’t really smell right. And the
poor folks here who have been infected all this time, being made
ill when they left, pressured to return. How long had they been
infected? Why didn’t they wonder about the odd little things?
Well... they were high! Just enough maybe, to keep them from
thinking about it all too much.
If only he could have recovered some of
the nanites before they self-destructed, he could have maybe gotten
more answers. Marcus used to talk to the statue… he was high! If
his post-mortem bloodwork was any indication, he probably had a
huge payload of nanites in him. Probably some kind of control
centre. Maybe killing him was part of shutting it all
down.
Bah, too damned late to check. Dead
nanites, dead Marcus. Not that he thought he could find anything
else on Marcus that would solve much. No stray signals had been
floating around since the shutdown, and there wasn’t a live nanite
to be found. Brock would take the next ride he could get back to
Yute Central, and get back into his other projects. Whatever the
hell was going on here, it was over.
~~~~~
:::C /34
~~~~~
“
It’s a seventeen?” Cassidy
held the pistol up against the light, reviewing in her head how to
operate one of these damned things.
“
Yes, Sir.” Word had gotten
to Armil’s Storms that Cassidy was looking for a sidearm, and one
of the troops was dispatched immediately to fill that need. Cassidy
had a feeling she could have asked for a tank, and it would have
been supplied.
Cassidy stowed the gun in her new hip
holster. “Can the ‘Sir’ stuff, alright? That’s not how stuff gets
done around here.”
“
But Sir...”
“
No, come on, really. Do you
really use that protocol in your unit? Do you call Armil ‘Sir’ all
the time?”
“
No Sir, we call him Grand
Elder.”
This guy wasn’t going to budge on the
‘Sir’ thing. “Right. Anyway, thanks for the sidearm. Tell Armil
I’ll be ready in an hour or so.”
“
Yes, Sir.”
“
Uh...
dismissed.”
These Storms had their own way of
moving. They could snap to attention, salute, or run any drill
formation with all the speed and accuracy of any other soldier, but
they did it quietly. Not as if they were ‘silent and deadly’ or
anything. They were just quiet about things. No need for excessive
sound.
Despite their vaguely benevolent
mannerisms, they were still far more militant than Cassidy was used
to. Watching him leave the base allowed room for the peace to
reassert itself.
But the peace wasn’t the same. Nothing
was the same. Cipriana’s imaginary aura didn’t feel as strong.
Those damned lizards weren’t as charming. The metal reinforced
walls of the base seemed now less interesting, and just a little
more… junky.
Cassidy took a stroll over to the
temple to check in with Cipriana before leaving. She found her
stride was different. Was it the gun on her hip, the slightly
heavier spear, or a sense of focus. Don’t even let your mind go to
Cheryl. Don’t. Don’t.
There was a slight wind tossing sand
around lightly. Since when did that happen? Note to self: Get some
sunglasses. All the time here, and she never felt the need for them
before.
Even the damned temple felt like a
stranger as she approached. She chose the left doorway at the
bottom level. She didn’t want to pass the same spot where she
cowered from the wind and sand as Cheryl’s killer passed
by.
“
Hey Wanda, Jim.” Cassidy
quietly greeted the two friends guarding the left
doorway.
“
Cass.” Jim
nodded.
“
Hey Cass, are you headed
out to Cheryl’s-“
“
Yeah. Not sure when I’ll be
back.”
“
Make it soon.”
Climbing to the top door, she met with
Cipriana and Maxine while that giant dog silently stared on.
Cassidy returned the statue’s gaze with a bit of a glare. Her eyes
were drawn to the spot on the floor where Cheryl died. Slow to drag
her eyes away from it, she started speaking before looking at
Cipriana.
“
Hey Cip.”
“
You’re
departing?”
“
That’s right. It’s been
a... it’s been a while since I got much distance between me and
this place.” She didn’t know if she was feeling spite or nostalgia.
It’s hard to feel super positive about staying in one place because
leaving made your sanity fall apart.
Cipriana put her hand on Cassidy’s
shoulder, and spoke in a nearly solemn tone. “You’ll be in all our
thoughts, Cassidy.”
“
Yeah.” Maxine
added.
Cassidy took a moment, and looked at
them both fondly, but her expression changed as she looked to the
statue again. She slowly walked further in towards the statue,
holding the beast spear laxly in both hands.
She cocked her head to the side and
looked up at the big stone dog. “And what about you? Huh? Anything
inspirational to say?” She paused, and gave it time to respond. It
didn’t, so she lowered her head and turned around slowly, to begin
the journey to the helipad.
Maxine averted her eyes as Cassidy
walked past, not wanting to see her pain too closely, and not
having any helpful words. She looked up at Cipriana. Cip was so
hard to read sometimes. She just looked calmly at Cassidy as she
walked off.
Cassidy’s footsteps faded down towards
the front of the temple, and Maxine felt safe to release a sigh.
“Cip. Do you think that’s really a good idea?”
Cipriana looked back at Maxine with a
mildly inquisitive expression. “What’s that?”