Eva Tsolomon
Pradox One
Proficiency V.
0
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Posted - 2013.12.12 19:07:00 -
[1] - Quote
I lay breathless on the dust covered ground as a silhouette appears from the distance.
"I must be dead again", I thought to myself.
Like so many times before I lay dismembered, waiting for the blood to drain from my body and my heart to stop. No matter how many times I die, I can't help but wonder, can't help but hope, that this is the last time. The last time I feel my flesh tear from my body and I fall into the abyss. But it's not the pain I fear, it's the state between life and death, before my consciousness reanimates into another clone that terrifies me.
'Limbo', they call it, and I hate it more than anything. Is this what it's truly like to be dead?
My father, an Achura monk of the highest monastic order in the Saisio System, had never thought so. He spoke often of the places he would 'travel', truths he would uncover, and of an 'architect' he would sometimes encounter during his celestial voyages. My grand-mother, a Seer and Stargazer, had taught him how to open his mind and explore the universe.
I never had the patience. All my life I took the short-cuts, and this time it cost me. I wanted to access the universal consciousness like he did, but I never had the discipline to get there on my own. I wanted it so bad that I cheated, and now I'm stuck, fighting to support my habit.
X-Instinct; a powerful hallucinogen helped me open the doors of perception. But once you step through these doors, there's no turning back.
I feel a burst and a surge throughout my core as the helix pours into my bloodstream, coursing through my veins and into my heart and lungs. I breath deep, gasping for air as the Nanites work to repair my tissue and organs. The silhouette takes shape, and I hear a familiar voice.
"Eva, get up!" orders are bellowed.
A strong arm reaches down and pulls me to my feet. Still in a haze, I scan the surface for my weapon.
"Here" the man says, as he hands me my shotgun. "Go, we haven't much time."
My legs are wobbling and shaking with every step I take, but I force myself to keep moving.
"Null Cannon Alpha is being hacked" flashes on my communicator. I scan the area and locate a hostile 96-meters from my location. As I start to sprint towards him I instinctively feed shells into 'Logan'.
As I approach him, I can start to make out his insignia and recognise his signature. "It's him," I stare in disbelief; the coward that ordered the attack on SBS, destroying my home.
When we had learned of the imminent attack coming from Redstar, we weren't shook. I had personally organised and help coordinate several successful defences of our district, and we thought we were ready for anything. Soon after however, I had received an urgent and encrypted message from a source within the upper echelon of Eon.
It read: "Redstar has been losing a lot of ground since the war started. They need to make up for their loses; expect there to be heavy MHPD presence."
He was right. The chaos that ensued that day was like nothing I had ever experience. I had been in battles before, but nothing like this. We were rookies, scrubs, playing at war. I never harboured any resentment towards the soldiers that attacked us that day, after all, a merc's got to eat and in the end you've got to respect their talent, but a realization did come to me after the carnage was over; those that possess power are afraid of losing it. We expected to have to put up a fight after we acquired our district, and we did, many times, but when some of the most infamous and highest ranked mercenaries in all of New Eden come down to attack your small ragtag, no-name corporation, you see just how far just how far some will go to keep their power.
After the battle despite being destitute, it was the first time I genuinely wanted to fight for something other than myself or my addiction. I wanted to stick for all the underdogs out there that were getting crushed by megalithic corporation's.
'Logan', named after the slaver hound I use to own as youth that liked to bite the heads off of rodents was fully loaded. I took one step forward, and stopped, activated my cloak and moved in for the kill.
As I raised my pet to the back of his skull, I thought of my old friends.
"This is for Shootbreakstab you son a b****!" I roared, and his cranium ceased to exist.
In case of a debilitating and painful but not immediately lethal injury, I had my dropsuit modified by a smuggler I met to inject a large quantity of Sooth Sayer mixed with a touch of X-Instinct. Normally I hate dying, but in this moment I was at peace. I sat next to the headless corpse and dropped Logan beside me, turned off my Coms', and hit the switch.
Mind bending awareness coupled with pure ecstasy is what I felt as I was taken into a state of nirvana, and for the first time I was not afraid to die. |