Dagger and Scalpel

[Redtricks]

It had started. After weeks of investigation, triangulation and slowly returning memories. And the first message had been sent with simple words. All it said was: "My dagger. I have found them. Meet me in two days." The second message? "Cipur. I need your help to get myself and my dagger close-by and provide a distraction." Added to that was a timetable and a plan.

The dear man delivered. Bless his soul, Sandra thought, as she and Breyd lay near the compound, dug near an OTAF base and waiting for the fireworks in silence. Whatever Breyd's snooty comments and anger toward Rubi-Ka, at least Sandra trusted her to be quiet. She had outlined the plan, having blackmailed information, having looked into datastreams and figured out things on her own with a murderous gusto... and there they were now. In the middle of a desert, far north. "They have my child," is what Sandra had said, never bothering to check for Breyd's reaction, and explained the plan.

Once the firefight on the southwest perimeter began, they were off, shedding sand off their bodies as they emerged from it, running at full speed toward the entrance to the bunker, where a big, greyed atrox was watching the tracers. Sandra's next part of the plan was to walk up in full gear. She did, catching they eye of Cervair. The atrox stopped, weapon in hand and turned, flummoxed. "LaCroix." He grinned.

"Hello, Sergeant Cervair." She stared up, watching the grin and leer.

"You, was it?" the atrox asked, pointing at the firefight in the distance.

"Singular or plural?" That apparently confused the atrox a little, and just as he was ready to grab for his comlink, Sandra calmly shot at his hand a burst from her JAME, listening to the cursing and then measured the atrox, smiling. "Cervair, please. If you wish to attack me, know one thing." Whatever was left of the comlink was bloodied and messy.

The atrox stared, ready to bring the Kyr'Ozch pistol to bear as the Opifex measured the cliff above them in front of the non-descript entrance to the bunker momentarily. Then she looked down -- and upward at the face again. "Did you know your lungs and kidneys are actually in your back?" Sandra LaCroix asked, cheerfully and with wide, red irises around her pupils.

That was not a question that had been expecting. "...yes?"

Sandra smiled. "Oh! Marvellous!"

Cervair blinked a few times, starting to get a little unnerved. "Why?"

[Breyd]

"Why?"

He never saw her. Breyd jumped silently and smoothly off the cliff, and as her feet touched ground, her blades sank into Cervair's body. Stab, twist, pull. Surgical precision to slice the renal arteries of the kidneys.

For good measure, she stabbed him again within the breath of a second. These atroxes had large bodies and perhaps their anatomy was different. Best to be certain. She pulled the blades out again and flipped each handle in her hand, then jammed the sizzling energy beams hard into the looming figure's back to puncture the lungs. There was a very slight hiss followed by an expiration from the atrox.

The dying Cervair turned his large head to see the attacker. Death wouldn't be long now. She looked at him with grey, calculating eyes. This one, she didn't hate. He was meat, a pound of flesh whose sacrifice would buy their entrance to the compound. He meant nothing - even less than nothing - to her.

She watched him as he sank to his knees and finally slumped over, the blood that oozed from his puncture wounds colouring the sand a muddy kind of brown. Had he been a foe to respect, she might have keep eye contact until death embraced him, but he wasn't, so she didn't. Instead, she stepped casually over his body and away. No, this one didn't mean anything.

Those inside the compound who had hurt Sandra, however. Halifax, Rubin, Thorpe. They meant something, and their deaths would be slower and more painful than this one's. This place, a symptom of all the things gone wrong in the Duster world, sickened her. Not so much for what they did, but for who they had done it to.

She didn't need more details. Sandra had been hurt, forced into unconscious submission by these wretched Dusters. But she was still her healer, her Eir. The one Breyd had chosen and the one who had chosen her. To the shade, little else mattered.

A glance towards Sandra. A quick nod. No need to speak. Words wouldn't change the situation.

The shade turned to the entrance of the bunker. Yes. Today, Sandra would get her revenge.

[Redtricks]

The Opifex certainly looked like she was relishing it so far. Whatever Cipur was doing out there, she had her own plan. Quick. Efficient. The uncharacteristically grim (yet strangely still sweet) smile on her face said as she plucked Cervais's passcard and set it in a pocket said so. Even more so when she produced a scalpel and proceeded to butcher eye and hand, then link them to a tiny little machine that pumped synthetic blood into both parts of the atrox's body.

Once she had done so, she ran as fast as she could to the doors, already feeling a little weary due to what she was carrying and covered in blood. She paid no attention to either factuality, nor even to Breyd's silence. The latter Sandra was used to. And even so, she was in a kind of predatory mood that showed even when she first scanned the eyeball, then the hand and then the passcard -- and then they were inside, much to the surprise of a rear guard soldier.

She surveyed the area, finding her mind making connections. Yes, the corridor did go some ways down in a very low angle, but the damned lights were hurting her eyes. It was just as clinical. If painted-over concrete and Omni-Tek placards could be said to be like so.

"Quick kill," she said to Breyd, in tones of an avenging black angel, but only after setting the eyeball and hand aside and hitting the poor man with a malevolent NCU program. Sandra was already walking along, even as the soldier watched in terror at a blood-spattered doctor and a clearly hostile shade. Mostly at the doctor, as he remembered her. Even then his hands were shaking too hard from the program frying his vital functions and motor coordination.

[Breyd]

Breyd didn't mind quick kills. For the most part she preferred them and either way, she had to conserve energy for later, for the ones that did matter.

She flashed the energy beams of her blades off and on once, catching up to Sandra and walking down the long corridor while the gurgling sounds of a man drowning in his own blood gurgled weakly behind them. The shade looked around - counting doors, looking for exits, air ducts, cameras, security bots - everything she could use or should watch out for.

Damn, she hated these sterile kinds of places. Give her a swamp, a desert, a rolling hill blanketed by things with murder in their eyes, and she would thrive. Even a dark cave. Anything more organic than this.

But this wasn't about her. This was about possibly finding Sandra's offspring. She mulled at the word, tasting it in her mind. Offspring. Sandra had a child...what a strange thought.

In Breyd's tribe, children were adored and loved by all. They were gifts to everyone, not just their parents. True, they were given sharp instruments from a very early age, but it was necessary. She understood that it was not like that everywhere, and often scoffed at how coddled the children of Rubi-Ka were. Yet even on the Duster world, children were protected and cared for. They would grow up with parents if they had them, or fostered if they didn't.

An environment like this, however was no place for a child to grow and be nurtured.

The shade cast a quick glance at Sandra. There was a hardness in her step, a deadly determination like she saw when the two of them were fighting. She liked that side of the opifex, who could also be vulnerable and thirst for acknowledgement. There was no supplication in her eyes now, though.

Now, her red eyes were complimented only by the blood spatters on her coat.

Breyd smiled. They were coming to the end of the corridor, and ahead, a door marked with "Laboratory 1-3" invited them deeper into the depths of a particular kind of hell.

[Redtricks]

The door was no more difficult than the entrance, what with her jury-rigged little device. Sandra had carefully ignored the gurgling, smiling underneath her braids and then the silent steps that Breyd seemed to always have; why not? She had grown accustomed to hearing the spring of her little sentry-go, sometimes even sensing when the shade was near. That, the medic had decided, was a pure sign of their symbiosis.

She turned a warning look at Breyd as the door to 1-3 opened, gesturing something they had developed during their relationship as a pair of fighters. Breyd was to lay low, behind as Sandra peeked over and ducked back to nod. It was clear. Clear of thought and eyes, she led the way down an even more sterile place, full of office doors and glass windows separated by a crossroads junction. Forward, and they would head farther into office spaces. To the left, holding cells. To the right... the lab... which, as she recalled, held a few more rooms.

Thinking, the Eir looked left and right. The offices were almost empty. Almost. But there was her favourite, favourite soldier, who'd left her door partially open. Thorpe, playing solitaire as always, unmindful of anything and bored out of her skull, not even paying attention to the security feed that should have given her reason to stand up and grab her weapon or one of the hazmat suits in case any of the experiments were to escape. Just as dully she reached for her comlink to say: "It's fine, doc. Just some clanner on meth or something." The monotone was almost depressing. Sandra gestured at the door to Breyd and counted to three.

By three, Thorpe had cut off the link. Sandra stepped in silently, pushing the door open. "What is it this time?" Thorpe asked without even looking up when Sandra hemmed. "More catshit? I told you, it's Miller's turn to--" The moment she looked over to see the two of them, Breyd was too close for comfort and Sandra was smiling one of her smiles.

"Keys, please. And were you to hit an alarm, my dagger here will gladly strip you of all of your limbs and I will cauterise them so that you will live in agony for a while. Ah, there? Yes. Very good. Breyd? Her hands only, please."

[Breyd]

The good thing about the blades was that with a simple move, they could switch between a beam that would simply cut with extreme precision and sharpness to a beam that would burn as it passed through the flesh of the victim. She liked her blades and their multi-functionality a lot. Now, she wasn't a sadistic person, and she always strived to make her kills quick and silent, without too much agony, but some times it was good to be a little bad also.

Like now. A flick of a switch, and the blade was burning as well as cutting.

She deftly separated Thorpe's hands from the rest of her body, and while the woman was still in shock from the cuts, grabbed two letter openers that lay on the desk. Rather dull instruments in and of themselves, but with enough force, even they could be dangerous. A hard jab through each wrist and Thorpe was stuck to the desk, her amputated limbs stretched out in futility near her never ending game of cards.

Breyd didn't know many things in life. In truth, she didn't need to either. She was training to be a Wielder in her tribe, and no wielder had ever had need of learning the finer arts of medicine or the use of heavy weapons. For that, they had healers and warfarers. She didn't need to know a whole lot other than the use of her blades, and she had sworn those to Sandra. A bargain, an agreement, an exchange of trust in their growing symbiosis. All of the above and more.

Time to move on.

She struck Thorpe over the head so she fell unconscious and wouldn't scream so much. Then they headed off towards the cross junction of the corridor where Sandra glanced left and right. Was that a hesitation? If so, it only lasted a moment, before she led her down the left way towards the holding cells. Breyd enabled her cloaking device just before Sandra opened the door. Nanobots shimmered around her a brief moment before she blended into the drab backdrop of the corridor. Onwards, then.

[Redtricks]

If the grey-faced Opifex in mostly black, white and red withdrew any pleasure from seeing Thorpe maimed so, she gave no indication. The entire process of cutting off the hands seemed more academic than anything else, and once they marched on over to the door to the left, Sandra stopped to remain still, holding the keys. First; the eye and hand. Then the keycard. Then the keys. Actual physical keys, which struck her as somewhat redundant. Even as Breyd disappeared, the medic looked around and felt the presence.

As the door opened into another section of the facility, there really was the stench of cat shit, sweat and something more rotten. Sandra took a moment to take in the scenery, then shot out the security camera at the end of the corridor (only hitting it with her third shot) and the one just above the entrance (with the first bullet). Having reloaded, she began to traipse down the corridor, knowing fully well that Breyd was near. She couldn't smell her or see her nor hear the steps, but something -- something alerted her senses to Breyd even as she neared the first cell, peering through the glasteel.

It was Marston who had confessed to Sandra that he wasn't feeling human anymore. The sabretooth's fur was mangy and the man inside the cat was long gone. Blinking her own catlike eyes, she tapped on the door, catching the cat's attention and finding parcels of her memory as she watched him come closer. The mangy thing set a paw at the glass, as did she. With a hint of sorrow, she opened the door and waited, staring at the cat that just lay down, staring up.

Motioning to the unseen -- but certainly sensed by the tired cat -- shade, she crouched and whispered something, watching into the deep amber eyes afterward. Finally, she nodded and bumped her head against the forehead of the man who had become a cat. Seconds later she stepped back, raised her weapon and watched with a gentle smile as she pulled the trigger. And it was done.

She moved on to the next cell, where an atrox was marching around the small perimeter of his cell, dragging a bed. This time, she opened the door and stood there, small figure watching a person easily twice her size in height and at least four times her weight. Whereas the previous cell had held cat shit and claw marks along the walls, this one had a floor that had been scratched by either the bed or the baseball bat being dragged around. Nonsensical text covered the walls, scraped with a nail or painted with blood -- or both.

The atrox stopped to stare at her, hair greasy, half of the teeth gone from both jaws and eyes vacant. Sandra knew this one too, walking up to him without fear. The healer sighed. "To think, under all that bluster..."

"Gnh." The atrox simply stared at her, even as she eyed the fresh scar on his forehead.

Sandra smiled, opening her eyes. "Is that not a nice drawing on the wall, Anton?" she asked, and fired three rounds straight into the atrox's cranium after he had slowly turned to look. As much as it hurt her, knowing Breyd was there helped. This was no way for people to live, not after so many experiments that had rotted their self into nothingness, she thought as she walked over to the last cell only to find it empty.

This was not particularly good news in her mind, and it proved right the moment the door they had entered from revealed a figure dressed in a black cloak, nanobots swirling around her. Sandra blinked and raised a hand -- only to be thrown back by nanobots that hit her like a sledgehammer. She spat blood as she looked up, watching the figure march closer. So, they had finally perfected it on Treviilla.

She didn't have any bindings unlike Anton and Marston, and she was alone.

[Breyd]

Breyd stood cloaked as Sandra moved from one room to the other. She couldn't hear what the Eir said to the big cat or to the lumbering atrox, and she didn't quite understand why Sandra killed them. But thinking about it, knowing her partner and seeing the body language, she assumed she euthanised them to keep them from suffering. She certainly didn't slaughter them. This was the mild, gentle Eir at work, not the murderous one.

Sandra had told her about the people - no, creatures - she had been captured with.

Marston, a man who thought he was an animal and had morphed into feline form one too many times, spending all day clawing at rugs and shitting on the floor. That wasn't a life. For the better, then, that he was released from this insanity.

Anton, a tough guy who suffered from side effects from the drugs they gave him to the point where he just circled his cell hauling a bat and drooling. Rubber-room irrational...it was a term she had heard Dusters use about those whose minds were so lost, they were simply just a living shell with no humanity left.

Then there was Treviilla, an emaciated, confused woman with great command of nanotechnology. A woman much older in mind than body. Sandra had briefly explained what the scientists had wanted for that one, but it didn't correspond with what just happened.

When Sandra's body slammed in the wall, Breyd's predator eyes went straight to the source of the attack, not the opifex splayed out on the floor. Sandra could take care of her own wounds, and there was little Breyd could do in that respect. She was the dagger. Her strengths lay elsewhere.

Perhaps it was her unfamiliarity against enemies whose weapons technological rather than physical. Perhaps it was hubris after easy pickings earlier. Whatever it was, the shade didn't expect to meet a barrier as solid as a rock wall when she leaped forward to backstab the dainty nanotechnician. Her cloaking device disabled upon impact and before she had even hit the floor, the other woman had turned and executed a root program. Unable to move beyond her reach, Breyd had been disabled for the next few, crucial seconds.

For whatever reason, Treviilla decided to turn back to Sandra and ran something in her NCU. A blinding program by the look of it. Precious milliseconds passed and all three remained utterly still. Then, a rasping, thin voice broke the silence.

"Have you heard of Izgimmer, Sandra?", it said, sounding more like a hiss than a human voice.
"Yes, Treviilla." came Sandra's reply.

The solitus started weaving the strands of a complicated program. Breyd could see tiny beads of sweat on the nanotechnician's temple and forehead when she briefly turned to check if the blade wielder was still there. Seconds passed and she still wasn't done weaving.

"Mehar Izgimmer was a genius. He saw the possible where others gave up. He saw beginnings in the end. He was alone, an outcast...unwanted, Sandra. But he had his revenge. He got the last word in the end - just like me."

The words bit into her like sharp teeth. Izgimmer got the last word. She knew this program. It took a long time to prepare, but once it fired, it was utterly devastating. If Treviilla succeeded, their chance was over. The base would double or triple their security, likely move the child and it could mean the end to their plans. Time was running out, the program was almost ready to execute.

Think, Breyd. Think.

And then it hit her. Spacial displacement. She knew a way to break rooting programs. Without a sound, she lifted a hand to one of the straps on her chest and ran a finger over a small sensor in the leather. Then she was free, and immediately leapt towards the nanotechnician. One blade went in through her ribs to puncture a lung and the other through her spine to sever the nerves there. Breyd looked at the small frame on the floor in front of her, heard the raspy breaths she struggled to take and the weak flailing of the arms while the legs were still and limp. Then she glanced at Sandra and remembered what she had done to the other two. It was mercy, not murder. Kneeling, she put her blades aside and with one sharp move, snapped the woman's neck.

She picked up her blades and walked over to Sandra, casting a few wary glances around.

"We can't stay here."

[Redtricks]

Sandra wasn't feeling too well when being questioned by the nanotechnician. In fact, the combined force of being blasted against a wall, having blood in one's nostrils and then being blinded and being talked to by someone far off the deep end only served to make her afraid, woozy and wondering: where was Breyd? Where was her Dagger? As much as they sometimes got combative in their lifestyles, there were times when Sandra was genuinely afraid for the shade. Afraid she'd let Breyd down.

And now this? She was still spouting blood but healing quickly as she was being ask about that nanotechnician of olden time, fumbling for a nano program she couldn't very well excecute, fumbling for her rifle and then... then hearing the crunching sounds. Breyd. Breyd, please. Be safe. Be safe.

But then, just then -- she heard the words and wanted to weep. "No, Breyd. We cannot." She looked up at the helping hands, eyes clear again, heart even more set on this task they had undertaken. She looked down at the clean kill, straightening her spine as she began to feel better and better. A few words of advice rang in Sandra's mind as she look at the ginger shadow that always seemed to know where she was. What she was doing. Who hated her background but still... loved her?

Pointless thinking about love. The Eir knew very well she loved the shade and would settle for morsels if those were all she would get. But nobody, nobody had loved her enough to be so inclined to kill anyone and everyone who would hurt their Eir. Breyd... Breyd, Breyd, what is it you do to me?

One final spit of blood sealed Sandra's determination. "To the laboratories," she said, glancing at Breyd before walking on and over the body. So long, dear you, too.

This was the crux of the matter. Much of what went on in, went on in the lab space. This was no surprise. The moment Sandra opened the heavy door with Cervair's eye and hand and the keys and pass card, it became imminent to the shade exactly how big an operation this entire this was. It smelled even more sanitised. It looked clean and white aside from some chairs, a mixture of gasses and vials in a low-temperature walk-in cabinet the size of a small apartment. Glass walls.

On the other side of the room, there were the private offices. Living spaces, almost. Names on doors. Pictures on the wall.

But currently, Sandra was more interested in the cabinet. Quietly, quietly, she motioned Breyd to move with her, only to open the door and advance upon the woman there, dressed in a protective suit and wearing headphones that blared music as she worked on something stuck in a supercooled container.

Sandra tapped the woman on the shoulder, eyes catlike and very, very angry. What Breyd saw was a look of horror reflected above the facemask.

"Thank you for letting me escape," Sandra said -- and cracked the woman over the head with the rifle, sending her face straight into the harsh, harsh far-below subzero container full of vials.

There was no scream. There was only a slow, slow, sound of flesh and tissue being frozen in an instant and then being pulled back to scatter into pieces and pieces on the floor. The Eir kicked the corpse, sending bits and morsels around the laboratory space, ignoring the chairs, the medical equipment and everything else.

Sandra turned to look at the offices, marching toward one particular door.

[Breyd]

There was only one left of the ones Sandra had described. Dr Halifax, an elderly solitus who gave the impression of being a wizened old grandfather-type. Sandra said he was shrewd, very well-spoken and had a prosthetic left arm that looked more like a symbiant than an arm. It was a strange thought that a doctor, a healer, would do such harm to people, rather than heal their wounds and cure their ailments, like she expected all Eir would do. Another thing she disliked about the red planet and its inhabitants. They were so easily corrupted by greed or personal interest that they forgot about their first and foremost responsibility - their tribes. After all these years fighting, trying to understand their ways, she still had little else but scorn for the people of Rubi-Ka.

Breyd glanced at the tiny opifex she had sworn her life to as she stomped onwards with resolve. This one hadn't forgotten. Not yet, and if she could do anything about it, not ever. At times, she was a bundle of murderous intent, but she knew her primary function well. Had she been Trueborn, Breyd was sure Sandra would be the Elder Eir even at a young age. But she wasn't, and there was no point wasting effort thinking about it.

"This one", said Sandra - her girlish voice shifting between eager curiosity and quiet determination as she pointed to the door.

This was the end of the line, the reason they had come here in the first place. Breyd was getting impatient. They had been here too long, and the further in they went, the more trapped she felt. The scarred Elder Sandra called Cipur was outside reach and could not help them out. If they reclaimed here, all was lost and Breyd was unsure if Sandra could ever be pieced back together if that happened. Leave those thoughts. They do you no good. Get on with it and finish it.

She watched as Sandra positioned herself on one side of the door, and mirrored her on the other side of it. Then, as simple as that, Sandra disabled the lock with the eye and the card and let the door slide open. The final chapter began.

[Redtricks]

It was a chilly room. It was a rather large room, and Sandra remembered it all now. The tests, the treatments. The humiliation and the pain -- but the most pain came from seeing what she saw now. Breyd and she had entered and stopped simultaneously, both grim, bloodied and at least one of them a seething little bundle of barely contained anger. In front of them lay an office that was decorated lavishly and yet still filled with children's toys and a small enclosure.

If one could call it that. It was an otherwise open glass pen filled with even more toys, a small toilet and bed. For a moment, Sandra lost her focus as she watched the kaleidoscope from a spinning mirror sphere paint reflections all around the room but then  she looked down and saw something that gave even Breyd something to contemplate on.

A tiny, tiny child. Staring and staring at the reflections with disturbingly familiar red eyes and a mop of thick hair. Electrodes were attached to her forehead and bare chest, connected wirelessly to the second person's datapad. A set of chains, not attached now, lay on the floor.

"Shiny," said the little girl.

That was when the Eir finally snapped.

Thus far, they'd gotten off lightly. All of them. This one was going to take the full brunt of it. Even as Dr Halifax turned around, she was doing what she always did in a proper battle. Infect the system. Give them palsy. The look on Halifax's face was at the same time surprised, pleased and then, horrified as he tried to finish a sentence. "Ah! Hello, doctor LaCroi-- wait! WAIT!" Desperately, he tried to tap on his pad to sound an alarm, only to have the pad rushed away by a charging, rainbow-braided little Opifex. That was as close as he got to saying anything as the Eir began to pummel him with the butt of her assault rifle.

"What an interesting side effect."

Bash. A cheekbone cracked. The child was still staring at the reflections.

"I wonder if it could be replicated."

Slam. A broken nose. The crude-looking prosthetic slashed at Sandra's face, cutting skin, only to be cut off by a swift Wielder, who watched.

"Is she awake?

"Yes, doctor."

"Good. Keep her in the happy place. I'll want to examine her... later. And the child?"

"Perfectly normal, doctor."

By this time, Sandra was done bashing. The rifle hit the ground. Doctor Halifax was weakened to the point where she had been, but in so much more pain that she had been in. It was about to get worse. She let out a hiss and plunged her thumbs into his eyes, sitting on the man's chest and pushing her thumbs deep enough to blind the screaming man -- one eye even coming out. This, she stuck into his mouth, still connected to the optical nerve.

In the background, the child was still mesmerised, unaware of the amount of violence happening just a few feet away. Breyd could have watched either of them and seen the similarities and the dissimilarity; both with the same cheekbones and eyes; one distracted by nice, happy things and the other tearing into her tormentor with gusto. He couldn't even speak, what with his own eye in his mouth. He tried, only to be countered with a low growling response: "Fermes ta gueule, ostie trou de cul."

With that, she picked up her weapon, stood up and nodded at Breyd, bloodier now more than anything and looking decidedly miffed. She shuddered as she turned to watch the child -- stare back at her.

[Redtricks]

"Time, Eir." Impatient, that tone. She knew it well.

Sandra had yet look what Breyd did to Halifax, but what she did do was sling her rifle and simply grab the child and raise her to her eyes. "I do not know if you remember me," she said, bloodied and bleeding, "but I am your mother. We have the same eyes." She didn't have to even say that. For one reason or another, the child seemed fixated with another pair of eyes like hers and smiled. This puzzled her for a moment, because she would have thought the blood and the wounds on her cheek would have been more interesting.

Merde.

She carefully tried to shield the child from the slaughter, catching Breyd's impatient and (as usual) imperious look. "Take her. There is one more thing I have to do. It will not take more than a scant two --"

"Are we going somewhere?" the child suddenly asked, watching Breyd. Sandra's heart twinged suddenly as she watched them, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut.

Breyd's answer didn't do much to still her unmended heart. "Yes, child. Soon." The look Sandra saw on the shade's face hurt. Was that tenderness? She couldn't be sure.

"Scant two minutes. Head for the exit. I will follow." As per usual, Breyd accepted that. She watched them go, then looked at the corpse with a smile. "Putain. Let us see how you enjoy this." She dug into her Blackpack and set a charge on his work desk. Then she sailed out to set a similar charge near the oxygen canisters in the laboratory space, stepping over melting brain tissue. Once that was done, with shaky hands, she took a deep breath and a remorseful look toward the holding area.

"Forgive me."

She ran after Breyd, thanking the stars above that the jury-rigged device worked. Of her escape, she remembered vaguely forcing a private or some non-com open the door out of the actual laboratory area with the holding cells and offices. Had she really cut the man's throat? Yes, she had. "All the doors are open from the inside from here on out, I hope."

"Is it time to go out?" the child asked, even as Breyd shoved her into Sandra's arms. She took the tiny burden gladly. "You're sticky."

"Oui, ma chouchou. I am," Sandra replied curtly. They moved in synch. The Wielder running at a clipped pace, Sandra running with her burden and legacy after her all the way past a screaming would-be solitaire player... it all fused together even as they reached the exit, over a corpse and the distant sound of one or two weapons still discharging. She should have thought to grab Cervair's radio. Too late now.

Deep underground, a small explosion destroyed Dr Halifax's records and personal mainframe. A minute later, the second explosion amped up by the oxygen in the tanks destroyed all lab equipment and a better part of the corridor, actually causing a tiny cave-in.

Two women and a girl disappeared into the desert.