Seymour seizes the Seeker’s wrist tightly, and declares forcefully –
“.. I think you’re mistaken..”
Breaking out of his hold, the Seeker roughly shoves Seymour to the ground, and approaches Sam with his teeth bared, while the other Seekers draw in close to Trace, Data, and Elena, pinning them against the tunnel walls by their throats. While they struggle to break free from the Seekers’ tight grips, Sam backs into the wall, her eyes fixed unblinkingly onto the irate Seeker.
“Think it’s fun to slaughter our brothers, you bitch, huh?!”
The Seeker pulls out a slightly chipped combat knife, raises it into the air above Sam’s head, and prepares to bring it down in a two-handed strike, when she seizes his wrist, rips the knife from his hands, and stabs him through the eye in retaliation. As he cries out in pain, blood running down his face, the Seekers pinning the others to the wall rush to his aid. With the Seeker’s agonizing screams distracting his brothers, Seymour pulls Sam to her feet with an impressed smile. Enraged, the group of Seekers pulls out weapons of their own, though Trace, Data, and Elena are faster, and pin them down before any of them can take a first shot. Seymour pulls the knife out of the dead Seeker’s eye, and plunges it into the other Seekers’ throats one by one with a fierce grimace. While the Seekers gasp and choke through the blood, Seymour and Sam hurriedly take off down the tunnel together, with Trace, Elena, and Data in tow. After a few minutes of mad dashing, Seymour skids to a halt, panting for breath as he wipes the blood off of his hands, and chokes out as Sam and the others catch up to him –
“T-that was way too close.. We need to find a safe place to go..”
“Y-yeah, yeah, but where can we go in Santuc where the PRIME or the Seekers won’t be there?”
“… That’s a very good question.”
Back at the pile of Seeker corpses, the shortest lying among the dead pulls out his radio from underneath his blood-drenched black leather jacket.
With his last ounce of strength, the supposed Seeker turns on the radio with a shaky hand, slowly raises it to his face, and manages to choke out through the hole in his throat –
“G-General S-Solari.. Th-this is.. SPEC Ops covert agent Dawson… Reporting an H.V.T. attack.. S-Seymour Moreau and others… heading for Trajit.. over…”
The SPEC Ops PRIME agent’s job done, he drops his radio, and breathes his last.
Rushing through the tunnel as fast as their legs can carry them, Seymour and the others eventually reach the very end of the tunnel; the sight of the Trajit Slums stretching out beyond the darkness of the passage acts as a beacon of hope for the group. Their hope, however, is soon extinguished, as a massive convoy of PRIME vehicles suddenly comes screaming into the tunnel, barring their escape, and an entire battalion of heavily armed soldiers pour into the passageway. The group stops in their tracks, as the soldiers begin to unload upon sighting their targets, and Seymour reacts swiftly, pushing the others into a shadowy niche inside the tunnel wall to avoid the soldiers’ gunfire. Flinching as a bullet flies dangerously close to Data’s face, he squeezes further into the niche as he shouts incredulously over the din of active weaponry and pounding footsteps –
“How did they know we were coming?!”
“W-what should we do, Seymour?!”
Infuriated, Trace seizes two of his frag grenades from his pocket, pulls the pins with his teeth, and tosses them into the oncoming squadron of troops, blasting most of them apart in a shower of blood and severed limbs.
“Got a plan, kid?! I’ve only got one grenade left!”
“… I think… we should run.”
“Huh?! Which way?!”
“Back the way we came.”
Trace shoves the others as far as they will go into the niche, trying to protect them from the gunfire as he yells above the cacophony –
“That’s crazy! What good will that do?!
“Well, we can’t go forward! What other choice do we have?”
“We can fight our way through!”
“It’s too risky! Did you see how many soldiers were there?”
“Regardless, I’m not goin’ back!”
“Me neither!”
“This isn’t the time to argue! I have a plan-”
“Oh, no fucking way, Seymour! Look, I’ve gone along with your plans this whole time, and they all seem to lead to some crazy situation where at least one of us nearly dies! I’m sick of it! I’ll make my stand right here, and stick it to these PRIME bitches! Who’s with me?”
A long silence follows Trace’s declaration, until Sam, her eyes averted from Seymour, says in a voice barely more than a whisper –
“… I am.”
“Sam..”
Data glances at Elena while Seymour and Sam glare at eachother irately, and utters nonchalantly –
“Well, I’m with Trace. Sorry, Seymour, but I honestly don’t see what good can come of running at this point.”
“Yeah, you’re right, Data.. Me too; I’m with Trace. Let’s kill them while we have the chance.”
“Great, the kiddies are all with me. Well, Seymour? You comin’ or what?”
Seymour takes one last angered, but worried look at his companions, and without a word of parting, he takes off back down the tunnel, away from the light of the exit, dodging the PRIME soldiers’ gunfire as he runs, and soon disappears into the shadows, leaving Trace and the others behind.
“Eh.. He can take care of himself, I suppose.. Ahem, well, kiddies? We ready to play?”
Trace pulls the pin on his last grenade and chucks it into squadron, blasting them into bloody pieces, then he, Elena, Data and Sam all charge out, seize some fallen assault rifles in the obliterated remains of their adversaries, and meet the massive PRIME battalion head on, though they are severely outnumbered. Within minutes, the exhausted, blood-soaked party runs low on ammo and energy, but the PRIME brigade’s numbers have hardly been diminished. Soon, despite everyone’s vigorous efforts to quell the massive tide of soldiers, the troops overpower and encircle the defeated party, and turn their guns on them menacingly. Gasping for air, and tossing his spent gun aside, Trace tentatively steps in front of Sam, shielding her from any potential gunfire, as she hopelessly drops her rifle to her feet, while Data does the same for Elena. As the ring of soldiers stare derisively at their crushed targets, a familiar, smug-faced, stiff-suited man forcefully breaks his way through the band, and looks contemptuously at Trace and Elena with curiosity and gleeful triumph shining in his pitiless auburn eyes.
“Well well, look at that. I didn’t realize that the dead were rising. Heheh.. General Trace… I thought my father had you disposed of in Shete.”
“Like hell he did, you sweaty prick! Your father was a lying piece of shit, Solari, and he sold me out!”
“Well, I should’ve known that a mere nuclear holocaust couldn’t quell your idiocy. Heheh… Still, you look absolutely pathetic, old man.”
His yellowed teeth bared in furious hatred, Trace lunges at Solari, though the soldier standing behind him reacts fast, and shoots Trace in the leg. Stopping in his tracks, Trace kneels down, grasping his bleeding leg in pain, while Solari looks on with delight.
“Well, that was pointless.”
“Rrgh.. What do you want, Solari?!”
“Well, let’s see here. I don’t want anything from you, so…”
Taking the nearest soldier’s gun, Solari belts Trace on the side of his head with the rifle butt, knocking him out instantly. Circling the now-unconscious Trace and the others like a predator stalking prey, Solari meticulously appraises each one of them with shifty eyes, while his soldiers wait anxiously for their orders, their fingers tensing eagerly on their triggers. Spotting Sam staring at him with furious contempt burning in her eyes, and gripping the necklace hanging from her throat tightly, Solari leans in close to her face with a wide smile, and strokes the side of her cheek gently.
“So… You’re Seymour’s sister, right? Yes, I remember now… You little cross
-dressing fraud, Tyler Krieger.. Mm.. You’re quite a.. ah, what was that word again? Ah right.. ‘bijin’.”
Instead of speaking, Sam angrily punches Solari in the face. As Solari staggers backward, clutching his face painfully, his soldiers all turn their guns on Sam, but Solari holds up his hand, signaling them to stand down. The troops comply grudgingly, and lower their weapons. Approaching Sam again, Solari leans back to her face, seizes her chin, and forcefully presses his lips against hers while she struggles in shock, then grabs hold of her necklace and rips it clean off of her neck with an amused smile.
“Mhm.. That should be enough to piss Seymour off..”
“Y-you sick fucker!”
Solari chuckles down at Sam as she stares at him with mingled rage and disbelief, puts two fingers against his lips, then strikes her in the side of the head with his rifle, knocking her out as well. Gazing at the shining purple glass eagle claw pendant of the broken necklace curiously, Solari turns to his troops with an emphatic smile.
“New orders, men. Take the dear General to DIV. 6, and leave the girl at DIV. 2.
I’ll be there shortly. I just have some unfinished business to attend to.”
Breaking free of the soldier’s circle, Solari strides down the tunnel, away from the exit, with Sam’s necklace in hand, while the troops look at each other with confusion.
“Uh, what about the other two, sir?”
Looking back through the tunnel without breaking his stride, Solari appraises Data and Elena curiously, who sit together tightly, fearing the worst. With a smile and a careless flick of his wrist, Solari portentously orders –
“Oh, right. You can just kill them.”
Running back through the shadowy tunnel alone, listening to the sounds of Trace and the others’ battle echoing off of the cold steel walls, Seymour soon comes back across the collapsed Seeker barricade, and spots a side tunnel branching into a small chamber filled with Seekers. Sidling carefully inside the tiny chamber, Seymour finds it to be filled with Seekers lying on flat cardboard beds, missing limbs or covered in lacerations and burns of all degrees. The Seekers all turn their heads angrily at Seymour’s entrance, and one of the Seekers, a man with his entire head hidden under a black scarf and a pair of thick sunglasses, approaches him curiously while Seymour desperately catches his breath.
“What do you want?”
“I need your help.. My friends.. are being attacked by the PRIME, and they’re completely outnumbered!”
The man in the scarf appraises Seymour at length, his visage inscrutable underneath the fabric. After a few seconds, the man looks back at his wounded comrades, then exclaims in muffled tone –
“… Find help somewhere else.”
“B-but we can’t get out of the tunnel! They’re blocking the way! Please.. I know you all bear a grudge against the PRIME, so I just assumed you’d be willing..”
The conscious Seekers in the room start to mutter quietly to one another behind the enrobed man, but he merely cuts them off by declaring forcefully –
“The Seekers of Peace do not exist to help strangers. Now go away.”
The Seeker irritably returns to his cardboard bed, unwilling to say more. Unable to convince the despondent Seekers, Seymour retreats back into the main tunnel, where the sounds of battle reverberating off of the tunnel walls have inexplicably ceased. Listening intently for any kind of sign that their clash is still ongoing, Seymour ducks into another side chamber, to find almost the exact same scene as in the previous one: Decimated Seekers lying desolately on makeshift cardboard beds, not a one capable of combat. Checking each of the numerous side chambers studded along the walls of the Seeker base, Seymour finds nobody willing to fight for his team, and resigns himself to return to his companions alone, his plan a failure. Leaving the last chamber, Seymour hurries back through the tunnel, heading for the exit to help his friends, though beyond the Seeker barricade, somebody is waiting for him. A terribly familiar, tight black-suited man with his signature arrogant smile slathered on his face like watery paint.
“Solari!”
Solari approaches Seymour, and he prepares himself for a fight, but hesitates when he spots something hanging from Solari’s hand: A purple glass, eagle claw-shaped necklace hanging from its broken chain. Along with the one holding it, the object is terribly familiar. Knowing that Solari’s possession of Sam’s necklace could only mean one thing, Seymour yells with mingled fury and shock –
“What have you done to them, you bastard?!”
“Heheh.. Let’s just say… they are beyond your help now, Moreau.”
Solari tosses the necklace down at Seymour’s feet, its bright, intricate purple glass surface shining in the lights of the Seeker base. Staring disbelievingly at the necklace, Seymour falls to his knees in overwhelming shock.
“… You… you killed them..?”
“That’s right. I did. Even though your sister put up a fight, I dispatched of her first. The others begged me not to kill them, even your hero Vars Trace.”
Chuckling scathingly at Seymour’s disbelief, he decides to pile it on by uttering with a mad smirk –
“Oh, and I must say, Moreau.. Your sister? What a cutie. I almost regret wasting such an adorable little thing. She tasted good enough, though. .. Heh, it’s too bad she spent all that time cross-dressing, or I would’ve gotten in on that years ago.”
Solari sardonically kisses his knuckles, and laughs derisively at Seymour. Seymour gently scoops up Sam’s necklace in his trembling hands, and, listening to Solari’s odious laughter ringing in his ears, his shock is suddenly replaced with hatred. Pure, unrefined hatred, surging intensely through his veins. Staring up at Solari’s face, his rage blurring his vision, Seymour slides the necklace away and gets to his feet, his furious, unblinking gaze set on Solari’s half-amused, half-frightened façade as he slowly backs away from Seymour, his hands held up in wary defense.
“Heheh, now don’t do anything rash, Moreau. We both know how a fight between us will end by now, don’t we?”
“… Shut up.”
“Well, now you see what happens when someone you care about is killed by someone you hate. This is my revenge, for Erik’s sake.”
“I said… SHUT UP!!”
Tackling Solari to the ground before he has a chance to defend himself, Seymour pulls off the belt from around his enemy’s waist, wraps it tightly around Solari’s throat, and pulls the two ends apart as hard as he can, furiously strangling him. Solari’s face slowly turns red as he frantically tries to break free of Seymour’s unyielding grip. In desperation, Solari grabs his combat knife from the sheath on his boot, and drives it deeply into Seymour’s shoulder, making him relinquish his grip on Solari’s belt. While Solari gasps for air, Seymour’s fury is augmented at the sight of his blood seeping through his shirt. He vehemently pulls out the knife from his shoulder and lunges at Solari, screaming with fury, who rolls out of the way just in time, so that Seymour accidently drives the knife deep into the ground, wedging it inside. As Seymour tries to pull the knife out of the ground, Solari kicks Seymour into the tunnel wall, pulls out his pistol, and aims it at his head, and Seymour, reacting swiftly, ducks out of the way of the bullet, and swipes the gun out of Solari’s hand. Grabbing Solari by the arm, Seymour viciously lifts him off his feet, and tosses him into the low ceiling, retrieves the knife from the ground, and as Solari falls back down, tries to stab him in the chest; however, Solari rolls over in midair, and lands hard on all fours. Swiftly grabbing Seymour’s wrist, and using every ounce of strength left within his beaten body, he flips him over his shoulder, and violently smashes him into the ground headfirst. Retrieving his belt, Solari keeps Seymour from getting to his feet by kicking him in the stomach repeatedly; over and over again, until Seymour can barely move. With a crazed, victorious smile spread across his sweaty face as Seymour struggles for breath at his feet, Solari wipes his sweaty, greasy hair out of his eyes, wraps his belt tightly around Seymour’s throat, and just as Seymour ha
d done to him, brutally strangles his enemy as he laughs manically. Unable to breathe, Seymour desperately claws at the belt, but Solari’s grip is too tight. His vision fading into blackness, and completely powerless to stop Solari’s attack, Seymour cannot fight off Solari, and, closing his eyes in defeat, exhausts his last scrap of strength, and all is silenced.
After a few seconds of tense, motionless silence, Solari unwraps his belt from Seymour’s bruised throat, staring with disbelief at his foe’s lifeless body, when he suddenly feels a hard tap on his shoulder. He turns, to find a huge band of Seekers glaring at him reproachfully and angrily, though none more angrily than the Seeker at the very head of the group, whose face is still hidden under all his black coverings.
“… What have you done here?”
With a smile and a proud sweep of his hand, Solari makes a grand proclamation to the Seeker party.
“Seekers of Peace, I am General Vincent Solari of the eXo PRIME Armed Forces.
I have just eliminated the greatest threat to humanity in the history of the world! And though I know that our two factions have had disagreements in the past, I would like to state that in light of this great achievement, you may applaud me without disgrace.”
While Solari waits for his applause with a wide expectant smile on his conceited guise, the Seekers look at each other slowly, and all together, burst into raucous laughter. The swathed Seeker at the very front of the roaring group wipes his eyes then holds up his gloved hand, quieting the howling assemblage, though a tremor of hilarity still silently sweeps through the crowd. The Seeker drops his hand, steps forward from the group, a smile just visible underneath all his coverings, and puts a hand on Solari’s shoulder.
Paradox: The Last Day - Seymour's Story Page 29