“Remember, the last time I saw you, you were still just a kid, Seymour! It took me a little while to realize that your coat was the same one I gave you before I left the PRIME. I’m a bit sad that you didn’t take such good care of it, but whatever.. Uh, but the white hair and colorless eyes put me off for a bit there too. The Magni virus, I’m guessing, right?”
“Er, no.. Well, I mean.. that was part of it, I guess.”
“Hm.. Well, anyway, I thought it was impossible, y’know? I heard you were executed in Liberty about a month ago..”
Seymour stares down at his own interlocked hands, feeling a nervous bead of sweat working its way down the back of his neck. He glances up at Valkyrie, whose eyes are still fixed on the road, though a faint frown can be seen on his yellowy-skinned face.
“Wait.. You know about that?”
“Yeah, Trace told me on his last visit to DIV. 1. He never told me what you were being executed for.. He didn’t seem to want to say it.”
“W-well, let’s just say.. I did something very bad.”
“… That’s it?”
“… Yeah.”
Falling back into a heavy silence, Seymour fidgets anxiously in his seat, looking unseeingly through the windshield grimly and thinking over the millions of thoughts racing through his head. His whole plan is falling to pieces: he has one person injured, one missing, and one dead, not mention he has no idea where Trace has been taken, nor does he have Adrian in his possession. He dwells angrily over how much he still has left to do, and how little time he has to do it, when he thinks that maybe he could use Valkyrie as a backup for his plan. But before Seymour can ask him for his assistance, he suddenly spots a woman walking alone down the side of the desolate street, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach while tears pour down her pale face. Seymour instantly recognizes her shimmering cascade of light blonde hair, and gasps in disbelief.
“Stop the truck, Valkyrie! That’s one of my friends!”
Taken by surprise, Valkyrie compliantly pulls the air brake, and the truck screeches to a halt in the middle of the deserted road. Seymour jumps out of the truck, runs up to the woman with a relieved smile, and taps her lightly on the shoulder. She turns with a start, her bright blue eyes shining with tears, which instantly evaporate at the sight of Seymour.
“Seymour..? You’re alive!”
Embracing Seymour as tightly as she can, Elena’s tears are renewed as he fights to break free of her suffocating grip.
“Ah, man.. C’mon, Elena, I’ve already been strangled once today..”
Elena lets go of Seymour with a slightly embarrassed smile, but then she stares at him for a moment, and her eyes suddenly fill with tears again.
“… Seymour.. I’m so sorry, but… Gordon is dead..”
“Uh, no.. No, he’s not..”
“W-what?”
“Gordon isn’t dead. He’s in the back of the truck, but he’s in bad shape.
We’re gonna take him somewhere safe, and get him the help he needs.”
“R-really?”
Her eyes light up with relief and happiness at Seymour’s admission, and she resolutely wipes the tears tracks off of her reddened cheeks.
“Yeah. But tell me: What happened to Sam? Did you see what happened?
Did Solari kill her?”
“No.. His troops just took her and Trace somewhere.. I didn’t hear where though..”
Hardly daring to believe her words, Seymour breathes out with a little comforted laugh as he murmurs –
“Oh.. That’s... a huge relief.. I can’t believe that that fucking prick played me.. Ah well, all that’s important is that we find them, and get Data somewhere safe, so come with me. We’re heading for Liberty District.”
“Right. I’m with you.”
Returning to the Seekers’ truck together, Elena climbs into the trailer to look after Data, while Seymour gets back into the passenger seat beside Valkyrie, who instantly resumes driving, and soon, Seymour and the Seekers reach the eXo PRIME Checkpoint, to find it completely devoid of any PRIME operatives, but they have no time to ponder this strange anomaly as they cross through the deserted checkpoint, and into the dense, polluted streets of Liberty District. Pulling out the MFI apparatuses from his pocket again, Seymour stares at the blood stains on Sakura’s fixtures, and closes his eyes in grim contemplation.
|So.. Finally.. Once all the pieces are back in place, this really will be… our last day on Earth…|
End of Part 4
~Tonight the World Dies~
~Santuc TerraDome: Liberty District~
Driving toward the very centre of Liberty District, where the Raven’s Nest lies beneath the cobblestones of the main square, Seymour suddenly remembers his tracer, and pulls it out to check for Sam’s whereabouts, though he finds that it has been crushed, and is no longer functional. Irritated, Seymour throws the pieces out the truck’s window, and slumps back in his seat, his hands over his eyes, while Valkyrie glances over curiously.
“You alright?”
“Yeah.. I’m fine. Can you just.. stop the truck for a sec? I wanna talk to Elena.”
“Sure..”
Valkyrie tentatively pulls the truck to the side of the deserted Liberty road, and Seymour jumps out into the street, pocketing the MFI apparatus, and rounds to the back. Pulling open the doors, Seymour hops inside the crowded trailer, and shuts the doors tight. Spotting Elena’s beacon-like hair shining amid the sea of bald heads and black jackets near the back of the trailer, he wades his way over, to find her supporting Data’s head in her lap while she gently strokes his soft shock of spiked brown hair.
“Elena.. We need to talk..”
Suddenly, Seymour is interrupted by a curt tap on his shoulder, and turns to find an abnormally short, frosty-faced Seeker staring up at him with inquisitive eyes.
“Excuse me. You’re Seymour Moreau, correct?”
“Uh, yes..”
“Hm… Is your seat free next to Valkyrie?”
“Yeah… Why?”
“May I take your seat?”
“Uhm.. Sure, I guess..”
Without a word of parting, the strange Seeker marches off down the trailer, opens the doors wide, jumps out into the street, and shuts the doors swiftly. The Seekers in the trailer murmur discontentedly, while Seymour looks back to Elena with raised eyebrows.
“That was.. weird..”
“Yeah..”
“So, uh.. Oh yeah.. I need to discuss something with you.”
He sits down in the empty seat behind him, and stares straight into Elena’s eyes with all seriousness.
“So-”
Suddenly, the sound of constrained yelling is heard through the walls of the trailer, and Seymour recognizes Valkyrie’s voice. He puts his ear up against the back of the trailer, and listens in closely –
“NO! I knew it was you, you bastard! Let go of me, what-”
Something smashes hard against the windshield of the truck, then the yelling is punctuated by the sound of a single, sudden gunshot, and total silence falls.
“Mikael?! MIKAEL!”
Nobody answers Seymour’s cries, and after a few seconds spent in a terrified hush, the sound of the truck’s engine revving reverberates through the walls. Every Seeker jumps to his feet in shock, and quickly scrambles for the doors, but the truck abruptly starts up, and speeds off down the street, throwing the Seekers back against the walls.
“W-what’s going on, Seymour?!”
“I knew there was something weird about that Seeker! He must be a PRIME agent! Dammit, we have to get out of this trailer before we die!”
Running along the long row of frightened-looking Seekers, Seymour pushes the doors open with all his strength, to find the truck racing through the streets at breakneck speed, as blurred buildings swiftly fly past, and the stretch of concrete below rushes along faster than his eyes can focus. Elena swiftly runs up behind him, and as the truck drives over a cracked piece of road, she loses her footing, and nearly
falls out of the trailer, but Seymour quickly grabs her forearms, and gritting his teeth, pulls her back in with difficulty. He grips her shoulders tightly to keep her from falling again, and asks worriedly –
“You okay?”
Elena nods in shock, her face deathly pale, and Seymour sits her down on the seat behind her.
“You stay here. Keep everyone calm. I’m gonna go deal with this hijacker..”
“B-but how?”
“With these.”
Seymour pulls out the twin MFI apparatuses, wraps the wiring around his wrists, and activates the battery. Testing its performance, he magnetically unscrews a screw on the trailer’s wall, and attracts it to the metal disc.
“Seems to work okay even when not powered internally..”
“Don’t tell me you’re gonna climb along the trailer with those things..”
Flexing his wrist pointedly, he mumbles distractedly –
“Think of this as a beta test..”
“Huh?”
“N-nothing.. Don’t worry about me. I’ll stop this truck, no matter what it takes to keep you guys safe.”
With a last nod to Elena, Seymour activates both MFIs, affixes them to the metal trailer wall, and magnetically climbs his way onto the roof of the racing truck. Squinting his eyes against the rushing wind, he arduously climbs along the roof, keeping his grip on the MFIs as hard as he can, until he reaches the left side of the cab. While still affixed to the roof, he stands straight up on his hands, and falls down to the window feet first, smashing right through and kicking the driver into the passenger seat. Unfazed, the driver pulls out his combat knife, and takes a stab at Seymour, who rips the knife from his hand, pitches him forward, and drives the knife into the back of the driver’s neck. The PRIME agent screams in agony as he tries to remove the knife from his neck; Seymour reaches past him, opens the passenger side door behind the driver, and kicks him out onto the road. Breathing heavily, Seymour shakes his head to clear his mind, and unravels the MFI apparatuses from his wrists. As the unmanned truck rolls down the road, Seymour quickly grabs the steering wheel, pulls it over to the side of the street, and turns the engine off. In the absence of the roar of the engine, Seymour hears a faint voice coming from below the passenger seat. Confused, he reaches down, and pulls out an eXo PRIME radio, where loud, shrill voices of soldiers jabber on. Listening intently on the conversations, he hears with a pang of shock:
Yeah, we’re all in position, over. Covert agent Demona should be bringing the truck into the main square any minute now, over.
Roger that, we are primed and ready to engage at first sight of targets, over.
Remember to tell your squad not to let ANYONE near the entrance to the Raven’s Nest, understand, over? Moreau must NOT reach the Raven’s Nest, over!
Yeah, yeah, we got it, over.
Switching the radio off, Seymour throws it out the broken window, starts the truck back up, and takes off down the street, straight towards the main square. He looks at the bloodstained crack on the windshield, and considers doubling-back to find Valkyrie’s body, but he ultimately decides against it, though the guilt squirms uncomfortably in his chest. After about twenty minutes of straight driving, blasting through traffic as fast as he can, Seymour bursts through the pedestrian blockade at the perimeter of the main square, and finds the square just as the soldiers on the radio had said in their report - absolutely overflowing with heavily-armed troops. Over three thousand eXo PRIME soldiers, and massive pieces of heavy weaponry line the edges of the square, while military helicopters hover tenaciously overhead, their blinding searchlights covering the entire area with a bright white light. Seymour quickly slips out of the cab before he is spotted, rounds to the trailer, and throws the doors open. Inside, the pale-faced, terrified-looking Seekers are all crowded near the back of the trailer, huddled together in fear from Seymour’s haphazard driving, though Elena sits calmly upright near the doors, keeping a hand on Data’s shoulder; he is sitting upright against the wall, his eyes half-open, a hand over his wounded stomach.
“Seymour! What’s going on? Who was that guy?”
“I was right. He was a PRIME covert agent.. He was taking us straight into an ambush.. But at least we’re exactly where we wanna be.”
“We are?”
“That’s right. The PRIME doesn’t want us to get into the Raven’s Nest.
That’s where we need to be. So, we need to fight our way through.”
“Fight? We’re in no condition to fight!”
“You two don’t have to. The Seekers and I will clean up this mess.”
Turning to the Seekers still crowded together at the back of the trailer, Seymour holds his hands high in the air, and with a glare of grave solemnity, makes a proclamation to the skin-headed sorority.
“Men… Valkyrie is dead. He was killed by a member of the PRIME who had been living amongst your ranks and compromising your security.
This man was kind enough to bring us straight into a legion of PRIME troops. Are you just going to sit back and let the PRIME take the lives of more of your friends and brothers? Will you let the PRIME continue to take what is rightfully yours? Help me take down the last of their numbers. Show them the might of the Seekers of Peace.”
The Seekers all look at each other with mingled terror and excitement, though they all spring to their feet with a joyous refrain, retrieve their weapons, and charge from the trailer with their fists held high. Elena makes to join them, but Seymour holds her back, and kneels down to her level.
“Stay in here. We’ll take care of this. You look after Data.”
“But-”
“Trust me.”
Despite the look of fear in her eyes, Elena gives a quick nod, and a saluting wave as Seymour grabs a stockpile of weapons from the seat behind him, dashes from the trailer, and emerges into the blinding lights of the PRIME battalion, where the Seekers stand at alert, waiting for orders from Seymour. Seymour strides through the procession of Seekers, observing them and their newfound allegiance, then, he raises his rifle in the air, and fires off one shot, which echoes soundly throughout the entire district. Instantly, the two factions dive into battle; bullets fly, blood spills, and bodies fall, as Seymour mows down anyone in his path, and arduously makes his way towards the very centre of the square, where the forces are most heavily fortified around the opulent black marble fountain that stands tall amid the carnage. Forced to fight harder and faster than he ever has in his long life of modern warfare, Seymour pushes forward with his Seeker comrades, putting pressure on the PRIME forces as they prepare their heavy weaponry near the edges of the square. All around Seymour, explosions suddenly go off, as the PRIME missile launchers drastically cut through his numbers. Rolling out of the way of a mortar shell as it lands inches away from him, Seymour makes a mad dash for the fountain at the heart of the square, and by ducking past the distracted soldiers as they gun down the Seekers at eye-level, Seymour eventually reaches the fountain, and frantically searches its ornate black marble base for a certain switch. Searching desperately for the switch, he suddenly feels the hot muzzle of a shotgun pressed hard against the back of his head, and the entire square falls silent. Closing his eyes impatiently, standing slowly with his hands held high, Seymour turns to look into the visor of a PRIME soldier, while thousands of identical visors stare at him lividly, the soldiers’ guns all pointed his way, and not a bald head to be found amid the sea of bloodstained helmets. Every Seeker is gone.
|The Raven’s Nest is so close.. I can’t have come this far just to fail now…|
… Looks like you’re about to break again.
As though time comes to a complete halt, Seymour feels a presence behind him, and glances over his shoulder to find a man swathed in a tattered black hooded robe sitting on the edge of the fountain, his arms folded. His left hand is missing the ring finger.
“Y-you- N-now’s not a good time!”
… No.. This is as good a time as any.
“W-what ar
e you talking about?!”
… Think of this.. as a beta test.
The robed man slides off of the rim of the fountain, and unnoticed by all of the surrounding soldiers, he puts his ghostly pale hands on Seymour’s shoulders, and slips his hood off to reveal a pair of bright, colorless eyes, though the rest of his face is hidden under multiple wraps of black and red fabric. When Seymour’s eyes meet the hooded man’s, his mind is suddenly wiped blank, and he is only half-aware of his actions as he sheds his black jacket, and splays his fingers out on the bloodstained cobblestone. While the soldiers watch in confusion, too puzzled to pull their triggers, Seymour channels all his strength into his brands, which suddenly flare with searing black flames. While the solders looking on transition from confusion to terror, the fire on Seymour’s forearms slowly starts to work its way up his arms, diverging over the rest of his body and spreading out from his scarred shoulder blades, forming what appear to be massive wings made of sable flame. The PRIME soldiers finally start to fire upon him, but their bullets simply melt before they can make contact. Seymour laughs derisively as liquid nickel splashes him, still mindlessly focusing every inch of strength within him to keep the flames alive, when the flow of time around them suddenly begins to slow to a halt, and the blinding white illumination of the helicopter searchlights fades into a prosaic, monochrome glow. He removes his shaking hands from the ground, and spreads his blazing arms wide, causing the same black flames enveloping him to erupt from beneath the cracks in the cobblestone, licking at the soldiers’ heels, and soon climb as high as their waists, melting their flesh away as they scramble to flee from the square, but a great tempest of flames encircles the square like a tornado, barring any escape for the burning soldiers. Giant pillars of onyx fire climb into the sky, and collide with the helicopters above, melting their armor and blades. The copters come crashing down to the earth in a hellish firestorm of blazing orange flames, annihilating anyone still standing beneath them.
Paradox: The Last Day - Seymour's Story Page 31