“Halstead would have made the optimal choice. A true hero, a patriot and noble citizen, he rose above turmoil that would have destroyed any lesser man and lit the path forward. Unfortunately, he is dead, and his brand is unfairly tainted with treason.
“Clausen, given enough time, could mature into a suitable successor, but he is too constrained, too conventional, too tied into martial honor, and, worst of all, falsely maligned under that same traitor's brand.
“Firenze, for his part, lacks the emotional connection necessary to relate with the huddled masses, being too resigned to the world of machines and abstraction, of a world that is not yet, and may never be, yet still lingers in the fearful shadows of tomorrow.
“The others are much the same, in all their differences. Each is too polarizing, too niche, or too mundane.
“The terrible burden, then, falls to the least candidate, for I am no champion. I am a defiler, a deceiver, and a destroyer. I draw up these thoughts and plans because I may grasp them, and, as I grasp them, bite from the forbidden fruit of understanding; my actions, then, are tainted by hypocrisy and opportunism, because I am aware of the extent of their consequences, and pursue them with full knowledge of the results. I concoct an illusion of nobility through the abuse of belief, and the manipulation of the yearning for redemption that lies hard-coded in the human mind. Know this: I am the guardian demon of my chosen flock, a man you would not wish to meet, bound to your cause by only circumstance; yet, in my makeup, I can detect the beginnings of a plausible lie. Death, and its finality, could cement the narrator as reliable, elevate the champion, and seal the story, far more potently than that champion either deserved or desired.
“Death and redemption, delivered in sublime combination, bled out upon the altar of the State, those are the only lies strong enough to break the pull of Striker's 'actualization'. It may not be enough. It may very well be too late, with all our actions rendered futile by his damnable inertia. Yet, if this is the one stone I possess, the only tool with enough mass to have even the slightest chance of starting an avalanche, then, I am compelled by my nature to hurl it over the cliff. I despise gambling, but if you are seeing this, then I have already placed my final wagers, and have now consigned myself to the winds.
“Brian, Grant, this is for you, more than any. You have been the closest things I have ever had to friends, and I am sorry you had to carry my burdens for as long as you did. To the rest of you, or to your families, I am sorry I that could not do more. No actions I could take would redeem me, or alter what I am, but do know that I regret the pain I have caused, even if I could not take it back.
“It is amusing to me, that I would record this. I have always detested emotional drivel, especially regarding subjects with as much finality as death; but staring at my own imminent mortality, I cannot help but wax philosophical. I wonder, if, in another life, I could have been a better man?
“The harsh truth is that this is highly unlikely. My nature and my nurture conspired to produce a weapon. Still, it remains a pleasant delusion for me, that I could have been something else, perhaps measured up to the lofty goals once conceived for the Titan Five project. If I may ask of you one favor, when I have asked for far too much already, it would be that you remember me not as I was, but as I was once meant to be. Do this, then, not for me, but for those we leave behind, and the myth we cast forward.
“This world needs a better champion, but I am the only one that you have available. I hope that I may prove worthy of this burden.”
#
The echoes of the last meal had faded, and the shadows of the men who’d dined had vanished into the night.
The dining hall lay empty, long folding tables left propped open on a concrete floor. The lights were dim, the rafters clogged with cobwebs. Paper plates and cheap plastic forks lay scattered over the tabletops, trash piled in clumps near the remains of empty bowls.
In the dingy room, Brian Clausen wheeled a trashcan between the tables, and took care to wipe down each seat.
“You do realize that we are never coming back?” Berenson asked. The supersoldier sat in the back corner of the room, and sipped from his plastic cup. “You realize that this facility is derelict?”
Clausen shrugged, and swept the next abandoned setting into the trash.
Berenson sighed, heavily, and took an overly-acted drink.
“He has to live, you know?” Berenson said, to break the silence.
Clausen stopped, and tossed his washcloth over his shoulder. “Who?”
“Mister Firenze. Of all of us, he has to live.”
Clausen shrugged. “He’s committed. Same as the rest.”
“He is… important. He has a future.” Berenson said. “You and I? We are each outmoded, in our own way. Two sides of a balanced equation. Should we emerge victorious from this struggle, your end will be dignified. Mine will be flamboyant. But both of us live on borrowed time.”
Clausen eyed him, for a moment. “You still buy that Faction crap?”
“Crap? They had a vision, Mister Clausen, of a world that would not require the kind of sacrifices for which we now muster.”
“Terrorists usually do. Have visions, I mean.” Clausen said.
“No. Not that. Not the murderous nonsense. The ideals… they became twisted. They rotted, as all of men’s constructs do.” Berenson placed his cup on the table behind him, and leaned over his knees as he spoke. “Our world is on a precipice. Soon, we descend into battle with my brother, but he is merely a symptom of a greater ill. We are dying, and few men have a solution.”
Clausen let him ramble, and kept cleaning.
“Do you know who does?” Berenson asked.
“You?”
“Pah!” Berenson cackled at that. “I think too small. The only man at the table is Niklaus Draco. He is whom I battle, when I close my eyes.”
“How’s that?”
“We are a species, tethered by a climbing rope, walking the edge of a cliff. The ground has grown soft, begun to give way, and we teeter over the abyss on a floor of loose stone. The Director is one of few who feels the sand shift, and recognizes what it means. He has a solution, the kind favored by reasoned, careful men. He throws himself prone, and cuts his rope. Any below will fall, and those few above may crawl to safety. It is a completely viable option, if one sees only in terms of fear.”
“You disagree, I’m guessing.”
“When the ground starts to give, and you feel yourself start to fall, one solution is to drop and crawl. The other is to sprint.”
Clausen just shook his head, and went back to cleaning.
Berenson broke the silence, again. “I wanted to tell you. I promised I would keep no secrets. That is the reason I am here, why I fight. I believe we can escape the collapse, not merely endure it.”
Clausen shrugged, and poured out the remains of a coffee, before pitching the cup.
“Nothing? You have nothing to say?” Berenson demanded.
“I’ve got a room to clean.” Clausen answered. “And, you’re stalling.”
Berenson opened his mouth, then closed it, again.
“Bingo.” Clausen stated.
Berenson stood, and said, “Fine, Mister Clausen, down to it. I need to thank your team, for coming with me. It cannot have been easy for them.”
Clausen nodded, and waited.
“I just cannot determine how to do this.”
“Just tell them.” Clausen answered.
Berenson glared, and said, “I am allergic to sincerity.”
Clausen chuckled, and went back to cleaning. Over his shoulder, he said, “Don’t sweat it. You’re always banging on about how they didn’t have a choice in the matter, anyway. No need to thank men you’ve forced.”
“That is… not entirely accurate.”
“Oh?” Clausen stopped dead, once more. “This, I gotta hear.”
Berenson clarified, like an irritated professor, “What I said was, we do not receive the choices you think we have.
When you order a sandwich at your favorite shop, you are responding to chemical compulsions. When you hold the door for an old woman, you are responding to social conditioning. Every choice you have ever made, bar one, is a response to behaviors that are embedded into your core programming.”
“So free will is a joke, right?”
“Precisely. With one, rather cruel, exception.”
“What’s that?”
“Once you are aware of the nature of your programming, you have exactly one choice. You always have it, and it cannot be taken from you.” Berenson paused, to glance from Clausen to the half-cleaned tables. “You can always choose to continue being the person who you are, or to become someone else. You, for instance: all your life, you have been raised to be the kind of person who ‘runs the wrong way when the shooting starts’. A lovely expression, that. All you would have to do, in a single, simple instant, would be to turn back. Be someone else. Be the kind of person who lets someone else solve the problem. Be the kind of person who cannot stand to work with a monster like me, no matter the cause. Be the kind of person who walks away. You always have that choice. It would be easier. Smarter. And yet, you have never taken it. For that, I owe you my thanks.”
Clausen nodded, and grunted in agreement. Then he got back to work.
Berenson stood there, in silence, while Clausen wiped two more loose strokes across the table. Maybe he waited for something. A sign? A protest? Berenson shifted, sighed, and said, “Fine! Fine! You win!” He stood, dusted his palm on his pants, and then held out his hand. “Give me a towel.”
Clausen tossed one across the table, and failed to suppress a smile.
#
Dawn broke over the remains of MacPhereson, cool yellow light that filtered, brighter and brighter, through the fading arms of the storm, a momentary pause in the maelstrom. Vertols buzzed over the twisting sands and broken pillars, the rush of their jets clearing one spot or another as their wake rippled through. The sounds of gunfire had faded with the last of combat, and now another sort of army prowled the shattered buildings, squads of Authority Marines, their adaptive camouflage tinted brown and orange, wrapped in scarves and helmets, securing prisoners and evidence, while corpsmen sorted out the wounded and the dead.
High above, the Cataphract still hung, like silver splinter in the sky, the distant buzzing hive for the flitters, vertols, and dropships that swarmed over the base. Word held that more ships were coming, but down on the surface, all that mattered was the reassurance that it was still up there, impregnable and dominant, securing the battlespace.
Standing on a piece of deck plating, scored and scarred by energy weapons fire, still reeking of ozone and hot metal, Brian Clausen held his arm inside a bone-white sling, the piece of medical gauze a counterpoint to the soot and blood that caked the rest of him. He watched, numbly, as the medical teams separated out the wounded and the dead, as the walking wounded filtered towards drop pads, and the air cavalry came and went, again and again, each pass stirring up the sands that were rapidly reclaiming the wreckage below.
He had watched as the prisoners were herded, non-too-gently, towards pens at the edge of the base, kept under guard by angry naval infantry and marines, who held their rifles just a little too tightly. He had watched as the Agency spooks, with their black armor and knee-pads and glasses, led by Commander Velasquez, perp-walked Chief Raschel past the whole medevac line, letting every soldier and sailor see the parade. Raschel had never lowered his eyes, never turned away, but just kept walking, until he reached his transport. At the edge of it, the Chief had stopped, glanced back, perhaps to Clausen, and given a little “you know that I know you know I know” grin, and vanished inside.
Clausen watched, but did not comment. He counted the dead, and checked for familiar faces on carried litters or autodoc bots, and gave each one that passed one last nod. He should have gone back to the medical prefab, but he had a job out here, and if he went back in, they'd try to stick him with some dope, and make the pain fade out, and he didn't want that. He wanted to remember. He needed to remember.
Two dozen had gone in, two dozen of ASOC's hardest, the sons of bitches who even the Plymouth couldn't kill. Seven walked out. We few remain.
Even the word “walked” was a stretch. Clausen had peeled himself out of medical. Hill and Trevinger had been rushed out on priority medevac up to the Cataphract, unresponsive. Rutman and Jennings were walking wounded. Firenze was found comatose and bleeding on the floor behind an impromptu bunker, until he suddenly bolted upright in the medfab and started screaming. He'd be under observation until God-knows-when.
Clausen had counted them all, each and every one he'd lost, except for one. He turned back, towards the last edge of the base, where the entire spoke of the facility had been torn from the earth, peeled upwards from the burnt crystalline sands like a scorched limb. Skeletal fingers, twisted metal and duraplast, marked Berenson's final stand, the grasping hand turned towards the sky above.
Striker was gone, and the only markers of his passing were the ashes scattered amid the shifting dunes. Already, the Waste was reclaiming the wreck, burying the twisted metal under slowly drifting dust.
There were no signs of the battle there, no echoes of the man who'd walked those final steps, no artifacts of a comrade he barely known, or a friend he'd never thought he'd keep. Death was funny like that, how it changed perspectives.
“It's a damn shame.” A voice stated, and Clausen turned back, to see Firenze, seated in a wheelchair. The hacker looked worse for the wear, wired to IV drips and sensors, one leg broken and up in a cast, ribs wrapped in rejuv tape. At least he was speaking, again.
“Sure is.” Clausen answered. It was good to see the kid moving, even if on a power-chair.
“A damn shame.” Firenze echoed, shaking his head.
“He did it.” Clausen stated, with a bit of a rueful grin. “Crazy bastard.”
Firenze hung his head, sadly, and stated, “He broke his code.”
“How?” Clausen demanded, surprised that he felt indignant about the slight.
“Not like that!” Firenze protested. “It's just... he had two principles, in all the world, just two things he held. He did not lie, and he kept his word.” The hacker let his voice fall, like he was delivering a death notice to grieving family. He said, “He wasn't a hero, but they're going to make him one. In order to keep his promise, he had to sell a lie. Of all the things he'd done, that was one of the few things that he could hold himself 'good' on, and now he's a liar, too.” Firenze paused. “He deserved better than that, and so do we.”
Clausen let his breath out with a whistling sigh, and turned back towards the crater. “Maybe.” He replied, and watched the sands blow. “But maybe not.”
From behind him, he heard Firenze shift, could almost picture the “explain yourself” look that would surely be plastered over the kid's face. Clausen let the moment hang, gave a mental nod to the dead man before him, and then said, “I think... I don’t think he lied. I think that he finally told the truth. Not to us, but to himself.”
“It doesn't change what he's done.” Firenze said, but without fire.
“No, it certainly doesn't.” Clausen agreed. “But it adds to it, fills out the picture.” He paused, raised an invisible glass over the crater, and declared, “Here's to you, you son of a bitch.” After a moment, without thinking, he turned that raised hand into a salute.
He didn't notice, not at first, when Firenze dropped his head in respect, or when that salute spread, over the impromptu encampment, jumped from one soldier to another, from sailor to technician to prisoner, a wave of salutes and bowed heads, removed hats and eyes lowered, as the vanguard stopped to honor the fallen, and among them, the greatest monster of the modern age, or maybe a prisoner of fate who'd given up the final measure, perhaps both and neither. The truth depended on the lie, but that wasn't the kind of thing that mattered to Clausen.
What mattered to him was what was, and what would be, and fr
om this hole in the ground, in the heart of the Waste, they had a chance, again. When he finally dropped his salute, he let himself cry.
Zero Hour
Jackie Carter, trauma nurse, sat in her beach house, and watched the transmission end. The Mirror was promising updates. The Senate had called a special session. The subpoenas were flying. The entire Agency was on trial. Article Two was in motion. Striker was dead. The night was over, and the world could see the leading edge of dawn. In a moment, in that new light, they would finally be able to tell if they had survived the dark passage.
She'd been ready to listen, when death first appeared on the screen. She’d been ready, because the world was ending, and she'd had nowhere to turn. When the broadcast ended, she was done watching, because she was done running. She was done hiding. She was done waiting.
The man had beaten the monster.
Jackie Carter broke from inertia. The world would not burn today. Striker would not get his pyre. He would not win. Jackie Carter heard his question, and stood, in unison with first responders at MacPhereson, to answer, defiant. She would not roll over and die. She would not give him his “actualization”. Jackie Carter would save the world.
She was trained for this. She could see the problem. She could fix it. She was not a victim.
Jackie Carter, trauma nurse, got up from her couch, to make sure the children were safe in their beds. Then she called the hospital, and checked for another shift. There was work to do.
The world would keep turning.
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