THEME:
Assault Suits Valken: Beyond The Top
Armor is... gone, mostly.
Structure is all in the reds and high yellows.
Cognition is functioning, but all levels of output have been reduced. So many components have been burned out or destroyed. So many good spirits dying a good technocratic death.
John would laugh at the irony, if he still possessed a diaphram, and if the vocoder he currently used to talk would make it sound like anything other than tearing metal.
He knew. He knew, and he knew that Director Belltower knew.
This was not a fight he could walk away from. He was too damaged. Too slow. He would fight, because that that's what he was made for- he might even win, temporarily. They wouldn't expect him. When a HITMARK hits the red like this, they shut down or SCRAM their reactors. They don't have the drive- not if they're functioning within expected parameters.
Panopticon doesn't inspire loyalty in their troops. Not real loyalty. It's all imagined, all conditioned- just toys ready to be thrown away at the best opportunity. How many lie broken in their wake, in the wake of the god-like thing that the Computer had become, that doesn't respect anything.
How many of his brothers and sisters in the corps disrespected like that?
No, they would not see him coming. They wouldn't expect that as damaged as he is, as slow as he is, that he would risk everything. Not when they know they wouldn't, without invoking a Control code.
Not when have no respect for their enemies.
But this is the choice he made.
There's a discontinuity in his thoughts. That's been happening more and more. Lost time, lost seconds. He's moved slightly, and the whole room seems different.
Jamelia puts a hand on his shoulder. That's what it feels like. As though she's standing beside him- too close to the still red hot of his primium skeleton. Touching what should be polished metal bone hot enough to melt steel, let alone skin.
She isn't beside him- John references his UDEI's snapshot of the room. She's standing at the far end, next to the cargo pallets. There's several, ranging from large boxes to small boxes.
One of them looks like a coffin, and- there's a discontinuity, and John is beside her. He hasn't moved. He's still on the other side of the room. But it feels like he's moved.
John's seen this before. Seen it, but never from a Technocrat so senior as Jamelia Belltower. He knows- he's known that everything's been getting all mixed up, that- even if she's made every effort to keep it secret, that the boss lady had been investigating old projects, old techniques. Psychic powers. That's why she brought in Harlan, who manages to simultaneously guard his psychic presence enough that their enemy can't easily pick them out of a crowd, and yet leave a smear of resonance on everything he touches that screams 'super psychic commando'.
John remembers that she already decided to trust him once. This revelation? He knows that she knows that there's something going on with him. That he's versed in Dimensional Science, that he's an AI specialist when he wants to be. A man of many talents, our John Kessler.
He feels her hand on his shoulder again, and this time he opens himself up. Lets himself be drawn into the link. Lets the world fade from his eyes for just a moment, in the space between seconds.
John Kessler stands next to Jamelia Belltower. He's clothed. In flesh and garment. His hair is back, the mullet in all its glory. But his hulking, glowing, radioactive skeletal form still stands hunched over across the room. He hasn't really moved. He's not even really here. This is a psychic link- a trading of thoughts and emotions.
It's trust, a last offering to the damned.
"Director," John says- and his eyes pick up a subtle motion from her. There and quickly gone. She has her hands on the long crate. The one with the seeming of a coffin.
"John," she says. Her voice is neutral- but there's an undercurrent there. She isn't disappointed. She's not angry but neither is she optimistic.
"It's not good. I'm not... I'm not going to be able to make it," he begins.
"John..." she interjects- but then falls quiet. She turns to look at him- just slightly. Angling so that she isn't really turning, so that her gaze pans across the room, seeming to focus on her assets, seeming not to see the so subtle imprint of John Kessler's self standing beside her. But her eyes pass over his own.
"They won't get me- if that's what you're worried about. I won't compromise the mission- or this team. I won't compromise your trust," he continues. "You'll have to go on without me... That's going to be rough. You're going to need someone else to trust- but I think you're already prepared for that."
John does not glance at Harlan.
Jamelia sighs. It's a very humanizing motion. He'll miss that. He'll miss breathing in general- not that he needed to, not really. So many things gone now.
But he grins all the same.
"Don't worry-"
"John."
He pauses, snapping to attention.
"This isn't about any of that. I know you'll do what's needed. I know. I've trusted you. It isn't easy. But I know."
John remains silent, the question in the air.
"There's another way," she says, and her words echo those of his old Drill Seargant, Fitzsimmons- just as the man's words echo those he's heard a dozen, a hundred times in his life before. There's another way. This isn't the end for you. Stand up soldier, and do your duty. This is your choice and your choice alone, John Kessler.
It's the way she said it, though. Almost sad-like. A difficult decision, a difficult solution. But none of the choices that define him were easy. John steps forward. Not really, he stil hasn't moved from across the room. But the imprint of him steps, and then he sees the words Jamelia's hands were covering up.
M-1992 Z.E.R.U.E.L. Combat Chassis
Why-
"Wha-"
He doesn't even get a word out when Jamelia moves her hands.
Full Synthetic integration required.
"Oh."
But then he grins. He's already done the math. Sure, it's a sacrifice of the last part of him that makes him really human- after so many other sacrifices. It would be an end of John Kessler
the man.
But it wouldn't
his end.
He grins sardonically, and steps forward with a wrenching jolt of twisted metal, his body turning towards the coffin shaped box. He takes a second step. Then another. Then another.
It seems like it takes forever, but it only takes moments to cross the room to her side.
"John, I can't make you do this. I can't even ask you to do this. Full synthetic integration? You know what that will do to you." she says, her voice low and clipped. The words don't come out easily. They're born of trust and in defiance of her training as an operative. "I won't force that on you."
Not 'cannot'. Will not. It's the difference that makes everything, just as Jamelia Belltower is the woman who made everything different.
"Do not... worry," he says through the vocoder. "Thank... you... for everything."
His head turns, casting his eyes across everyone in the room, watching them, watching their resolve.
"But...
it has to be this way."
