Janice XXIV: The Wolf
The snow falls in flurries all around them. The lights from the cracked-open house highlight madly whirling flakes. The visibility is so low that they're in a little bubble of their own. The ice-choked river below them burbles.
"I heard you died," the man Wolf says. He shoots. A squirrel drops dead, smearing red across the snow. There's a hint of something else, some power. Not enough against primium-jacketed rounds.
Ami smiles sadly. "I did."
"You should have stayed dead."
"I wanted to. Even the Union respected my DNR. But I never can leave well-enough alone, can I? I was reborn, and who I became went and dragged me back." Ami laughs, but there's no real humour in it. "She's regretting that right now. But she agreed to give me what I wanted. And a deal is a deal. If she didn't want this, she shouldn't have agreed to what she did."
"What does a dead woman want?"
"Well, for one, to talk to you."
Wolf adjusts where he stands. "I would have found you anyway even if you hadn't called me in. I recognised the authorisation codes. You used that missing Control code. The one you stole."
"Misappropriated, technically."
"You stole it from me. I trusted you."
"Now that, that was a mistake. I don't know why people keep on doing that." Ami shakes her head sadly. "People can't seem to remember I'm someone who worms inside your confidence then turns that against you."
"I couldn't do a thing while the order was in effect. But it's over now. Roth walked into your web. Another one of your victims. They should have called you 'Mantis'. Is he dead?"
"Oh, I wasn't involved in that. It was her plan, not mine. She dragged me back to life to get help with it." Her eyes narrow. "Don't worry, Wolf, he's not dead. She couldn't kill him if she'd even tried. Which she didn't."
That doesn't reassure him. "If she's like you, her words are as dangerous as her weapons."
"Oh, you flatterer, you." Ami smiles at him, her smile a knife edge in the gloom. "So, how've you been? I see you've lost weight. A lot of weight. Everything apart from your brain, in fact." Her voice grows tighter towards the end. "Wolf, what did they do to you?"
"Don't ask what they did to me. Ask what I did," he says, suddenly sounding far older than the false face he wears.
"They cut out your brain and stuck it in that machine. They took your heart, your lungs, your limbs, your dick; even bits of your brain. What are you, now? What kind of life is that?"
"They call it an ATLAS. And I deserve it. I defected. I had it coming."
"Wolf." There's a catch in Ami's voice. "Wolf, what happened? I know I… I fell apart. But you…"
"Don't give me your
false sympathy." Wolf's grip on the rifle jerks dangerously as the wind picks up, whirling flurries into the air. "This is your fault. Yours and Hyena's. The two of you poisoned Sparrow. At least she had the guts to take her punishment. You dragged me down with you."
"You don't understand. I needed those two codes to-"
"You
used me."
Ami narrows her eyes, bares her teeth. A useless human gesture against a machine-man like this. "I needed to find
her. You don't understand! It was her fault! Jodi Blake was behind it all! I know she was! I know it! She had to have planned it all!" She takes a gasping breath. "I nearly got her! Nearly!"
"You didn't."
"I didn't." Ami's voice is suddenly cold and dead. "She was there. She nearly killed me. Then she put me in… that
thing. I didn't… I died rather than accept
their offer." She shivers, and not from the cold. Tears leak down her eyes. "Then this woman drags me back!"
"You always lie. You cry on demand."
"I know. But I'm not lying here. I was happy to be dead."
"I trusted you." Thunder booms in the distance. The show is becoming sleety.
"I know."
"I
loved you. Because of your games!"
Ami sighs. "You didn't. You just lusted after me."
"You never loved me back," Wolf says, ignoring her.
She doesn't even dignify that with a response.
"It's your fault I'm like this," Wolf states. The bridge creaks as he takes a step forwards. "I had to get out. Because of you. Because of how you used me. I ran for it. Control wouldn't accept the loss of two Codes. I even managed to get over things. After 1999, I thought I was safe!"
Ami takes a step towards him. "You know the Eye never looks away," she says. "Who would hide someone like us?"
"The Akashics did," he says, voice soft, a lover's whisper. "It wasn't easy. They didn't trust me. But I made myself useful. And people like us know how to hide."
Another step forwards. "You got sloppy."
"Of course I did. It'd been thirty years. And now look at me! A cut-up brain in a HITMark. They can press a button and bring me to heel any time they want!"
"They've tamed you, Wolf. No more a wolf. Now just a dog."
He laughs like a dying man. "Not quite. Roth went out of contact. He's the one with my leash. For a day or two, I'm free. I recognised the code. I recognised your presence. And then you called me and gave me this RD hideout as an excuse." He exhales. "You always lured me with what I wanted."
"Guilty as charged," Ami says, with a faint smile.
"I want to kill you. I have standing orders to track down the remainder of Vigilance. Trim the loose ends."
"That's what I want."
They're face to face now. "Do you know who's giving me my orders?" he breaths, breath warm against her. "The one who's got Roth brought to heel."
Ami blinks, frowns. This isn't how the script should go. "Why ask that? No, no, there must be a reason. Someone we know. You wouldn't be like this for…" She falls silent. "Hyena. Someone gave her power again."
"They loved her so, so much they made a copy of her. An alpha fork. I don't know if the one I'm following is the original or the copy, but it doesn't matter. They're both her. I'm allowed to kill one of them, though. That'll come. In time. But not the one who's got my leash."
"Life isn't fair," Ami says. "Of all things,
she's the one they trust again?"
"I can't kill her," Wolf says. "But I can kill you."
"That's what they did to you," Ami says, softly. "They've short-circuited your desires. She must have found it amusing in her smug way to chain an Akashic to his worldly wants. You want to hunt down and kill every remnant of Vigilance because it's your revenge. And you always wanted to get even. 'Don't get mad; get even'."
He just growls softly at that in affirmation.
"The Iterators got smarter to think of something like that. You know they chained you like this. And you don't care. Because it gets you your revenge. Clever little machines."
"Wasn't them. It was the Order."
"Hah, yes." Ami leans in on tip toes, lips hovering before his. "You disgust me. You can't kill the one person who deserves it most. Does it gnaw in your gut, to have that simmering rage forced into other things? Every time you see Jazmin and imagine breaking her neck, does it get you hard?"
"You're trying to provoke me."
"Of course I am. I came here to die. To die and tell you that I'm sorry."
Wolf jerks back, dislodging snow from his shoulders. "No," he breathes. "No. No. You can't do that. You can't apologise."
"But I want to. I'm dead. That means I can say things tha-"
He backhands her. He pulls the blow. It means it's only enough to send her sprawling and spitting blood. "I want to kill you. But that doesn't mean I have to. I was going to. Right until you
mocked me by being sorry. As if that could make up for
anything you did to me." He leans down, gloating, his expression one of terrible joy. "I have room in my orders to take a high value target alive. And that'll hurt you more than I'd enjoy killing you. I don't get pleasures that don't come from the wire in my head very much." He shifts his weight. "I'm going to relish this one. The impotent rage. The sight of you on the table. The knowledge that for all the pride you took in your body, you're just another cyberbrain."
Ami goes for her phone. But as she presses it to her temple, it fails to transform.
Wolf only shakes his head. "No. Do you think I'd let you escape this way? You're never going to stop me, Ami. I'm not going to let you go. No matter what. If you throw yourself in the river, I'll fish you out. If you shoot yourself, I'll recover you. And when I get back to base, I'm going to have them pull out your DNR memory tape. And we can continue our... talk.
"Because, after all. I'm just recovering a disloyal asset. And making use of it. For the good of the Union. For Panopticon. For Oversight."
"Wolf. Wolf. If you have any mercy, any trace of who you were, you'll let me die." There's actual fear in her voice, or at least something close enough to it. "
Please. For old time's sake. For revenge. For whatever reason you want. That's all I want."
The man exhales, as if enjoying a fine cigar. "No."
Staggering upright, Ami wipes her mouth on her sleeve. "I brought one last trump card along. Someone else is coming," she says, wincing from her bruised jaw. "Just in case you… you tried something like this. Someone that can stop you. Stop you from getting your hands on me."
"A lie. That's all."
"No," Ami says. "it's n-"
"-ot."
Janice's mouth finds it shaping the end of a word she hadn't begun. Ami is gone, sunk back into the black waters of her subconscious - and she's left a poisonous message, the memories of that conversation.
The man, the killer, the machine - Wolf - stands before her. His rifle is some high tech Technocracy thing that can probably aim itself. Death hangs heavy around it. She's seen the stigmata-wounds on Selene's body. His body is primium through and through. He's stronger than any man, and madder than any machine. Mad as in angry, and mad as in insane.
She's heard rumours of what they do to ATLASes. Every one a work of art, a mind twisted around its breaking points until they know what was done to them and still
want to obey.
And her suicidal, malicious past life - who died in a Caul, rather than Fall, after betraying almost everyone she ever cared about - is gone. Fled, just so she can avoid having to live again. Gone so she can avoid having to face the consequences.
Thunder booms. Sleet slashes down. Winds whip the icy waters. The storm is here.
In the end, it's always a choice.
Red on Snow
[ ]
Fight For Her Life: The storm is overhead, crackling with power. She is a weather witch. Even in the face of an ATLAS, she'll fight for her life.
[ ]
Flee For Her Life: This will not be where she dies. The storm winds can carry her away. Exit Witch, pursued by Brainwashed Killing Machine
[ ]
Give Up Her Life: There's nothing that defines your life like how it ends - and a witch can always die on her own terms. Her life force should be enough to burn this abomination from the world, setting the soul within free - and maybe paying off her own debt too.
[ ]
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