Break Free & Be Broken (27 page)

Come on Chales, ten more feet! Get there!

We get there, but not unscathed. Just as we cross the tree line, something hot and fucking violent shreds through the side of my ankle. I fall, causing Jade to fall. She goes toppling past me and collapses onto the ground. I grunt in pain, roll over, and fire every shot I have left at our attacker. I don't know how many times I shot or how many of those shots were true, but it was enough to turn a man into nothing more than a hole ridden piece of garbage dirtying a porch.

I take a quick appraisal of my ankle. It's bad, yeah, but the bullet didn't go in. It took a nice chunk from the side, but there's no hole, and adrenaline is already washing away the pain and preparing me to run again. I limp over to Jade.

"Jade, are you..."

...

Oh fuck...

...

FUCK!

"Noooo! No no no no..." I groan. The world starts swimming. Jade's laying on her side, good eye staring at nothing, mouth moving to soft words directed at no one, with blood gushing from holes in her back and side. "Oh fuck!" I cry.

She's shot... she's dying!

"Jade..." I place a hand on her shoulder. She doesn't respond. Gently-gently!- I shake her. "Jade, please! You gotta get up. You gotta get up so we can get out of here." Her mouth continues to twitch in its silent whisper. Her eye never finds me. "Jade... please..." A wave of despair puts me under and shatters my bones. I fall over her, weeping, overwhelmed by both shock and fear.

Where the fuck is Sage!? He should be here to save us! Someone needs to save us!

Someone like me...

Shouts in the distance draw me back to my senses. I scoop Jade up in my arms and start to run...

Or at least, I try.

Jade isn't a big girl by any means, but that doesn't mean she is light, and trying to run with her weight, plus my bum ankle, plus the state of my body from this nightmare night, is no simple task. I move as fast as I humanly can but it's no speed that's gunna win a race. I don’t know if I'm gunna be able to get away like this. I don’t know if I can pull this off.

Light from a flashlight illuminates some of the area off to my right, then sweeps past, illuminating some of what's to my left. Fuck! Fuck, no! This can't be happening! You'd think having the enemies whip so close to my back would give me the strength to speed up, but it doesn't. I'm stuck in one of those dreams where no matter how hard you try, you just can't run fast enough. The light sways back and finds me. The crack of a rifle is not far behind. Jade whimpers at the sound and buries herself into my chest. It breaks my heart.

Enough of this bullshit. Jade is depending on me.

It's time to wake up.

All at once I fall into myself, and for the first time in my entire life, I become one with my body. Complex issues of control that were always so mysterious suddenly unravel, and I know exactly what it is I must do. My posture lengthens and stiffens in a way that not only makes Jade's weight easier to manage, but actually uses it to increase my momentum and add to my speed. My stride adjusts accordingly, and instead of blundering along with leaping bounds as I was doing, I start pumping with short, crisp bursts of focused power, allowing myself to accelerate ferociously fast. My rib cage goes wide and my lungs become broad. My breathing pattern and heartbeat become the textbook definition of efficiency. Thrusting with new strength, surging ahead with unstoppable force, I cut and weave through the trees like a dagger. Everything is passing by in a blur. Pain, worry, weariness, fear-all such things disappear. The sublime glory of a human body in perfect motion is the only thing I’m aware of.

I can see. I can finally see. Control. It's something I've always had, just didn't know how to use. Well, I see it now, and I know how to tap it.

I'm getting out of this
.

Another burst of gunfire manifests itself as an explosion of bark on a tree not far from me. I laugh. Do you bastards not recognize the greatness of the man before you!? HUH? Do you not understand that I, alone, exist, and that this life is mine?

Everything is so clear. I can't die! I am all that is and ever was! Without me, there is nothing! NOTHING! This life is
mine
to do with as I please!
I
create it!
I
control it!

I am going to make it out of this!

I AM GOING TO BE FREE!

Something smooth and impossibly swift-perhaps a night wisp-slips through my throat. Two steps later and I fall.

I don't mean to, but I just kind of bounce off Jade's body when we hit the ground and end up on my back, facing the sky. It's gray, but not completely. Bright streaks of violet are coloring the heavy clouds, and the clear sky I can see through the cracks is an infinite blue.

How lovely.

I let my hand drift up to my neck. My, it is wet! And warm. I take a look at my hand and gasp at the sight. It's covered in a thick paint of the finest red I have ever seen! It's been a long time since I last had the desire to paint, but with this color, I'd surely do it again. Maybe every day.

"Sage?" It's Jade’s voice. I look around. Sage isn't here.

"Sage?" She pleads.

Oh... she needs him... and I need her to have what she needs... so I suppose
him
will have to be
me
.
"Yes, my love?" Much of my voice is lost to my neck-the sound is pathetically fragile.

"Can we be done? I don't want to do this anymore." Jade's is the voice of a child: a wonderful, innocent child.

"Of course, my dear, of course. Time is ours now. We never have to do anything again."

She smiles her beautiful smile.

"I love you." She says.

"And I love you." I reply.

The words were hardly more than a whispered lament, but it doesn't matter. Jade was gone by the time she finished talking. I know it. I felt her life slip from her hand with the last of her breath, but more than that, I now have the undeniable ache of being alone.

I look back toward the sky, breathing in the silent dawn. I'm tired, but I can't close my eyes just yet. The colors streaking across the clouds are too captivating to miss! Even the gray looks delightful. Rather than take away from the beauty, it gives it a base to stand out against, actually increasing the wonder rather than diminishing it.

I consider taking one last look at Jade, but my body has become altogether too heavy!-

...And besides, I've got a nice view of the heavens like this.

I gotta remember to look up more... enjoy the simple things.

I close my eyes. It will just be for a minute.

Deep breath in...

Chapter the Last

Deep breath out.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Sage may be breathing hard-he's running even harder. It's been 273 seconds since he heard the last gunshot.

This isn't good
, he thinks,
this isn't good at all
.

He can't remember the last time he felt panic such as this, nor the last time he was so irretrievably afraid. Under regular circumstance, he'd suppress such feeble emotion, but this time, he can't.

At least they are helping him sustain his bone splintering pace. He's never forced his body to work this long past its limit-he knows there will be damage-but he can't help it. Not when his love might be in danger.

Three hours
, he growls in his head,
three fucking hours it took to dispatch those men!
He hadn't expected them to be so well equipped and highly trained. He hadn't expected their clever little traps or their frustrating ability to stay a step ahead. He winces as a misplaced step sends a shock of pain through the hole in his side.

He hadn't expected to get shot, either.

Unacceptable. That's what it was. His performance, his planning: all of it. Un-fucking-acceptable. He hadn't been thinking clearly-he knew that he wasn't!- yet he couldn't stop himself... the prize was too damn close.

If it's Jade who has to pay for his recklessness...

He plants a boulder on the track of that thought. That is one place he simply cannot allow his imagination to go. She will be all right.

She has to be
.

He focuses on his memory of the gunshots to distract himself from both the crippling pain of his body and the pitch black possibilities that lie ahead. There was the wild burst, followed shortly after by three single shots, and then-nothing.

This isn't any fucking good at all.

He desperately tries to create a picture of what may have happened that doesn't involve the thing he fears. The initial burst was clearly a battle-there's no question about that. It's the single shots that present him with a bit of mystery, though it certainly sounded like it could have been a chase.

Maybe it was Jux who was running and Jade was chasing him down...

He dismisses the idea immediately. This isn't the time for half-assed optimism. Only five men came after him. More than that surely would have stayed behind to guard their master, and no way Jade could have gotten to him without going through them.

He keeps thinking. Chales probably would have gone back with Jade if she did. Maybe the battle was his final moment, and when he died, Jade got away with nothing but a few shots thrown after her... and right now, she's waiting back by the mountains, ready to gently scold him for his silly behavior... ready to hold him close and show him that everything is fine...

It would be sad if Chales died, but that would be preferable to—

The unmistakable stink of a cigarette tickles Sage’s nostril. He drops down into a crouch while simultaneously bringing the sight of his MP5 submachine gun to his eye. He sniffs at the air, tracking the scent, but alas, the smell was fleeting. There is none left to aid him. He transfers his focus to his ears and eyes, stalking silently ahead. Another whiff of smoke lands upon him. This one he snatches before it can run and uses as a guide.

A few steps to the left, he spots his target: a lone sentinel, leaned back against a tree roughly thirty yards out, staring down at something on the ground. Sage lowers his submachine gun and draws his silenced USP.45 pistol.
Best not disturb the morning just yet
. He points his weapon, then strokes it to life with a finger. It chirps its pleasure at being touched and the man falls dead, though not before decorating the tree he stood against with blood.

Sage is panting. He can't get control of his breath. He watched the man fall and hit the ground. He saw what was at his feet: a body. Maybe two.

An immense drop of emotion, the likes of which he has never felt, churns through his insides. With steps he never wanted to take, he slowly moves himself toward the place he wants more than anything to get away from. He has to stop twice along the journey when his breathing somehow becomes suffocating. He reaches a point where the only way he can continue forward is by staring at his feet and willing them, one by one, to move him. After what feels like a century, he finally reaches the nightmare spot and the hellish sight that it holds.

It's Chales...
he thinks,
poor Chales is dead
. And it's true. Chales is dead-one eye corked open, a ghost of a smile left dancing on his lips, as if staring at some jester only the dead can see. Sage is somewhat surprised at the amount of sadness the sight brings him. How Chales crept so deeply into his heart, he doesn't know. But there's more than just Chales on the ground. There's another, as well.

One he can't seem to see.

His brain simply won't allow him to take a good look. The first time he attempts to force himself, his vision distorts. Colors mix with shapes while shapes collide with colors, causing the picture before him to wiggle and shake as if pounded by waves. It makes him dizzy, so he looks away, but his vision doesn't recover. The world continues to twist and spin.

Reality-or at least his-is crumbling, so he does what any great man would do in the face of impending collapse, says, 'Fuck it,' and tries to look once more. Again his brain refuses to process the information and blasts him with a missile of gut wrenching nausea for his efforts.

Despite the sickness and pain, Sage doesn't divert his eyes. He stares at the horror lying at his feet, desperate to make sense of it. His brain-angered by his petulance-decides to take things a step further and commands his stomach to spew. What comes is no light, easy puke. It's an explosion: a tearing, ripping explosion of acid and waste. Sage's abs contract so violently they damn near wrap around his spine. Many times he is wracked by such convulsions, each one promising to crush his lungs and end his life. He longs for such-he stretches for it with the full length of his arm-yet he continues to live. Each time the pain puts him on the edge of darkness and death reaches out to claim him, a thing most fucked up and cruel pulls him back, leaving him to rot in his anguish.

In the beginning he pukes acid, in the middle he pukes nothing, and in the end, he pukes blood. It isn't until long after his insides are empty and he's utterly drained that the vicious cycle finally stops, but the agony left in his head and chest are so overwhelming he would agree to endure the vomiting for an eternity just to get it to let up for a second.

The pain is there because the game is up. His brain didn't inflict all that suffering to prevent him from seeing. The pain came because he saw.

Jade is dead.

His precious Little, his best and only friend, is dead... and with her, his life.

Everything dissolves into confusion. Nothing makes sense. He is breathing, but he doesn't know why. All that is good in the world is dead, so why isn't he? He looks down at the pistol in his hand. A turn of the wrist and a flick of the finger is all it would take to end this madness, so why hasn't he done it? Why is he still lurking in this shadow world of nothing and death?

It's an important question, one he must answer before the end.

He jerks his eyes back to Jade, furious with himself for taking them off her to look at his gun. Even in death, she is beautiful. Even in death, she is the only good he ever knew. Wasn't his only ambition for her to be happy? Yes, yes. That is exactly what he wanted. She was all he cared about... all he needed... so why is she here, lying dead amongst forsaken trees, instead of somewhere warm and peaceful, happy and alive?

Because of him... that's why. Him and his god damn, unquenchable thirst for revenge...

Sage crumples into his misery, to a place where the whole of existence is stretched out before him. At first all he sees is light, and in that light: possibility. But the light is shrinking, being eaten up by an impossible black. As the light diminishes, the hurt inside him grows. The smaller it gets, the more his body aches and burns; the more his mind is slashed and torn! When the light is but a needle point in an infinite void, the pain crescendos to a level that shatters what little sanity he had left. The emptiness where his mind once dwelt becomes a vacuum for all the suffering of the world. It fills him until he bursts then fills him with more. It's unbearable. He won't survive like this.

Needing death-desperate for it!- he blows out the light. The light goes, the pain goes, and all is black.

'I'm free,' he thinks.

But he's wrong.

The world snaps back around him, except darker now: more ugly, but at least it's clear. This mess wasn't his fault. Sure, he made some mistakes, and there were certainly some things he could have done better, but the blame doesn't lie with him. Juxtapo Schultz is the fucking pig who started this. Juxtapo Schultz is a pig that must die.

And Sage is the one who’s going to make it happen.

Purpose drives sanity back into him with the force of a thousand hammers. He appraises the corpse of the sentinel, who’s dressed the same as the others: wool cap, wool turtleneck, canvas pants-all black. What stands out is that this man, like Sage, has a beard. The lengths aren't the same... their faces aren't the same... but from a distance, they look similar enough, so Sage takes the outfit, figuring that even up close it will give his enemies at least a second’s delay, and a second is often the decider between life and death.

Once dressed, Sage falls to his knees beside Jade. He lifts a strand of hair from her face and tucks it behind her ear, revealing one of his favorite places to kiss. Tears begin to fall and never stop. “I love you, Little.” The words slip through cracked lungs. He places a final, blood soaked kiss on her cold lips and staggers to his feet.

"I always will."

Bring forth the end
.

No longer concerned with stealth, (or anything else for that matter), Sage sprints to the cabin, all his focus securely on the goal. He expects there to be at least a couple men out patrolling the woods, but he sees none.
They must be hunkered down inside-rats defending their fucking nest!

So be it.

He doesn't slow until just before the clearing surrounding the cabin. Blood loss, exertion, depression... something is making him unforgivably weak, and it's getting hard for him to stand. His clock is ticking. There is no more time to stop.

Without even pausing to catch his breath, he marches out of the trees. He immediately spots a guard patrolling the second floor deck, but rather than shrink in fear, he merely throws up a quick wave, locks his gaze on the front door, and keeps moving forward. The guard returns a nod and carries on, proceeding around the corner and out of sight.

Sage walks straight up to the door and throws it open, MP5 at his hip but pointed and ready to shoot. To his left is a table, and at the table sit three eating men. In a split second their eyes go from the heartwarming recognition of a friend to the heart stopping recognition of a foe, but it's already too late. Sage claims their lives before they ever get to stand. They were his from the start: worthless souls waiting to be released. He sent them on their way. He was happy to do it.

For a fleeting moment, the air is clouded with a mist of blood, but as the bodies fall, the blood falls, and all becomes still.

Sage peals through the stillness, right across the room and over the table. As he jumps across it, he grabs the close edge and pulls it over onto its side, creating a protective wall. The table, however, felt too thin, so he doesn't use it. As clunking footsteps converge on him from the porch, he scoots behind a couch on the other side of the room and quickly reloads his weapon.

The front door is booted open and man comes flying inside, only to be put down instantly by a three round burst to the face, making him both dead and unrecognizable.

After the thud of his body against the floor, the cabin goes silent. Sage doesn't like it. He'd prefer the sounds of vengeance and death, so he hops to his feet and rushes to the stairs. He caught a glimpse of Jux when he was scouting, up on the third floor, so that's where he’s going.

He rounds the corner to the stairs without so much as a thought. Mistake. The guard he saw outside is standing at the top of the stairs, rifle aimed and ready. Sage releases all the tension from the muscles in his legs, allowing him to instantly fall, but even so, he wasn't quick enough. A bullet that was meant for his chest digs in at the shoulder, twisting him as he falls. He whips up his SMG as he connects with the floor and holds down the trigger, sending up a handful of wild shots to riddle his enemy with death.

Sage gives himself one breath to lie on the ground, immerse himself in his fiery wound, and bask in the stupidity that brought it to him. He saw that guy when he was outside. He knew he was there, and yet, it slipped his mind and he got himself shot... again. While it's true that he won't have more need of his body later, he needs it at least until he completes his task.

No more mistakes.

He tries to get to his feet but his body is slow to respond. He coaxes it up gently.
Come on, old boy, just a bit more to go
. Once up, he slowly makes his way to the second floor. There is no door at the top of the stairs to hide what is up there-only space-but what that space holds... it's too early to tell. He lurks up the stairs one woozy step at a time, gun held high, ready to ward off any ghouls that attempt to hinder him from his goal.