Robert Crane - Family

“Then you’ll have Omega after you and pissed off as well as the Directorate.” Zollers didn’t flinch. “I’m a counselor, and as such I’d advise you not to get yourself killed here, because if you harm that girl, you’re a dead man, even if I don’t kill you, and you know it.” Zollers raised his pistol, looking down the sights at Mormont. “So…do you want to die today? Because if you shoot her, you’re signing your own death warrant. Put the gun down.”

Mormont pursed his lips. “I’m not gonna just disappear into the Arizona desert.”

Zollers didn’t blink. “You’re either going to the prison under the ground or you’re going under the ground. Your choice. Make it quick. My finger is starting to itch.”

Mormont was still, for just a moment. “In that case—”

I didn’t hear his last words, blotted out as they were by gunshots, as Zollers emptied his gun into Mormont, every shot echoing through the room as loudly as if it were fired with the barrel right by my ear. I dodged out of the way, pulling my mother back to the ground with me. Mormont’s gun fired twice as his muscles contracted one last time.

There was a heavy smell of gunpowder in the air as the smoke began to swirl. I lay on the ground next to Mother, and I watched Mormont collapse onto his back, unmoving. I rolled to him and yanked the gun and taser out of his grasp. There was no sign of movement on his face and he had already stopped breathing. There were a series of red circles spreading out of holes in his torso. I was reminded of Andromeda again as I watched one of the wounds bleed, blinking as his white shirt turned red beneath his suit coat.

I looked up at Zollers, his calm eyes looking at the dead man next to me, his pistol still pointed at Mormont, and by extension of my proximity to the body, me. “Doc?” I asked, jarring him back to himself. He stared down the sights at me, and I caught a flicker of something in his eyes that scared me. “Doc? You can put the gun down now.”

He stared hard down the sights at me for another long few seconds before his arm started working again and the pistol ratcheted down, slowly, a little at a time until it was by his side. He then seemed to take a breath, finally. “Never did trust that son of a bitch,” he said with a nod at Mormont.

“Have you ever killed anyone before?” I asked, getting to my feet.

“No,” he said, staring at the body. “No, I haven’t. Counseled a lot of people about it, though.” He laughed, a little rueful. “You’d think that would have prepared me for how it’d feel, hearing them talk about it, but…” He wore a smile that wavered, then disappeared. “…it really doesn’t.”

I felt a little pity for him, though I didn’t know where from. I had killed before, and I hated it. I cast a look at the two dead vampires on the mats, and realized I didn’t really feel that bad for them because they were beyond subhuman, but I had regretted it when I had to kill Gavrikov. I even felt bad about killing Wolfe, though I could barely admit it to myself, let alone fathom where the hell that infinitesimally small remorse came from. “It’s okay,” I said to him for the first time, and meant it, almost as repayment for all the times he’d told me the same. “You might want to put the gun down,” I told him as I watched his hand shake. He looked down at it and his fingers unclenched. The pistol fell from his grasp and to the mat as he stared at it. I watched him, saw his eyes widen and his head jerk up a moment before a taser swung around and hit him in the side of the head as he tried to dodge.

I whirled and saw Mother holding the taser by the prongs that had been lodged in her skin. She dropped it to the ground. “I didn’t really want to knock him out like that,” she said, and I looked – Zollers was facedown on the mat, eyes closed – “but I need Directorate complications right now like I need another hundred thousand volts.” She centered her gaze on me. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not going with you,” I said, already down and checking on Dr. Zollers. I touched him briefly with my ungloved hands, long enough to establish he had a strong pulse and was still breathing, but no more than a couple seconds. “Are you insane? He just saved us from being kidnapped by Omega.”

“And that’s all well and good,” she said, and I felt her come up to my shoulder, “except that the next logical step would be for us to be confined in our own private cells by the Directorate instead.” I looked up and saw her blue eyes flash cold. “And I personally am not looking to be a prisoner of Erich Winter. Not now, not ever.” She reached down and I felt the pressure of her hand on me, on the shoulder, squeezing my arm, tugging me to my feet. I came up and threw it off.

I watched her eyes blaze in reaction when I did it, and I planted my feet as she stared at me. “I’m not going with you.”

“I guess you’ve forgotten what happens—”

“When I break the rules?” I asked. “When I don’t follow your commands?” I circled her and she circled me, keeping our distance in a staredown unlike anything I’d done with her before.

“Everything I do, I do for your own good,” she said, and it poured a little more gasoline on the fire inside me. “The things I do for you, even now, with Andromeda, are for your future—”

“You still treat me like a child,” I said and stopped circling, causing her to do the same. “Feed me a line about rules, or how it’s all for my own good, and stop short of trusting me with the truth.” I smiled, and tried to make it devastating. “All these years and you’re still trying to keep me in a little box in the dark.”

She took a step forward and caught me flatfooted. It was stupid for me to be so smug that I didn’t expect her to come at me, but I didn’t, and she landed a slap on my cheek that sent me into a turn and a fall that I rolled out of when I hit the mat. I came to one knee near the wall and looked down at something next to me, and realized it was the katana. I looked at her, then at the sword, and picked it up and pointed the blade toward her, staring down the sleek metal surface, at my reflection in it, distorted and rounded. Then I looked up at her, at the shock on her face.

“So that’s how it is?” She stared at me in disbelief, then I watched the emotion dissolve into a cold fury. “All right.” She looked around and found the broadsword a few feet to her left and stooped down to pick it up, pointing the blade at me. “You know what this means, right?”

“You don’t point a blade at anything you don’t mean to have dead,” I said grimly.

She stared at me and I could feel the electricity between us as though the taser were firing from her eyes to mine. “So you haven’t forgotten.”

I stared down the blade at her. “I haven’t forgotten.”

She watched me as I rose to my feet, the sword never wavering. “Then it’s on you, what happens now,” she said. Before I could respond, she was in motion, her blade leaping at me. I parried, spinning to the side, surprising her and batting her weapon away. She came at me again and I dodged, riposting from the side and catching her with a glancing blow that elicited a grunt of surprise and pain. I took a step back, my blade still aimed at her, and I let a smile cross my lips. “Been practicing?” she asked.

“You don’t think I’ve just been sitting around watching TV and dating boys the last six months, do you?” I asked. I whipped the sword around to a defensive posture above my head in a flashy move that was crisp and beautiful and could have been pulled out of the katas she used to teach me.

A smile crossed her lips. “I suppose I sort of did.”

I darted forward with the sword, clashing with hers as she retreated from my onslaught. I hit my blade against hers, chipping metal from both, and hammered it again, causing her to flinch from the strength of my attack. “Then I guess that makes you kind of an idiot, doesn’t it?” I plunged the sword for the third attack, this time connecting hard with her hand, and she let out a cry of pain as her weapon flew out of reach and she bent at the waist, holding her injured hand.