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Killjoy realized that the old adage was right: blood really is thicker than water, she discovered, as she watched the first raindrops struggle to dilute the glistening red pool radiating outward from her girlfriend's now-lifeless body.
It had all happened so fast that she still had not fully processed it. She knew that she was alive — at least, she was pretty certain of that. Metaphysical questions aside, she knew that everyone else was dead. Raze had been the last to expire.
How many minutes had passed now? She had held on for what felt like forever, struggling just to keep her eyes open. Killjoy had thrown the whole book at her, exhausting her medical options until the only recourse she had left was to squeeze her partner's hand tightly and meet her fading gaze. She wasn't sure if Raze was the last one to die, but all of her thoughts were bent to the slim chance that they could make it out of this together. When Raze exhaled her last, her fingers going limp in Killjoy's palm, her thoughts had nowhere to go. They spilled out on the paving stones like free-flowing blood, haphazard and aimless.
"Can anyone hear me?"
At some point in her despondent trance, she had fumbled her way over to a radio unit. She did not know whose it was; it might have belonged to Brimstone, whose burly form was splayed out on the stones, his limbs violently twisted in sepulchral agony. It might have belonged to Sova, who lay face-down in his own blood, the jet-black shaft of the arrow embedded in his eye snapped in half by his death throes. It might have even belonged to Reyna, who had curled up into a fetal position in her final bleak moments, appearing almost as though she had fallen asleep.
Regardless of its previous owner's fate, it was in her hands now — and it was her only way to contact headquarters, where the rest of her Protocol colleagues would be, unaware of what terror had just transpired here at an otherwise inconsequential team dinner at Reyna's sanctuary.
"Hello? Is anyone there? If you can hear me…"
She trailed off. She tried to keep it together. As difficult as it was at first, she was buoyed by hope. Surely, someone had to be there on the other end of the line. They wouldn't just abandon her to her fate like that, assuming her dead like the others!
Right?
"Can anyone hear me…hello?"
The line was alive only for as long as she breathed life into it. Once her voice died, the connection went dead with it. She was shouting into the ether. The outside world that she had left only hours ago might have ceased to exist.
The blood-soaked sanctuary courtyard had not, though. The rain fell unevenly at first, and then the heavens opened up.
"Someone. Please."
She did not understand why she felt pain, even though she was unhurt. She had miraculously escaped unharmed; was it really a miracle, though? It felt like singular damnation. It felt purposeful.
"Anyone? We've got…we've got fatalities."
She had repeated herself so much by now that her throat burned, and her voice creaked into the receiver. It only sizzled in response, spitting scornful static back at her.
"Everyone else…but me."
The realization had set in that she truly was alive, and she was the only one. She at first thought she had escaped death, but she now realized it was almost certainly deliberate. Their attackers had moved with a singular purpose, cutting through them at a blistering pace, and it was by design that Killjoy was the only one left standing as a testament to their ferocity and efficiency.
"They're gone."
She said it for her reassurance as much as theirs.
"And I'm here…alone."
She was still holding Raze's hand with her own, though the familiar warmth had seeped out and her tan palm had turned wan. To let go felt like giving up; to hold on gave her that hope, the hope that she needed to stay afloat and not dissolve into withering strands like blood in the rain. She needed to get home; she needed to bring them home.
"Sage?"
Sage was the first person she thought of. Sage could save them. Sage had to save them. Could Sage save them all, though? Would she be able to after so much time? How many minutes had passed now? Hours? Killjoy was normally vexed by questions without answers but now they just felt like a core component of her new, lonely reality.
"Viper?"
Viper was her rock. Viper was her shield. Viper was her confidant and friend, and was without equal. And where was she now? Was she even listening in, or anywhere close to the receiver on the other end? Maybe she was dead too, somehow. Maybe this was the end. Killjoy couldn't weep for those who might be dead, though; there was still a chance she could save them all, if she could only patch her voice through across the void.
"Waylay?"
Waylay was a friendly enigma to her. The woman had come in like a shot, acting like she was suddenly in charge, but Killjoy had come to appreciate her wry sense of humor and her talent for discretion. She was the wisest young woman that Killjoy had ever met, and packed years of experience and hard-won victories behind her otherwise smooth and carefree expression.
"…anyone?"
The rain was inconsistent, falling at times in sheets and at other times offering little more than a sad dribble, pitiful like the tears staining lines down her cheeks. Her jacket kept her dry, but not warm; she was as cold as Raze's lifeless body was, or at least felt that way. Her heart still beat, but for how long? Perhaps quitting would be a mercy.
But she would not yet.
She lay down at some point, disregarding the blood as it stained her bright yellow jacket. To protect it would be futile; materialist philosophies faltered and fragmented in the face of naked death. She could clean it later, if that hypothetical later even came. For now she just wanted to be by Raze, and look up at the sky, and not speak for a little while.
Her voice was tired from her fruitless attempts at communication. The radio was within reach; any moment now, it would squawk to life like a surprised chicken, making her leap out of her trance and drawing her back to hope. It was a distant prospect now, but that didn't mean it was impossible. She just had to wait patiently and hold on a little longer.
There was something infuriating about the way that Raze's blood was giving way to the rain. It should have held on longer, just like she should have — and now the water was washing it into the cracks and channels of the stonework, ushering it away as though attempting to wipe her girlfriend away entirely and spell the end of her life. Killjoy raged at it silently at first, as though she could dip her fingers into the sticky mire and separate blood from water, saving one from the other and thereby saving her lover. And as she watched it wash away, she realized there was nothing she could do but offer silent, begrudging acceptance. She resigned herself to the inevitability.
That didn't have to be the end, of course. Sage had surely heard by now. Perhaps she was wondering why she had not heard from Reyna in some time, when they went barely an hour without texting one another? She would muster up the courage to inquire, and figure out something was terribly wrong, and would sally forth to save the day.
Perhaps Viper had realized something was amiss. Though she and Reyna had a complex relationship, they were deeply intertwined and their love was genuine — and Viper would be able to feel her sudden absence, in spite of their physical separation. She would sense the emergency and rally a team and would sally forth to save the day.
Maybe Waylay would grow curious in the way that she did, and get up to mischief. She would sneak her way into a forbidden room and pick up a radio as if to pull a prank, only to realize there was already another voice occupying the line. She would hear Killjoy's pleas for help, and her noble heart would urge them to sally forth — to save the day.
It was darker now. The sun had fully set. The courtyard torches were dim and dead, extinguished by rain or sputtering out on their own. The pallor of rainclouds hung low overhead, obscuring all but the most determined of moonbeams.
She remembered books she read at a younger age, in another life. She was fascinated by the culture of men like Maxim and Oppenheimer, who invented with innocent intent but ended up with cruel machinations staining their legacy. How she had insisted she would never be one of them, no matter what she did! Her hands would never bring that kind of terror into the world. Her intentions were not only innocent, but pure; she would not fall prey to the same trap that they did. But she wondered now if she too had been led astray. There was no glory in the shedding of blood — only silence, and loneliness for those who remained behind. Was Hiram Maxim looking down at her from heaven, or up at her from hell? And where would she join him? Was she just another Oppenheimer, damned to be a son of a bitch whose grim legacy would serve as a warning for future generations? Would she be like them?
The rain fell harder. A sharp wind blew in over the swerving facade of the sanctuary walls. Her tears mixed with the vanishing blood beneath her.
She walked from one body to the next, looking down at the faces of her friend, her colleague, her mentor, her lover.
Reyna appeared almost peaceful in death. Brimstone's agonized, final scream would never escape his silent throat. Sova's broken, blinded form made her turn away in despair. She could not bear looking at Raze.
"Tayane, please. Don't go."
She begged and pleaded like there was still a chance, like she had a choice.
"Don't leave me here alone. What am I going to do?"
She asked herself as much as she asked the dead. They had no boon to offer her, though.
"I can't do this by myself."
Whether or not she could, she didn't want to. How could she bear all of these crosses onward? How could she part like this, when there was so much left unsaid and undone? She took Tayane's hand in her own and caressed it but found no blood remaining. Only cold rainwater ran down her knuckles and pooled in her palm.
"Please. Don't go."
She had already left. The last vestiges of light that had lingered in her eyes upon the threshold of death had winked out, like candles in the last hours of dawn finally reaching the base of their wick and casting off into the unknown, plunging their surroundings into darkness. There might have been a chance, but it was gone now. Klara could not imagine how else this could end.
"I'm sorry."
I'm sorry I brought you here. I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention. I'm sorry I didn't anticipate this. I'm sorry I made you love me.
"I'm sorry for…"
All of it.
There was no glory on a silent battlefield. Nothing here could be salvaged and restored to some good, even if by some miracle the lights on the horizon line that swept in low and fast like a descending hawk alighting upon prey were for her, for her slain comrades and friends. There would always be a black mark upon the memory of today, staining it forever. It would be inescapable.
"I'm sorry for everything. Tayane…"
She choked on her own words like they were the venom that had seeped down Brimstone's throat and clawed at his pale cheeks in his final moments. Killjoy had watched it all. She remembered now.
Broken. She had broken him before he had died. There was fury in her eyes that gave way to a cold resignation, as though she had gotten what she wanted and yet had nothing at all. And before she had turned and departed with her team, she had cast one final look at Killjoy — as if to anchor her to the spot, at her girlfriend's spasming and wretched form. To condemn her. Viper had condemned her and then cast off, returning to her own world. That was the last thing she remembered.
The lights shone down on her, and it was no moonlight that coursed over the blood-soaked shoulders of her duckling-yellow jacket. The aircraft hovered overhead for a few moments, surveying the scene as though it were a carrion bird seeking the finest pickings, before it found a landing spot nearby. Killjoy was vaguely aware of the hoarse shouting, the bright flashlights, the sounds of Sage retching as she stood over Reyna's placid body, and the feeling of a firm gloved hand on her shoulder.
She could not bring herself to turn around and look Viper in the eye. Her Viper, she knew. It didn't matter to her, though. She would see condemnation no matter what.