A Man of His Time
By NFalc
17
Sins
In what may well be the last hour of my life, my senses have come alive. I can feel the vibrations of the vehicle beneath me, the heavy steel of the weapon on my lap, the blood rushing through the vessels of Mary's leg beneath me, the air entering my lungs.
I've become more aware than I have ever been, perhaps more than I will ever be again. It's do or die - I kill Cheryl or she kills me. And I'm ready and waiting, holding my breath. The vehicle comes to a stop, the vibrations cease. We've arrived.
Fifteen minutes earlier, we'd gone over the final battle plans. "The majority of our strength will be directed towards a frontal assault," Ash had explained, Dustin perched upon her shoulder. "This will involve all women except those specifically selected for other tasks. A large number of the men will assist from the ceilings, using their zipcords and harpoons. The battle won't be easy, but we do have an ace in the hole.
"Adam, Jot, Mary and Dustin will use a hidden entrance that was depicted on our schematics. Entering from the rear, they will run a seek-and-destroy mission to hit the leaders of the Establishment while we provide a distraction. At this juncture, leaders such as Cheryl are directly controlling the Establishment forces - without them, the Establishment will crumble from the inside.
"This will not be easy for any of us. There will be losses. Some of you will die. But if you want to see a new day, free of the Establishment, a day where the people really have control of the government, fight. If you want to see a day where men and women will be equals once more, fight. If you give a damn about anything we stand for, fight. Fight with everything you have. We may yet end this before everything falls apart."
We leap out of the car, followed by Mary, who carefully comes to a standing position with her feet spread on either side of us.
"Remember," Jot says. "We have to get into the command area first. You're getting us in," he calls up to Mary.
"I know," Mary says. "I'm the only one who can crack their systems."
"From there, we have three targets to hit: Cheryl and her two subordinates. Adam, Dustin and I will split up, each taking one of the targets. Hit them wherever you can, just be damn sure you're accurate. It doesn't matter whether we survive, so long as we accomplish this goal, and do it fast, so the frontal assault can take advantage of the chaos."
Dustin and I both nod. We both knew the risks, and we still had volunteered. I'm not completely sure why Dustin was so set on coming along, but I know my own reasons, and that's enough.
The rear entrance is through an old tunnel, covered by a large, rusting red door. Mary shoves at it, but it doesn't open. "The lock's jammed." She calls down.
"We expected that might be the case," Jot tells Dustin and I. "Two of us need to go up there and blow it open. Dustin, come with me. We need to get up there," he calls up to Mary.
She lowers her hand, and Dustin and Jot climb on. I decide to get on as well, but when they jump out onto the lock, I clamber along Mary's arm to her shoulder. "How are you doing?" I ask.
"I'm okay," she answers. "A little nervous, but I'd be stupid if I wasn't."
"Are you totally sure you want to do this?"
She turns slightly to me, so I can see her in profile. She has never looked more beautiful than now, seeing her in profile, the moonlight shining down on us. "If it wasn't for them, I might never have killed anyone. I might have lived a normal life, and eventually found you out of sheer good luck. We might have lived happily and peacefully ever after. But that didn't happen. They took away our chance, and the only way to get it back is to destroy them."
There's a tiny noise below us, and I see Jot and Dustin waiting at the lock, which has a wisp of black smoke coming out of it. Mary takes them onto her hand, and I slide back down to join them.
"Okay, you should be able to kick it in, now." Jot calls up.
Mary carefully steadies us, then raises her huge leg and with one swift motion knocks the door down. Dustin, Jot and I struggle to remain on her hand as she rushes into the building, running down the tunnel.
At the end is another door - but it doesn't look like we can kick it down.
"The door is made of reinforced steel," Jot says. "The only way in is through that keypad." He points to a small panel on the door's left side. "Mary, we need you to put us down. At this point we need to have the ability to move independently."
She nods, lip curled as she studies the keypad. She kneels and lowers us to the floor. After we hop off, she takes a few tools out of a small knapsack, then sets to work on the keypad.
Jot motions me over to the side of the corridor, where he and Dustin are standing. There, built into the wall is a small iron grate, which looks just tall enough for us to fit into if we crouched. "You two, help me move this."
"Why are we opening the grate?" I ask. I've got a strange feeling in my stomach, like I'm missing something, something important.
"We need to have an escape route, in case something goes wrong. I'm just planning ahead." Jot says.
I help them move the grate out of the way. It's better to have a backup plan; Jot's just being smart.
"I think I'm almost done, guys." Mary says.
"We should get into position to cover her," Dustin says.
"We're in position," Jot says. There's something weird about the expression on his face.
"Got it!" Mary says.
The door slides open.
It happens so fast, I can't even see it. I just hear the gunshots, louder than anything else in my life, and feel the ground shake. I look up, and Mary's lying on the floor, hair fanned out behind her, eyes wide open. There's a small trickle of blood flowing from the side of her mouth.
A small red pool forming around her.
I cry out without words, ripping my throat, reaching outwards, stumbling towards her. This can't be. I have lost so much already, and now Mary... She can't leave me now.
In the distance are heavy footsteps, guns reloading. A hand grasps the back of my shirt and pulls me backwards forcefully, as I keep reaching out to her. I need to be with her. If she's going to go, I have to say something... For once I need to say something. Tell her I love her. Tell her I'm sorry. Tell her something. Oh God.
I'm pulled into the safety of the grate opening, and though I fight and claw to be free, I'm held firm. "It's not safe, Adam," Dustin says. "I know you want to, but you can't." I hear almost as much anguish from him as I feel in my own heart.
I look out helplessly, as the Establishment troops cluster around her. She turns her head, and looks at me, and (God help me) she smiles. She mouths words, although she can't speak them. It takes a second for them to rearrange themselves in my mind. "I did it for you." She said, "I did it for you."
And now I weep, truly and honestly, sobbing, although no sound comes out. Why did it have to be this way? Why?
Dustin puts a hand on my shoulder, and it doesn't help, but I'm glad he does it.
"We need to hurry," Jot says. "They'll only be distracted for so long."
The tears dry quickly, the sadness in my heart hardens, replaced by cold awareness. "You knew this was going to happen," I say.
He looks at me, and does not deny it. "It was necessary." He says.
"You planned it this way. You bastard! You killed her!" I rip free of Dustin's grasp on my shoulder and leap towards Jot, pinning him to the wall. "You motherfucker! How could you take her from me?" I'm going to strangle him, I'm going to rip his throat out, I'm going to tear his filthy heart out of his chest.
"Adam," Dustin says urgently. "Adam, I know what you feel. I know what you want to do. But you can't. We have a mission. Do you want her to have died for nothing?"
The anger leaves me as quickly as it came, and all I'm left with is a deep feeling of being tired, tired of everything. I don't know how much more I can take. My hand goes slack, and I turn away from Jot.
"You have your own mission," he says. "Your own revenge. In time, you will understand that what I did was no different from what you are about to do."
My fist clenches, but I say nothing.
"We've got to get moving," Dustin says. "You can kill him later, Adam, for all I care, but right now we've got to finish this."
I turn to him and nod briefly. "I think it's time for us to split up."
It takes five minutes for me to climb swiftly through the ducts, moving towards the room we're guessing Cheryl's staying in. All the while, I struggle not to think about her. Or anyone. Keep my mind on the mission. You came here to do something, and you have to see it through.
I look through the small grilles in the vent system. Empty room. Room filled with guards. Another empty room. Still no sign of Cheryl. I keep moving.
I can hear a great battle going on beneath me by the time I reach the next grate. Guns going off, women shouting. I peer through the slats and look down at the skirmish below. There, behind a small barricade of barrels, Kyra is yelling orders to her fellow Truthseekers while blasting away at the Establishment grouped across from her. They've got her in a corner - she'll be safe for now, but not much longer.
I have to finish this. If for no other reason, then for Kyra. I can't allow anyone else to die. I move quickly onwards, climbing over the slats and upwards into another section of the vent shaft.
At the next grate, I see her. She's standing right beneath me, talking into a handset, probably giving instructions to the Establishment troops. I carefully, quietly pry open the vent grille. She doesn't hear me. Too focused on what she's doing.
I take out my zipline and plunge the hook into the metal of the vent shaft, hoping it will hold. If I screw up the landing, all will be lost.
I take a deep breath. Then, one hand on my line, the other firmly wrapped around the harpoon gun, I dive out of the vent shaft. I plummet downwards, but the rope catches. I'm floating right above her white shoulders, and she still hasn't noticed me. I quietly exhale. Everything is going to plan.
I slowly let out enough line, positioning myself just right to land on her shoulder. I feel my feet touch soft, yielding flesh, and quickly press the barb of my harpoon against the pale skin of her neck. "Don't move," I say.
She sucks in a surprised breath, and tenses, but doesn't move. "This is one of your lethal guns, pressed against my throat, isn't it? I found one of the barbs in my best lieutenant. Neurotoxins. I'll admit I underestimated you little ones."
I don't say anything. I'm waiting for it to sink in. That I'm not going to have any mercy. That she can't talk her way out of this. She's got to know before I kill her, know and understand how she got here.
"You think yourself the moral crusader, don't you?" She sneers. "If only you examined the situation a little further, maybe you'd realize that everything's not so black and white."
She's trying to throw you off guard. Shut her up, then do it. "You murdered an entire town in cold blood, Cheryl, then crushed one of the two survivors under your feet ten years later." I see Raymond's bloody, mangled body before me. This is the one who did it, the one who was responsible. Do it, do it now.
"In cold blood? What makes you think I did it in cold blood?"
"What?" I ask, and all of a sudden I'm thrown off my guard.
"Destroying your town wasn't something I planned on doing," Cheryl says, and I'm astonished to hear real remorse in her voice, "And it was something I regretted my entire life afterwards. The fact is, Adam, that I have only killed twice in my life, and I never took joy in it. What you don't understand is that there are some things in life that have to be done, whether you want to do them or not. It's too bad that both of those killings involved people you loved, but there was nothing I could do."
"Bullshit," I say. "You could've controlled yourself, both times. There was no need to murder anyone. There's never any need to murder anyone."
"Such talk from someone who has killed one of his own kind! I found Judas' body. At least I've never killed one of my own."
"Don't you dare bring that up!" I shout (and see his face as he fell backwards, that look of betrayal). "You don't know... You couldn't know what it was like!"
"I know more about it than you ever will," she says, and her voice trembles with emotion. Something glints in the light, and I realize that there are tears falling down her cheeks. "You've never killed someone you loved."
I pause, hearing the tone of her voice. God, do I really want to know? I have to. I have to ask, or it will torment me the rest of my life.
"What do you mean?" I ask quietly.
She raises her left hand, the one facing away from me, to blot the tears, and then she talks, her voice carefully controlled. "I first met your father thirteen years ago. I'd been assigned to study the men's communities, see how well they were functioning, what needed to be changed. I thought that one of the ways to go about my research would be to interview the men themselves, and learn their thoughts on the matter.
"At the time, I was a supporter of equality regardless of size. My feelings of superiority were deeply buried. I was so naive that I actually believed men and women could live together as equals, no matter what our differences. I saw your father as an equal - a sensitive intellectual, a man with strong values. The kind of man I could spend my life with. Values, I thought he had values."
I can't believe what I'm hearing. This doesn't make sense...
"We began seeing one another. We had a schedule of days when we'd meet. He'd wait outside the town limits, and I would take him in my hand and carry him back to my apartment at the edge of the city. We'd talk, and kiss, and make love. Then after a few hours I'd bring him back to the town, and think about him until the next time I could pick him up."
No, no this can't be true... I've slept with her, but in the past she'd been with my father... And something tells me that this is not the worst of what she has to say.
"I couldn't help but get curious. He refused to see me outside of the scheduled times, refused to allow more days into the schedule. I wanted him all to myself, and yet he stubbornly refused to be mine. And gradually, I began to wonder what was keeping him away from me...
"So I looked him up, ran him through the government databases. Mitchell Baker, age thirty-one. Married."
I grab her neck to keep myself from falling off. I'm dizzy, I'm going to throw up. It's true, something deep inside me tells me that it's true. I hear her voice harden as she continues.
"He had a son. Damn it all, he had a son that he never told me about. With the other woman! He had lied to me, and like a fool I'd let myself believe him. You could never understand the rage I felt. This... this insect had deceived me, fooled me into loving him. I had been the pawn of a being that was forty times smaller than me!
"I went to confront him, screamed out his name and his crime for everyone in your town to hear. They all knew about it, they'd known about it all along, but kept quiet. They were all as guilty as he was. He came to talk to me, to try to reason with me. I was not going to be reasoned with. I had only one thought in my mind, and that was to do what needed to be done. He'd made a fool of me, and there was no other option - he had to pay. I crushed him in the palm of my hand. I could feel him squirming, thrashing about in his death throes. I watched the blood leak out between my fingers. Then, still furious, I raised my foot and began to stomp."
It was because of him. My father was the reason my town was destroyed. He is guilty, and so am I... The sins of the father...
"I lost myself; I wasn't thinking. I didn't understand that there were others in those buildings. Innocents. Elderly. Children. I thought I'd killed them all, and when I realized this I stopped and wept. I dried my tears, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. Something small, stumbling around the remains. A child."
Oh my God. Stop, I want her to stop, I can't listen to this, this changes everything. But I don't say a word. I keep listening.
"I watched you walk around the ruins, knowing it was impossible for you not to see me there. I almost fooled myself into thinking you'd forgiven me. Then I looked more closely, and realized you were still in shock.
"Think about it, Adam. If I was the cold-blooded killer you think me to be, I would have murdered you then and there. But I had come back to my senses. I left you there, alive, knowing that you could come back to haunt me one day, seeking revenge. But I swore that no matter what, I would not kill you as well. This was the price I would pay for the deaths I had senselessly caused."
A few seconds have passed, and I realize that she's stopped, her speech is over. "It's not true," I say. "My father was a good man, a hero. You're lying. You're doing this to throw me off my guard." But deep down, I don't even believe myself. I have to at least try and deny it. This is just too much to accept.
"Do you need proof?" She asks. "Upstairs there is a large database. Within it are the records of every government action since the Establishment began. There were microphones hidden in every one of the men's communities. There will be a recording. I can take you there."
I take a deep breath. I'm still trying to sort through this, understand it. I press the harpoon slightly harder against her throat. "You move slowly, hands at your sides, no sudden movements, or I'll kill you."
"Okay," she says, and begins to move slowly up a set of stairs on our left. She keeps her hands at her sides. I keep the gun at her throat.
She takes me to a room filled with huge cabinets, buzzing with the sound of computers at work. A small terminal is at the room's front. "I need to type," she says.
"Do it," I reply.
There's the sound of fingers moving across the keys, tapping out the letters. After a few seconds, sound begins to play.
I remember it as booming, so loud I could not even understand the words. But I recognize it now, the voice that rang throughout my city that morning, as the people fled and my father stepped forward to face his fate. "You lied to me about everything," Cheryl says.
The reply is soft, muted by the camera's distance. But someone must have gone back over the clip and amplified the audio, because I can just make out my father's reply. "Yes, I did, Cheryl. I regret doing it, and I apologize."
"That isn't good enough," she says, her voice rising, her anger searing. "You made a fool of me, in front of everyone else you know. And now you and everyone else will pay."
"Cheryl, I can understand your wish to kill me," my father says almost pleadingly, "But if you do so, leave the others out of it. You're not being reasonable -"
"I'm tired of being reasonable, Mitch. I'm tired of being toyed with and taken advantage of. But most of all, I'm tired of you."
The next thing I hear are the sounds of my father's screams. Then the clip ends.
Cheryl slumps slightly, her head hanging a little. My hands grip the harpoon barrel so tightly that they feel numb. I keep it pressed against her throat.
"So, Adam," she says. "Do you still wish to kill me?"
Over the past few minutes everything I know has been destroyed, replaced with the harsh knowledge of a horrible truth. I no longer know what to think. I can no longer see who is wrong or who is right, or if anyone's to blame. Can I kill her, based on what I know? Can I ever think it right to kill anyone, again?
I feel the weapon slipping slightly in my hands. I'm losing my grip on the harpoon. No, I can't do it. Blood only leads to more blood. If I kill her now I only extend the cycle, onwards until everything is destroyed.
There's a sudden noise behind us, and I turn my head to see the doors behind us burst open, two women in gas masks standing in the doorway. I turn back to see five huge pale fingers moving straight towards me.
Without thought, without emotion, I move to my left, throwing my weight against the harpoon to use it as leverage, boosting myself away from her reach and out towards empty space. The Establishment women run forward as we fall, she and I, rushing towards the steel floor. I manage to grab a strap on her uniform and clutch to it briefly before flying off, skidding against her leg and grasping wildly at the material of her pants. I lose my grip and hurtle to the ground.
The fall is surprisingly short, only ten feet, but I hear something snap as I land, and pain shoots up my leg. The heavy footfalls of the Establishment women are right behind me, their shadows falling over me, when I hear two loud gunshots. The guards fall forward, coming to rest directly before me, dead.
Ash and Kyra stand in the doorway, towering above me. They slowly lower their pistols, then begin to move forward to stand beside me, comfort me. Without speaking I raise a hand and they stop.
I turn back to where Cheryl lies, twitching on the ground, the harpoon buried in her neck up to the hilt. I watch her tremble, then go slack, with a sound like a sigh. I look at her and no longer feel any lust or any hate, just see her lying still on the cold steel.
"I forgive you," I whisper quietly, then turn away from her, head in my hands, waiting for Kyra and Ash to come to me.
Giantess World
