Paradigm City - Fan Fiction - Eve of the Hurricane

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Eve of the Hurricane

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Vera decided to finally serve Gordon and scooped up ladlefuls of soup into a bowl. She placed it before him and he dipped his spoon in, blowing the steam away. Angel watched Gordon as his nose and chin got messy from the soup.

Vera settled in a chair, facing Angel. "I had rescued him from his burning dome," she explained. "Thinking he might still have some memory fragments, but it was a waste of time."

"You called him 'father', back then," Angel commented.

"He's your father, too."

"Liar," Angel automatically answered, knowing it was truly a lie.

Vera's smirk turned into a sneer. "In one of his foolish attempts, he tried to revive memories, using his own genes and those of the elder statesmen, creating 'tomatoes' via artificial cultivation. We were considered the inferior stock, cast aside in order to produce a superior species." She frowned. "But even if the 'superior' could remember what happened forty years ago, they could not remember one thing prior to that ... and sadly they were killed at the very instant they became aware of that fact."

Angel remembered the victims of the android known only as 'R-D'. All of them had awakening memories just before they were killed ... except for - she suspected - Roger Smith.

"Who did this?" Angel asked.

"He is one who believes he is Gordon's only son, an Oedipus."

"But what about our people? What about the Union?"

"The Union symbolizes the hatred of a people who were forsaken when this city was constructed forty years ago. We, the breed who was abandoned and cast out of the city, are the ones who deserve to unify the power now."

"Revenge?" Angel asked incredulously. "That's why you want the memories?"

"Our motives are just," Vera stated.

"And to get them, you would blatantly rewrite the memories of the living?"

Gordon's raspy voice spoke up, "I want some more."

Vera picked up the bowl and took it back to the stockpot, refilling it. "Our means are just."

"What memories are there? What could possibly be left at the bottom of the earth?"

"You know you, too, are losing your sanity."

Angel stared at Vera's back, seeing her mother's figure layering over it. Vera was not her mother; Mildred Hathaway was much older, softer, kinder ... sad, but not twisted to bitterness like Vera.

She raised the gun again, pointing it directly at Vera's head. "No," she breathed. "No, I'm quite sane. Sane enough to know I can't trust myself. Sane enough to know that what you're doing is not Right!"

"You contradict me, child?!" Vera roared.

"Yes!" Angel responded, pulling the trigger.

Vera's wrist snapped out, her whip striking Angel's hand and making her release the gun. "Mildred Hathaway never used your full potential, Beast Spawn!"

The gun hit the floor, firing and hitting a pipe.

[CRACK!]

"You've been a bad little girl, my dear little angel!"

[CRACK!]

Angel fell to her knees as the whip struck her cheek, drawing blood.

"She could never see you as the tool you are!"

[CRACK!]

Angel turned, the whip tearing the back of her coat.

"Even her dying words condemned you to your fate! 'The Chariots of God will meet again - my child will know her predestined Hell'!"

[CRACK!]

"It makes your Mother sad, hurting you in this way, just to make you listen!"

"You - " Angel gasped. "Aren't - MY - MOTHER!"

[CRACK!]

"Tools are not born from mothers!"

[CRACK!]

"And you will be used to create the new world!"

[CRACK!]

Angel cried out in pain while Gordon looked on. He dropped his spoon as the scars on Angel's back became visible, crossed with the bloody streaks from the whip.

"That's enough," a man's strong voice quietly said.

Vera grunted as Dan Dastun gripped her wrist holding the whip.

"Who are you, Paradigm Dog??" Vera demanded.

Angel turned, her tears blurring the image of Dastun in the process of breaking Vera's wrist.

"Colonel Daniel Dastun," he answered, staring coldly into her face. "Military Police."

"Pig!" she shrieked, spitting in his face. "I am - the Union - !"

Dastun twisted her wrist. The room filled with a wet crunching sound as the wrist broke. Vera gave a harsh cry. He pulled her close to his face and stated in a low, measured voice, "I don't care who you are - you do not hurt her."

"You're just like us, Dastun," Vera spat. "A useless attempt - at artificial cultivation. Most pathetic that you - a Dominus - are one of the rejects!"

Dastun understood her, even though he had no idea where this knowledge came from. "To pardon the phrase: 'So the hell what'?" He held her wrist despite her gasp of pain. "I refuse to let shadows direct my actions and my life because of what I have or who I may be."

"You conceited Dominus! We'll rain down thunderbolts and burn this city to make them atone for their sins!"

"You're wrong!" Gordon blurted.

Dastun released Vera, seeing Gordon Rosewater for the first time. "Sir?"

Gordon gripped his hat in his hands. "It's a story that a dream commanded me to put down. No one ever had memories of the world prior to forty years ago, including myself. But memories themselves have existed in unexpected forms." He looked up at Angel.

"You're just senile," Vera barked. "My compatriots and I will remind you of the shame you caused us when the Union destroys the world you have built!"

"The Union," he sighed. "It's just a tiny gathering of people scattered across the wasteland. It's just a name, perhaps never existed in the first place."

Vera's face turned white with anger. "That's - impossible!"

The muffled sound of explosions were felt through the floor of the set.

Vera's face twisted up into a leer. "Don't you hear that rumble? The sound of the fires of wrath, unleashed by my compatriots!"

"They don't exist," Gordon stated. "They never did."

"Sir," Dastun said. "It's time to go."

"No!" Vera yelled, dashing after him.

Dastun's other hand balled up and cracked straight across Vera's approaching face. "Unlike my friend the Negotiator," he said. "I have no qualms about hitting bitches."

Angel rubbed her shoulders, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Vera fell to the floor, blood trickling out of her still smirking mouth. She looked up at him. "Always were like that, Dastun, no matter what. Luckily, you cannot call yours ... "

Her slung arm poked out of her jacket and a control appeared in her grip. She hit the button on the control and the room rumbled.

Dastun's foot slammed down to her good hand, but she rolled away as the ground crumbled beneath her.

"Now - YOU SHALL DIE!!!"

Dastun turned and grabbed both Angel and Gordon, pulling them down the narrow corridor as it shook around them.

"What's going on?" Angel asked.

"A ravenous monster," Gordon answered. "Whose hunger for memories has taken in my poor daughter."

Dastun blurted, "She called the Behemoth."

"The what?" Angel repeated.

"I don't know, either."

They entered the main walkway, the metal wall beside them torn away to reveal the subway system - and Big O ascending upward.

"ROGER!" Dastun yelled.

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