Chapter Text
He walks.
Pulls himself slowly and painfully out of the gully where the norm family lie dead. Vision blurs with tears. Hands shake and he can’t tell if it’s from grief, rage, sheer horror or post-adrenalin tremors from the beating he’s taken.
Mardi’s blood – Mardi’s flesh – is on his face, in his hair.
Remember me, Johnny.
Sneck, how could he forget? How could anyone ever forget something like that? The image will be burned into his frontal lobes forever.
Johnny Alpha is no stranger to death. Since joining the Mutant Army he’s dealt it out, seen comrades snatched by it, and narrowly missed its embrace on more occasions than he can count. But this…?
He’d liked her. Connected with her. Enjoyed talking with her, even when the topic was Moon’s weird book. His fourteen-year-old hormones belatedly inform him some of what they’d done was flirting. He doesn’t have any prior experience of this; hanging out with kids his own age isn’t listed on his cv. His comrades in the Southwest Division are all adults who’d roll their eyes and tell him to get lost if they caught him looking at them that way.
Mardi didn’t. Mardi told him he was extraordinary. Mardi liked his eyes. Liked him.
He curses the stupid kid notions he’d woven the night before: come back from the mission and see her again. Compare notes on her own mission. Talk shop. Talk about other stuff. Just spend some time together while waiting for Moon to debrief him, then maybe some more time before he headed back to Armz’ unit.
Like he expected a happy ending. Stupid, naïve sneckwit.
Instead, her life ended in an explosion of flame and gore. Because the crux of the matter is he’s an idiot teen who was too busy basking in Mardi’s attention to hear the subtext in her words: Our duty to fight them, if necessary to sacrifice our lives. Hell, it was text, plain and simple – no sub about it.
It makes him doubt everything he is, everything he stands for. Does he have what it takes? Has he failed at the one thing he’s supposed to be good at: protecting his kind from the Kreelers.
Mardi died for nothing – a pointless gesture. Yeah, she died because of Moon’s twisted philosophy. But she also died because Johnny lied to her. He told her the guy inspecting the Kreeler troops was a double, which was true enough. But he didn’t mention the real Kreelman was present at a different location. A lie by omission. He’d just panicked at the sight of the suicide bomb and blurted out what he thought would make her stand down.
He’s as much to blame as Moon for Mardi’s death.
If he’d told her about the building where Kreelman was briefing his commanders… Mardi would have accompanied him there. He would have had time on the way to come up with a better plan than a snecking suicide bomb. The window was open – they could have rigged the explosives as a satchel charge and lobbed it in. Hell, they could have mugged some random Kreeler for his guns and stormed the place. The at least her death would have meant something…
Sneck, if Moon had given him a concealed weapon – some piece of crap blaster the Kreeler Youth boys illegally toted to make themselves feel tough, or maybe a grenade – he could have finished Kreelman the moment he laid eyes on him.
Sneck, sneck, sneck!
Moon doesn’t trust him with a weapon.
Armz wants him back in one piece. Does that mean the General doesn’t trust him either? Leastways not on an assassination run against Kreelman. Because he’s trained and fought and killed… but he’s still ‘just a kid’. Because he hates Kreelman with every fibre of his being but can never explain why his hate is different. Can never explain he’s not just another mutie with a sob story and a tragic past. Because he lied. About his name, his origin, his reason for wanting to fight. It’s too late to backtrack now. He can’t just rock up to Armz one morning and say “Hey, by the way, just thought you ought to know – Nelson Kreelman is my father.”
It would almost be worth it to tell Moon, though. Watch the shock shatter his carefully crafted poise. Johnny pauses in the last glimmer of sunset and glares back towards Moon’s HQ. He could still kill the guy. Sneak back in, steal a weapon. Not the uncontrolled burning rage of his first attack. Do it subtly and stealthily – a proper assassination hit. Moon likes standing in that picture window, gazing out over his little kingdom. Sniper could take him out easy.
Too easy.
Johnny wants Moon to know who kills him and why. He wants to look the man in the eye as he pulls the trigger.
So he walks. Staggers on through the oncoming night, muscles throbbing with pain where Moon’s people had beaten him. Screw them. Isn’t the first time he’s had the crap kicked out of him.
And if Armz doesn’t trust him anymore after hearing he attacked Moon? Doesn’t want him? Johnny will take to the rad-lands. Live off the land. Live alone. Head back to Salisbury and find someplace to lurk near his old home. Kill his father as he enters or exits the building.
Then, if he survives that, he’ll track down Moon.