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No longer hidden behind the rushing adrenaline and the roaring flames and the plumes of thick smoke, the outside air stinks of death. It’s a thick, oppressive stench, a disgustingly rotted sweetness blended with the stomach-churning, iron-and-fish odor of spilled blood, made heavier with huffs of slick oil and tangs of metallic rust. Still, it permeates the air, and even breathing makes him light-headed. He kind of wants to throw up.
Next to him, the LCCA Agent says not unkindly, “Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”
He doesn’t tell them that he wishes they’d let him die so he wouldn’t have to see this again—the forest of agony his once peaceful home had grown into. He musters up a wobbly smile in response, but it doesn’t reach his eyes at all. He doesn't say a thing.
“Good. We don’t have any more extra ampules.” Not unsatisfied, the LCCA Agent pats him on the shoulder. He flinches, but only a little. “Nice work out there.”
The response comes out quiet and dull. “Thanks.”
He doesn’t say that the mission should have failed, that that bitch Kromer would have delighted in rending the manager’s head from their shoulders and crushing the gears and guts in front of him, that she would have devoured every inch of him whole and spit him out a bloodthirsty madman desperate for her recognition, that she wouldn’t have given a thought to the lives crushed under her heel and twisted ideals. That he hadn’t the strength yet to pry his life from the hands of others. That this mission would have ended very differently had Demian not intervened, splitting her torso from her carapace, drenching everything but himself in her remains. That it was only something like Fate that steered the mission towards success.
Still, he thought he could feel the soft bones in her neck popping under his fingers, or the warm trickle of her blood coating his hands, or the crunch of her exoskeleton splitting before his blade. In another life—he tightens the grip around his halberd—in a better life, he’d killed her himself.
Still, he thinks, he’s too weak.
Noting his reticence, the talkative LCCA Agent shrugs and brushes by him, catching up to another team member currently typing something into their PDA. For a moment, he’s envious that they can chat. It festers, a terrible thing nestled into the back of his throat, and his footsteps slow. For a moment, he could have screamed. Don’t leave me here, a child had cried, so long ago. Stay with me. Let me be one of you. And everyone but the child had paid the price. A wolf, disguised as a sheep.
He can’t hear them anymore, the soft chatter of the cheerful After Team, now drowned out by the ringing in his ears. Before he’d realized it, he’d lagged behind everyone else. He pauses, and they walk on without him. He can still make out the scarlet tails of the Executive Manager’s coat, fluttering as they’re carried away, back to Mephistopheles. Once they wake up, everyone else will be revived.
Revived... He swallows, thick and dry.
Yes, everyone else will be revived. And the world, and Limbus Company’s mission, will be revived too, carrying on as it always has, moving relentlessly towards the future.
Never to return.
Never to return.
The stench of death still suffocates him. He can smell every molecule of oxygen flowing down his throat, can feel the rise and fall of his panting chest, can taste the blood and oil coating the air. He’s stilled.
Slowly, creakily, his head turns, eyes glued wide. He glances left. (Didn’t he have a classmate who replaced his arms with a similar prosthetic?) He glances right. (The family maid always wore an apron just like that.) In, out. He breathes it in again. (Can he spot it? The gentle beige of his sister’s ivory plating?)
His feet crunch against the bone-dry ground, printing footsteps into the gray sand, remnants of a place that was once so perfect and pristine, that was once his home. Not a head turns his way. The midnight breeze carries flakes of ash away; in just a few moments, his footsteps disappear.
A coat of grey paints the sky. Here, even the stars no longer shine.
His eyes sting with dryness. He hasn’t blinked in a while. The ringing in his ears, he recognizes distantly, has become a roar.
Shot off like a bullet, he tears through the forest of bloody nails. Their roots run deep and thick, and the red and black residue stains the emerald grass he’d once played in, free of all cares. Childish laughter hounds him. (Does he still remember the sound of his sister’s laugh? Before the prosthetic, or after? What about his mother’s hugs, as cold as they’d felt, or the heavy but proud weight of his father’s gaze, still tangible behind metal?) Underneath his feet, the ground crunches, stiff with oil, as intense and fishy as blood. Sometimes it squelches. Human guts splatter against the sole of his shoes. He doesn’t think too hard about it. Truthfully, he’s not thinking about much.
One foot in front of another. Dodge left, move right, winding through the stakes. His vision goes double. He’s seeing everything and nothing at all, running on nothing but the human instinct to run.
One foot in front of the other. Left, right, left.
The world around him blurs into dark, ghastly colors, tainted with the rusted reds and browns of blood mixed with oil. The thick stench dogs him ceaselessly. His breaths come out in harsh, painful pants, but he persists.
One foot in front of the other. Right, left, right—
The next step catches on air, and he slips.
A panicked shout tears free from his mouth. He tumbles down the slope, landing harshly on his hip, and a pathetic sound leaves his hoarse throat as he finally stumbles to his feet, clutching the throbbing area. Every breath seems to highlight the pain, inflaming the sensitive nerves. He inhales and exhales slowly. The tips of his fingers shake from the shock.
“Where...” he mumbles, blinking. His vision clears.
What a stupid question to ask. He knows where this is. For a moment, his memory’s eye overlaps with the current sight. Before him, he can see the vivid, verdant field of his youth, where the five-color flowers burst from the tracts of rich earth and the canopies of great trees seemed to soar so strong and high that he thought he could have hidden there forever without being found. Once, he had climbed one and found the nest of a sparrowhawk hidden within, and he had visited that tree, day after day, until the baby birds had finally flown free.
Then he blinks, and the illusion shatters.
Blotches of dry, cracked dirt appear like bald spots under the ash-grey grass crunching under his shaking feet. The trees have been cruelly cut down, leaving only the holes of their exhumed stumps, their wood dedicated to the gruesome pièce de résistance. The field of his childhood home, his secret space where he hid and played and thought up precious, clever things, had been desecrated. In the center stood three arrogant stakes, each propping up the body of someone he had personally buried. Someone he had loved.
In comparison to the sights before, this was cleaner. After all, the wounds were already drained, though the damage still remained—the first time around, he had none of the means nor mentality to fix them, holding their funerals in a hazy-eyed fugue state. Yet trussed up as they were, void of gore or machine fluid, they seemed to him like plastic dolls. Stabbed or nailed or crucified, what did it matter? They didn’t even bleed.
Disgusting. All of it, disgusting. He presses stars into his eyes as if he could banish the sight from his mind. He’d laid them to rest—they were already dead, already gone, already tormented—why did they have to be further tortured, even in death? Who cared if they couldn’t bleed? Couldn’t they at least have some peace?
For a long, sickening moment, he wishes that they were instead like every other corpse here, leaking blood and oil and organic matter, rusted with fat and dissolved by stomach fluid. At least the shut eyes and creeping bile would be easier explained if that were the case. But as he spits it free, letting it splatter against the dirt, the nausea doesn’t abide. The disgusting feeling swirls in his gut. Why does he want that—to see them hurt all the more? Why can’t he still look at them clearly? Why did they have to change, why did the world have to change, why did it have to be him!
He shakes with the fury of it, of the heat overcoming his body. His limbs shudder with an unfamiliar tremor. His ears rush with blood. Before he knows it, the exhilarating, scorching sensation has possessed him.
Vogel lashes out. He swings it with all his might at the nearest stake, cutting a gash into the base. It sticks wedged into the wood but he pulls it out, slamming the blade of the halberd back into the gash under the first stake the topples. Then the next too and then the next until the three bodies of his dead family stare back at him like puppets with their strings cut, their limbs akimbo against the ground. His sister’s synthetic neck, his mother’s metal hands, his father’s fake eyes that remain open to the world as if wide with horror. So many years ago he’d seen this exact sight painted with far more gore. And yet he still averts his gaze.
Isn’t he still a little kid after all!
He screams, a yell so loud it pierces the night. With his hands screwed tight against the hilt of his halberd he slams the pommel into the dry ground, cracking it, crushing it, until it becomes silt under his harsh ministrations. Under his gloves his calloused palms are bloody and ripped. Still when Vogel is no longer of any use to him he flings the halberd far away and, on his knees, he begins to claw at the unyielding ground. His spit wets the dirt but it’s been dry for so long it seems to repel the liquid.
Left. Right. Left. The nails on each finger are cracked and bloody but he doesn’t feel an ounce of pain, scrabbling for more dirt to fling away. It needs to be deeper. Deep enough that she’ll never find them again, that they’ll never reappear, that this will never reappear that she’ll never reappear that this place will be buried under the dirt the flames put out that—!
The dull smack of a shovel against his back snaps him painfully from his thoughts. He whirls around, eyes blazing, to find the perpetrator, and meets the cold gaze of his colleague.
“N.B.,” Ryoshu says, taking a drag of her cigarette, “but inelegant.”
Saliva still trickles down his chin. Annoyed, he rubs it away, leaving dirt and pink marks against his skin. Not bad?
He mutters, “Did they make you come here to get me?”
“Hm.”
He thinks about saying something like ‘I won’t leave even if you drag me,’ but decides against it. Instead he stares blankly at the hole he’s made so far. It’s barely deep enough to fit his hand, much less large enough to fit an entire body. How long had it taken him to bury them the first time? He’d hired help for that, didn’t he?
His eyes trail to the shovel. Certainly, that would make it easier.
But what about Ryoshu? Outside of her greeting, not a word has left her mouth, only the impossibly quiet sizzle of her lit cigarette and the inhale-exhale of her slow and steady breaths. He tenses when she finishes it, but she only puts it out on another so she can smoke a new one.
As if sensing his observation, Ryoshu glances over at him. A faint irritation is on her face, but for some reason, his shoulders loosen.
“Thank you,” he says, throat hoarse, and picks up the shovel.
“Y.W.” That one’s not too bad. You’re welcome.
Digging with a shovel is much easier than digging with his bare hands, even though his grip presses painfully into his cracked nails and torn calluses and the posture makes his back ache. He stoops down to throw aside another lump of dirt, his head bowed low. His eyes fall closed. It’s tiring work, and his muscles scream from overexertion, but he continues on anyway.
Once, he had hired someone else to do this for him. Now, he digs the graves himself. The person who dug them before is likely dead. And the blame, the blood stains his hands, even if the person who had driven the final nail had died.
He remains. The only one left. The sole survivor of Calw’s massacre, including the perpetrator. The only one who carries his family’s memories is himself. The only one who carries Kromer’s memory is also himself. That image of Kromer, which had haunted him so—not the One Who Grips, but Kromer in their school uniform, smiling so kindly yet so coldly among their ignorant, sheep-like classmates—would also be his.
It’s unfair. Blood trickles out from under his dirty gloves. It’s so unfair. Why does he have better memories of the person who blackened him, than the people who raised him in that place of light? Does he even recall the warmth of his mother’s hugs, or the weight of his father’s eyes, or the sound of his sister’s laugh? Those days had been drowned out, long ago, by the same static that consumed even the memory of his family’s funeral. How had he forgotten it?
There’s no home to return to, no family to greet him, no egg to shelter him anymore. Not even in the solace of memories. All he can offer is this shoddy burial.
“I don’t want to go,” he confesses quietly. “It’s all my fault. I’m sorry.”
Behind him, a severe voice rings out. “Y.E.A.H.”
Your effusions aren’t helpful. Before his brain even catches up to him, he slams his shovel against the ground so hard it makes a clang. Gnashing his teeth, he screams, “Then what would you have me do?!”
There’s no making memories with the dead. There’s no recovering those forgotten stories. There’s no hope left for them, for the people he’s lost in the process of his childish selfishness. For the second or maybe third or maybe infinite time, he’s let them down again. Without a second thought, he cries out his rage, his heartbreak, his pain.
It’s so unfair.
An aggrieved growl escapes Ryoshu’s throat, but she doesn’t do anything except smoke her cigarette. The flame reaches the tan filter. She puts it out. “Still a K.I.D., huh.”
He gnashes his teeth. By the time his mind catches up with his body, he’s charging towards her, shovel in hand. “I’m not a damsel!”
Ryoshu prepares another smoke while she sidesteps his clumsy charge. As he swings the shovel, she grabs it by the handle and tosses him into the dirt. She chuckles darkly. “Look like one. Act like one, too.”
He snarls, struggling to his knees. His clothes are covered in golden dust. Ryoshu casually kicks him back down. “You wanna stay here forever?”
“So what if I do?” he bites back, glaring up at her.
“For what?” she demands, scowling. “Can’t do anything with some D.U.D.”
“They’re more than just—dried up debris!” He leaps from his place on the ground, trying to tackle her. She uses his momentum to fling him into a tree stump, knocking the wind out of him.
“Sure treat ‘em like they are.” She huffs, exhaling smoke. Her steps grow faint with distance. He turns his head, head still ringing with his aching body, watching as she picks up Vogel. She tries out a few test swings. Then, scowling, she disappears. The blade cuts through metal like butter in a flash of black and white. When Ryoshu finishes her work, the bodies of his family lay, slumped one over the other, but no longer nailed to the stakes. Like this, they look a little less like crucified dolls, a little more like fractured bodies collapsed painfully on the ground.
A little bit more like his family.
Ryoshu tosses Vogel aside. She pulls out a new cigarette, approaching him. Eventually, she stands right in front of him. The smell is overbearing, drowning out even the stench of death.
Everything hurts. He watches her take a drag, the bitter cloud dissipating into the still-fuzzy air. Who remembers those things? The puffs of smoke that so easily disappear, returning to nothing? When the town’s flames are put out, who will be there to remember it?
“There’s just me,” he says.
“Hm.”
“I wish there wasn’t,” he whispers, his voice croaky. “I don’t deserve it. I’m not good at this.”
“C.H.E.” She crosses her arms. “Or bury yourself with ‘em. Saves us the trouble.”
The cigarette between Ryoshu’s fingers sizzles. Ash falls down. A long time ago, digging a fourth grave seemed like the most noble decision he could have made. Can’t help enduring, indeed.
He holds out his hand, and the fluttering flakes scorch his fingertips. He admits quietly, “I don’t want to anymore.”
“Then get up.” She lifts her leg and kicks the shovel in his direction. “P.A.I.N.T.”
Ryoshu’s crimson gaze bears expectant holes into his head. His brows furrow. He listens to the steady inhale and exhale of her chest, blowing smoke into the air, as regular as a metronome. Amidst the remaining chaos, the crackle of his old home, the shouts of agents, faint but audible, her breathing is somehow the loudest.
Subconsciously, his uneven panting matches pace with hers, and the taste of the acrid secondhand smoke fills his lungs. He stumbles to his feet. The pain settles into his skin, binding his fuzzy head to his body.
Ryoshu puts out her cigarette. Her gaze is cool but proud.
He picks up the shovel again.
The spade cuts cleanly into the earthy loam hidden under the packed, dry silt, pulling free half-decayed roots. Earthworms slither free from under the rich, brown soil, their faces still a fat, healthy pink. Even under all this death and decay, life still bursts forth.
The world keeps turning. Thousands of tragedies like his happen everyday, but nobody pays them any heed. Nobody except the people who live through them, the sole survivors to the near-daily violences that haunt their City. Gregor, who abandoned G Corp in time to see his comrades fall one after another. Rodya, the only remainder of her neighborhood, her pride dooming them all. And now Sinclair, the only person left of Calw, his silent anger birthing a massacre.
Hot sweat trickles from his temples into his eyes and down his face, absorbing into the rich loam. His hands are slippery, but he twists his hands, regrips the shovel, and continues to dig. It’s tiring work. His head has never once felt clearer.
He can’t do much, but he can bury them.
His tired arms cradle the dangling bodies of his family, their limbs twisted and loose and cold, not at all like a human’s. The sight still revolts him, even if he can’t quite recall how they looked before the prosthetics—this is how they are now, and that is how they chose to be. The intricate patterns on his sister’s arms, which she had proudly designed herself. The careful calibration in his mother’s fingers, which brought her success as a prosthetics engineer. The delicate planes of his father’s face, which still smiled kindly at him whenever he returned home.
Their bodies had changed. Their bodies will change. In one-hundred, one-thousand, one-million years, their bodies will rot and decompose, metal turned to rust to return to the earth and burst again as flowers or trees or chirping birds, stretching towards the blue sky. In that time, he can recollect all that he’s lost, all the memories left to the wayside, the essences that remained. The sound of his sister’s laugh, or the warmth of his mother’s hugs, or the weight of his father’s stare might be memories he’ll never recover. But he can, at the very least, recall the warm, triumphant way they lived and cherished, even if he couldn't help but hate those cherished things.
The precious people whom he’s killed haven’t been forgotten. It’s a paltry condolence, but it’s better than nothing. He carves this single kindness into the City’s surface. The shovel’s tip cracks the packed silt, and the earth’s membrane spills forth.
Beside him, Ryoshu watches, her gaze ever-proud. Overhead, a sparrowhawk soars.