Mistrunner 2 - Chapter 59 - The Best We Can Do (Patreon)

Jeremiah never went far enough. He held back when he could have given us everything. I won’t make that mistake. I will drag the Specters to the top even if it kills every last one of them.

Nora Lancaster

After Patrick and I took a few minutes to rest, we set about gathering the contents of the enormous crate that had appeared once the giant spider had died. I’d already felt the strength of the agitated Mist surrounding it, so I knew the metallic crate held incredible wealth, but when we finally cracked it open, I couldn’t contain the gasp that forced itself out of my mouth.

I flashed a grin toward Patrick, asking, “Think that’s enough for a ship?”

“I…I have no idea,” he answered, his eyes wide as he looked at the pile of sparkling crystals. Each one looked as if it contained a galaxy all its own, and there were hundreds of them, each big enough to bring in thousands of credits. “If we’re looking for something like the Jitterbug, then…definitely. But I’m guessing you want something better.”

Indeed, I did. That little ship had been fine for traveling between the local towns and cities, but for what I envisioned, we needed something far more robust. After all, the Jitterbug had nearly fallen to an overgrown bird, and I suspected that more Mist-rich regions would play host to much more powerful creatures. To survive on that other continent, we’d need a flying tank of a ship.

“Definitely,” I said. “But I don’t really have any context for what that might cost.”

Still staring at the crate of crystals, Patrick shrugged. “The Jitterbug was built here on Earth,” he stated. “Remy got it years ago from some place called Ohio. He always said that’s where the best shipyards were, but he never got around to taking me. He kept saying he would, but…well…you know…”

I shook my head and looked away. The carpet of corpses wasn’t a pleasant sight, but it was still preferable to seeing so much grief painted across Patrick’s face. It had been months since Remy’s death, but it still weighed heavily on him. Usually, he kept it bottled up where it couldn’t affect him, so it was easy to think he’d adjusted to his loss. However, there were times when it came bubbling to the surface, and when that happened, it was clear that it would be a long time before Patrick felt whole.

In that respect, we were similar, though in my case, Jeremiah’s death rarely strayed far from the surface of my thoughts. I wasn’t sure which was healthier. Perhaps neither. Maybe that’s why we clung to one another the way we did.

“How much do you think it’s all worth?” Patrick asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I had no interest in counting the shards, and even if I did, there was no guarantee that my estimates would be accurate. After all, prices tended to fluctuate, not to mention that the sizes of these individual shards didn’t really line up with the categories I’d established in my first Rift. Back then, there were three distinct tiers. But these? They were larger than all but the biggest I’d seen before. So, the value was almost impossible to estimate. I chose not to even try, simply telling myself that it was almost assuredly enough that it would allow me to accomplish my goals.

The crate was too big for Patrick’s storage ability to accommodate without help from an access point – a fact for which he apologized profusely. It wasn’t a big deal, but he seemed to take it pretty hard. Perhaps he thought that was the only reason I’d brought him along. In a way, that was accurate. His ability to store a huge amount of mass was extremely valuable. But even if he didn’t have that on his side, I would have brought him with me anyway.

Maybe.

I did enjoy his company, and I felt that something special might be growing between us. However, the fact that he could be useful aside from his meager skills with a pistol had definitely tipped the balance in his favor.

“It’s fine,” I said. “We’ll just divide it into two separate crates. I’ll carry a couple of small ones, and you can bring the others along.”

“That’s going to push my capacity,” he said.

“Then we make room by discarding some of the supplies,” I said. “We’re heading back to Nova and straight to the Bazaar. We can survive without the camping supplies and most of the rations. Getting these shards back to the city is priority number one.”

With that, Patrick started dumping supplies out of his storage space. Fortunately, it was all small enough that he could do so without the benefit of an access point; the crates of shards wouldn’t have that advantage, but that was expected. Soon enough, the cots, a few boxes of ration bars, the useless auto-turrets, and our tents had been piled on the floor. For my part, I delved into my own supplies, discarding anything that wasn’t immediately useful.

Curiously, Patrick’s pile was fairly neat and organized while mine looked like a haphazard pile of junk.

The process only took a few minutes, and when we’d cleared enough space, we started to divide the shards into something more manageable. I ended up getting three small crates – one for each of my storage slots – while Patrick took the rest. With that done, we gathered a few of the discarded items until both of our storage spaces were filled to the brim.

For Patrick, whose space was tied to an ability, it created an uncomfortable drain on his pool of available Mist. For me, the only issue was the blinking light in the corner of my HUD that told me I’d reached the extent of my storage capacity. Annoying and potentially distracting, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Patrick would be incapable of using any of his abilities until he emptied his space, though.

“What is that ability called, anyway?” I asked.

“It’s dumb,” he muttered.

“Oh, c’mon. Now you have to tell me,” I said.

After a second, he seemed to realize I wasn’t going to let it drop, and he let out a sigh before saying, “Fine. It’s called Pack Mule, okay?”

“Mule?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Like the animal?” I asked.

“Like the animal,” he confirmed.

“But aren’t they known for being…I don’t know…difficult?” I asked. Obviously, I’d never seen a mule outside of a video, and even that had been an artist’s representation. Still, we’d learned about the beasts in school, and though the creatures had been considered useful, once upon a time, they also had a reputation of stubbornness and had spawned a number of less-than-flattering phrases meant to describe undesirable traits. Some of those insults still survived, lending some weight to the creatures’ poor reputation.

“Yes,” Patrick stated. “But they could carry lots of stuff. I asked Remy about it when I first got the ability – I mean, what kind of sense does it make for a skill to reference an Earth animal?”

“Jeremiah said that the skill and ability names are just translations,” I provided. “Like, that ability is called Pack Mule, right? But maybe in its original language, it referred to some famous beast of burden from whatever planet created the system.”

“Remy just said the names were created by our brains,” he said. “But I guess they both could be true.”

“Or neither.”

“Or neither,” he agreed. “But I thought the Mist was just…I don’t know…a naturally occurring thing.”

“It’s not,” I said. “It was created by someone. When I asked Jeremiah about it, he said that it was probably just some kind of experiment or something that got out of control. Nobody he ever talked to knew for sure. But the system – that’s different. That was definitely created by some aliens who wanted to help people survive the Mist. They built the first Nexus Implants and somehow tied the system to the swarm of nanites that constitute the Mist.”

“So, there’s some super advanced alien civilization out there that’s responsible for all of this?” he asked.

I shrugged. “No idea,” I admitted. “And I don’t think anybody else knows either. Not on Earth, at least. Personally, I think it’s more likely that whoever created the Mist died out.”

“And the ones who made the system?” he asked.

“Maybe they’re still around,” I stated, though I had no evidence to support that idea. It was just that if any civilization was advanced enough to have harnessed the Mist and created a system by which to utilize it without the negative consequences associated with Mist exposure, I had a difficult time believing that anything could kill them off.

Of course, the memory of that giant, shadowy creature that looked like it had taken a bite out of a planet injected plenty of doubt into that supposition. Sure, it had been in a Rift, which meant that it probably wasn’t entirely real – I still wasn’t sure how it all worked – but thesetting had felt too solid to have been created out of nothing. Instead, it was easy to imagine that the Mist had used some past event as fuel for the scenario. And if that was the case, there very well could have been something that terrifying floating around out there in space, just waiting to eat any planet that got on its bad side.

“Either way, I think we should table this discussion and get out of here,” I said.

“How?” he asked. “Just walk through that prism like we did to get in here?”

“Yeah,” was my confident response. “But I should go first, just in case there’s something out there waiting on us.”

I was still very much aware that the octavangians had had plenty of time to call for reinforcements. None had arrived when I’d escalated the attack, but that didn’t mean they weren’t on their way. If they’d arrived while we were in the Rift, they were probably waiting to ambush us as soon as we stepped back into the real world.

And if that was the case, I needed to be the one to take the brunt of that attack. Part of it was so that I could protect Patrick, who just seemed so incredibly fragile, but I also knew that I was far better equipped to survive such an ambush.

Still, there was an insistent voice in the back of my mind that told me that sending him out there first would provide a viable distraction. Sure, it’d probably end up with him dead, but it would increase my chances of coming out on top.

I mercilessly squashed that line of pragmatic thought. The last thing I wanted was to become the sort of person who’d sacrifice her allies – or worse, her friends – just for a slightly better chance at survival. If anything, I wanted to be the person who did the opposite.  But I knew, at least in the back of my mind, that I probably would never be the sort of girl who engaged in noble sacrifice. I just wasn’t built that way, and nothing I’d experienced had pushed me even a smidgen in that direction.

But I still wished I could make that kind of choice.

After what I’d experienced under the mental thumb of that giant spider, I felt compelled to make some changes in my life. For a long time, I had known that my pursuit of vengeance, while justified, would leave me scarred. It would drive me to do things I never would’ve done, otherwise. And it had. Not only was I responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents, but I’d also chosen a course of action that had ended up with Heather – someone who’d never wanted anything more than to be a friend to me – as a mindless wildling. At the time, I’d pushed much of the resulting pain aside, but the spider had stripped my mind of its defenses, laying my choices bare.

And I hated what I saw.

“Do you think we are what we’ve done?” I asked as I stood before the Rift’s gate. “Or do you think intent matters? Can people change? Or are we always going to be the sum of our past sins?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” I agreed.

But I hoped I could move past my selfish choices. I hoped they wouldn’t define me for the rest of my life. That was what had happened with my uncle. I don’t know how I’d never seen it before, but the reason he’d never seemed concerned with saving himself was because he didn’t think he was worthy. Sure, he was strong. Stronger than anyone else, I was sure. But just like me, he’d done horrible things. In some cases, he’d been forced. But in others, he made a conscious choice of brutality.

I had left thousands of bodies in my wake, but Jeremiah’s kill count could well have been in the millions. After all, I’d only had a few years to bolster my total, while he’d had decades. Even if his number didn’t reach seven figures, it almost certainly came close. And it had taken its toll on his psyche.

So, he’d latched onto ensuring my survival because he just didn’t care about his own, save that it would help him in that goal. Dozens of times, he’d cautioned me not to follow his lead. He’d taught me his skills, but he’d made it abundantly clear that he never intended me to become a killer.

And yet, that’s precisely what I had become. He would have been ashamed of me.

Sure, he probably wouldn’t have minded if I’d killed Nora as well as whoever had sent those Enforcers, but he’d have looked upon the meticulous deconstruction of the Specters as unnecessary. And the innocents I’d killed?

I shuddered to think what he would have said about that. I felt certain that he wouldn’t have berated me. Nor would he have been overly critical. Instead, he’d have just been disappointed that I fell so far short of his expectations.

I had plenty of excuses on my side. My training had been cut short, and though I’d become a proficient warrior, a decent thief, and a passable tactician, I still lacked a host of skills. I still wasn’t entirely comfortable in social situations – a remnant of my upbringing, no doubt – and my mind tended to work in straight lines. Surely, he’d intended to extend my training to shore up those weaknesses.

That had obviously never happened.

But I knew he wouldn’t accept any of those excuses, especially when it came to my actions since returning to Nova City. He’d always held me to an impossible standard, and as such, it was absolute folly to imagine he would have made an exception in this case.

“What’s wrong?” asked Patrick, interrupting my thoughts. I’d only been standing there for a few seconds, but with my Mind attribute having reached such heights, my thoughts raced along at unprecedented speeds. Then, before I could respond, he added, “I don’t think you’re a bad person.”

“Really?” I asked, turning to face him. “Because I’ve been thinking about some of the things I’ve done, and…and it’s not pretty, Pick.” I ran my hand through my tangled hair in disgust, both at the things I’d done as well as the splatters of gore the mass of hair had managed to accumulate. “You know some of it.  But not all. The other day, I cut a woman apart one little piece at a time. And I enjoyed it. She’d never really done anything to me, and yet…I felt justified, you know? Because she was one of Nora’s people. And that’s not even considering what happened to Heather…”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes in derision. “Then whose fault was it?” I demanded, my voice raising. Before he could answer, I went on, “I knew she was there, Pick. For weeks. Months. I knew where she was. I could have gone in and rescued her. I mean, I could’ve just bought her. I could’ve gotten the money. But do you know what I did? I actually forgot about her for a while! I mean, who the hell does that, Pick? Who does that?!”

He didn’t bother answering. Not at first. Instead, he just stepped forward and wrapped me in his arms, embracing me in a tight hug. Until that moment, I hadn’t even realized that tears were flowing down my cheeks. I was just so angry. Not at the people who’d enslaved Heather. Not at the system of oppression that made it possible. Not even at Nora. Not really. Instead, I was furious with myself. At every turn, I’d made the selfish decision, and innocent people had paid the price of my actions.

“I feel like a monster,” I sobbed, burying my face in his shoulder.

“You’re not.”

“I am. I know that. It’s exactly what my uncle didn’t want, but I did it anyway,” I said, my words coming out muffled.

For a long few moments, he didn’t say anything. To me, that was all the confirmation I needed. Even Patrick could see what I had become.

But then, he pushed me to arm’s length and said, “Okay. You’ve done bad things. Who hasn’t? One time, just a few weeks after I started riding with Remy, a woman tried to break into the ship. Do you know what I did? I killed her. Shot her right in the head, just like it was target practice. It wasn’t until later that I found out that she had four kids she was trying to feed. She was desperate. Her kids were starving. And here we were, a couple of strangers who came to town with all kinds of things everyone needed. We’d practically painted a target on our backs.

“When it happened, I felt good,” he admitted. “It all went down so fast, I didn’t even see her. Not really. I just reacted. And it felt like I’d finally made myself useful. I was thirteen years old, small and scrawny. Until that day, I hadn’t done anything to help Remy. But then it finally happened, and I was proud. Of killing a starving woman who was trying to feed her kids. Once I recognized the situation for what it was, I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know how to act. I didn’t know whether to feel guilty, to hate myself, or to just be a man and move past it.”

He shook his head. “But in the end, I didn’t do any of those things,” he said. “I just…I just sort of lived with it. I cried a few nights. I beat myself up. I vowed to do better. But at the end of the day, nothing I could do would change what had happened. A few weeks later, once we’d left that town behind, Remy took me aside and told me something I can never forget.

“He said, ‘Look, kid. Ain’t nothin’ you did wrong. You did what you were taught to do. That’s it. You saw a threat, and you reacted. If anybody’s to blame, it’s me. But it ain’t that simple, is it? You pulled that trigger, so you get a piece of the guilt. She was the aggressor, so she gets some blame, too. Even if her reasons were understandable, she still made her choice. If she’d just come to us and asked, we’d have picked her up. You seen it in other towns, right? That’s how we work. Help the needy, charge the ones who can afford it. But she didn’t think. She just acted. And she ended up dead. Her kids are orphans, now – poor things. My point is that if you go around takin’ all the blame, you’ll never survive. So, do your best to move on – easier said than done, don’t I know it. Try to do better. Try to be better. That’s all any of us can do.’

“And then he just left me to it,” Patrick concluded. “We never talked about it again, but anytime I make a bad choice, I think about that. I’ll never forget what happened, but I don’t think we’re supposed to, either. Forget, I mean. I think we’re supposed to remember it and use that to help us make better choices going forward.”

I wiped my cheeks and said, “You’ve got one. I’ve got thousands. I don’t know if that’ll work for me.”

“It has to, Mira,” he said. “And I believe you can do it.”

“I…I hope you’re right,” I said. Then, I added, “Thanks.”

He gave me a crooked grin, responding, “Anytime.”

Then, I turned around, wiped my eyes, and stepped through the prism and back into the real world.