Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 45 - Bailing Water (Patreon)

I don’t know why I stayed. It was hopeless, and just like I’d seen happy a hundred times before, the planet was doomed. Still, I stayed. I wanted to help, and I still don’t know why I didn’t just pick up and leave the moment I knew we were going to be blockaded.

Alistaris Kargat

“I don’t know if I can keep doing this,” I said, looking up at Patrick, who was pulling on a tee-shirt in our bedroom. “It’s too much.”

And it was.

The past few months had devolved into a blur of death and destruction where I spent most of my time whipping back and forth across the planet and trying to put out proverbial fires. Sometimes, I was called in to keep a group of aliens from establishing a foothold from which they would inevitably enslave or oppress the local population of humans. That was normal enough. But other times, I was forced to respond to yet more attempts to destroy the planet.

“I know it’s hard, but –”

“It’s not, though,” I insisted. “That’s the problem, Pick. I don’t know how many people I’ve killed in the past week, much less overall. I thought I was strong enough to take it. I really did. But this is so much harder than anything I’ve done before. I think it would be easier if they could put up a fight. But they can’t. It’s just extermination at this point, except instead of killing a bunch of roaches or rats, I’m murdering people.”

“Mira, they –”

I interrupted him again, saying, “I know, Pick. I know. They’re invaders. Aliens. They want to kill us all. I recognize that it needs to be done, and I’m as committed as ever.” I shook my head. “But it weighs down on me like you couldn’t believe. I hate it. I hate remembering the people I killed today. I hate knowing that tomorrow, I’m going to get up and go somewhere else, and kill a bunch of people who can’t really fight back.”

It was all true, and the feeling had been building since that first week after the quarantine had lifted. I felt like an overused weapon on the verge of collapse. Before, it had been so easy to get wrapped up in the struggle of it all. The challenge. But now? With everything that had changed, they couldn’t even hurt me, much less kill me. Even the mystics were like putty in my hands, and I routinely slapped their pitiful attacks aside without skipping a beat.

And then there were the whispers.

They were getting worse by the day, and they rose a crescendo every time I went in to attack one target or another. In a way, it felt like the souls of my victims were screaming at me. I knew that wasn’t the case. The origin of those whispers was the Mist itself. Yet, it was easy for superstitions to survive a clash with logic, and I couldn’t help but feel more than a little discomforted by what I heard.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mira.”

I sighed. “You don’t have to tell me anything. There’s nothing to say, really. This has to be done, and I’m the only one who can do it,” I stated with more conviction than I really felt. However, was well aware that it was the truth. Even a thousand fighters couldn’t accomplish the things I had done. They just didn’t have the power. “Where are we on the ammunition manufacturing?”

“It’s slow,” he answered, sighing as he sat on the bed next to me. “We took the Bazaar for granted.”

“Even if I hadn’t blown it up, the blockade would have kept us from resupplying.”

“I know.”

“I did what I thought I had to do, Pick. I don’t see anybody else taking the world on their shoulders.”

“I’m not –”

“Save it,” I said, sliding off the bed. He reached out to grab my arm, but I dodged it easily. “I’m going for a walk. I need to clear my head before the next mission comes in.”

Before he could say anything else, I Teleported out of the room. Out of the Leviathan, in fact. I appeared outside, grabbing at the ambient Mist to regenerate what I’d just spent. It came easily, flooding into my core to fill the gap. Meanwhile, I strode off into the forest, using one thread of thought to keep an eye on my surroundings.

There was nothing, and I quickly found my way to a nearby stream. It was a beautiful sight that suggested a tranquility that I could feel was a façade. Everything was. The few victories we’d managed, the fights I’d won, the progress I’d made – it was all a surface level disguise for the disgustingly unwinnable war I’d started.

In the past, I might have lashed out at something. Perhaps I would have kicked one of the rocks lining the bank of the stream. Or maybe I would have punched one of the trees. But after living a life of so much violence, I just couldn’t muster the energy to perpetuate more destruction. So, with a huff, I settled down on a fallen tree and buried my head in my hands.

It was like that, almost an hour later, that Freddy found me.

I felt him long before he knew I was there, so I wasn’t surprised when he settled down on the trunk beside me. He didn’t say anything, though. Instead, he just sat there. So, I reached out in an attempt to get a sense of his Mist aura. But when I did, I found that it was entirely controlled, to the point that I could glean nothing.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“Practice,” was his answer. “This is a beautiful spot. Sometimes, we get so caught up in fighting and all the horrible things in this world that we don’t see how lucky we are to live on such a world.”

“I don’t need a pep talk, Freddy.”

“I do,” he countered. “I’ve found that it often helps to remind myself what’s truly important.”

“And what’s that?” I asked.

“For me? Or for you?”

“Pick one,” I answered.

“For me, what’s important is that I pass on what I know,” he said. “That’s my calling. I’ve never been particularly powerful. In fact, I’m dead average. Perhaps my control is a bit better than most, but that’s just repetition. But what I’m good at is teaching. I think that’s what I would have been in the old world. There’s just something about seeing a student finally understand the lessons I’m trying to teach.”

“Is that why you’re here? To teach me?” I asked.

“Oh, no. You’re far past where I can teach you anything about the Mist. It’s an interesting thing. We have been at this for decades. Nearly a century, in fact. We have the benefit of knowledge most people on Earth can only dream about,” he explained. “And yet, in only ten years, you have exceeded even our most talented Templars. By no small degree, either. I suspect that, in this sector, you are the single strongest individual. Perhaps in many sectors. I know you have no context for the power you wield, but –”

“What’s the point?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I stood, then stepped forward. Reaching out with a tendril of Mist, I lifted a rock and tossed it into the river. Then, with forty-two identical tendrils, I did the same, picking up a rock with each one. Then, I started to juggle them. It wasn’t even close to the limit of my abilities – I wasn’t even sure if limits existed – but it made my point well enough.

I turned to face Freddy and said, “This. I know I’m strong, Freddy. But what the hell am I supposed to do with it? I can’t be everywhere at once! Every day, people die before I can get to them. The other teams, they’re trying to pick up the slack, and on some days, they manage it. But all it takes is one mistake. One little slip-up. And they all die.”

I sighed, then tossed all of the rocks into the woods. “But do you know what the worst part is? It’s not even the deaths. People die all the time, and I barely know any of them,” I said. “No – it’s the fact that when they’re gone, I’m the only one who can fill in. Most days, I race from one crisis to another, just murdering people left and right. And I don’t know how long I can keep it up, okay? I don’t know how long I can stay sane!”

As I shouted, some of my aura leaked out, sweeping through the forest and kicking up dust as well as stripping the bark from nearby trees. For his part, Freddy remained unfazed. My shoulders sagged, and I sat next to him, burying my face in my hands as I muttered, “I don’t know if I can do what’s necessary. I don’t know if I can be what Earth needs me to be.”

“You can’t be.”

“What?” I asked, looking up. I hated that my eyes were moist with tears.

“I said you can’t be what Earth needs you to be. No one can. Not alone,” he answered. “Everyone has limits, Mira. You’ve just found yours.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“Why not?” he asked earnestly.

“Because if I can’t do this, if I can’t save everyone, Earth is…it’s all going to end,” I said. “Do you know what the feels like? Does anyone?”

I had the weight of the whole world on my shoulders, and as strong as I was, it was too much. With every passing day, I drew closer to the point of collapse. And after that happened, Earth would fall. I knew it. So did Patrick. Alistaris. Gala. That was why they’d all been pushing me so hard. And what’s worse is that I couldn’t blame them, either. They needed me to be the hope that nobody else could be.

Because if I wasn’t, everyone was going to die.

“Have I ever told you the story of how the Templars were founded?” Freddy asked.

“What? What does that have to do with anything?”

“It happened so long ago that the only people who remember are the Templars,” he said. “And we don’t even remember his name. We just know the story. His planet was doomed, too. The coming of a world serpent, not aliens, but the stakes were similar to your own. He started the Templars, hoping to help his people escape what was coming. They didn’t have the system. Nor were they capable of space travel. The Mist was mired in mysticism and religion. Yet, they accomplished amazing feats.

“He failed, though. The budding organization of Templars were not strong enough, and the world serpent came,” Freddy went on. “Do you know what happened next?”

“They all died?” I asked. I had some experience with a world serpent. I’d seen a facsimile of one in a Rift, and I’d never quite gotten over the sheer scale of the thing.

“They did not. The originator sacrificed himself,” Freddy said. “He defeated the serpent and shielded the world, providing a thousand years of salvation. They used that to advance, to grow, and when they were once again exposed to the world, they were prepared to do whatever was necessary to survive. And they did, due to his sacrifice.”

“Are you saying that I need to sacrifice myself?” I asked.

Freddy shook his head. “No. Of course not,” he said. “I’m telling you not to.”

“What?”

“My organization is a shadow of what it once was,” Freddy went on. “We see evil, and we stand aside. We are not worthy of the originator’s sacrifice. Nor is Earth worthy of yours.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Escape.”

“There’s a blockade.”

“That won’t stop you.”

“But all those people…”

“Are not your responsibility,” Freddy said. “You are –”

“You’re no better than the rest of them, are you?” I accused. “If you could leave, would you?”

“I think you misunderstand. I don’t want to escape. I want to be punished,” Freddy stated. “Do you know how many children I’ve seen become Wildlings? Teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them. I told them pretty lies to get them to eschew Nexus Implants. And for what? So I could grow the numbers of Templars? To spread an ideology that I don’t believe in? Hundreds of lives ended so I could meet my quotas.”

“W-what?”

“Originally, I was told that they were special. The ones I was sent to target were supposed to have better chances of becoming Templars. They didn’t. It was all random because nobody knows why some survive and some don’t. I killed them,” he said. “Your friend Alistaris is right to hate us. We’re not worth saving.”

At that moment, I realized that Freddy hadn’t come there to comfort me. In fact, I wasn’t sure why he was there at all, except to unburden his soul. Now that Earth seemed doomed, that sort of thing was probably going around.

I looked at him for a long moment, and all I saw was a broken man with a million regrets weighing down on him. And I found it so disgusting that it made me want to vomit.

I didn’t begrudge him for breaking. That was out of his control. But in his eyes, I saw something I couldn’t stomach.

Surrender.

Freddy had given up, and he wanted me to do the same. That brought a well of anger bubbling up inside me, and I shoved myself to my feet. Once I did, I said, “I intend to keep fighting until the last cell of my body is destroyed. Maybe you’re willing to just lay down and die, but I’m not. I won’t. I refuse!”

As I spoke, Mist swirled around me, kicking up dirt and pebbles and stripping whatever bark was left from the nearby tree trunks. With a deep breath, I settled my aura and continued, “Thank you, Frederick. You put everything into perspective.”

Then, without another word, I strode back toward the camp, ready to continue the war we’d been fighting since the beginning.

It didn’t take long to cover the ground, and soon enough, I arrived back at the Leviathan, where I found Patrick in the cargo bay where he was tinkering with his armor. He didn’t even look up as he asked, “Get it out of your system?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t…”

He sighed and turned to face me. Then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me in a tight hug. He didn’t say anything. Instead, he just let me sink into his embrace, and in that moment, I felt like the whole world melted away.

“Thank you,” I mumbled into his chest.

“You don’t have to thank me, Mira. I’m here for you. You can talk to me. You don’t have to keep it all bottled up,” he said, cradling my head with his cybernetic hand. “We’re in this together. Remember that.”

Then, I told him what Freddy had revealed, ending with, “I don’t think we can depend on him.”

“What an asshole.”

“He’s not an asshole, Pick. He’s just…broken.”

“No, he’s definitely an asshole. Giving up just because he feels guilty. If he was really sorry, he’d be working to save as many people as he could to make up for the people he lost,” Patrick stated. “And he tried to rope you into it, too? In your moment of weakness, he just twisted the knife. That makes him an asshole.”

I pulled away and shook my head. “Maybe.”

But I wasn’t so sure. Freddy was probably more damaged than even I wanted to acknowledge, and I felt like I had no right to judge him. None of us did, because we hadn’t felt what he’d felt. We hadn’t been through what he had been through. As such, we couldn’t really understand the grief staining his heart.

I sensed Alistaris heading in the direction of the Leviathan, so I dried my eyes and told Patrick about the Dingyt’s impending arrival. So, we were both ready when he stepped through the ship’s hatch.

“Are you ready for another mission?” he asked without preamble. In the past couple of months since the quarantine had lifted, he’d lost weight. More, he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Not surprising, considering he was the organizational lynchpin for the entire resistance.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“One of our teams got ambushed,” Alistaris answered. “Initial reports are that there are nearly thirty mystics and more than five-hundred Adjudicators.”

“Do you want me to just blow it up?” I asked. I certainly had that capability. I could drop another bomb from the Leviathan and wipe out an entire city, if I wanted to.

“Not possible. They’ve already deployed anti-projectile cannons,” he answered. “We can’t afford to lose any more people.”

“What was the team’s target?” I asked.

“What else? Another dig site. They’re bound and determined to blow this planet up,” Alistaris said. “The team managed to take out the machine, but they were taken soon after.”

“Seems simple enough. We go in, kill the bad guys and rescue our people,” I said. “Sound about right?”

“Ensure that the machine is completely destroyed and gather any intelligence you can,” he added. “But other than that, yes. That’s it.”

“So, same as always,” I reasoned. “Alright. Let’s get this thing going, then.”

After that, Patrick and I went to the cockpit, and Alistaris transferred the coordinates to Patrick. Then, we were on our way. The trip was supposed to take a little more than an hour, so I settled into the navigator’s seat and focused on my aura control.

That’s how I passed the time until Patrick said, “We’re here.”

I opened my eyes to see a massive set of ruins the likes of which I’d never beheld.