"This is what a broken world looks like, Clair," Lance said. The city below them burned; pillars of smoke clawing at the skies like so many torture-twisted fingers. "This is all that's waiting for us."
But even as he spoke, that faint smile never left his face.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
==="You've lost everything."===
"I'm sorry, Theo," Serra said, pulling his jacket tighter around herself. She couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. "I just...I can't."
Theo almost-growled and ran a hand through his hair. He was at his wit's end. "You can't keep stringing me along like this."
"You don't understand," she said, pleading. "You
can't understand."
"Is it
him? Is it?" Theo demanded. He needed real answers. "Do you even know what he is? Can't you see him the way the rest of us do?"
==="You've thrown the rest away."===
"This is more than any of us were ever trained for," Davis protested, flinging his arms wide. "We're soldiers--on our best days. This isn't our job!"
==="And all that's left is fire..."===
The blade cut deep, and the pain almost knocked Lance unconscious. But the dark thing behind his eyes flared itself to prominence and chased away all notions of oblivion. His vision sharpened and he pulled the blade from his side.
==="...and rage..."===
"That your first time?" Lance asked from the dimly-lit shadows.
Beatrice was silent, staring wide-eyed at the blood on her shaking hands. She nodded.
Lance laughed. "It gets easier."
==="...and blood."===
"I've calculated our chances of success at 47 percent," Kotomi said, sliding into her Core. The controls and harnesses clicked into place around her. "Which will only decrease should additional enemy reinforcements arrive."
"Are you kidding?" Benjamin groaned.
"That's actually good news," Juliana said with a smirk.
"Those are the best odds we've had all week!" Claire exclaimed.
==="You can call yourself whatever you want."===
"He'll get everyone killed," Mariette said. "You all know this. He's unstable."
---
Lance drove his fist into his masked adversary's gut and slid his knife in between the plates of the man's armor.
---
"Murderous. A Sociopath."
---
He buried the knife to the hilt in the man's eye. And slashed it across another's throat. And that same almost-smile never left his face.
---
"He's Da Vinci with a knife," she protested.
"And on
our side," said Davis.
==="It doesn't matter."===
Beatrice punched the Imperatrix through a concrete wall and gunned down a trio of incoming Normals. "There's too many of them! Where the hell is our backup!?"
==="At our core we're all the same thing."===
"I know what you are. And I know what you're doing," Theo shouted over the pouring rain. Bone-drenched and half-shivering. Though not from the cold.
If Lance was at all concerned with his confrontation, it didn't show.
"I know what you're doing to her, to them--to us. And I won't let it go on."
==="Monsters."===
"There's no way that I could know what you've experienced, right?" she said. Her eyes flashing in the artificial light, dancing with a hint of blackening shadow. "I couldn't possibly feel that need. Like a thousand hiding voices whispering "this is who you are". And you fight the pressure. The growing need rising like a wave. Prickling and teasing and prodding to be fed. But the whispering gets louder, until they're screaming "now!" And it's the only voice you hear. The only voice you want to hear. And you belong to it. To this … shadow self. To this …"
"Dark Passenger," Lance said, full of reverence.
"Yes," Talya said, a coy smile spreading, like a dance, across her lips. "The Dark Passenger."