It was a small building at the end of the Iminn Town in between Nowhere and Nowhere Else. It was open to the spring air as was best for them both. For once, Sabatt smiles on us, Mik thought, as the Goddess provided pleasant weather for unpleasant tasks.
Perhaps the old girl's not dead yet. He had come alone and he waited alone.
Medic Merikka Sorennsen had wanted to come, but she only thought she knew about Lt. Bastion and Mik un-categorically denied her request. The town was alive -- struggling, but alive -- and they'd be safe there. Today, anyway.
Mik fidgeted a bit, checked his chrono again, for the thousandth time. Ric wasn't late, but he worried. He worried because he knew Bliss had been shot. He worried because of the Freemen killer. He worried because Brrace knew where he was and why. Brrace had tried to stop him from leaving the Hope Relay Installation base and that had been an awful, heated conversation. Mik almost, almost hoped Ric didn't come so that he could honestly tell the Col. that he hadn't talked to him about anything. Then when he did, he could keep it to himself and he wouldn't be questioned. Still, he wanted him to come; needed to see him. So much to say, he thought.
Death. Dead. The city was dead around Riccoh. He stuck to the shadows because it was habit and took no pride in passing by unseen the ghosts and goblins that inhabited the city, pretending at life, pretending at living. He knew Mik was early, waiting on him. So close to the meeting point, a safehouse at the city's edge where the dusty wastes licked at the remaining ramshackles like the waves of the ruined ocean. Time would tear it all down and there would be nothing but dust.
He paused against the crumbling brick of a once thriving wedding mall to check his chrono. So near, Mik's presence thrummed a counter to his own heartbeat, crackled along his nerves. Other times, it would pull him up, make him high and stir phantom feelings of wings spread out to catch the thermals. He had been crawling on the bottom so long (only a few days, really), he had forgotten what the wind felt like and had no desire to find out. A few more broken blocks he passed by anonymously and he found himself there. On the threshold. For better or for worse.
"Ric." Mik rose and moved immediately to the door knowing without doubt who was there behind it. To Ric's credit, he didn't open the door in Mik's face. He stepped in, dark and brooding, a mood made worse by the hood and veil that showed only dull, steel eyes.
Mik didn't know immediately what to do and it was an uncommon feeling. That look in Ric's eyes was something he hadn't seen often. After Macy died, he'd seen it. After he'd been hurt in the Battle of Progress; after they found out that Malley was their father and they'd already lost him... He gently laid a hand on Ric's arm. "Hi bro."
He swept past his brother. Don't touch me...no touching, Ric made clear in his brother's mind. He gasped at the physical contact between them and pulled his arm away. "Mikkaill."
Maybe the rejection was something he should have expected, but it stabbed at him unexpectedly and his intake of breath was soft, cut short, but startled. He watched as Ric made no move to shed himself of his disguise. It had become a shield, a barrier against the world and the world held his brother firm in its grasp. Mikkaill... his full name. Mik didn't know what else to do but to retreat himself, regroup. They were two sides of the same magnet - flipped and pushing at one another with all their might.
Ric found a place to sit, wherever, whatever it was, it was obvious that he didn't care. He plopped himself down and pinned his brother with the full tang of his gaze, dull though the points were, it still cut. "You have my orders?"
"Sorennsen figured it out." Mik put his hands behind his back then, an uneasy at ease; ignoring the 'order' from his brother for his orders - as if they weren't brothers but instead Ric was commander and Mik was here for his pleasure - Mik distinctly disliked that feeling and went on; "The Doritinn was clearly altered to be habit forming - even the dose you were given by way of reintroduction to the drug when you returned from Demm was of the newer formulation."
There was on Ric's face no expression to go by. There was only the tightening around his eyes, the dilation of black pupils to show the momentary surprise which was rapidly followed by resignation. He was soft spoken today. Still speaking like Bastion, Mik noted, but to himself not to his brother.
"Makes sense. I can't stop taking it. There goes the problem. Poof."
"I confronted Brrace. He claimed he didn't know what Dr Cannon was up to. I don't know if I believe him; but I'm not inclined to trust the Ex-cultie at all." Never was, he added silently. Mik watched Ric ... Bastion... as he sat there. Like this, Ric was less his brother than ever and his nostrils flared with the hatred of what had done this to him. "You have stopped taking it ...?" Mik was sure Ric had ... days ago ... and knew he'd promised to be there to help Ric through it -- but the damn Messanger had kept his attention much of the time... the conversations got longer and deeper and philosphical and hinted at great knowledge just beyond the paranoia that the Messanger evidenced when they "talked." Mik just didn't know if somehow more Doritinn had gotten into Ric's hands by way of Peter Cannon's own delivery service but the fact was that Cannon hadn't found him. Ric had his own stash.
Ric began to work his gloves tighter on his hands, not looking at his brother. The need for the calm the drug gave him was obvious on his face. Mik suspected it was the only thing that Ric felt was keeping him together.
"Kinda."
"Dammit, Ric! Kinda? Why the hell not?"
"I just..." and Ric's voice broke. "I needed where it took me."
Ric flinched. Mik regretted raising his voice even before Ric flinched. Ric's facade simply crumbled. Mik had yelled at him. It was plain on his face that he thought he deserved it. He deserved it all. He no longer sat like Bastion, or even looked like him despite the outfit.
Oh ... oh gods... Mik said to Ric's tender consciousness and came out of his soldier's at ease to cross the room. He half knelt beside the chair, one hand on the table the other on the chair in which Ric sat. He spread out the mental blanket of comfort he knew Ric needed and stopped being an ass of a Commander. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "We'll get you off it."
Ric for his part hesitated crawling into that blanket, though he knew it was warm and unconditional. He felt he needed punishment, something so painful that it would erase the ache in his heart. He knew there couldn't be anything that hurtful. "What's the use, Mik." He bowed his head into his hands.
"The use?" The question so startled him that he didn't have a fast, bandaid answer - which in it's own way was good -- that wasn't what Ric needed. "It's ... it's wrong what they've done." Just plain wrong, forget the tenets, forget everthing. It was just as wrong as what the High Command -- including Brrace -- had wanted to do with Lowinn; use him to their advantage. Mik wasn't that kind of commander. And what the drugs had done to Ric was to take away his will and Ric was trusting in the drugs instead of in the relationship between them as brothers and, instead of in who Ric himself was.
Ric's eyes burned, but there were no tears. He'd cried them all at Bliss' place. There was only a hollow spot, a vaccuum that defied the laws of physics. It wasn't being filled by anything. "What's the use? It doesn't matter anymore. I don't matter...anymore."
Ric wasn't a quitter, he fought. And when things got bad he fought harder. Mik was terrified. "You matter!" He said urgently as if his life depended on it - which in a way, in the most important way - it did. "You matter to the Legion. You matter to Bliss. You matter to me."
Ric looked up then, fixing on his brother's eyes, drowning in them. Too many choices. Too much left up to him, who so far, had the worst track record on the planet. He couldn't stand it anymore and opened up completely. Everything he had felt and shared with Myrr. Myrr who had been and still was, the most important person he wanted in his entire existance. Nothing was held back, not even nights of pleasure from the first to the last. He sent it at Mik like a bullet. Its' wake was the most poignent of it all. The emptiness, the nothingness that was left over. All because he couldn't keep his mouth shut when he was off the drugs. There was awareness there too, that it wasn't ultimately the drug's fault, but his own for being so weak. He hated weakness and that's all he ever seemed to show.
Mik lost his balance at the bullet of images, thoughts, feelings and landed on his ass on dirt floor. His steel eyes glazed over as his brain tried to assimilate it all and finally he dumped his head in his hands, blacking out a moment as the information settled in: His blanket of warmth wrapped around Ric still more tightly even in the loss of awareness of the physical world around him. Ric oozed to the floor beside Mik and cradled his brother in his arms. Fresh guilt settled on his shoulders. I'msorryI'msooryI'msorry.... Ric's mantra.
Mik's mind recovered before his body did, but that was only a minute or two behind. No, don't be... you've been through hell and I wasn't there...
A good thing. Hell sucks.
Mik's eyes fluttered open. "How could she say that to you? That you were freaking out over nothing... when you love her?" He looked up into his brother's eyes and being cradled in his arms was reassuring; more it was right. They were again who they were and it comforted above all.
Ric sighed and tried to sit Mik upright to ease the strain - despite Mik's loss of weight - on his still healing shoulder. Ric had been shot when Myrr had revealed her method of operations as the Nightmare that Walks. Mik wasn't sure how she'd done it -- it hardly mattered at this moment -- but he figured she had probably relayed the images through her own people skilled in the art of telepathy. With the information he had, that was likely the only way to do it. Years in the Complex playing the Power's "games" had taught him how to put himself into problems and find solutions. Usually it was to the advantage of Legion regarding battle; this time, in an interpersonal relationship.
But it didn't matter to him what Myrr did for a living. What mattered was how she treated his brother and how his brother treated her. It was the fault of that image, relayed to Ric during a skirmish with Nukes, that had caused him to be shot. It was what had brought them together in the hospital the night they'd left with Bliss and Roan for Bliss' Firehouse a meeting that had led ultimately to Mik's revelation to the two women about who he and Ric were. Odd how things work.
"My fault," Mik said. "It's my fault. I overheard her talking to Williams... overheard she was in danger of dying. I didn't know how to tell you." Myrr would die young because of what she was, a mindwalker. She and Williams had found no way to stop it.
"Maybe I don't love her enough or the right way. One thing I do know ... you ain't to blame for this." The blame settled perfectly on Ric's back and his back alone. It was something he was used too.
Connected to his brother, he pushed up himself, only marginally dizzy still. "You can't blame her for something that I overheard - at least that's one thing she didn't do ... she didn't tell me before she told you. She should have told you about Williams before ... when he was just 'the Guy' who'd come back." He was insisting that it wasn't all Ric's fault even as he didn't let Ric take all his weight, though he shared some of it. "You can't be blamed for what you weren't told, either or how you react to it."
"I shoulda tried harder. Shoulda just smiled and nodded. Shoulda...woulda...coulda... I don't blame her for anything. She's more fragile than even she knows. And I'm one helluva bull in that china shop." He kept one hand on Mik's back, reassurance and preventative. He'd be there to catch his brother should he fall.
"You both could learn to smile and nod, bro. Trust me." He felt the dizziness slowly ebb and couldn't believe some of the things that Ric had sent him... so much... Everything? But worst indeed was the emptiness. Mik had thought himself alone, so many times.... it was nothing compared to this.
He let Mik digest and ruminate on what he had shared. Everything. He stayed silent, almost embarrassed because he knew Mik had feelings for Myrr and had never really been jealous of them. Well, somewhat so that he had guarded some memories, some experiences closely. "I need to get out of town." For a very long time.
There was so much he'd overheard in that conversation he'd listened to between Trace and Myrr...and so much he'd said to her that Ric didn't know and he wondered if he should shoot a bullet back... no...that might be bad timing - Gods he didn't know what to do! and he heard what Ric said, ... get out of town... and .. and... every other thought stopped right there. "Where?"
"I don't know. I don't care. Just... I don't want to run into her." His voice dropped to a soft whisper. "Ever ..."
Was he going to run like Myrr had? Mik couldn't believe that. "You're... but... you love her."
"What good is it, Mik? She doesn't want me. All I do is hurt her. Me talkin' is like stabbing her in the gut with a knife."
"What good..." He shoved a hand through his dark hair which he maintained in a military cut as per regs... stupid regs... "I dunno Ric but it's gotta be some good. Just has to be on some level. What do you say that hurts her most?"
He snapped his mouth shut and his went wide as saucers. "I... I don't say much ... actually." There was guild written all over his face.
Mik turned his head to eye his brother. "And why's that?" He knew he could tell Myrr almost anything - it was kinda odd that. That for him she was easy to talk to but for Ric, who'd married her, she remained enigmatic.
"Because I'm afraid to. She cuts just as good as I can - better than I can." His voice rose from a whisper. "Yanno, Mik... it's like she said... 'don't lose yourself in me'. I tell her it already happened, but I don't think it did - yet. I want her so much I'm scared about what I'd do to get her." Leaving Williams alive for one.
Mik was like a book in a library, all he knew freely to be taken - even to how he felt about Myrr when Ric was gone in Demm, the small fantasy he'd allowed himself. All for if and when Ric chose to read it. He wouldn't hide it anymore and he wondered if he had because he was guilty of an obsession ... something he was seeing for the first time that might be true of Ric as well. "Ric... I know the love is real; but ... is it healthy?" They weren't stupid men, they could figure things out -- especially when they were together, they knew how to effectively profile people - usually enemies, but why couldn't they profile one small woman? Maybe they hadn't tried. "Should anyone lose themselves in another person?" Gods it was such a head question.
"I want her to lose herself in me, dammit. Not the other way around." It surprised him to realize that. The veil was suddenly stifling. He ripped it away so he could breathe. "I want...I want...What does she want? I don't know."
"I'm not sure she knows, Ric. You know I love her... but I don't understand her. And hell, if I don't understand her with my brain, how can she, poor girl?" He tried to smile, tried to lighten the mood with the joke, but well... he swallowed ... it was good to see Ric's face. He hated the veil now almost as much as Ric did.
Ric's skin was flushed, from heat within and without. He took a few deep breaths and felt the first stirrings of a need artificially born. Doritinn. Odd that he could hate it so much and yet desire it all the same. He swallowed the craving down at the same time Mik swallowed. It was a subtle rummage, but he found in Mik what he was looking for. "You want her too."
He wanted to deny it, to say No ... and flat out said. "I want Bliss, dammit." But he couldn't deny his desire for Myrr... because his desire half born of Ric's own had grown into something of *his* own despite all he'd done. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean to... I know you won't - can't - share her. I don't really want you too."
"I want Bliss too." And he did, at first because Mik did and it was a natural spawning from such desire and then as he got to know the woman, because he'd found a kindred spirit. "But I didn't kiss her and she didn't kiss me...put her hands all over me...and...like it." He'd plunged into the memory and voiced it...bit by bit. "Why didn't you just shoot them, Mik.." he asked in a very soft whisper. "Gods..."
Gods ... he thought. Then in a faint whisper he begged, "Please, Ric forgive me." Then to answer the question he said, "I don't know... because -- becasue ..." ...because that was Ric's style, not his; because she said if they fired they'd draw the fire of the others... she said they'd be killed before they could kill... couldn't she have killed thm all, liquified them? "... because I didn't want to." That was the truth of it, in the end, wasn't it? He'd enjoyed her hands on him, her lips on his. He'd never been loved the way Myrr loved Ric, the way Macy had loved Ric.
"You godsdamned bastard. Everything I want you take. How could you?" Ric withdrew his touch, pulling away phsyically. Mentally he threw off that blanket of pseudo-comfort and to Mik it was worse than any rejection. "You think she's gonna run to you now."
"No... no ..." It was miserable, but it was that all he could say.
Mik had thought Ric old-fashioned sometimes and maybe he was, but it was how he saw things. Black and white. No gray or middle. One or the other. If he had planned something like that, that's how he would be thinking. Anger laced with hurt and the pain of betrayal bubbled up, tossing cinders like the precursor to a volcano's blast.
"Ric ... I spent so much time with her. How could I help but love her? Everything you felt, I felt. We both loved Macy the same way! You married Myrr, I didn't. She's yours, not mine." It was a very childish argument, but he thought to himself but didn't say, She kissed me first!
"One thing I want...dammit...need.... And I loved Macy more than you ever did..."
That hurt as it was meant to... maybe Ric had; but Mik had loved her ... she'd been the first kiss ... the first love of his heart ... and since her he'd had nothing but whores in his bed. Camp following woman after camp following woman. The poet in him remembered all their names. Even so, he was still a child when it came to relationships of the heart. Bliss had bowled him over by loving him in a way that was pure and beautiful. She never tried to entice him sexually. There was no innuendo. No subtle arousal. She was too honorable for that, knowing Garth loved her and that had to be resolved. But she didn't need to entice him. He loved her completely and since he'd admitted that love aloud, he'd not gone to the whores. He honestly believed he never would again.
It was quick, so fast Ric wasn't sure he'd actually aimed the left handed punch to his brother's jaw. "I killed for her. What did you do?"
It hurt. It drove his teeth into his tongue, cut and he swallowed blood. Thickly, softly, he said, "I lived." And remembered. Poem after poem he'd written. There were entire books of them in the Deep Dark dedicated to Macy's memory. It was the only way he could honor her - becasue he couldn't take revenge on those who'd killed her:
Ric saw red. The slurred response became the trigger that let spew forth a tirade of filth from his mouth and a catlike pounce that had no play in it. Deadly serious, he grappled with his brother -- or was it himself? Each blow rained upon them both.
The venom and anger that rolled over him was almost blinding to Mik. He fought back but knew he was guilty so took more blows than he blocked. The more serious the attack became the harder he fought back and finally, forced to it, landed a few hard blows of his own despite the lack of room for them. Gods, would he have to reach for a weapon? Ric! Ric stop! There was little chance Mik would win a close quarters fist fight. Ric was faster, stronger despite his wounded shoulder and because Mik was having a difficult time gaining back the weight he'd lost. A full 15 pounds down from 155 which made him an emaciated rail compared to Ric.
The blows Mik had gotten in cut through the haze of red he saw and made him think about where to land the next blow. Mik's voice in his head pulled the punch completely. He breathed heavy as he levered himself up with his left arm and glared at Mikkaill. He felt more battered than he was and it was good to focus on that for a moment.
"Ric, I'm sorry." It wheezed out of him and he coughed. Something hurt: inside.
A voice reached them from the doorway, a voice little older than their own. "That will be quite enough, gentlemen." The sound of several gun bolts being drawn followed the voice.
"What the...?" Ric pulled his own gun, despite the sound, and soon the sight, of several guns leveled at him. He blinked blood from his eye and squinted. The vision of their visitor alone sent him scrambling to put himself between the door and Mikkaill. And from somewhere, his bravado came back with a vengence. "Get the hell outta here.," he told Mik.
The man at the door carried an odd hand gun, his blue eyes sparkling in an expression totally devoid of sanity. "Well, well, trouble in paradise? Tsk. What a pity."
Mik tried to move, but it hurt dammit. He managed to unholster his gun. Ric climbed to his feet, stifling a groan as his solar plexus protested the sudden movement. Mik cursed feeling it. He eyed the new comers and realized the men with them were wearing Freemen Green. Men they knew.
"Ain't none of your business, Cannon." He lent Mik a hand up and shared a silent bit of encouragement. The anger had slid away leaving a dangerous glint in the brother's eye.
Around the man with the white hair and the fanatical blue eyes, came an old man, tall, straight dignified. "I think it's every bit Peter's business, Ricohh." The ex Right Reverend Mitchell Raines crossed his arms in front of him. There was no fear in his small black eyes.
Ric calculated the odds, the number of shots he could get off before they reacted. How fast he could get Mik and himself to some cover, such as it was in the cramped space. They were trapped, Mik and he, but trapped beasts were dangerous creatures indeed.
"Commander Gideonn." MIk said, always one for words in such a situation. "You talk to him the right way, Raines."
Raines raised a brow and Cannon let out a laugh that only increased the odds of his insanity - who'd been feeding him drugs one wondered? "But, dear boy, that's you not him. He's just... leftovers."
Mik, breathlessly leaning on Ric's mental support after the physical was retracted, pointed his weapon waveringly at Raines forehead. The distance from the door to the table where they'd wound up again after fighting was about two meters. "Apologize." Mik slurred it. Gods he sounded drunk!
Ric paled at the word "leftovers". His right eye began to swell, filling his vision with blood. It was hard to judge the distance ... two maybe three meters at the most. As Mik's aim wavered, his had become solid, but it wasn't on Raines he trained his borrowed weapon. It was on Cannon.
"Come, come...not much time." Cannon wheezed and cackled, pulling his kit off his shoulder. One of the Freemen greens lowered his carbine off the pair and actually bent over so the Complex doctor could set the kit on his back. Peter Cannon seemed oblivious to the danger, so trusting he was in the Doritinn's call. "I've always preferred leftovers for dinner." Cannon snapped open the case.
Mik's grip on the gun shifted between Raines and Cannon and back. Gods, but his chest hurt! "What are you doing here? This is breaking protocols." The PTBs never ever did this kind of thing; once they'd reached adulthood Ric and Mik had always been afforded their privacy. Never ever had they drawn weapons either side on the other. Confirmation. Things were going swiftly down hill.
"Protocols are for you, not us and you've broken one too many lately. Let's see if you can remember them, shall we? Ricohh, what is the First Protocol?"
"Change in plans, change in plans..." Cannon pulled a tranqullizer dart - well it looked like one - from the kit and fixed into his gun. "Yes… yes... number one, Ricohh?"
He had to remember how to breathe if only to protect Mikkaill. A heartbeat later, his gun lowered as did his eyes. "Keep the Secret," he said quietly.
Cannon cackled and nudged Raines in the ribs. "He remembered! How wonderful!"
Raines rolled his eyes at Cannon - the man was a lunatic but he did do his job. "That's very good Ricohh, excellent. And have you kept the secret?"
A contrite little boy presented himself to Raines and a step closer he took. "No," he answered in that same soft tone.
"Shut UP Raines!" Mik was sweating. Ric, get away from them... He urged it, either playing into Ric's plan to act this way or truely scared bloodless. He tried to focus, his eyes on the soldiers around them. How could they? How could men they'd known, trained with, lived with betray them? They were from the Complex but they were Freemen!
Just a small tendril of trust, wrapped around his brother. Go with it Mik, he said, and nothing else. He didn't know who or what had come with the two powers. "I can explain," he said quietly. A sweet look up from behind the lowered lashes, marred only by the swelling cut above his eye and the trickle of blood.
"Good, good. Explanations are vital to understanding."
Cannon's voice shrieked. "We don't have TIME for explanations." He had stopped fiddling with the gun and was now preparing a syringe from the things in the kit.
"Quite right, Peter. Quite right. Ricohh, what's the Second Protocol?" He gestured to a soldier to move in to point a gun at Mik's head. So many times they'd used similar tactics, though not with weapons, with other things in the years at the Complex, it was a wonder the two men were sane at all, Raines thought.
He saw the gun on his brother and his certainty wavered. He wasn't that fast. "No," he whispered. He took a second, dragging step forward.
Mik kept his gun on Raines. He'd sworn he'd not shoot another man in Freemen Green. Ever. Ric, don't let them stick you... He trusted his brother completely in his plan, despite Ric's own assertions that planning was not his forte... but he did not trust Cannon at all. They said Ric was leftovers! What if they meant to kill him, here now, without a fight? Sweat trickled down Mik's temples into his beard and he gritted his teeth.
"Come come... the Second?" Raines said impatiently.
"Never get caught." I'm not that fast! Gods ... get out while you can, Mik!
"Can we get on with this? I've got ... well, I've just got a hundred things I need to do." Cannon squirted out a bit of fluid from the needle's tip and left the soldier bent over. He handed Raines the tranq gun.
"Oh, you are smart." Raines nodded, taking the gun in hand. "I've never regretted that part of your training. "Now, roll up your sleeve."
Not leaving you. Not now, not ever. Mik's finger itched to squeeze the 9mm trigger and blow a hole in Raines 'superior' brain. Ric flinched at Raines' tone, though he should have been used to it by now. With a gun trained at Mik's head, what choice did he have but to roll up his sleeve, meek and mild? A good little boy.
"Good boy, good boy. Always could find a vein on your arm." The doctor waddled over, gleeful and smiling while Raines held the tranq gun.
Mik was breathing hard. He couldn't act all calm and cool when his brother was this close to being sent back into the hell he hadn't even had a chance to emerge from... no... no...no... The protest was a litany in his head. "Raines... ! What about the other Protocols? You didn't ask him to recite them all..."
"Oh, they're hardly important now since I ..." and here he looked Ric in the eye, "Have what I want." It was never clear to them what Raines wanted.
"Has what he wants. Has what he wants ...and you will too, won't you my boy? You want this, don't you?" Cannon tapped Ric's arm to find that easy vein.
The soldier holding the gun to Mik's head was sweating too; Mik saw it when he shifted his eyes. Holding a gun on the Legion Leader had to be one tough position to be put in. Good - at least someone was uncomfortable with his job!
It would be so easy, wouldn't it? To just let them stick him, Ric thought, and all would be right again or at least familiar. Again his plan wavered even as he tore his eyes from Raines to sweep his steely gaze over the assembled Freemen. "You're all traitors."
The soldiers from the Complex had always been different from the average Freemen. Like the men from Demm perhaps, they were brutal but disciplined, and Mik realized that Ric knew all their names.
"Traitors? Perhaps you do need to recite the rest of the Protocols, after all, Ricohh,"
Raines quipped.
"Alphonse Winnder. Veritzz Goldd. Damionn Mizzakk. Jonn Gantz. Traitors all ... and they will all ..." He pinned his gaze on Raines, a promise made with the words, "Die Knowing." Mik saw each man look away... just a split second...as his name was said.
The Third Protocol recited quieted even Raines just then -though perhaps not Cannon. That promise made to him by Ric. That Ric knew the names.
Ric didn't need to see Cannon to know where he was. As the men looked away, Cannon found his face presented with a 9mm hollow tip. Blam. As the man beside him looked away, Mik whipped his gun around and blew a hole in the head of another Freemen at precisely the moment Ric shot Cannon. The whoosh of pump guns impinged on his consciousness - and everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
He saw Ricohh follow Cannon down, beneath the muzzles of the carbines so close. Ric drew a knife and flung it at the nearest Freemen. Flashbacks of Demm, all over again. Down, down! Get down Mik!
The words triggered the memore of Progress and it came back; of bullets ripping into his body and the shout of a Freemen Commander. Mik went down into a crouch, not shot but reacting to Ric's command in his head as if it were his own brain's order to his body. But there was the voice of a Freemen shouting, even as Mik spun on the balls of his feet and fired his weapon into another Freemen chest as that man's gun was pointed toward Ric. That man went down as two grenades launched through the windows from the pump guns he had heard landed on the floor, clattering and skidding.
"Dammit, I said no grenades!!" The voice of Bryan Brrace came to Mik's ears from outside. Mik's next to last thought about Brrace's lineage was unkind when he lunged for Ric as time ran out Ricohh!
The last thing Ric saw was Raines being pulled out by a new Freemen, one who had just shown up at the door. Mikkael Blackk... he thought, aiming for the cold man's heart, oblivious for the moment to sound of grenades thumping home. Blam! Blam! Ric pulled the trigger but he never found out if he'd hit his mark. Mik was atop him and the world exploded... twice.
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