Before he can fire, Virginia yells out to her soldiers.
“No, don’t. There is no need.”
She lets out a victorious giggle.
“He cannot harm us now. No evil can overcome the power of the love that holds us together. As a family!”
She gives another thumbs-up and the crowd reciprocates. Thumbs in the air, they all start moving rhythmically, in unison. In thrall. Their leader continues, “So let us rejoice in our unity, and accept my new daughter into our circle.”
Virginia kneels next to Matilda, and the crowd starts chanting the girl’s name. Crosshairs trained on Virginia, Taciturn rests his finger on the trigger, his pulse thudding in his temples, in his hand. As the chanting continues, he slowly traverses his aim to Matilda. The crowd’s chanting is deafening, a pandemonium.
James can barely finish a single thought. Would Matilda prefer death over slavery to this world of illusions? Or is there even now a part of her that secretly longs for this – longs to find a home, whatever the cost?
And can I still get into the Triangle without her? he wonders, and instantly despises the thought.
Looking deeply into Matilda’s wide eyes, Virginia now holds both of Matilda’s small hands in her own. The crowd’s rhythmic chanting lowers, almost disappears in a tuneless, mindless humming as the citizens of Neverland communally connect with the spirit of their mother. Blue light flickers around them as the lifesync dances from Virginia’s to Matilda’s hand. A similar blue flicker forms above the heads of all those in the crowd and all those on the display screens.
Virginia utters an impassioned whisper, but in the new, near-mesmeric silence of the night, it sounds like thunder. “Open to me, my daughter, come…”
Matilda nods her head.
James finger twitches, measureless micrometers off the trigger. His body’s muscle memory knows what to do, but something within him resists.
Cursing, James moves his trembling hand away from the rifle.
Unable to look away, James watches the Scry and the Neverland leader on the platform. Matilda finally answers. In the terribly-clear magnification, he can read her lips.
“Of course.”
Virginia grins in triumph, but James now registers a familiar smile creep across Matilda’s face as well. He watches in confusion as a flickering red flame appears above Matilda’s head. Dancing across the child-Scry’s body, it sweeps across their tightly-clasped hands and up Virginia’s arms. Reaching the ruler’s head, the flame consumes Virginia’s blue.
Gripping Virginia’s hand tightly Matilda whispers, “But I’m not your daughter.”
Virginia’s eyes widen. She screams in horror as the red flame flares and erupts in a sudden inferno over her blue form.
Taciturn quickly gets his finger back on the trigger and shifts his aim to the first of the Neverland guards. As Matilda struggles with Virginia, he begins his own fight. Controlling his breathing, Taciturn finally lets Restoration sing.
It’s a hymn of death for Virginia’s guards, as some scramble for the platform, as still others shoot blindly in his direction. The mercenary doesn’t give them much of a chance as Restoration’s .408 rounds scream down on them, into them, through them, sending their bodies flying. Every shot sends data-blood fanning out into the panicked crowd. The throng seems desperate to break out of the square, but the lifesync with their mother anchors them in place.
Taciturn only stops his slaughter to momentarily watch the Scry and the Queen of Neverland conclude their struggle. Matilda is absorbing the power and memories of everyone connected to Virginia, as the red flame spreads. In the crowd, horrified awareness starts dawning on citizens as they flicker between their chosen child avatars and their true, elderly forms, aging decades in seconds as the System efficiently readjusts the years of hacking and cheating. A black nexus forms around Matilda as more memories pour into her. The void consumes every true memory from the crowd. The Scry has become a channel between them and the great abyss. One by one, as everything that was within them is ripped out, they become nothing but dust and the echoes of screams
Restoration’s chorus is briefly paused again as Taciturn slams a fresh magazine into the rifle. He is gunning down old men now, but their adjusted forms don’t make them any less dangerous. A single near miss whizzes past his head, fluttering his eardrum. Far more frenzied, inaccurate hails of return gunfire randomly chip concrete far away to each side as stray rounds slam into the building around him, most well below him, a rare few behind him. Taciturn barely pays the return salvos a second thought. Their standard-issue weapons are hopelessly outclassed by Restoration’s punishing power and range.
He scans for more targets, but finds nothing but a dusty courtyard, the strewn bodies of felled guards, and Matilda still locked in a struggle with an aged, dying Virginia. Placing Restoration back in his pack’s inventory, Taciturn picks himself up from the shell-covered ground and makes his way to the stairs.
Stepping over the bodies of fallen guards and filmed dust, James approaches the podium. Carefully, he pries Matilda’s hands from Virginia’s. With the bond broken, both women collapse. Virginia falls to the floor. Matilda collapses into Taciturn’s arms.
“Easy there, Matilda. It’s over. Time to stop.”
Matilda blinks her solid black eyes and they slowly return to normal. She looks around dazed, as if waking from a long, deep sleep. Seeing James, she nods her head but her voice jitters and croaks.
“I’m… I’m okay. I just need a minute.”
Reverting back from her proxy child body, Matilda sits down on the podium’s edge and buries her face in her hands. James tries to think of an encouraging word but can’t. Instead, he looks down at the wrinkled, ruined body of a person he once knew in a different life. Virginia’s motherly aspect has been discarded, revealing her true form.
“How could you let this get so far out of hand, Virginia? What happened to you?”
Piercing blue eyes glare back at him. “You’re an asshole, James, you know that? You really planned all of this just to get to me?”
Taciturn looks back at Matilda. The Scry stares blankly out at the open courtyard now filled with information dust. James wonders if the Scry had planned this all along. And, and if so, why she didn’t tell him.
“It didn’t have to go this way. We just wanted your key.”
James says the words but surveys the carnage of the courtyard. He thinks about Restoration, sitting in his inventory. He thinks about what he had very nearly done with it.
Virginia tries to laugh, but it turns into a gurgling cough. Spitting fluids out of her mouth, she replies, “My key… I never liked you James, but I always thought you were one of the smart ones. That’s why I don’t understand why you’d make a deal with that prick, Donovan.”
Taciturn grimaces at the accusation, “It’s only temporary.”
Virginia tries to laugh again. “You know what they say: ‘You deal with shit, you’re going to smell like it.’ At least I can go knowing he’s using you.”
James’ hand begins clenching and unclenching. “He’s not using us.”
She coughs again, weaker this time. “Sure. Sure, James. Whatever you have to tell yourself.”
Frowning, James scans Virginia’s body until he finds what they came here for. Virginia’s key is in the form of a leather bracer attached to her wrist. James starts to take it off, but Virginia’s hand grabs his arm with a sudden, surprising strength.
“If you give it to that monster over there, you’d better know what you’re doing.”
James’ expression causes Virginia to launch into another fit of painful laughter, punctuated with harsh, wracking, dying coughs.