The blackened, skeletal wreck of her lodge was all that remained. Marina sat on the charred branch of a fallen tree, her clothes filthy with soot and smoke. The thin layer of ash underfoot made the cobbled ground feel more like soft carpet than stone through her boots.
Kal's body, or what was left of it, had been removed less than thirty minutes before.
She was no longer aware of the tears that were still streaming down her face as his animal-like hysteria had gradually morphed into a sort of catatonia. Her eyes, although fixed on the hollowed out remains of her old life, remained almost oblivious to the sight. She could only stare at a distant, unknown point that was neither nearby or far away. Through the black, through the rubble and into nothing.
She was no stranger to death. She was a soldier, it came with the territory. It hadn't even been three days since she'd lost friends and compatriots at First Province. But they were expendable fodder, they all were. Happy to sacrifice themselves in service of the greater good of the Capital. Justice, Ever Forwards. Kal hadn't chosen that. He hadn't chosen to be blown apart in a fiery wreck. He hadn't volunteered to die in one of the most horrendous ways imaginable. He was supposed to have died peacefully, when he was old, with Marina or his children at his side. The suffering and death Marina had witnessed in ten years of service, that had always seemed normal, rational even and her brain could always close it off. This wasn't rational, this wasn't part of the plan. This was Kal.
And she hadn't fixed it. She'd never made it home to repair the damage from their argument. Her last memory of him would be anger and hurt. The last time she would ever see him would be as he'd stormed away from her, slamming the door behind him.
Tomorrow, she had said. We'll fix it tomorrow.
No, that wasn't right. Ashe had said tomorrow. Ashe had said he'd be there. Ashe had pulled her away from the man she loved for a night of hollow, meaningless revelry and like a fool, Marina had toddled along, trying to fit in. Trying to find something else outside of her own, actual worries.
Ashe Marvel and his fucking drinks.
Ashe Marvel.
Marina hated him.
It had seemed like days ago that she'd arrived at the scene in the Swan's commandeered cart. Truthfully, she'd lost track of time but it couldn't have been more than eight hours or so. The cart had been unable to get anywhere near the barracks as the roadblocks and rerouting set up by the emergency services had been wide and far reaching. Yet it had managed to get Marina close enough that she could feel the heat and smell the death when she'd emerged from inside the vehicle.
She'd run, all awareness of her injured ribs and alcohol filled bloodstream forgotten. She'd run past rescue workers, MRO's, and lawmen, bounding over, around and under control barriers and wagons, shoving aside anyone that had tried to stop her. All the while displaying her secure military ID, waving it around frantically in an attempt to quell any protests.
As she'd grown closer, the heat and smoke had become unbearable. The soaring temperatures seemed to pulse in waves through the air, along the streets and down the back alleys. Not hot enough to singe her clothes or skin, but enough that her eyes had stung, making it almost impossible to see. She hadn't seemed able to blink any moisture back into them as the searing heat dried them out within seconds. The smoke had billowed upwards obscuring everything above and making it seem as if the entire district was submerged in a toxic fog of suffering.
Eventually she'd come to a blockade that was impenetrable, a line of fire wagons and rescue crews that had formed an impassable wall around the barracks western watch gate. The crowds of onlookers that had sporadically peppered the streets on her drive there were now almost too thick to penetrate. Se'd pushed through them towards the blockade as huge streams of water roared out of tank-like vehicles ahead, arcing over the walls into the flaming carnage beyond. She'd had a brief flashback to the Ocean Ghost's thunderfall, and imagined the jets pummelling any surviving barracks inhabitants into pulp on the other side. Although she knew the pressure was nowhere near the force of the tider vessel, the memory had caused her a moment of weakness and she'd stumbled briefly before regaining clarity and focus.
By that point, however, she was already screaming, fighting to make it through the cluster of bodies. She'd screamed Kal's name over and over and the screaming had quickly turned to wailing. The pushing, meanwhile, had turned to shoving and before long she'd been actively throwing people aside to make it to the gate. All the while screaming in anguish and rage.
She remembered reaching the blockade, remembered being held back and restrained by lawmen and MRO's. She remembered throwing punches, remembered fighting her way through, her military training seeming to take over instinctively. She remembered Travis appearing with Garvey, she'd remembered yelling at them both. She remembered that she had spat, screamed and thrashed, all the while being held back, tackled, and shouted at. It was all fragmented, the brief flashes of memory jumbled and clouded by the blanket of intense grief.
Somehow she'd made it through the blockade, running past the open gate, past the fire-wagons, and into the maze of burning buildings. Most of the fires had been extinguished, but she remembered navigating her way by memory and by the flickering orange glow of still-burning lodges. There were voices behind her, following her. It may have been Travis, it may have been the law, but she didn't care. She couldn't see past the rage, or past her increasingly blurred vision. If the smoke hadn't attacked her eyes enough it then started to attack her lungs and her eyes watered even more with every cough. She'd covered her mouth with her shirt to try and ward off the worst of it but it had done nothing.
She remembered reaching the smouldering one-story cuboid that had been her home and although she'd passed dozens like it on her run, seeing the wreckage of her own was like a punch to the soul. She'd finally collapsed. She didn't know how she'd known, but a certainty had washed over her then: a certainty that Kal had been inside. A certainty that he was dead. She'd broken down then, holding onto the still-warm tree for support, and wept. She'd wept uncontrollably for hours, wailing into the emerging dawn. It was a flood of the deepest, purest anguish imaginable. If she'd have been on the outside of it looking in, she wouldn't have known a human body was capable of such sustained and intense emotional turmoil. Every sob brought a fresh cough and every cough brought a sob, it was a feedback loop of pain that seemed to have no end. Eventually she wasn't even aware of what it was she was crying for, or what she was screaming at. It had seemingly become a natural state of being, as if she'd never known anything else.
At some point Travis had found her and sat with her. She didn't hear the man's words, or feel his embrace, nor was she aware of the emergency officials who'd tried to remove them both from the scene, the arguments and legal threats hurled back and forth went unheard to her. Dawn eventually became morning and at some point after that Travis had left her, whether before or after her anguish had become catatonia Marina didn't know. Nor did she hear the reasons for her companion's departure. Eventually, the emergency workers had left her be too. They flitted in and out of her vision, examining buildings and looking for any dead. It was then that they had found Kal. Somebody in the green and white colours of an MRO spoke to her and tried to get her to stand, Marina was immovable, lost in her own spiral of despair.
And here she was still, barely aware that the coughing had set in quite badly. Her throat was raw and her breathing was laboured. The toxins in the air were dispersing, but she'd sat too long in the thinning smoke, and had taken some damage to her lungs.
Slowly, her thoughts started to organise themselves into some semblance of functionality, although her head was still a thick broth of all the ills of the past few days. Her alleged mutation and suspension would bubble up only to burst and be sloshed over with another wave of grief and loss. The battle of First Province seemed to stir around the edge, only to be folded in with the faces of the dead. Her ribs, in agony again with every cough, were overwhelmed with memories of Kal, who in turn would be swallowed up by fire and the stream of a thunderfall.
Kal. He was gone, and it was Ashe's fault Marina hadn't been there; but if she had been, she'd be dead too, which would surely be preferable than living with this pain. She wished she was dead. She wished they'd gone together. Laughing, repairing their quarrel, remembering why they were in love.
But it didn't matter. He was gone.
The thing that finally brought her out of her trance was a loud alarm blaring from her pocket. Her ears and mind seemed to gradually tune into its miniaturised siren.
She pulled out her datapad, the screen flashing red with a priority banner bearing the Capital coat of arms and hopper insignia. Underneath flashed the words: PRIORITY ALERT - REGISTER CHECK IN. Marina pressed her thumb to the designated space and waited as the alarm silenced and the banner faded. Within a few seconds, the screen turned green and displayed her number and rank with instructions to report to the Royal Court Assembly Hall.
She threw the device aside, it skittered along the barren ground, ricocheting off of a piece of rubble.
Why bother? What was she fighting for if not for Kal? If not for their life together? Besides, her services were no longer required. Rendered inert because of a medical anomaly someone should have an answer for and didn't. She had no life, no future and no career. No home.
She let out a snorting chuckle, the thought that she was homeless had only just occurred to her. The military would rehouse her of course, yet if her suspension became a permanent discharge, that wouldn't even be a guarantee. The chuckle seemed to break through her grief somewhat, and for the first time in hours she looked up and around at the ruined courtyard surrounding her, taking it in for the last time. The MRO's crawled over the scene like green-and-white coloured termites on a mound, working to recover the dead and secure any high risk areas.
Marina looked down at her now cracked datapad and let out a hacking cough. The alert meant either two things: that her suspension had still not been fully authorised and was moving its way slowly along the channels of bureaucracy, or it no longer mattered and the call had been put out for all available military personnel regardless of status. Didn't she have to report to Canhos today? To sign off on the forms that would turn her from soldier to lab rat? Maybe. She had no idea what time it was. Yesterday already seemed weeks ago.
The cracked datapad screen continued to draw her attention and a flicker of curiosity tickled the back of her mind but was quickly suppressed by a fresh wave of anguish. Kal's face crashed through her mind like a torrent. Images of him laughing, sleeping, gasping and crying out as they made love. The grief threatened to consume Marina again and she could feel her heart racing, the panic setting in once more. In desperation and with no other idea of how to stop it, she punched herself in the face. The effect was instantaneous. Kal's face vanished in a constellation of newly flashing stars. She swallowed down everything, literally and figuratively. The physical act of swallowing felt like her throat was being torn out, but it helped calm her emotional state. Swallow the pain. Act first, grief later. Duty first. Contain the emotion, pack it away, process it later. When the mission is done, then is the time for emotional fragility.
It was like a trigger had been pulled in her head, the pistol of her military training had been fired. The conditioning overtook everything else and Kal vanished. She wasn't even aware of it. That part of her brain was gone. Buried under years of training and discipline.
The alert had called her and suspended or not, it was her duty to answer. Just as it always had been.
Marina tried to stand, and found she couldn't. She was too weak. Too stiff. She'd been sitting in the same position for hours. She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck in an attempt to loosen herself up, and then, supporting herself on the tree branch, she pushed herself upwards. Her back cracked, her knees ground, and her ribs and diaphragm were in a pain beyond description. She was certain that the coughing and screaming had broken something again. Her whole body screamed in agony, but she was standing.
Holding her stomach, she took her first tentative step and felt a twinge in her back that couldn't represent anything good, but she was moving. Another step. Then another. She paused to pick up her damaged datapad, just about finding the strength and will power to drag herself up from the ground a second time.
Marina slowly shuffled her way through the courtyard, away from the barracks and away from her old life. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. She felt an ominous sense, almost a certainty, that she'd never be back there again. She couldn't explain it but it formed with a clarity that was almost like relief.
Gradually her shuffle became a waddle, each step getting easier than the last. The Capital had summoned her and she would answer. As she always had.
Justice. Ever Forwards.
