09. For Justice

 

A fire finally flickered to life.  Cari, Ex, and Kibo sat around it, a grim mood fallen upon them.  They had been walking for two days now, but they hadn’t reached the city yet.  Internal maps in their mind told them it was near-by.  But now they were too tired to walk anymore.  No one had a working watch, so they couldn’t tell what time it was.  But judging by the blackness of the sky, it must have been long after sunset.

 

Ex was singing them a lullaby, soft and sad and full of real emotion.  He could barely be heard over the crack of the fire, which he was staring at intently.  Kibo’s hand was in his.  The first born-Forty watched the dark cat sing, the fire reflecting in his already red eyes.

 

Suddenly, Cari sat up.  She had almost fallen asleep, but now her fur was standing on end, and her tail was bushy.  “What was that?” she asked them anxiously.  She looked all around her, but her eyes picked up nothing.  All she saw was desert, and desert, and desert as far as she could see.  “Did you hear that?”

 

“Hear what?” Ex asked, snapping out of his trance.             

 

“That!” she replied, cupping a hand to her ear.  She frowned, intent on listening.  The boys fell silent and listened too, but they couldn’t hear anything.  The only thing that they heard was the fire snapping and popping.

 

Kibo sat up a little straighter, looking around too.  “I don’t hear anything,” he started to say, when suddenly he heard what Cari was talking about.  It sounded like a low rumble of a machine.  An engine, perhaps?  His blood ran cold, and his heart began pounding.  Only when Ex’s squeezed his hand reassuringly, he realized that they were still holding hands.

 

“Oh my god,” Cari whispered.  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

 

Headlights appeared on the horizon.  Headlights, followed by the dark shadow of a mobile vehicle driving toward them at a dangerous speed.

 

“Put out the fire!” Kibo shouted, but Ex was already working on it.  Wasting some of their precious water supply, he poured it onto the fire until it was nothing more than a hiss and a puff of smoke. 

 

Then all was silent again, save for the roar of the approaching engine which had replaced the comforting sound of the fire.  The lights and engine grew closer and closer, louder and louder, brighter and brighter until it came to a screeching halt right in front of the three.

 

Like an animal trapped in the headlights of a car, none of them could move.  They just sat, cowering, close together.  Their sensitive eyes temporarily blinded by the bright lights, they couldn’t make out the figure who hopped out of the car and walked towards them.  They couldn’t tell who it was, until he spoke.  The same voice that always interrupted.  The same voice that always calm and collected.  The same voice that betrayed them.

 

“Hello again.”

 

Ex shot to his feet like lightning.  “Get out of here, Ran.  Leave us alone.  You don’t have any right to even show your face to us.”  The now familiar click of a gun coming out of safety filled their ears.  Ex fell silent. 

 

Kibo tried in vain to pull Ex back down with them.  “Exy,” he whispered, his voice faltering with worry.  “Let’s run, Exy.  Please, Exy, let’s run.”  Cari nodded her head in agreement, but never took her eyes off of Ran and the gun in his hands.  But Ex didn’t pay attention to either of them.

 

“Calm down, pretty boy,” Ran said, leaning on the hood of the military jeep he rode in.  “You should be thanking me for finding you.  I’m sure you don’t have enough food or water to last you to the nearest city.  Give it up.”  His lips twisted in pleasure as he saw Ex’s scowl deepen.  “Besides, even if you did make it to a city, what would you do?  You would be shunned.  No one would take you in.  No one would give you work.  You would die as hopeless, homeless freaks.

 

“Face it, we’re mutants compared to the rest of the humans.  We wouldn’t be accepted no matter what we do.  They would hate us for being the race that is supposed to replace them.  That’s expected behavior of them.  How would you feel if you met the person who was supposed to take your place in everything?  We don’t belong up here, on the surface.  I came out here looking for you to take you back to the lab.  The scientists are willing to take you back, all charges dropped.  …Even if you killed Professor Gideon.”

 

“Fuck you,” Ex snapped.  He walked out of the headlights, carefully shielding his eyes.  “I’m not going back to that hellhole.  We never chose to replace the humans.  I don’t want to.  I never wanted to.  It’s natural for a species to die out when it’s their time.  If we can just tell everyone that we never chose to be born this way…”

 

Ran laughed.  No one had heard Ran laugh before.  It wasn’t friendly.  It wasn’t because he thought something was funny.  It wasn’t because he was happy. With Ran, he was never laughing with you.  He was always laughing at you.

 

“Do you really think that?  Face it, you’ll never be accepted as cat-human freaks.”  He aimed the gun at Ex again, smirking.  “Now just get in the car and there will be no harm done.”  When Ex didn’t move, Ran’s smirk turned into a frown.  He aimed the gun at one of Ex’s foot and shot.  As Ex yelped and instinctively knelt down to hold his foot, Ran leveled the gun at his head again.  “I told you to get in the car.”

 

Ex looked up and smiled grimly.  “Like hell I will.”

 

“Don’t try to be a hero, Ex!” Ran shouted and shot again. 

 

This time, the scream that sounded didn’t have walls to be echoed off of.  It just traveled across the flatland, on, and on, and on.  Ex laid, eyes wide, mouth open, blood seeping into the dirt from the hole in his throat.

 

Ran looked down at the fallen Forty without the slightest bit of sympathy.  He let his hand fall to his side as he watched Ex die.  “You are not your sister,” he said quietly, more to himself than to anyone else.

 

Kibo was sobbing and kneeling before Ex.  “Don’t die, Exy.  Please, please don’t die.  I never got to say ‘I love you,’” he sobbed, gently pulling Ex into his lap.  “You can’t die yet.  You have to hear it.”  His entire body shook as he tapped his nose to Ex’s gently.  “You can’t die without hearing it.  You can’t die without knowing.  That’s so unfair.”  He shut his eyes and started to sob.  “Please wake up, Ex.  Please, please wake up.  I love you.  I love you so much.  It’s not funny to pretend to be dead.”

 

Cari fell to her knees, sobbing for them.  It was all too much.  Five deaths in rapid succession.  Four of which who were her best friends.  She couldn’t handle it.  Even Ran felt a little sympathy, more than he thought he could ever feel.

 

“It’s not funny, Exy!  You have to wake up!  I’ll build us a house and we can live in it and live happily ever after, okay?” Kibo said, his voice shaking and his nose sniffing.  “I’ll cook you waffles every morning.  It’s your favorite, right?  It’ll be way better than the cafeteria waffles, too.  Please wake up.  Please wake up…”

 

The desert seemed to cry, too, as it echoed his and Cari’s tears back to them.

 

At long last, knowing that the boy in his hands was dead, Kibo fell silent.  He didn’t move for a long while.  After a while, he slowly looked up at Ran with a pathetic expression.  Ran looked away, feeling something very similar to guilt.  But instead of accusing Ran angrily, Kibo spoke quietly.  “Shoot me too, Ran?  Please?”  Without waiting for an answer, he delicately brought his trembling lips to Ex’s.  With closed eyes, he barely had time to hear the bang.  He was dead upon contact. 

 

Ran couldn’t tear his eyes away.  Blood and tears mixed and streamed silently down Kibo’s cheeks onto Ex’s face.  Despite all the violence, it was a peaceful scene, painted by the stars.  They had died in a kiss, the way they had both wanted to go.  But Ran couldn’t take it.  He had felt sympathy for them.  He couldn’t bear to see his cousin crying like that.  He had to shoot.  But now it was just him and the crying girl.

 

“Come on,” he said, his voice rough and haggard.  “I’ll take you back to the lab.”

 

Cari nodded.  Her body was weak from walking on an empty stomach.  She was tired from crying.  She was emotionally tired from all her friends that died before her own eyes.  All the friends she couldn’t save.  She didn’t make any complaint as Ran hoisted her up to her feet.  She didn’t make any complaint when Ran sat her down in the passenger seat of his jeep.  She didn’t make any complaint as they drove away, leaving the two bodies behind.

 

But she cried.  She didn’t dare make any noise, because Ran still had the gun.  But she tilted her head back, eyes shut in pain that he couldn’t feel or understand.  And she cried.  And she cried.  And she cried. 

 

She cried for anyone who could understand her pain.  She cried for the human race that was denying their approaching extinction.  She cried for the professors who did the only thing they could do.  She cried for all the experiments that died as failures before her.  She cried for all the experiments that were to be created.  She cried for Axie and Ex and Kibo and even Professor Gideon.  She cried for the polluted world that almost couldn’t sustain life.  She cried for every life that ended before her.  She cried for every death that would happen after her.  She cried for freedom.  And she cried for justice.

 

Ran watched her silently.  He was overtaken with thousands of new emotions, tons of which didn’t even have names yet.  Finally, he grit his teeth, and jerked the steering wheel to the side.  The jeep skidded completely around, and started charging in the way that Cari, Kibo, and Ex had been heading.

 

“Where are we going?” she asked quietly, her eyes wide and wet and wondering.

 

Ran turned to her, eyes not as cold as they used to be.  “We’re going to the city.  We’re going to tell everyone that we’re alive.  And we’re going to try our best to fit in, even if everyone hates us.  We’re going to be free.”

 

And with that, the jeep roared off, far, far away from the laboratory where they had been born.