Liberty or Possessions Chapter 14 Another Version of the Truth
Liberty or Possessions Chapter 14
Another Version of the Truth
Chapter 14 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIs7UoGuyo
Warnings: (Minor) Character Deaths, Gore, Language, Violence, Mentions of: Drug Use, Blood Diseases
The only words spoken between the two men were basic commands as they made their way from the base. Mikkel did not need to ask if Oliver was all right, knowing fair well that he was not. What he had witnessed, what he had experienced, what he had felt, was not right for anyone, let alone someone his age. It would have been unheard of before the war, but America’s presence had changed everything. No one should have had to see people die unnaturally, the horrors of war and resistance, but they lived in a world where it had been brought to their doorsteps. No one should have had to watch his or her loved ones be gunned down, Mikkel rationalized; not even strangers gunned down. He had not known exactly how or why Oliver was there, but after everything, Mikkel believed what Maria had written about him to be true. It was the only thing he knew to be true at that point, and yet he had no evidence to back that up. The only thing he had was Oliver himself, and the way the Presence pushed the thoughts about the younger man onto him.
They escaped through an access door that Mikkel had disabled the alarm on, entering the outer grounds of the base where the darkness of night greeted them. The silence was deafening, the alarm that had been loud and imposing inside finally being blocked by the heavy door, which clicked shut behind them. It would have been a nice change of pace if it did not require Mikkel to readjust his focus, but the silence did mean that he could possibly hear threats before they snuck up behind them and put a gun to Oliver's head as Sinclair had. However, on the other side of that coin, it also meant that they could just as easily be detected. Mikkel glanced back, holding his index finger to his lips to show that Oliver should remain silent. Oliver nodded back, nodding once more when Mikkel whispered for him to follow but further behind than in the hallways. Carefully they both crept toward the center of the outer grounds, Mikkel desperately wanting to get some idea of what had been happening out there that had lead to the emptying out the of main building.
The structure they used as cover was a long yet narrow hall, and it took a little bit of time for them to reach where it opened out toward the main field. When they did so Mikkel took to the wall, peeking around the corner of the building. From the safety of darkness he could not see much, but upon glancing around the building and toward where the barbed wired gate stood several hundred yards out, Mikkel gathered a lot of information. There were thousands of soldiers out there, all lying face down in the mud. He held his hand up again, blindly signaling for Oliver to stop, and he took a rough estimation of what the casualties were.
It was almost impossible to tell that the soldiers were dead because their fronts were completely flush against the soft earth, but unless it was a very strange and elaborate trap, uniformed men, especially the Americans, never got dirty in their own bases. It would have been easier just to ambush them inside, so a trap seemed unlikely. Mikkel retreated back to Oliver, speaking low and close to him.
"Aqua is something worse than us," Mikkel began, which made Oliver scrunch his brow in confusion. "Remember when I said it's either for us or worse? Well it’s worse. Seems every member of this base is dead in the courtyard, but I'm going to have to go out to be sure." Mikkel could immediately tell Oliver would protest, and was not disappointed a moment later.
"What did they die from? How do you know that you won’t die too?" Mikkel quirked a light grin. The kid was learning that was for sure. Maybe it had been good Maria had taken charge of looking out for him, he reasoned. Maybe it was good he had left Oliver there to experience all he had. He had grown a lot that week, and it showed. For a moment Mikkel thought back to the woman, to her beliefs and the way she lifted spirits. He hoped that she knew about the soldiers that were probably dead and smiled from whatever version of heaven she believed in. It was only fitting that they got their dues for her death.
"I don't know, and that's why you're staying here. Back there on the other side of the main complex is a tunnel, which leads to an underground well. About three-quarters of the way down is another tunnel that leads out past the city. It's several miles, but I blew all the doors before I came in." Oliver seemed to understand what Mikkel was going for, and he shot back a quick "no" but Mikkel continued to speak past it.
"I'm going to go out there as quickly and quietly as I can. I have no intention of getting caught or killed, but I need to make sure this place is done. I need to know that they all got what they deserve. But I also need you safe, so here's the plan. You're going to stay here, and count. Five minutes, Oliver. If I don't give you a sign of all clear, or if I get captured, then you head for that tunnel and get out." Oliver was not going to agree, but Mikkel left no room for negotiation. "If I get caught, I'm going to kill myself. There will be no point in you staying here. If it's clear, we'll walk right out the front gate and leave this miserable place behind us. That is the plan, and there's no use fighting about it." Carefully, almost thoughtfully, Oliver nodded. Mikkel, a tiny bit surprised that Oliver had actually listened to him, nodded back and slid the backpack off his shoulders. He held it out to the younger man and Oliver took it with a confused look. It was heavier than Oliver expected, but he shrugged it on, before looking back at Mikkel. It made sense that he should have it, but the exchange of the bag still felt like a premature good-bye. Mikkel would come back and Oliver would hand it over again, he tried to tell himself. It was simply a precaution.
"Don't get caught or killed," Oliver told Mikkel, and got an almost silent chuckle in return. The older man reached up to ruffle Oliver's hair, unsure if his sudden fondness toward Oliver was because of the younger man’s transformation into the pseudo soldier Mikkel was, or because the Presence had made him want to be fond of Oliver. Taking a half step away, not wanting to think about it, Mikkel raised his pistol, turned, and prepared to move away.
"Don't plan on it," He told Oliver. "Would much rather find a way to get you back to the other version of me." With those parting words, which left Oliver staring at him, Mikkel returned to the threshold of the main yard and, with a moment's hesitation, disappeared around the building.
Oliver sighed heavily, unsure of how to take Mikkel’s parting words, and gave the older man approximately an extra thirty seconds before he began silently counting. Five minutes, he reminded himself, or the first sign of danger. He owed the man enough to listen to his instructions.
Mikkel knew how to remain unseen in most environments. The Government had trained him to be a tactical expert, and though the Opal had passed its peak, he still felt the disconnection to almost everything. He had no problem putting a bullet in every body he found in the field, slitting every throat to assure they really were dead. However, for the sake of time, he hoped that the submersion in the toxic water that had turned the ground so soft would have assured their deaths.
On the front of the building that Mikkel moved against were a few windows and one door. Craning his neck, Mikkel looked inside the hall. It was packed tightly with rows of bunks against each wall. They were all seemingly unoccupied, but many bodies, nearing about half of what would fill the hall to maximum capacity, were sprawled out on the floor. Like those outside in the field, they also lay face down. They would not have drowned like those outside, and the confines of a building provided some cover for Mikkel to check them, so he decided to start there.
After making sure nothing looked amiss (besides the mass mysterious deaths which, honestly, seemed strange enough), Mikkel edged open the door and slid inside. He checked every point of the building from his spot at the door, ready to slip back out incase of a sudden ambush, but none of the soldiers stirred. Inside of his head Mikkel had been counting and two minutes had already been used up in his slow and methodical approach to the situation. Three more and Oliver would be gone, and Mikkel would have no hope of catching him. He kept his gun at the ready as he approached the nearest body to his position, his boots squeaking softly on the dampened floor. Eyes up and scanning, he carefully placed his index and middle fingers to the man's jugular, feeling for a pulse for just a moment. None met his finger, so Mikkel moved to another corpse. Five bodies later, and with no sign of life, Mikkel decided to examine one.
Having to lower his weapon was something Mikkel did not feel comfortable doing, but the men were muscular and heavy. After a moment of wondering what his best move would be, Mikkel holstered his gun. With his hands free, he grabbed the man's shoulder and pushed him over. Mikkel had assumed he would need to flip the man completely in order to see whatever wound had killed him, but all he had needed was the face. The soldier had not bled out, not even a drop of it on the floor. And yet it seemed as if his eyes had been torn out. Holes of blackened flesh remained where the orbs should have been. Had the Opal not still been in his system, Mikkel would have gone right back out where he had come in, far too unnerved by the wound. He would have collected Oliver and told him to run. These men had not been slaughtered by an attack, but burned out seemingly from the inside. Mikkel worked up the nerve to check a few more bodies and all seemed the same. Though Mikkel had no idea what weapon could have created such wounds, he had an idea of what might have had the power to do it.
With a newfound sense of urgency, Mikkel returned to the field. He looked for any sign of hostility, any sign of life, but none emerged from the complete stillness of the usually busy base. He ventured out to the middle of the field where bodies lay on one another, propped up just slightly by their intertwined arms and legs. Regardless, they all seemed firmly planted in the mud. They had identical wounds, had experienced identical deaths, and they all wore the same grotesque faces. Mikkel stood up straight and gave one last look around, before he lifted his hand to his mouth and released a shrill whistle. Oliver's head popped out from behind the corner of where they had hidden, but Mikkel gave a thirty count before he waved him over. The whistle would have alerted anyone in the area, anyone that wanted to put a bullet in Mikkel, anyone that had happened to still be alive, but no movements came. Everything remained still and silent in the exposed graveyard. Mikkel signaled for Oliver to join him, and the younger man hurried out, feet slipping in the mud with a soft squish that echoed around the otherwise silent compound.
"Clear?" Oliver asked, which Mikkel felt there was no need to respond to.
"You waited almost six minutes," He said with some displeasure in his tone. Oliver did not even bother to look sheepish about it.
"Guess I am bad at counting." The younger man commented back in almost a monotone, which resulted in Mikkel grunting out another displeased noise, yet he did nothing else but retrieve his backpack from Oliver's shoulders. He spoke as he worked.
"We have to get moving." He told Oliver, who looked confused. Sure, dead men surrounded them, but they seemed to be in no immediate danger and so he did not exactly understand the rush in Mikkel's tone.
"How did they die?" He asked after Mikkel had begun moving toward the main gate of the compound. He hurried to fall in stride behind the older man; the place Oliver had come to realize Mikkel normally wanted him. They were not running, but they were certainly not loitering either. Mikkel did not answer right away, still piecing things together as it was. Their organs, the dead soldier’s organs, had probably been scorched much like their eyes. They had probably died in complete agony, the screams of which would have been impossible to hear inside the base with the alarm sounding. The alarm had obviously held some key information that had been missed. Mikkel thought back: It had been an Aqua alert, a very strange color decision. Most danger rankings were common in the concept of cool colors for minimal threat and hot colors for serious threat, but the alarm had been an Aqua color. That logic told him whatever had done that to the soldiers had been perceived as a minimal threat, but their almost concurrent deaths meant that it had actually been something pretty damn threatening. So it was something that the military had thought unimportant, had not given serious weight to, and which had in turn bit them in the ass.
"Mikkel?"
"It was the Presence," Mikkel said, almost surprising himself with how sure he was. For years there had been the sightings of the giant hands reaching from the skies. For years the Government had said it was just mass hallucinations. Mikkel had almost been on board with that theory before he had seen them himself, and had still doubted their actual existence up until they had taken him over and saved his life. They really were out there, whatever they were, and they were no longer just making random people feel really terrible about how bad the world had gotten.
"What?" Oliver asked after a few seconds of quiet concern. There was a moment where he jogged in the slick mud in order to walk next to Mikkel who still refused to look at him. "No, Mikkel, really, what? They were just giant glowing hands. How could they suddenly kill all these people?" Mikkel continued not meet Oliver’s eyes. Once outside the gate, he grabbed a hold of the younger man's arm and pulled him to the side of the path. They walked along the fence toward the light pollution several miles in the distance, which was a sure sign of Stockholm. He never stopped moving though Oliver really wanted the older man to stop and explain to him that they were going to be okay; that he had a plan. However, Oliver understood why stopping and stalling would not have been the best idea.
"I wasn't on Opal when we saw them," Mikkel told him in even tones, keeping his attention ever shifting, but never on Oliver. The younger man scoffed and did stop then, calling after Mikkel.
"You had turned around after we saw them and had already used at least one," He told Mikkel, unsure where his own hostility was coming from, frowning heavily as he thought back regardless. He had been told that they were seen while on Opal, and sure Oliver had not been on the drug but he had been an anomaly all along. Mikkel was not. Oliver wanted to puncture holes in Mikkel's theory. He wanted to have it that someone equally or more so pissed at the Government than they were had walked in there and slaughtered all of the bad guys. He did not want it that aliens or gods or… whatever the Presence was could just remove thousands of lives from the world in a matter of minutes. He wanted Mikkel to look at him and tell him that he would do what it took to protect them both. He wanted to feel even an ounce of safety, but got none. Mikkel had stopped, turned, and looked at him. The older man stalked back, but no longer looked like a scared child. He looked annoyed, and Oliver placed it easily.
"I'm not always high, and how dare you think that I am. I shoot up to not be a Berserker, to not just slit your fucking throat for saying something like that. I get high to be that perfect soldier and save your life again and again, and I get off of it to feel the pain that I deserve for what I've done." Oliver slunk back from the verbal attack, but only a little. He did not know what this Mikkel had gone through. He knew next to nothing about the man, and it was a cheap shot, but from what he had seen, it had seemed to be the truth. Mikkel always seemed to be on drugs, to be under them somewhere.
"I'm sorry," Oliver said, though surprisingly not meek in the least. He knew when he was wrong, and Mikkel definitely made him feel like he was wrong, but something kept him numb to it. "So if you saw the Presence, and I saw the Presence, and they're real, why do you think they would do this?" Mikkel tried to calm himself, huffing a bit to let out the anger he had accumulated from Oliver's accusation. There was no need to get mad at the kid, but as the drugs drained from his system, he felt the self-loathing creep back in. He felt the agony of every mistake he had ever made. It ate away at him and he felt as if he was one of those men lying dead in the mud on the other side of the fence. He almost wished he were one of them. Moments, even minutes, of indescribable agony was better than the years of hatred he had let eat away at his heart.
"When they were there on the streets, I heard them talking about humanity. About how we messed this all up and how we were going to pay for it." Mikkel spoke slowly, schooling himself and convincing Oliver to walk while they talked with a gesture. It was not the pace that it had been previously, not one that mimicked his desperate need to get as far away as he could from the Presence’s threat. They had made good on it to the soldiers, but he did not run from it any longer. Instead they just walked.
"I only heard the other people. Just the shouting and the crying and stuff," Oliver commented back, a little slow and unsure. Mikkel nodded at that, already knowing somehow. He had never asked Oliver, and though the younger man had talked at length about it days prior, Mikkel had never asked what he had experienced. There was no reason Mikkel should have thought that the culpability would have been directed at him alone and not at everyone together. There had been no reason to think that the Presence could have addressed them all individually and yet simultaneously, but he had also never actually thought that Oliver had heard them. It made Mikkel wonder just how long the Presence had been with him, just under the skin, waiting to move when Oliver fell into danger.
"I heard things. I heard this voice. Actually, it was more like a million voices. It was like I heard every language ever and understood them all and they all told me that this was it. That this was the final moment where we could change and save ourselves." Mikkel paused, and Oliver took that time to intercede.
"To save ourselves from what?" Oliver asked, though the bodies in the field were a fairly good reason for Oliver to imagine that they had meant death. Mikkel cocked his head toward the base and confirmed Oliver’s suspicion.
"From what happened to the men in there. I'm guessing that's their answer to it all: to all we've done to each other, this world, and ourselves. They didn't exactly state the consequences, but I felt them. That if we didn't stop, if we didn't fix everything we broke in this world, that we were done for."
"Just us?" Oliver asked, meekness finally slipping into his tone. Mikkel slowly realized that Oliver not hearing the threat meant something. He had not shared the same hardships Mikkel had, not even the same timeline. He had not been there to experience the world dying. He did not only remember the stars in the sky from picture books he read as a child. Mikkel had been barely the age of two when the last star had been blocked out of the night sky. He could not even call to mind what they had actually looked like.
"All of humanity, really," Mikkel said, almost whimsically. There was no humor in his voice, but no real regret or horror either, and the lack of emotion made him wonder if it was he or the Presence speaking. Mikkel had always just gone with the tide for a long time. He had never thought about righting the true wrongs of the world until he joined Molious. Even then he was run by spite and misery, not love and compassion. "We're all guilty of it. We all just let this planet rot under our feet and never thought about fixing it or each other. We only thought about ourselves, and to hell with others.
“I've killed a lot of people, Oliver, and maybe I'm the worst of the lot, but the blood of the world is on everyone's hands, and there's no reason to think otherwise. We all played a role in it." Both men shared silence for several minutes. They both were lost in thought over what Mikkel had said, though Mikkel had begun to think all but the last part were the words of the Presence. It fit, it all fit, except for one thing. Oliver thought about it for a while before he asked.
"Then why didn't I hear them?" Of course, the one piece that did not seem to fit into the puzzle at all was Oliver's existence. He was dead, by all accounts. He had been shoved in a box and buried somewhere. He was no longer in the timeline, and yet there he was, standing next to Mikkel, talking to him about how very soon they would both probably die.
"I believe you, you know?" Mikkel responded after another minute of silence, which made Oliver make a confused hum. It had not been an answer. "I believe now that this isn't where you're from. I think they didn't speak to you because none of this, not a single part of it, was because of you. Oliver, you are the only person that didn’t do anything to this world."
Oliver had more questions, had more things he wanted explained, but he knew he had always walked a fine line between helpfully inquisitive and rudely annoying. He decided to err on the side of caution just incase Mikkel had decided that he really was no longer worth the trouble and did kill him. Silently they hiked miles, Oliver having fallen a few steps behind in order to also mentally separate himself from Mikkel. The older man was not the only one that needed time to think, and Oliver’s thoughts returned to Maria and the words she had written about him. He was supposed to do something, stop the death of the world, but he had no idea how to do so.
Mikkel, though still conscious of his surroundings, thought about their next course of action. The voices of the Presence had told him much, and it had not been a very nice picture it had painted days before on the city streets. Humanity had obviously not changed their ways after the final warning, had not done what was required of them to allow any kind of stay of execution for the sins they had committed. However, the Presence’s next move still remained to be seen. Mikkel tried to hold out hope that only the worst of the offenders would be punished with the gruesome death that had been brought upon the soldiers, even though he knew he would be amongst the bunch. If others were spared, those that had already suffered through the failure of their fellow men, then he would take the unbearable agony. He tried to hold out hope, but it slowly began to wane. Everyone had done something that was worth death by the Presence’s philosophy. Everyone had done something to push the Earth, and each other, too far. Mikkel glanced back at Oliver who looked worn out, exhausted and near collapse. Oliver probably felt like the Earth felt: just done. Carefully Mikkel cleared his throat and slowed to a stop, gesturing with his gun toward a pile of old and long dead brush.
"Let's just take a minute." He did not want to say it was for Oliver's sake, but it was. He had to have come out of the height of the drugs a while ago, and his body would have been way past the point where it would have broken for normal people. In any other circumstance he would have offered Oliver some water to flush the Parepin out of his system, but at that moment he doubted the sight of even filtered bottled water would have been any comfort. More so, lingering traces of the drugs were probably the only thing keeping Oliver conscious. Under them his body was probably screaming to stop and give in.
Oliver flopped unceremoniously down onto the dead twigs and sighed, eyes closed and body taking up more space than Mikkel had thought his long frame could. Mikkel took half a minute in the silence to listen. There was always the chance that the crunching dead foliage had alerted someone to their presence, but nothing but the soft wind came to Mikkel’s ears. Carefully he crouched next to Oliver, reaching down to take the younger man's wrist, getting a slightly annoyed look from Oliver in return, which he ignored. He had meant that they would rest, not sleep.
"I’m checking your pulse. Until the drugs are out of your system, you really can't let it get too low. It hadn’t been rare for the drugs to kill people back in the day, but now it’s almost unheard of. Still not worth taking the chance." Mikkel stared at his wristwatch until he was certain Oliver's heartbeat was above a normal resting rate. Sure, the Parepin would pass faster if he was sweating and rehydrating with clean water, but there was no reason to put Oliver's body through any more stress than was absolutely necessary. Besides, without an endless supply of water to let Oliver replace the tainted with, dehydration would have been a very real threat. Mikkel released Oliver’s wrist, the younger man letting it drop to the ground with no restraint.
"No sleeping," Mikkel told him, which drew a mildly childish whine from Oliver who lethargically shifted on the brush. Mikkel was not kidding, though, so he nudged out his pocket flashlight and pulled one of Oliver's eyelids open. He got the younger man's attention with that, having to back off as Oliver flailed and complained, enduring the onslaught of disgruntled questions posed toward him about why blinding him was necessary.
"I’m checking your pupil response. You’re pretty dense about these things.” Mikkel said, tone mildly put off, but still with a hint of amusement. “Punch me and I’ll punch back." He was not sure when he had grown fond of Oliver, how a lost and confused kid had become part of the close knit group that he held, but when he had to beat back the smile that tried to creep onto his face, he knew he would do anything to save the younger man. Oliver begrudgingly allowed Mikkel to shine the light into each eye in turn, too worn out to really ask why he felt the need to attack him with tests. Pupil response was normal, and there was not too much more Mikkel could do to make sure he was going to survive, so he just re-pocketed the flashlight and carefully sat next to Oliver. He held his gun loosely but never let his guard wane.
"Just rest a little, and we'll get moving in a few."
"Where're we going?" Oliver asked, cracking an eye open a little to regard the older man through the after images that floated in his vision. He looked nothing like his Mikkel at that moment, and though Oliver felt safe, he also felt his heart sink a little more.
"To the city. We can't stay out here, we're too exposed, and the city might hold some answers about what exactly had happened." Oliver did not respond, did not question the plan, which Mikkel was glad for. He just rolled over, away from Mikkel, on the dead brush and closed his eyes again. The older man hoped a little sleep would not make him worse, because he no longer had the heart to make Oliver suffer more. At least, if the drugs took him down, he would die peacefully in his sleep.
"Just let me know when we're going," Oliver mumbled, and Mikkel remained silent.
It was only a half an hour later when Mikkel shifted to stand. Oliver woke up quickly but groggily as he glanced around, sobering up when he realized that the memories of their predicament had not been a dream.
"Already?" He asked slowly, and Mikkel nodded, holding out his hand to haul Oliver to his feet. The younger man took it slowly, and brushed off his clothes when he was upright. Mikkel bent to grab Oliver's gun, holding the grip out toward him.
"You're lucky I let you sleep at all, so come on." The glow behind the smog, which was widely figured to be the sun, seemed to be near midday, and they did still have an hour or two to trek, depending on Oliver's speed. He looked a little better, but just a little, and Mikkel hoped he would not be too much of a hindrance. It took about fifteen minutes for the younger man to really get his head back in gear, but once he did Oliver seemed more eager to get to the city than Mikkel did. Mikkel figured it was because Oliver associated cities with beds and sleep, safety and security. Mikkel associated them with traps, checkpoints, and disguises. He hoped that it actually would be status quo when they got there, even with the hardships that would bring on them.
Mikkel sensed danger before they even got to the outer wall of the city. Oliver had picked up his pace significantly when the city came into sight, but Mikkel grabbed his shoulder, pulling him to a stop while they were inside the brush line. Oliver had made a disgruntled noise, tried to ask what the big idea was, but Mikkel held up his hand and silenced him. Slinging the backpack from his shoulders again, the older man pulled out a scope. Hunkering down, he raised it to his eye and surveyed the situation.
There were no guards, and that immediately did not bode well with Mikkel. Actually, outside of the gate, and on the watchtower, there appeared to be no movement at all.
"Shit," He hissed, which made Oliver crouch lower to him, squinting as if to see what the other man saw.
"What? What’s wrong?" Oliver had never been to the gates of the city. The only time he had been outside of Stockholm he had been blindfolded, gagged, and drugged in the back of a truck, so he had no clue what the checkpoints would look like on a normal day. They definitely would not have been unguarded, Mikkel knew.
"Something's wrong. This place should be crawling with Government soldiers, especially if they saw what had gone down at the base. Even if they were getting radio silence from the base, they would have upped patrols. And then there's the fact that we've seen no one going out there to check on the base. This is definitely not right." Oliver frowned heavily and stood again, pushing the dead bushes from his path as he began hiking on toward the city. Mikkel swore low and under his breath, shoving the scope back into his bag as he hurried to catch up with Oliver who seemed to be even more on a mission. He swore that if Oliver were only concerned with finding a place to sleep, Mikkel would put him under.
"Oliver, what fucking part of 'this is wrong' did you not understand?" Mikkel asked, grabbing a hold of Oliver’s shoulder and pulling him to a stop. The younger man looked disgruntled and it honestly surprised Mikkel a little. His tone of voice did not help and actually made his finger twitch a little toward his pistol.
"I understood all of it, thank you. But you said there are no guards, that something is wrong. It might be something we can help with, or it might be that everyone knows how to protect themselves from what had happened to those people at the base and that we can be saved too. You said we are dead men out here, so let us go in and maybe find a way to keep ourselves safe." Mikkel frowned heavily. He wanted to argue, wanted to tell Oliver that no, they were going to keep hiking, find somewhere that felt right and not like a death trap, but Oliver made a good point. Their survival was hovering right around twenty-percent out in the wasteland they had been traversing, but there was no guarantee that it would have been any better inside the city. However, there was a chance it could have been. He just wished Oliver had not been so quick to follow his own instinct and charge ahead.
"Fine, we'll go in, but if it's wrong, if there's less of a chance of us surviving in there, then we're out and I'm finding you somewhere safe." Oliver pursed his lips, obviously planning to say something that he slowly decided not to. He nodded and after one more squeeze of Mikkel’s hand on his shoulder, as if to say he would hold Oliver to that agreement, they both headed off.
Mikkel did not move as fast as Oliver wanted, but Oliver knew that the older man would be true to his word. He would keep them both as safe as he could until they could assess their safety. Oliver had stopped simply tolerating Mikkel's precaution and actually began wondering if the man had been right all along when they eventually caught sight of the guards. Mikkel had not seen them on their initial survey of the city because, exactly like the soldiers at the base, they were face down and slightly compressed into the mud.
Oliver thought it was strange that outside of the base it had been bone dry, almost like there had been no rain in months, and even the plants were brittle and snapped easily. Where there were bodies, however, the ground appeared soaked and held tracks where it had been walked on, like a rain had fallen right there just before all the people had died. He mentioned it quietly to Mikkel as they hid behind some debris piles not too far from the gates. Mikkel looked thoughtful about the question, but Oliver suspected he already had an answer for it.
"What? Is it… is it their blood?"
"No, they're clean. Blood would wet the ground but also get on them. It's water."
"But it didn't rain just there," Oliver pointed out, like it had not been obvious. Mikkel glanced at Oliver, but it was not reproachful for stating what was basically common sense. It was calculating, almost as if he was trying to figure out how to break the news to the younger man. He was, and decided there was no easy way to do it. Fast, Mikkel thought. He needed to tell Oliver fast and with no lies.
"It's their water." Mikkel responded in a level tone. Oliver did not understand, so Mikkel pushed on. "They looked like they were burned, but now I think that, maybe, they were turned into water and carbon. Hear me out: Water gets back in the soil, and I mean real water, not the poison water that's coming from the oceans and lakes. Then there's the carbon in the bodies that, when the skin breaks down, will start to fertilize the soil. Plants will come back, and start sucking the shit out of the air. It will take a long time, but what they're doing, the Presence, is rebooting the ecosystem… with us as fertilizer." Oliver watched Mikkel as he spoke, a mixture of horror and awe on his features. It was brilliant, but the Presence could not just kill pockets of soldiers for that plan to work. There were too many civilians, too many that could still mess it up. There would need to be a wholesale eradication of humanity for that simple of a plan to work.
"That means…" Oliver started, still shocked over his newfound realization. Mikkel nodded slowly.
"Means that anywhere, now, has a zero-percent survival rate." Mikkel stood straight and holstered his gun, walking with no fear toward the gates. They were open, and it would be no trouble to get inside. Mikkel no longer paid any mind to the bodies they had to step over as they moved, but Oliver did.
Inside the city looked no better than outside of it. People were dead on the streets, hanging out of doors, and on the floors of houses. Water darkened the asphalt around their bodies, and it all appeared identical to the other deaths at the base except for one thing: Not everyone was dead.
"There are people still alive," Oliver whispered to Mikkel who scanned the scene even as they walked. "How are people still alive?" Mikkel did not know the answer, and so supplied none. Instead he kept moving, kept looking, until one woman caught his attention. She did not hover over a corpse, did not pull on a body, begging it to wake. She also did not appear desperately searching, wandering as if in a daze, shouting out the names of missing loved ones. Moving quickly to her, Mikkel stopped over that crying woman who sat on a curb, and touched her shoulder gently.
"What happened here?" He asked her, and she looked up with surprise and desperation. She tried to speak once before she found her voice, and then it came out shaky and unsure. Mikkel knew she would not be credible, but he needed to hear what she knew anyway. She claimed she had been inside, and that she had then heard screaming. She had rushed upstairs from the basement just in time to see everyone drop dead on the street. Some more prodding had her recalling that they were all looking at the sky when they dropped dead, but she had not seen at what. She had run outside then, but there had been nothing in the orange sky to draw everyone’s attention. She broke down at the end, blabbering that her children had been out somewhere, that she did not know where and had looked all over for them. She clung to Mikkel and begged him to find them, to know, magically where they were. Carefully, Mikkel dislodged her from his leg, dropping her back to the ground. He knew he could be of no help to the woman, and was just far enough removed to not even offer assistance. Everyone she loved was probably dead, but questions about how she was still alive made his mind race.
"She did not die because she was in the basement," Oliver deduced after they had moved away from the sobbing and begging woman. It was obvious that he felt bad for her, at least a little, but Oliver also seemed to know enough not to try and help her. She was one of thousands and there was no way they could give any of them a happy ending to their woes. Mikkel felt dirty over it, but he knew his own self-image paled in importance to getting Oliver somewhere safe. "Just like that guy Sinclair, and us. We were all inside so they could not kill him."
"I know," Mikkel replied stoically, looking up and down the main road. There were thousands of bodies, but only a dozen or so living people on that street. That meant either survivors were displaced elsewhere, or the fact that the Presence had shown itself had lured out most people. Either way, there would be no way to get the word out to everyone that there could be a chance of their survival if they abandoned the bodies of their loved ones and hid in any windowless room they could. All channels of communication were run by the American Government, TV or otherwise, and any attempt to get into them would ping any living soldiers to their location. He would tip them off on how to save themselves as much as he would inform civilians. No, the hatred still ran deep, and if Mikkel had to see everyone die to get his revenge, it was what he would do. After all, the Presence was willing to complete Mikkel’s mission for him, and that was not something he would pass up.
"We need to get you somewhere deep. A bunker or something." Mikkel said calmly as they moved around bodies and down the street. Oliver's eyes went wide before they carefully narrowed, glaring at Mikkel.
"You do not plan on coming too, do you?" Mikkel did not answer right away, and he knew that, in and of itself, was confirming. Oliver knew another version of him, and the way the boy could read him from the start had meant that the two instances of Mikkel were not too far off from each other.
"I'm a bad man, Oliver," Mikkel began, moving with purpose, hoping to stumble upon a place that would provide Oliver with the protection that Mikkel hoped would spare his life. "I've never really wanted to stay alive after everything I've done, except for revenge. There would be no place in a new world for me."
"And I am not even supposed to be here, so why would you think there would be a place for me either?" Oliver shot back, and Mikkel narrowed his gaze to match Oliver's stare. This had been the part that Mikkel had told himself was nonnegotiable. He had wanted Oliver safe, the Presence had wanted Oliver safe for some reason. They wanted him to survive everything and maybe even thrive, but the younger man had been right. He would have just as little place in a world devoid of others as Mikkel would have. He would not survive when he had to forage and hunt food that would not be there.
"They would hunt me down if I stayed with you, Oliver," Mikkel said with no grounds to the claim. "The Presence knows I'm the worst there is, the worst that they haven't killed yet, and that I would ruin this place again, even if I didn't want to. I'd be a soldier with no battle left to fight. I would make one, just to feel whole again. If I don't die now, then all of these innocent deaths would be in vain." The glare had slowly melted off of Oliver's face, turning into pleading eyes and a slow realization that he had no argument to change how Mikkel felt about himself. He knew what he would have to do; even it appeared to be the worst idea ever.
"I am not leaving you then," Oliver said, stronger than he felt, as he marched down the street, head held high in defiance. Mikkel argued with him about that idea, but the nail in the coffin, the one that made Mikkel almost reel and sputter, was when Oliver told him "My life just would not be worth it without you, Mikkel-- Whichever version of you there is. You do not feel the same, I know, but you are my best friend, and I really would not want to keep on going without you, in any situation. So, if we are going to die, we are going to do it together."
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 14 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIs7UoGuyo
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 15 In This Twilight: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/20443.html
Another Version of the Truth
Chapter 14 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIs7UoGuyo
Warnings: (Minor) Character Deaths, Gore, Language, Violence, Mentions of: Drug Use, Blood Diseases
The only words spoken between the two men were basic commands as they made their way from the base. Mikkel did not need to ask if Oliver was all right, knowing fair well that he was not. What he had witnessed, what he had experienced, what he had felt, was not right for anyone, let alone someone his age. It would have been unheard of before the war, but America’s presence had changed everything. No one should have had to see people die unnaturally, the horrors of war and resistance, but they lived in a world where it had been brought to their doorsteps. No one should have had to watch his or her loved ones be gunned down, Mikkel rationalized; not even strangers gunned down. He had not known exactly how or why Oliver was there, but after everything, Mikkel believed what Maria had written about him to be true. It was the only thing he knew to be true at that point, and yet he had no evidence to back that up. The only thing he had was Oliver himself, and the way the Presence pushed the thoughts about the younger man onto him.
They escaped through an access door that Mikkel had disabled the alarm on, entering the outer grounds of the base where the darkness of night greeted them. The silence was deafening, the alarm that had been loud and imposing inside finally being blocked by the heavy door, which clicked shut behind them. It would have been a nice change of pace if it did not require Mikkel to readjust his focus, but the silence did mean that he could possibly hear threats before they snuck up behind them and put a gun to Oliver's head as Sinclair had. However, on the other side of that coin, it also meant that they could just as easily be detected. Mikkel glanced back, holding his index finger to his lips to show that Oliver should remain silent. Oliver nodded back, nodding once more when Mikkel whispered for him to follow but further behind than in the hallways. Carefully they both crept toward the center of the outer grounds, Mikkel desperately wanting to get some idea of what had been happening out there that had lead to the emptying out the of main building.
The structure they used as cover was a long yet narrow hall, and it took a little bit of time for them to reach where it opened out toward the main field. When they did so Mikkel took to the wall, peeking around the corner of the building. From the safety of darkness he could not see much, but upon glancing around the building and toward where the barbed wired gate stood several hundred yards out, Mikkel gathered a lot of information. There were thousands of soldiers out there, all lying face down in the mud. He held his hand up again, blindly signaling for Oliver to stop, and he took a rough estimation of what the casualties were.
It was almost impossible to tell that the soldiers were dead because their fronts were completely flush against the soft earth, but unless it was a very strange and elaborate trap, uniformed men, especially the Americans, never got dirty in their own bases. It would have been easier just to ambush them inside, so a trap seemed unlikely. Mikkel retreated back to Oliver, speaking low and close to him.
"Aqua is something worse than us," Mikkel began, which made Oliver scrunch his brow in confusion. "Remember when I said it's either for us or worse? Well it’s worse. Seems every member of this base is dead in the courtyard, but I'm going to have to go out to be sure." Mikkel could immediately tell Oliver would protest, and was not disappointed a moment later.
"What did they die from? How do you know that you won’t die too?" Mikkel quirked a light grin. The kid was learning that was for sure. Maybe it had been good Maria had taken charge of looking out for him, he reasoned. Maybe it was good he had left Oliver there to experience all he had. He had grown a lot that week, and it showed. For a moment Mikkel thought back to the woman, to her beliefs and the way she lifted spirits. He hoped that she knew about the soldiers that were probably dead and smiled from whatever version of heaven she believed in. It was only fitting that they got their dues for her death.
"I don't know, and that's why you're staying here. Back there on the other side of the main complex is a tunnel, which leads to an underground well. About three-quarters of the way down is another tunnel that leads out past the city. It's several miles, but I blew all the doors before I came in." Oliver seemed to understand what Mikkel was going for, and he shot back a quick "no" but Mikkel continued to speak past it.
"I'm going to go out there as quickly and quietly as I can. I have no intention of getting caught or killed, but I need to make sure this place is done. I need to know that they all got what they deserve. But I also need you safe, so here's the plan. You're going to stay here, and count. Five minutes, Oliver. If I don't give you a sign of all clear, or if I get captured, then you head for that tunnel and get out." Oliver was not going to agree, but Mikkel left no room for negotiation. "If I get caught, I'm going to kill myself. There will be no point in you staying here. If it's clear, we'll walk right out the front gate and leave this miserable place behind us. That is the plan, and there's no use fighting about it." Carefully, almost thoughtfully, Oliver nodded. Mikkel, a tiny bit surprised that Oliver had actually listened to him, nodded back and slid the backpack off his shoulders. He held it out to the younger man and Oliver took it with a confused look. It was heavier than Oliver expected, but he shrugged it on, before looking back at Mikkel. It made sense that he should have it, but the exchange of the bag still felt like a premature good-bye. Mikkel would come back and Oliver would hand it over again, he tried to tell himself. It was simply a precaution.
"Don't get caught or killed," Oliver told Mikkel, and got an almost silent chuckle in return. The older man reached up to ruffle Oliver's hair, unsure if his sudden fondness toward Oliver was because of the younger man’s transformation into the pseudo soldier Mikkel was, or because the Presence had made him want to be fond of Oliver. Taking a half step away, not wanting to think about it, Mikkel raised his pistol, turned, and prepared to move away.
"Don't plan on it," He told Oliver. "Would much rather find a way to get you back to the other version of me." With those parting words, which left Oliver staring at him, Mikkel returned to the threshold of the main yard and, with a moment's hesitation, disappeared around the building.
Oliver sighed heavily, unsure of how to take Mikkel’s parting words, and gave the older man approximately an extra thirty seconds before he began silently counting. Five minutes, he reminded himself, or the first sign of danger. He owed the man enough to listen to his instructions.
Mikkel knew how to remain unseen in most environments. The Government had trained him to be a tactical expert, and though the Opal had passed its peak, he still felt the disconnection to almost everything. He had no problem putting a bullet in every body he found in the field, slitting every throat to assure they really were dead. However, for the sake of time, he hoped that the submersion in the toxic water that had turned the ground so soft would have assured their deaths.
On the front of the building that Mikkel moved against were a few windows and one door. Craning his neck, Mikkel looked inside the hall. It was packed tightly with rows of bunks against each wall. They were all seemingly unoccupied, but many bodies, nearing about half of what would fill the hall to maximum capacity, were sprawled out on the floor. Like those outside in the field, they also lay face down. They would not have drowned like those outside, and the confines of a building provided some cover for Mikkel to check them, so he decided to start there.
After making sure nothing looked amiss (besides the mass mysterious deaths which, honestly, seemed strange enough), Mikkel edged open the door and slid inside. He checked every point of the building from his spot at the door, ready to slip back out incase of a sudden ambush, but none of the soldiers stirred. Inside of his head Mikkel had been counting and two minutes had already been used up in his slow and methodical approach to the situation. Three more and Oliver would be gone, and Mikkel would have no hope of catching him. He kept his gun at the ready as he approached the nearest body to his position, his boots squeaking softly on the dampened floor. Eyes up and scanning, he carefully placed his index and middle fingers to the man's jugular, feeling for a pulse for just a moment. None met his finger, so Mikkel moved to another corpse. Five bodies later, and with no sign of life, Mikkel decided to examine one.
Having to lower his weapon was something Mikkel did not feel comfortable doing, but the men were muscular and heavy. After a moment of wondering what his best move would be, Mikkel holstered his gun. With his hands free, he grabbed the man's shoulder and pushed him over. Mikkel had assumed he would need to flip the man completely in order to see whatever wound had killed him, but all he had needed was the face. The soldier had not bled out, not even a drop of it on the floor. And yet it seemed as if his eyes had been torn out. Holes of blackened flesh remained where the orbs should have been. Had the Opal not still been in his system, Mikkel would have gone right back out where he had come in, far too unnerved by the wound. He would have collected Oliver and told him to run. These men had not been slaughtered by an attack, but burned out seemingly from the inside. Mikkel worked up the nerve to check a few more bodies and all seemed the same. Though Mikkel had no idea what weapon could have created such wounds, he had an idea of what might have had the power to do it.
With a newfound sense of urgency, Mikkel returned to the field. He looked for any sign of hostility, any sign of life, but none emerged from the complete stillness of the usually busy base. He ventured out to the middle of the field where bodies lay on one another, propped up just slightly by their intertwined arms and legs. Regardless, they all seemed firmly planted in the mud. They had identical wounds, had experienced identical deaths, and they all wore the same grotesque faces. Mikkel stood up straight and gave one last look around, before he lifted his hand to his mouth and released a shrill whistle. Oliver's head popped out from behind the corner of where they had hidden, but Mikkel gave a thirty count before he waved him over. The whistle would have alerted anyone in the area, anyone that wanted to put a bullet in Mikkel, anyone that had happened to still be alive, but no movements came. Everything remained still and silent in the exposed graveyard. Mikkel signaled for Oliver to join him, and the younger man hurried out, feet slipping in the mud with a soft squish that echoed around the otherwise silent compound.
"Clear?" Oliver asked, which Mikkel felt there was no need to respond to.
"You waited almost six minutes," He said with some displeasure in his tone. Oliver did not even bother to look sheepish about it.
"Guess I am bad at counting." The younger man commented back in almost a monotone, which resulted in Mikkel grunting out another displeased noise, yet he did nothing else but retrieve his backpack from Oliver's shoulders. He spoke as he worked.
"We have to get moving." He told Oliver, who looked confused. Sure, dead men surrounded them, but they seemed to be in no immediate danger and so he did not exactly understand the rush in Mikkel's tone.
"How did they die?" He asked after Mikkel had begun moving toward the main gate of the compound. He hurried to fall in stride behind the older man; the place Oliver had come to realize Mikkel normally wanted him. They were not running, but they were certainly not loitering either. Mikkel did not answer right away, still piecing things together as it was. Their organs, the dead soldier’s organs, had probably been scorched much like their eyes. They had probably died in complete agony, the screams of which would have been impossible to hear inside the base with the alarm sounding. The alarm had obviously held some key information that had been missed. Mikkel thought back: It had been an Aqua alert, a very strange color decision. Most danger rankings were common in the concept of cool colors for minimal threat and hot colors for serious threat, but the alarm had been an Aqua color. That logic told him whatever had done that to the soldiers had been perceived as a minimal threat, but their almost concurrent deaths meant that it had actually been something pretty damn threatening. So it was something that the military had thought unimportant, had not given serious weight to, and which had in turn bit them in the ass.
"Mikkel?"
"It was the Presence," Mikkel said, almost surprising himself with how sure he was. For years there had been the sightings of the giant hands reaching from the skies. For years the Government had said it was just mass hallucinations. Mikkel had almost been on board with that theory before he had seen them himself, and had still doubted their actual existence up until they had taken him over and saved his life. They really were out there, whatever they were, and they were no longer just making random people feel really terrible about how bad the world had gotten.
"What?" Oliver asked after a few seconds of quiet concern. There was a moment where he jogged in the slick mud in order to walk next to Mikkel who still refused to look at him. "No, Mikkel, really, what? They were just giant glowing hands. How could they suddenly kill all these people?" Mikkel continued not meet Oliver’s eyes. Once outside the gate, he grabbed a hold of the younger man's arm and pulled him to the side of the path. They walked along the fence toward the light pollution several miles in the distance, which was a sure sign of Stockholm. He never stopped moving though Oliver really wanted the older man to stop and explain to him that they were going to be okay; that he had a plan. However, Oliver understood why stopping and stalling would not have been the best idea.
"I wasn't on Opal when we saw them," Mikkel told him in even tones, keeping his attention ever shifting, but never on Oliver. The younger man scoffed and did stop then, calling after Mikkel.
"You had turned around after we saw them and had already used at least one," He told Mikkel, unsure where his own hostility was coming from, frowning heavily as he thought back regardless. He had been told that they were seen while on Opal, and sure Oliver had not been on the drug but he had been an anomaly all along. Mikkel was not. Oliver wanted to puncture holes in Mikkel's theory. He wanted to have it that someone equally or more so pissed at the Government than they were had walked in there and slaughtered all of the bad guys. He did not want it that aliens or gods or… whatever the Presence was could just remove thousands of lives from the world in a matter of minutes. He wanted Mikkel to look at him and tell him that he would do what it took to protect them both. He wanted to feel even an ounce of safety, but got none. Mikkel had stopped, turned, and looked at him. The older man stalked back, but no longer looked like a scared child. He looked annoyed, and Oliver placed it easily.
"I'm not always high, and how dare you think that I am. I shoot up to not be a Berserker, to not just slit your fucking throat for saying something like that. I get high to be that perfect soldier and save your life again and again, and I get off of it to feel the pain that I deserve for what I've done." Oliver slunk back from the verbal attack, but only a little. He did not know what this Mikkel had gone through. He knew next to nothing about the man, and it was a cheap shot, but from what he had seen, it had seemed to be the truth. Mikkel always seemed to be on drugs, to be under them somewhere.
"I'm sorry," Oliver said, though surprisingly not meek in the least. He knew when he was wrong, and Mikkel definitely made him feel like he was wrong, but something kept him numb to it. "So if you saw the Presence, and I saw the Presence, and they're real, why do you think they would do this?" Mikkel tried to calm himself, huffing a bit to let out the anger he had accumulated from Oliver's accusation. There was no need to get mad at the kid, but as the drugs drained from his system, he felt the self-loathing creep back in. He felt the agony of every mistake he had ever made. It ate away at him and he felt as if he was one of those men lying dead in the mud on the other side of the fence. He almost wished he were one of them. Moments, even minutes, of indescribable agony was better than the years of hatred he had let eat away at his heart.
"When they were there on the streets, I heard them talking about humanity. About how we messed this all up and how we were going to pay for it." Mikkel spoke slowly, schooling himself and convincing Oliver to walk while they talked with a gesture. It was not the pace that it had been previously, not one that mimicked his desperate need to get as far away as he could from the Presence’s threat. They had made good on it to the soldiers, but he did not run from it any longer. Instead they just walked.
"I only heard the other people. Just the shouting and the crying and stuff," Oliver commented back, a little slow and unsure. Mikkel nodded at that, already knowing somehow. He had never asked Oliver, and though the younger man had talked at length about it days prior, Mikkel had never asked what he had experienced. There was no reason Mikkel should have thought that the culpability would have been directed at him alone and not at everyone together. There had been no reason to think that the Presence could have addressed them all individually and yet simultaneously, but he had also never actually thought that Oliver had heard them. It made Mikkel wonder just how long the Presence had been with him, just under the skin, waiting to move when Oliver fell into danger.
"I heard things. I heard this voice. Actually, it was more like a million voices. It was like I heard every language ever and understood them all and they all told me that this was it. That this was the final moment where we could change and save ourselves." Mikkel paused, and Oliver took that time to intercede.
"To save ourselves from what?" Oliver asked, though the bodies in the field were a fairly good reason for Oliver to imagine that they had meant death. Mikkel cocked his head toward the base and confirmed Oliver’s suspicion.
"From what happened to the men in there. I'm guessing that's their answer to it all: to all we've done to each other, this world, and ourselves. They didn't exactly state the consequences, but I felt them. That if we didn't stop, if we didn't fix everything we broke in this world, that we were done for."
"Just us?" Oliver asked, meekness finally slipping into his tone. Mikkel slowly realized that Oliver not hearing the threat meant something. He had not shared the same hardships Mikkel had, not even the same timeline. He had not been there to experience the world dying. He did not only remember the stars in the sky from picture books he read as a child. Mikkel had been barely the age of two when the last star had been blocked out of the night sky. He could not even call to mind what they had actually looked like.
"All of humanity, really," Mikkel said, almost whimsically. There was no humor in his voice, but no real regret or horror either, and the lack of emotion made him wonder if it was he or the Presence speaking. Mikkel had always just gone with the tide for a long time. He had never thought about righting the true wrongs of the world until he joined Molious. Even then he was run by spite and misery, not love and compassion. "We're all guilty of it. We all just let this planet rot under our feet and never thought about fixing it or each other. We only thought about ourselves, and to hell with others.
“I've killed a lot of people, Oliver, and maybe I'm the worst of the lot, but the blood of the world is on everyone's hands, and there's no reason to think otherwise. We all played a role in it." Both men shared silence for several minutes. They both were lost in thought over what Mikkel had said, though Mikkel had begun to think all but the last part were the words of the Presence. It fit, it all fit, except for one thing. Oliver thought about it for a while before he asked.
"Then why didn't I hear them?" Of course, the one piece that did not seem to fit into the puzzle at all was Oliver's existence. He was dead, by all accounts. He had been shoved in a box and buried somewhere. He was no longer in the timeline, and yet there he was, standing next to Mikkel, talking to him about how very soon they would both probably die.
"I believe you, you know?" Mikkel responded after another minute of silence, which made Oliver make a confused hum. It had not been an answer. "I believe now that this isn't where you're from. I think they didn't speak to you because none of this, not a single part of it, was because of you. Oliver, you are the only person that didn’t do anything to this world."
Oliver had more questions, had more things he wanted explained, but he knew he had always walked a fine line between helpfully inquisitive and rudely annoying. He decided to err on the side of caution just incase Mikkel had decided that he really was no longer worth the trouble and did kill him. Silently they hiked miles, Oliver having fallen a few steps behind in order to also mentally separate himself from Mikkel. The older man was not the only one that needed time to think, and Oliver’s thoughts returned to Maria and the words she had written about him. He was supposed to do something, stop the death of the world, but he had no idea how to do so.
Mikkel, though still conscious of his surroundings, thought about their next course of action. The voices of the Presence had told him much, and it had not been a very nice picture it had painted days before on the city streets. Humanity had obviously not changed their ways after the final warning, had not done what was required of them to allow any kind of stay of execution for the sins they had committed. However, the Presence’s next move still remained to be seen. Mikkel tried to hold out hope that only the worst of the offenders would be punished with the gruesome death that had been brought upon the soldiers, even though he knew he would be amongst the bunch. If others were spared, those that had already suffered through the failure of their fellow men, then he would take the unbearable agony. He tried to hold out hope, but it slowly began to wane. Everyone had done something that was worth death by the Presence’s philosophy. Everyone had done something to push the Earth, and each other, too far. Mikkel glanced back at Oliver who looked worn out, exhausted and near collapse. Oliver probably felt like the Earth felt: just done. Carefully Mikkel cleared his throat and slowed to a stop, gesturing with his gun toward a pile of old and long dead brush.
"Let's just take a minute." He did not want to say it was for Oliver's sake, but it was. He had to have come out of the height of the drugs a while ago, and his body would have been way past the point where it would have broken for normal people. In any other circumstance he would have offered Oliver some water to flush the Parepin out of his system, but at that moment he doubted the sight of even filtered bottled water would have been any comfort. More so, lingering traces of the drugs were probably the only thing keeping Oliver conscious. Under them his body was probably screaming to stop and give in.
Oliver flopped unceremoniously down onto the dead twigs and sighed, eyes closed and body taking up more space than Mikkel had thought his long frame could. Mikkel took half a minute in the silence to listen. There was always the chance that the crunching dead foliage had alerted someone to their presence, but nothing but the soft wind came to Mikkel’s ears. Carefully he crouched next to Oliver, reaching down to take the younger man's wrist, getting a slightly annoyed look from Oliver in return, which he ignored. He had meant that they would rest, not sleep.
"I’m checking your pulse. Until the drugs are out of your system, you really can't let it get too low. It hadn’t been rare for the drugs to kill people back in the day, but now it’s almost unheard of. Still not worth taking the chance." Mikkel stared at his wristwatch until he was certain Oliver's heartbeat was above a normal resting rate. Sure, the Parepin would pass faster if he was sweating and rehydrating with clean water, but there was no reason to put Oliver's body through any more stress than was absolutely necessary. Besides, without an endless supply of water to let Oliver replace the tainted with, dehydration would have been a very real threat. Mikkel released Oliver’s wrist, the younger man letting it drop to the ground with no restraint.
"No sleeping," Mikkel told him, which drew a mildly childish whine from Oliver who lethargically shifted on the brush. Mikkel was not kidding, though, so he nudged out his pocket flashlight and pulled one of Oliver's eyelids open. He got the younger man's attention with that, having to back off as Oliver flailed and complained, enduring the onslaught of disgruntled questions posed toward him about why blinding him was necessary.
"I’m checking your pupil response. You’re pretty dense about these things.” Mikkel said, tone mildly put off, but still with a hint of amusement. “Punch me and I’ll punch back." He was not sure when he had grown fond of Oliver, how a lost and confused kid had become part of the close knit group that he held, but when he had to beat back the smile that tried to creep onto his face, he knew he would do anything to save the younger man. Oliver begrudgingly allowed Mikkel to shine the light into each eye in turn, too worn out to really ask why he felt the need to attack him with tests. Pupil response was normal, and there was not too much more Mikkel could do to make sure he was going to survive, so he just re-pocketed the flashlight and carefully sat next to Oliver. He held his gun loosely but never let his guard wane.
"Just rest a little, and we'll get moving in a few."
"Where're we going?" Oliver asked, cracking an eye open a little to regard the older man through the after images that floated in his vision. He looked nothing like his Mikkel at that moment, and though Oliver felt safe, he also felt his heart sink a little more.
"To the city. We can't stay out here, we're too exposed, and the city might hold some answers about what exactly had happened." Oliver did not respond, did not question the plan, which Mikkel was glad for. He just rolled over, away from Mikkel, on the dead brush and closed his eyes again. The older man hoped a little sleep would not make him worse, because he no longer had the heart to make Oliver suffer more. At least, if the drugs took him down, he would die peacefully in his sleep.
"Just let me know when we're going," Oliver mumbled, and Mikkel remained silent.
It was only a half an hour later when Mikkel shifted to stand. Oliver woke up quickly but groggily as he glanced around, sobering up when he realized that the memories of their predicament had not been a dream.
"Already?" He asked slowly, and Mikkel nodded, holding out his hand to haul Oliver to his feet. The younger man took it slowly, and brushed off his clothes when he was upright. Mikkel bent to grab Oliver's gun, holding the grip out toward him.
"You're lucky I let you sleep at all, so come on." The glow behind the smog, which was widely figured to be the sun, seemed to be near midday, and they did still have an hour or two to trek, depending on Oliver's speed. He looked a little better, but just a little, and Mikkel hoped he would not be too much of a hindrance. It took about fifteen minutes for the younger man to really get his head back in gear, but once he did Oliver seemed more eager to get to the city than Mikkel did. Mikkel figured it was because Oliver associated cities with beds and sleep, safety and security. Mikkel associated them with traps, checkpoints, and disguises. He hoped that it actually would be status quo when they got there, even with the hardships that would bring on them.
Mikkel sensed danger before they even got to the outer wall of the city. Oliver had picked up his pace significantly when the city came into sight, but Mikkel grabbed his shoulder, pulling him to a stop while they were inside the brush line. Oliver had made a disgruntled noise, tried to ask what the big idea was, but Mikkel held up his hand and silenced him. Slinging the backpack from his shoulders again, the older man pulled out a scope. Hunkering down, he raised it to his eye and surveyed the situation.
There were no guards, and that immediately did not bode well with Mikkel. Actually, outside of the gate, and on the watchtower, there appeared to be no movement at all.
"Shit," He hissed, which made Oliver crouch lower to him, squinting as if to see what the other man saw.
"What? What’s wrong?" Oliver had never been to the gates of the city. The only time he had been outside of Stockholm he had been blindfolded, gagged, and drugged in the back of a truck, so he had no clue what the checkpoints would look like on a normal day. They definitely would not have been unguarded, Mikkel knew.
"Something's wrong. This place should be crawling with Government soldiers, especially if they saw what had gone down at the base. Even if they were getting radio silence from the base, they would have upped patrols. And then there's the fact that we've seen no one going out there to check on the base. This is definitely not right." Oliver frowned heavily and stood again, pushing the dead bushes from his path as he began hiking on toward the city. Mikkel swore low and under his breath, shoving the scope back into his bag as he hurried to catch up with Oliver who seemed to be even more on a mission. He swore that if Oliver were only concerned with finding a place to sleep, Mikkel would put him under.
"Oliver, what fucking part of 'this is wrong' did you not understand?" Mikkel asked, grabbing a hold of Oliver’s shoulder and pulling him to a stop. The younger man looked disgruntled and it honestly surprised Mikkel a little. His tone of voice did not help and actually made his finger twitch a little toward his pistol.
"I understood all of it, thank you. But you said there are no guards, that something is wrong. It might be something we can help with, or it might be that everyone knows how to protect themselves from what had happened to those people at the base and that we can be saved too. You said we are dead men out here, so let us go in and maybe find a way to keep ourselves safe." Mikkel frowned heavily. He wanted to argue, wanted to tell Oliver that no, they were going to keep hiking, find somewhere that felt right and not like a death trap, but Oliver made a good point. Their survival was hovering right around twenty-percent out in the wasteland they had been traversing, but there was no guarantee that it would have been any better inside the city. However, there was a chance it could have been. He just wished Oliver had not been so quick to follow his own instinct and charge ahead.
"Fine, we'll go in, but if it's wrong, if there's less of a chance of us surviving in there, then we're out and I'm finding you somewhere safe." Oliver pursed his lips, obviously planning to say something that he slowly decided not to. He nodded and after one more squeeze of Mikkel’s hand on his shoulder, as if to say he would hold Oliver to that agreement, they both headed off.
Mikkel did not move as fast as Oliver wanted, but Oliver knew that the older man would be true to his word. He would keep them both as safe as he could until they could assess their safety. Oliver had stopped simply tolerating Mikkel's precaution and actually began wondering if the man had been right all along when they eventually caught sight of the guards. Mikkel had not seen them on their initial survey of the city because, exactly like the soldiers at the base, they were face down and slightly compressed into the mud.
Oliver thought it was strange that outside of the base it had been bone dry, almost like there had been no rain in months, and even the plants were brittle and snapped easily. Where there were bodies, however, the ground appeared soaked and held tracks where it had been walked on, like a rain had fallen right there just before all the people had died. He mentioned it quietly to Mikkel as they hid behind some debris piles not too far from the gates. Mikkel looked thoughtful about the question, but Oliver suspected he already had an answer for it.
"What? Is it… is it their blood?"
"No, they're clean. Blood would wet the ground but also get on them. It's water."
"But it didn't rain just there," Oliver pointed out, like it had not been obvious. Mikkel glanced at Oliver, but it was not reproachful for stating what was basically common sense. It was calculating, almost as if he was trying to figure out how to break the news to the younger man. He was, and decided there was no easy way to do it. Fast, Mikkel thought. He needed to tell Oliver fast and with no lies.
"It's their water." Mikkel responded in a level tone. Oliver did not understand, so Mikkel pushed on. "They looked like they were burned, but now I think that, maybe, they were turned into water and carbon. Hear me out: Water gets back in the soil, and I mean real water, not the poison water that's coming from the oceans and lakes. Then there's the carbon in the bodies that, when the skin breaks down, will start to fertilize the soil. Plants will come back, and start sucking the shit out of the air. It will take a long time, but what they're doing, the Presence, is rebooting the ecosystem… with us as fertilizer." Oliver watched Mikkel as he spoke, a mixture of horror and awe on his features. It was brilliant, but the Presence could not just kill pockets of soldiers for that plan to work. There were too many civilians, too many that could still mess it up. There would need to be a wholesale eradication of humanity for that simple of a plan to work.
"That means…" Oliver started, still shocked over his newfound realization. Mikkel nodded slowly.
"Means that anywhere, now, has a zero-percent survival rate." Mikkel stood straight and holstered his gun, walking with no fear toward the gates. They were open, and it would be no trouble to get inside. Mikkel no longer paid any mind to the bodies they had to step over as they moved, but Oliver did.
Inside the city looked no better than outside of it. People were dead on the streets, hanging out of doors, and on the floors of houses. Water darkened the asphalt around their bodies, and it all appeared identical to the other deaths at the base except for one thing: Not everyone was dead.
"There are people still alive," Oliver whispered to Mikkel who scanned the scene even as they walked. "How are people still alive?" Mikkel did not know the answer, and so supplied none. Instead he kept moving, kept looking, until one woman caught his attention. She did not hover over a corpse, did not pull on a body, begging it to wake. She also did not appear desperately searching, wandering as if in a daze, shouting out the names of missing loved ones. Moving quickly to her, Mikkel stopped over that crying woman who sat on a curb, and touched her shoulder gently.
"What happened here?" He asked her, and she looked up with surprise and desperation. She tried to speak once before she found her voice, and then it came out shaky and unsure. Mikkel knew she would not be credible, but he needed to hear what she knew anyway. She claimed she had been inside, and that she had then heard screaming. She had rushed upstairs from the basement just in time to see everyone drop dead on the street. Some more prodding had her recalling that they were all looking at the sky when they dropped dead, but she had not seen at what. She had run outside then, but there had been nothing in the orange sky to draw everyone’s attention. She broke down at the end, blabbering that her children had been out somewhere, that she did not know where and had looked all over for them. She clung to Mikkel and begged him to find them, to know, magically where they were. Carefully, Mikkel dislodged her from his leg, dropping her back to the ground. He knew he could be of no help to the woman, and was just far enough removed to not even offer assistance. Everyone she loved was probably dead, but questions about how she was still alive made his mind race.
"She did not die because she was in the basement," Oliver deduced after they had moved away from the sobbing and begging woman. It was obvious that he felt bad for her, at least a little, but Oliver also seemed to know enough not to try and help her. She was one of thousands and there was no way they could give any of them a happy ending to their woes. Mikkel felt dirty over it, but he knew his own self-image paled in importance to getting Oliver somewhere safe. "Just like that guy Sinclair, and us. We were all inside so they could not kill him."
"I know," Mikkel replied stoically, looking up and down the main road. There were thousands of bodies, but only a dozen or so living people on that street. That meant either survivors were displaced elsewhere, or the fact that the Presence had shown itself had lured out most people. Either way, there would be no way to get the word out to everyone that there could be a chance of their survival if they abandoned the bodies of their loved ones and hid in any windowless room they could. All channels of communication were run by the American Government, TV or otherwise, and any attempt to get into them would ping any living soldiers to their location. He would tip them off on how to save themselves as much as he would inform civilians. No, the hatred still ran deep, and if Mikkel had to see everyone die to get his revenge, it was what he would do. After all, the Presence was willing to complete Mikkel’s mission for him, and that was not something he would pass up.
"We need to get you somewhere deep. A bunker or something." Mikkel said calmly as they moved around bodies and down the street. Oliver's eyes went wide before they carefully narrowed, glaring at Mikkel.
"You do not plan on coming too, do you?" Mikkel did not answer right away, and he knew that, in and of itself, was confirming. Oliver knew another version of him, and the way the boy could read him from the start had meant that the two instances of Mikkel were not too far off from each other.
"I'm a bad man, Oliver," Mikkel began, moving with purpose, hoping to stumble upon a place that would provide Oliver with the protection that Mikkel hoped would spare his life. "I've never really wanted to stay alive after everything I've done, except for revenge. There would be no place in a new world for me."
"And I am not even supposed to be here, so why would you think there would be a place for me either?" Oliver shot back, and Mikkel narrowed his gaze to match Oliver's stare. This had been the part that Mikkel had told himself was nonnegotiable. He had wanted Oliver safe, the Presence had wanted Oliver safe for some reason. They wanted him to survive everything and maybe even thrive, but the younger man had been right. He would have just as little place in a world devoid of others as Mikkel would have. He would not survive when he had to forage and hunt food that would not be there.
"They would hunt me down if I stayed with you, Oliver," Mikkel said with no grounds to the claim. "The Presence knows I'm the worst there is, the worst that they haven't killed yet, and that I would ruin this place again, even if I didn't want to. I'd be a soldier with no battle left to fight. I would make one, just to feel whole again. If I don't die now, then all of these innocent deaths would be in vain." The glare had slowly melted off of Oliver's face, turning into pleading eyes and a slow realization that he had no argument to change how Mikkel felt about himself. He knew what he would have to do; even it appeared to be the worst idea ever.
"I am not leaving you then," Oliver said, stronger than he felt, as he marched down the street, head held high in defiance. Mikkel argued with him about that idea, but the nail in the coffin, the one that made Mikkel almost reel and sputter, was when Oliver told him "My life just would not be worth it without you, Mikkel-- Whichever version of you there is. You do not feel the same, I know, but you are my best friend, and I really would not want to keep on going without you, in any situation. So, if we are going to die, we are going to do it together."
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 14 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIs7UoGuyo
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 15 In This Twilight: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/20443.html