Deicide

Chapter Five

It was quite peaceful in the young forest. Terraforming was still in its infancy on Apollon, having only started seeding a decade ago. Still, the pines were tall enough to obscure Sophie's presence from the OTech scouts that were hovering silently above. Sophie wished she had taken more time to enjoy being out in nature, if it could be called that. There were a lot of things that she wished were different, currently.

Sophie wished she could have lived her cover. She wished that MI would have burned her years ago so she could live a relaxing, sedentary life here. She wished she could have been with Violet under different circumstances. She wished she had decided to follow in her sister's footsteps instead of being drawn in by the appeal of romanticized interstellar espionage. Now she was running for her life, confused and in disbelief at the events that had just transpired.

Violet was dead. Or was she? Not 20 hours ago, Sophie was gripped in her warm embrace, as alive as she had ever felt in her life. She wondered if it was a trick. Maybe what she had seen was an elaborate fiction. She had heard stories about interfaces being hacked, and victims being forced to experience a digital torture that couldn't be distinguished from reality. Or perhaps it was staged in order to easily break off the relationship like in a convoluted plot from a sitcom. Maybe it was all just due to an overactive imagination. Sophie wiped the sweat from her brow as she took a break from running, leaning back against a tree. The texture of her wrist against her forehead was sticky and flaky.

Sophie looked at her arms to find them covered in blood, then instinctively went to wipe them on her top, immediately noticing it too was thoroughly soaked. The sight of blood brought back images of Violet's pale face in her arms. It made Sophie's stomach churn. She brought her hands to her mouth to try and hold it closed, but reeled at touching her lover's blood to her face. Having nowhere to put her hands, she held them away from her body as she vomited on the forest floor. She couldn't hold her hair back or grip her gut, so for a few moments, she just stood in place and shook as the panic washed over her.

She had never felt as disturbed and physically sickened by blood and violence. She had received years of training in how to suppress negative reactions to it, and she had seen much more violent things on a regular basis when she was in Wonderland. However, she had never watched someone she loved die in such a manner. In fact, she had never seen anyone die at all, not really. It was a crushing feeling that she had never expected.

Thinking about all the changes that were going to happen, that have already happened, Sophie wondered whether it was worth it to even go on. She thought about stepping into a clearing and letting them find her. Maybe they would kill her on sight. If they didn't, she might be able to talk her way out of it, explain that she wasn't the one that did it, that it was Misty Hodges. She still had the video saved, and would happily give it to them. But then she thought about MI. They would not be happy to have another off world agent in captivity, and could send more out to eliminate her. Any way she looked at it, she was going to die, be imprisoned, or constantly look over her shoulder for the rest of her life.

The first option was sounding better with every passing moment. She looked at her bloodied hands. She wanted to split them open and jam the hidden blades deep into her neck. She tried to, but her body wouldn't respond. Instead, it picked itself up off the ground and continued moving through the forest toward the safe house.

The journey was long. 70 km on foot, and because the Mirror fried her wireless firmware, she had to do it all without GPS. Luckily, orienteering was one of the courses that she excelled at, and the relatively small area on Apollon that has been populated so far was a blessing compared to some of the horror stories she was told through MI.

Sophie considered herself pretty fit. Unlike most people who spent a lot of their free time in VR, she had a good habit of daily exercise and maintenance of her meat. She was quite fond of her flesh, usually, but at the moment, she was really regretting not opting for the fully prosthetic body that was offered when she joined MI. Her entire body burned and ached at the level of physicality she was putting it through, save for her prosthetic arms. She gradually increased the pain dampening in her interface as her body strained against her brain. Eventually, she couldn't increase it anymore. Her interface was effectively interrupting the undesirable sensation, but it could do nothing to assist when her body started refusing to follow direction.