cascade | kotlc

14. Fallout: Light and Shadow

don't we all love writer's block? anyway yeah this took a while

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- F. V.

This was bad. Super bad.

Fitz stared at the glowing console before him, focused on the red dot, which was flashing and teleporting all over the place. He smelled smoke and heard the crackling of wood, and he didn't need to look down to understand what happened.

He left his bay door open, in case he needed a view, and when he scrambled over the flames confirmed his suspicions. And he caught a glint off the side, just in time for him to notice a car veering offroad and into the fire.

"C'mon, June," he muttered. "Where are you?"

Chopping blades, and the other helicopter swerved close. Close enough for him to see the uranium core through their open bay doors. He could get to it if he leaped over...

"There is no escape," a slow, ghostly female voice whispered to him, and he almost jumped from the helicopter.

The shadows inside him twisted, and he slumped down onto the metallic grating and clutched his chest when the light formed into a vaguely humanoid figure. Then the image sharpened, and for a second it was a semblance to June before the jaw sharpened and eyes tightened. Vespera stood before him, adjusting her sleeves as always.

"You," he breathed, his heart already hammering away. Every muscle inside him threatened to flee, to leap away, and he had to grasp onto the handlebars to stop himself from extracting his home crystal.

"Me," Vespera answered smoothly, her slender fingers tapping her shoulder. "Do you ever wonder why I can keep surprising you?"

His jaw locked, and the echo in his heart crumpled into a knot, just barely stopping over the precipice of triggering the unsurmountable pain.

"It is because some things just never change," she whispered. "Things you are not yet ready to accept. Things that have been hidden away by our society for millenia. Things that only I can understand. Things that only I can manipulate."

The words sent chills down his body, and a brief, cut-off tick-tock reverbrated in his skull. It gave him a headache, which gradually evolved into a horrendous migraine, and he already saw a tiny papercut over his left arm.

His ribs began to cramp, and his heart felt like it was ricocheting all over his torso, bursting with pressure. Tick-tock. The chiming off the clock had returned, and golden light spilled from his mouth as he thrashed and his waist burned with unrivaled agony.

"Interesting," Vespera drawled, stepping closer and flexing her wrist. "I suppose our attack has marked you more than we expected."

He could scarcely think above the pain, and his eyes contorted as his eyelids blocked out half of Vespera's face with a sanguine veil. Delicately amber threads raveled around his hands, as if they were handcuffing him to the console forever. Tick-tock. With every chime came a massive jolt of feverish pain, and while his bones didn't shatter it certainly felt like they did.

Vespera tilted her head, bending down, her projection nails streaking over his chin. "Do you know," she began, "why we chose you?"

Pain, tick-tock, everything blended together into a giant, cascading mess of gold and disastrous suffering. And he couldn't reply as his throat turned parched and he could still see smoke drifting in the air.

"Because we knew we could control you. We still can."

Chop chop came the whirring of helicopter blades, and he found himself wrenching his back and hauling himself up with tremendous effort. Tick-tock. His entire body was screaming at him in outrage, but he managed to stagger over to the bay door where he saw the uranium core, defiantly silver in the light.