Elysium Falling (ONC 2024 Long List)

Chapter 10 Self Destruct

Dik Paramar stood behind Dana's desk holding the contents of package 59. It was a stack. 

He had no idea whose it was but he could guess. This one little stack was important to Rowan Stevescant. It was for the most part unharmed. Shiny from being held, which also made no sense. Why would Dana hold it so much? Who was important to both of them? He'd watched as Dana had cut it out of the protesting woman's neck with glee and put her skin in storage only to come out walking in it a few days later. 

Her goal was to get Rowan back into the fold. They'd all known it. 

For a while Dik had envied Rowan's ability to break free. But it hadn't lasted, not with higher ups wanting his skills back. Dik wondered how this would end and if it wouldn't be wiser to put a bullet through this stack right now. They wanted a killer with no soul. That's what Rowan would become if this stack disappeared. The stack was insurance he'd behave. Not that it was working. 

He sighed and flipped the stack around in his hands. Guard it with his life, she said. He wasn't supposed to ask questions but now he couldn't help it. The nature of this job had turned personal long before Rowan had stepped foot back in the palace. As he turned the stack over in his hands, Dik reflected on Dana's instructions and the larger implications of her orders. Guarding this stack meant potentially reviving a part of Rowan Stevescant that Dana Margrave believed could be manipulated and controlled, or perhaps it was a leverage point she intended to use to bend Rowan to her will once more. Either way, Dik understood that with it in his hands he was potentially a dead man walking. 

The building shook and Dik braced himself. 

Did he stay or go? The warm red walls of the office gave no hint of an answer to him. 

Dana Margrave, to his surprise, had ordered him to remain but she herself had fled. He'd dutifully nodded but now he was second guessing himself. It brought back sharp memories of Rowan's last day on the job. Rowan had pleaded with Dik to consider other options. And then he'd disappeared into the night after digging out his tracer and leaving it in their barracks. A pile of wires, blood, and skin.

Dik had thought Dana Margrave would make one last stand here. It was The Watcher thing to do. But it appeared she was more of a politician than he'd thought. She'd taken a handful of new recruits and told him to remain behind. One last stand between old partners.

Romantic she'd called it. 

Fuck that. Dik pocketed the stack and opened the door. The corridor was filled with the dust and empty. His left hand tightened on the stack and his right on the pistol. Dik Paramar's mind raced as the building continued to tremble beneath him.

He'd been left to die. That was the short version. He didn't know why. He understood Rowan now. The way he'd left. And why. To see yourself suddenly as just a pawn and not a valued member. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

Screw it. He was a dead man walking if Rowan found him. He walked out into the dust filled hallway, his only bargaining chip in his pocket. 

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The door swung open with a resounding crash, revealing a surprisingly pristine office untouched by the chaos that had engulfed the rest of the building. The contrast was stark, almost surreal. The room was dimly lit, with only a single lamp casting a pool of light on a large, mahogany desk that seemed out of place in the modern chaos outside. 

And it was disappointingly empty.

Rowan rushed over to the mahogany desk. He yanked open drawers leaving them on the floor when he saw no sign of the stack or any package resembling a carrier. 

Shit, he cursed himself. He'd been too slow. He would have prefered to have a room full of enemies to this. At least he knew what to do, the silence was deafening. His own heavy breathing echoed back at him, mixing with the distant rumblings of the palace's imminent demise. The sense of failure was overwhelming, a bitter taste in his mouth that no amount of physical pain could wash away. He had come so close.

He sank to his knees, as the building shook around him. He'd failed. His mental barriers crumbled as genuine panic set in. His fist hit the floor, the pain sending waves up his knuckles. Blood pooled on his hand. He rocked back on his heels. 

"Think, Rowan," he said out loud. He was still connected to the mainframe but it was being over run. Everyone was using it to examine the building, the contents were being emptied onto distant servers. His head popped up.

There was a large group moving towards the entrance, and one person left in the building. 

Dik. He was close. The large group was filled with names he didn't care about. But Dana was there. 

He stood up again resolute. 

Lock.

It was one simple command. He knew that Dana's group might be able to override it, but that would take time. 

Time they didn't have. He frowned. Either way this was going to end. Either he got Miranda back from Dana or they would all burn in this shit hole.

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Dana stood in front of the doors, the ones that no one was supposed to walk out of again unless they'd passed all of their tests. They were locked, access denied. 

She closed her eyes. It was a mistake to bring him here. She realized that now. Just like it had been a mistake to go after Miranda. Miranda, her sister, who had done nothing wrong. Dana sighed as she stared at the keypad for what felt like an eternity. Rowan was a hacker, his ability was over shadowed by his assassins credentials. But she should have considered it. He took months to do a hit. He was meticulous, he studied his prey.

How long had he known she wasn't Miranda when she'd been with him? That was the part that gnawed at her. His file said months to do a job. Had he noticed right away when she'd made the switch? 

Dana thought she'd been in the one in charge, knowing their relationship intimately and how to bring in the prize. But the truth of the matter was before her now in painstaking detail. Scribbled in blood on the dead recruits she stumbled over in the halls, their stacks blown out. 

She didn't even have Miranda's stack to hand over when the dust settled. 

There was so much he didn't know about why he'd been brought back in. She'd thought a taste of his old life would do the trick. But he seemed bored with the task. He was supposed to be her ticket to the top, to the high rise - the way out of the bottom. Hell, with the payout she could have gone off world to one of the under developed colonies and start over with less tech but more power. 

But now, she stood with her back to a locked door awaiting the monster she knew was coming. The one she'd resurrected. She laughed at the irony. She had played a dangerous game, weaving a web of manipulation and deception, and now she was caught in its strands. The building continued to tremble under the force of its imminent collapse, a physical manifestation of her crumbling empire. 

And hell, she laughed at the irony too. It was the self destruct sequence that she'd installed over fifty years ago to keep their secrets.  

WC: 1298