Sacrifices

Chapter 19: Final Judgement - Part 1

"Shoot me down, but I get up

I'm bulletproof nothing to lose
Ricochet, you take your aim
Fire away, fire away
You shoot me down but I won't fall,
I am titanium"

-Titanium, David Guetta-

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'My mission here has failed...'

All Jackie heard was the drone of static as her Pip-Boy continued to rumble out words. Words that registered no meaning. Static in her ears that clouded her mind and crackled through the air, tingling upon her skin with the rising of her hair. Her brain caught on the obvious and she struggled to comprehend the information that was being fed to her.

'...It is not forgiveness I seek. I am however, sorry.'

The tape clicked off and her Pip-Boy sputtered into silence once more. For a moment, Jackie just stared, attempting to process what she had heard. Beyond the flicker of the screen, movement pricked her peripherals. The darkness was alive. It shifted and morphed into disfigured silhouettes lurking in the shadows of hazy green light. Phantoms stalked her, waiting for the click of gears to form coherent thought.

Maxson... was a replacement? A synth?

Her mind gummed the word, still struggling to understand.

But how? It couldn't be possible... could it?

Suddenly the shadows rushed in to tear her heart asunder. Her chest heaved, heart thundering away, sending blood to beat within her ears. Madness once again ensnared her every thought with the realization that this whole time she had been played, baited and dragged along like some goddamn fish on a hook.

"Traitor…" her white-knuckled grasp threatened to strangle the life from her Pip-Boy and Jackie's disgusted whisper gave way to a deranged shout, "Traitor!"

Fueled by fury, Jackie thrust herself upwards with such force that the blood drained from her brain. Dizzy and uncoordinated she wavered and barely caught herself as she stumbled into the desk, sending her Pip-Boy skidding into the steel wall with a crack.

"Goddammit!" she cursed with a vicious shake of her head. Her hands a vice upon the edge of the desk, the only thing keeping her upright and tethered to what little grasp on reality she still possessed.

Greenish light spattered the wall a sickly hue, not quite concealing the cackling specters who heckled her sanity. Jackie had trusted Maxson, trusted him. Believed that even in his coercion of her, it had somehow all been for a greater good. That despite Maxson's own increasing instability, he was honorable. A man who would stand behind his beliefs no matter the cost. That his unreasonable hatred for all things non-human was derived from his own very human flaws of prejudice and greed. That at the very least Maxson was a man of his word.

But it was a lie. All of it. A goddamn lie fabricated by the Institute and her estranged son.

Maxson had been programmed and trained and sent out for infiltration and damn it , how long had it been? How long had Maxson not been Maxson? Since Danse's exile? Before the Brotherhood sent her into the Institute? Since she walked with him that first night on the beach?

Oh God.

Jackie couldn't breathe. The desk wobbled beneath her and she tried to keep her balance. Shaking and spinning and God she felt sick. Bile churned her gut and heaved up her throat, threatening to spill upon the floor between her feet.