The Sixth | Ekko

Chapter Twenty-Three

Six sewed Petra's button onto her jacket—a new addition amongst the macabre swarm of them she'd already attached to it from the those she collected from the fallen. She took it from the quartermaster's robes after paying her bedroom a sorrowful visit.

Afterwards, she decided to go to the ledge. It was a place she avoided as much as possible, but even with how much she evaded it, she still found herself there too many times.

The ledge was an abrupt drop off in a cavern hidden below the south wing of the hideout, where the trading facility had aged the most and shed its bits into the canyon underneath it. It was where the Vatalia 'laid' their dead to rest.

The community had long said their farewells to their quartermaster, the body dumped over the ledge and into the deep-burrowed pit.

In the undercity, they didn't have the luxury of burying their dead. There were no graveyards, as there wasn't any room for them. Instead, the dead were either burned, left in caves, dumped in Pilt river, or in some instances, left to rot in the streets. It greatly contrasted their sister city, which had large expanses of cemeteries filled with beautiful flora, memorials, and statues to honour their loved ones' deaths. It was as if Zaun was topside's hell.

Sometimes, Six wondered what became of Mylo's and Claggor's bodies. Were they just left there alone to decompose under piles of rubble? Had someone gone back and done something with them?

She reached up and clutched Mylo's lockpick, rubbing circles across the metal with her thumb. It was the last thing she had of him, and she often found herself clinging to it as if it were his hand that he was offering her for comfort.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, booted toes peekabooing over the ledge, gaze set on the unending darkness below. "I'm so sorry."

Her thoughts drifted back to the conversation she had with Honey earlier.

"I tried giving her the antidote," Honey said. To Six, it sounded as if she were listening to someone talk while being heavily drunk.

"I couldn't give her G-CSF since we used it on..." the medic's voice came again, sounding just as muffled as before.

"We'll never make a good pair, will we?" she spoke aloud, despite no one being there to hear her.

Momo and Ekko—when together leaving trails of death like frost in the fall. Their choices led to the demise of her brothers and father, while her decision to save him after the incident on the bridge led to Claret's death. Now Petra was dead, when there was a possibility that she could've been saved if the G-CSF hadn't been used on Ekko.

But then she realized, it had nothing to do with Ekko. It was her doing. Mylo, Claggor, and Vander—dead because she followed Ekko and gave them the tip. Five dead because of her disobedience. Claret dead because she startled Jinx, which led to Ekko's being shot and her choosing to save him. The other founders dead because of insistence. Petra dead because of a poison she'd created.

Her feet shuffled further off the ledge, bits of stone chipping away and freefalling into the black.

She thought she could make up for her mistakes by creating medicine from shimmer, but her attempts at doing so just led to the creation of a poison that was being used to kill the people of the undercity—including her own community members.

Another centimetre over the edge. Perhaps it would be for the best if she joined the ones she'd ended.

"What are you doing?!" Derora's voice shouted from behind her.

Six turned and found Derora looking at her, white in the face.

"Ora... You should... You should leave..." Six said, her voice a phantom's.