Clair de Lune

32. Weak

I pulled out onto the street, taking a right turn as directed by the man beside me. The roads were clear, as were the skies, and I was glad to see that the closest clouds were white and not gray. The ride through town was mostly silent, interjected every once in a while by directional help. At one stoplight though I could feel Sergei's gaze on me, and I rolled my eyes before looking over at him.

"What?"

"Your cheeks healed up nicely," he said softly, "do you usually leave them out in the open?"

"Well I don't usually go out in the open, so yeah." I sighed, watching as he shifted slightly.

"If you reach into my coat pocket, there's something you can have."

I raised an eyebrow at him, wary as all hell at first, but with a slow reach I snagged something out from his coat. My fingers caressed a black face mask, the outside painted with the lower half of a skeleton's jaw. I smirked a little and reached back behind my head, wrapping it around my face and securing it just as the light turned green.

"Suits you much better than it does me." He chuckled, turning his head to look out the window.

"Hey Sergei?"

"Yeah?"

"Necro's a lot more dangerous than we thought, isn't he?" I asked quietly, my eyes focused on the road.

"What brought you to that conclusion?"

"I read Seth Mars' file," I told him, "they're exhibiting the exact same symptoms."

"He's...got a lot of potential, I believe," Sergei nodded, "Seth was a God, though. I'm not sure what Necro can do."

"I think it has something to do with Murmur."

"Really?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Marshall didn't give us any rhyme or reason as to why he released the demon, but he obviously has been alive long enough to know about Seth. Murmur commands an army of the undead, but he can't bring them to the surface until the end of days," I explained, "Necro though, he could cut that whole process short with Murmur's permission." I shrugged, laughing at myself, "I could be wrong though and formulating my own plan on how Necro could practically destroy the world."

"It's reasonable to believe that Marshall might have ulterior motives to a lot of the things he does," Sergei nodded gently, "have you read his file?"

"Yeah, and I could see why he's wanting to get back at PASCI," I nodded, "but I'd like to know what happened in Sudan."

Sergei shut his mouth for a moment, a battle being fought in his eyes until he finally sighed and gave in, "Marshall and I used to be partners, if you couldn't put that together already. We were sent on a mission to Sudan to capture subject 2385A, basically a sand worm. It had been causing havoc for a while, and when we got out there, chaos erupted. I thought I saw Marshall go down, the worm crushed the jeep and threw it over a cliff. When he didn't regroup after we killed it, we just assumed he was dead. We wouldn't have been able to retrieve his body, alive or dead anyway. I'm still not sure how he made it out of that one." He hung his head slightly, memories turning his emerald eyes sharp and dark. "I fought every second after that to search for him though. I only gave up when they told me there was absolutely no way in hell we could stay. I always regretted never turning back."

"Well, Marshall is one hell of a tough nut to crack." I snorted, turning down a road that Sergei nodded to.

We pulled into a private road, surrounded on all sides and hidden from view. After a few minutes we came to a dead end, and I saw what appeared to be another small shack. I parked the car and hopped out before walking around to pull Sergei out of his seat. I snatched the keycard off of his neck, seeing that it wasn't a PASCI one. They must have replaced the system when they started using it. I kept a grip on his arm as we walked inside, finding the scanner on the wall and sliding the card through. The floor jilted alive, lowering us into the ground.