Clair de Lune

40. Redacted

Many times this week had Kelvin dropped by to say hello and see our progress, and many times I had to hide in the most available area to keep from either bursting into flames or breaking down and crying. Most of the time, it was the latter, and I was growing fearful of what was to come next. In a day and a half we'd be heading into the heart of war, and I wasn't ready. My marksmanship had grown better and my telekinesis stronger, but still, I was not ready.

Here I was now, sitting on the floor in the shower as the water rushed over my head to cool the burning fire that was trying to eat its way through my skin. I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes, ignoring the sound of approaching footsteps. Kelvin's booming laughter echoed from out in the training room, and I wanted nothing to do with hearing it, so I just listened to the running water.

"Are you just as sick of him as I am?"

"I just want to die already and get it over with." I mumbled, watching as Osiris came into view. She set her things down on a shelf and turned the water on, the sound of more shower heads running helping to block out the irritating man.

"I'd prefer if you didn't die, but I understand what you mean," she said, "I don't fully trust his plan, but it's the best one we have available right now, so it's not like I really have a choice in the matter."

"Since when have you ever said that?" I snorted, looking up at her.

"What do you mean?"

"Osiris Mars, conceding to something she doesn't want to do?" I got to my feet, "no, no, no, that's isn't the Osiris I know."

She stayed quiet, her eyes locked with mine in a sideways gaze. I laughed heartlessly, looking back towards the door and again towards her.

"You don't just follow the rules, you bend them to your will," I sneered, "since when have you ever listened to a man?"

"Never." She whispered.

"That's right, fucking never!" I cheered her on, "this guy has us all believing if we don't follow everything to a T, everything is going to go to shit. Well you know what I say?"

"Fuck that." Osiris turned towards me, a fire burning in her eyes.

"That's right!" I growled, "and am I expendable? No! We're people, we're Gods among men, we'll do what we want and they can kiss our asses if they think we're going to listen to them any longer!"

"You're right," she narrowed her eyes in thought, "God dammit Agnes, you're always right."

"This guy can go to hell if he thinks I'm just going to run in there and die like some lab rat," I spat, "I'm going to show those corporate bastards a good time, and they'll be passing along stories of the girl made of fire who destroyed the system to their great grand children out of terror."

"I think it may be time we strike fear into these mortals," she curled her hand into a fist at her side, a vengeful grin on her cheeks, "let's destroy the world Agnes, you and me, and we'll never have to listen to another man again."

"I like the way you think, gorgeous." I snickered, shutting off the water and grabbing a towel to wrap around myself. "When this whole thing goes to shit, because I know it will- no plan like this ever goes smoothly- we'll be the ones who save the day."

"What are you planning on doing?" She asked me.

"Who the hell knows, whatever I have to do." I laughed darkly.

It took me until seeing Osiris to realize that we were letting these people run everything. Yeah, sure, they were the ones who put the plan together and helped to work out the finer details, but we were the ones going in and getting ourselves into danger. I huffed to myself as I walked down the hall, formulating a plan of my own. I'd be keeping this to myself of course, would want to jeopardize the mission, now would I?

The bedroom was empty when I walked in and I dropped my towel without hesitation, walking over to my pile of clothes and pulling out a new set. I'd found my dresses growing dusty, seeing as how it was easier to train and move about in leggings instead. For old times sake I tugged the yellow one over my head and took a seat on my bed, something within the confines of my backpack catching my eyes. A few folders jutted out from the back and I remembered taking them from Sergei's hands, but never taking the time to sit down and read through them. Now is as good of a time as any, so I took them out and looked at the names. Mine was on top, of course, and Marshall's was in the back, but the second one...it was Necro's. I felt apprehensive attempting to read through his personal file, but there's nothing in there that I hadn't already known, right?

I placed the other files aside and opened his up, seeing a photo of him pinned to the top. It was like a mugshot taken while he was sleeping, and he looked no different than he did now, save for maybe the length of his hair. The strange and only off-setting thing about his file was the black ink blots scattered throughout the page. His eye color was listed as white and his hair color black, height at six foot one and his real name...redacted. It wasn't listed as unknown, it was listed as a real name that had been blotted out with a sharpie marker. My eyes jumped down to the bio and I found even more blots, missing information and trails that led nowhere.

"Blank was retrieved from blank on blank, retrieved with subject number blank, believed to be DOA. Blank was found without a steady heartbeat upon arrival to the morgue and was taken out of the facility and placed at blank to be retrieved on a later date. A number of weeks later, blank was missing from the spot and was found later that day in the blank district of Silver Lake. Seeing as how the subject was alive, blank was taken into custody and placed under PASCI care and maintenance." The rest of the paper was too blotted out to read, but still, it was enough to send chills down my spine. Just then I heard footsteps and looked up in time to see Sergei walking into the room.

"Hey, Agnes, there you are!" He smiled, running his hand through his hair.

"Did you know about this?" I asked him.

"Know about what?"

Sergei walked closer to me, looking over my shoulder at the file. His eyebrows furrowed and he flipped the page up, only to find more black bars and details about the experiments done to find out his skin composition. The man looked just as confused as I was.

"There's so much information missing, they know who he was?" I whispered, "do you know who he is?"

"No, this was done before I received the file. I never got a chance to look through it though because you grabbed it from me before I could."

"So he's...he's not just some unknown person, they know who he is," I wheezed, closing the file and getting to my feet. Sergei seemed concerned and also curious.

"Should we tell him?"

"No," I shook my head, "unless we find out who he is, I don't think it'd be a good idea, especially this close to the takedown. I say we just leave it be and delve a little deeper into it after this is all over. Right now...it would wreck his state of mind, and we need his to be as strong as he can be."

"Agreed," Sergei nodded, glancing back towards the door before turning me away and towards the opposite wall, "you're not really going to follow Kelvin's orders, are you?"

"I don't really have a choice." I lied.

"I don't agree with that. You're Hellfire, not a little spark in the dark," He whispered, squeezing my shoulder, "his plan isn't foolproof either. He's not taking the other subjects into account, or the higher ups. He just thinks if we destroy the facility it'll send enough of a message to cause havoc, but I can guarantee you, it won't."

"What do you think I should do?" I asked.

"When we get in there and I pull the alarm, run to the lobby and take the com system microphone and make an announcement. It's your choice on what you want to say, but you need to say something, or else it's going to be chaos."

"Oh, I think I can do a little more than just saying something."