Unreality

12. Behind the Mask

Mephisto was the first to reach the outside of the planetarium, after breaking through an emergency exit round the back, as Victor had blocked the regular entrance he had used to escape by covering it with flames which the ensuing fire sprinklers were still struggling to put out.

Then came Virgil, coughing as one of his hands held Joshua and the other his mouth, as he had already been damaged from his brother's attack and was now struggling further due to the smoke.

The reason he was holding Joshua was because Umbra had handed the droid over to him, as she had gone to pick up Adam on the other side of the theater room.

After feeling her way through the disorienting smoke and managing to escape from the fire, she managed to come out of the domed planetarium unscathed, and quickly joined the other two Anima agents further away from the burning structure, on a small park belonging to the Schwarz estate.

'Phew... he's heavier than he looks,' she wheezed out in between coughs.

She then noticed Virgil glancing at her as she placed Adam's sleeping body on the ground.

Was that acknowledgment and admiration she saw in his eyes?

However, these vaguely pleasant thoughts were soon interrupted by the harshest of voices.

'That was your brother?'

Mephisto — who had now put away her serrated blades — turned around to face Virgil, who had one knee on the ground as he held the wound near his neck.

In spite of his wounded state, the female cyborg's disconcerting eyes — made all the more so by the pale lifelessness of the mask surrounding them — looked down at him without the slightest hint of empathy.

Perhaps because of that, Virgil did not give out an answer, but her question soon proved to be rhetorical anyway.

'Two siblings... both sufferers... and one's a fugitive,' she said, her tone increasingly austere. 'What a rotten family.'

Naturally, Virgil did not appear to welcome her judgment, but other than a brief and slight glare, he ultimately opted not to react to her provocative words of reproach.

Umbra, however, could not contain herself to such an extent.

'H-how can you say that?' she protested reluctantly, still unnerved by Mephisto's appearance, 'If you're an agent of Anima, you must've been a sufferer yourself at one point... so how about showing some compassion instead of—'

'Compassion?' interjected the masked cyborg, glancing scornfully towards Umbra. 'For cowards responsible for unreality?'

'W-what? Cowards...?' the silver-haired girl questioned in indignation.

Mephisto moved away from Virgil and towards Umbra, halting right in front of her, causing the shorter rookie agent to look up at the masked cyborg with nervous apprehension.

'Let me tell you something — if the sufferers themselves had compassion and consideration towards others in the first place, unreality wouldn't exist.'

'What are you talking about...?' Umbra murmured nervously, 'I-I went through it precisely because I cared so much for... someone dear to me...'

There was a brief uncomfortable silence, which was soon shattered by the masked cyborg's austere voice once more.

'I've heard about your case. You're the spoiled brat who felt guilty for her brother's death, aren't you?' Mephisto let out a bitter, sardonic laugh behind the mask. 'You ran away from him shortly before he died, so when he killed himself you felt it was your fault... so you ran away again, trying to shift the blame towards your parents instead, because, being the selfish brat you are, you actually thought you were the only one suffering,' Umbra's gray eyes grew increasingly shocked and distraught with Mephisto's hostile words. 'And yet you think you're somehow a testament to the inherent goodness and innocence of sufferers? Don't flatter yourself — you're as worthless as the rest of them.'