Killing Time OST – Finale A – Release

<< 25c – Blast

I cocked my Desert Eagle, now full of bullets, and sighed.
Going radio silent.
I switched off my communications and my music chip. I didn’t want Vexx or Gabriel to talk to me. I wanted to bask in the peace, the accomplishment. The end.
“Lorelei –”
I shot a warning two inches off my father’s feet. He fumbled backward but after a life of deceit, he likely had an ace up his sleeve. I didn’t know if it was my instinct or the skewed perception caused by the tech by-products poisoning my senses, but he seemed to pulse with threat though he slowly took steps away from me.
I would leave him one chance to win. I needed this to be a duel, not a scything. He had wound me into an anger-driven killing machine; I couldn’t kill him in a burst of fury.
“You’re not leading anything anymore.” I had tried to find calm for years and had never achieved it before this moment. “Not your empire. Not your life. Not this conversation. How does it feel?”
He swallowed hard and took another step back. I shot an inch from his ear. He cowered.
“Your ears work just fine, Andrew. Please answer the question.”
He straightened himself, pulling his jacket to an ordered flatness and squaring his jaw. I cocked an eyebrow; the brave face didn’t bear any weight after all the cowering.
“It feels wrong. I’m –”
“– Too little, too late. I’ll have issues for the rest of my life.” I sat on top of a protruding ventilation unit. The air coming out of it blew softly around my ankles. It tickled. In the streets below, the authorities were arriving.
“You’re only sorry you got caught.”
The light played beautifully on the body of my gun. This was a perfect summer day, blissfully smog-free. He didn’t deserve such a good day to die.
“What do you hope to get out of this conversation exactly?” Andrew’s anger was fueled by annoyance and helplessness. Nothing like the one I bore since childhood.
“Nothing, really. The past weeks significantly lowered my expectations toward you.”
There was one question I wanted to ask but I wouldn’t believe his answer, no matter what he said. And one way or another, I would be an orphan.
“How many of you thought I could pull this off?” I waved at the cadavers.
“Two.”
“Wow! Underestimating your creations much?” I chuckled. “I bet you’ll get your ghostly ass spanked for not listening.”
The thumping sound announced the two guards way before they reached the roof access door. I shut two sparkies and was done with them.
“Why are you doing this?”
I shot a real bullet through the extra fabric around the ankle of my father’s pants.
“That’s the second question you ask. Are you trying to take back this conversation? Bad prisoner.” I clicked my tongue. “I want to leave you a chance to fail your escape. But since that team seems completely incompetent, I’ll have to kill you without quashing your hopes.”
A faint shushing sound entered my hearing range. My identification chip pulled the file of the associated vehicle: a super silent helicopter covered in high tech plasma screens that partnered with cameras to act like a chameleon skin. Virtually undetectable except for the obscenely enhanced like me.
I aimed at Andrew’s head. “How many others are there?” He shook his head no. I smiled and pulled a first detonator out of my vest. “It doesn’t matter, you know.”
I pressed the button. Somewhere in the middle of the jungle far away, a building blew up.
“Your research facility’s destroyed.”
I flicked my wrist, letting the detonator spiral to his feet. In the belly of this building, the mainframe reacted to the attack by saving a copy of all its content to a set of super secret remote servers. All its content. Vexx’s virus tagged along for the ride to make sure that the only server left with Merrilyn Tech’s information would be our own. By dinner time, the remote servers would be wiped clean of any back up files they might have contained.
I theatrically pulled another detonator out of my vest – the complete upload from the mainframe to the servers required ten seconds.
“I’m also commandeering all your data.” I pressed the button. The explosion was loud enough for Andrew to hear it. The roof shook a bit too. I threw the second detonator to his feet. “I’ll know how many prototypes are out there soon.” Vexx, Gabriel and I hadn’t gotten around to those files yet.
The soft shushing of the helicopter was growing closer. Thirty seconds tops.
“This doesn’t change anything for you.” Andrew said.
“So now you have fatherly advice, don’t you?” I chuckled again. “Think it’ll be good enough to save your skin?”
“You’ll still hate who you are. Maybe even more so.”
As if that would suffice to destabilize me, Andrew chose that moment to turn and run for the invisible helicopter. I placed a bullet between his eyes as soon as his left foot initiated the turn. Seeing its boss down, the helicopter started shooting. I rolled behind the ventilation unit. It did one pass over my head. I vaulted over the unit and broke into a sprint towards the body of the man I used to call Dad.
I stuck a Nightshade signature sticker on his chest. A puff of his cologne caught me by surprise and I stopped dead in my tracks. Though his nanobots weren’t in me anymore, they had burnt an unforgettable path. My body yearned to wrap my arms around him and cry in the curve of his neck.
The return of the helicopter snapped me out of my tech-induced trance. I sprinted to the edge of the building and swan dived. A few plasma bullet burst on the roof. By the time the helicopter turned around so it could shoot at me again, I would be out of range.
I opened the parachute folded in the back of my suit and angled myself to land in the parking next door. The crowd of buzzards parted for me.

Finale B – Release >>