Killing Time OST – Finale B – Release

<< Finale A – Release

I cut off my chute as soon as my feet touched the ground. It sufficed to keep my immediate surroundings busy as people frantically attempted to free themselves from the fabric. Amidst the panic, I had no problem grabbing a loose jacket off someone’s back and a hat off another one’s head. A pair of sunglasses fell to my feet with an impeccable timing.
The general chaos of the crowd running out of the parking garage – to avoid me who now looked like one of them if you forwent my Kevlar legs – allowed me to make my way to a quiet alleyway where a loosened manhole cover waited for my escape. I slipped in the abandoned sewer unnoticed and started my run out of the city. I shed my cheap costume under the neighborhood before I ran back towards my house.
The sewer entrance and the lab were untouched. No booby traps, no misplaced items. The door leading to the house was still closed. I enjoyed the fact that my secret sanctuary hadn’t been found; the recent event left so few pieces of me undisturbed, even Vexx’s overloaded shelves appeased me.
The house, however, was full of traps easily identifiable for anyone who didn’t walk in through the front door. Did they actually think I would be that stupid?
Julia rolled to me. “Your last grocery was thrown in last week’s garbage. Please refill the refrigerator to improve your meal choices.”
I stuck my Taser under her jaw. She wiggled, and then powered down.
Annoying machines.
Realizing I still wore all my Nightshade stuff, I backtracked and threw my face and my Kevlar suit down the stairs before closing the secret door. Naked, I headed upstairs. My bedroom had been turned upside down, like the rest of the house. My bottle of scotch lied on its side, empty.
The bastards.
I plucked my pink dress with white polka dots out of the wreckage and slid it on. I tied my hair and dabbed a little make-up on – which required a bit of digging to find. My pair of favorite sandals yearned to be reunited; I grabbed the left foot in the bathtub and the right under the bed.
I headed back out of the house with my purse, deactivating all the traps along the way to the front door. They were so primitive I preferred to think they didn’t really want to kill me. The blown up bed fragments had been cleaned from the driveway so the authority wouldn’t investigate my house. I shrugged to myself and checked the car to make sure it was safe. Two blocks of C4 later, it was.
I drove to the hill where my father and I had so many picnics. The guard didn’t require much explanation to let me in. He chatted me up about the recent attack on Merrilyn Tech. He didn’t know my father was dead. Or that he had been the head of Merrilyn. I leveraged his disgust at the attack, pretending that I needed a reminder the world wasn’t all violence and death. He let me in without question.
I rolled to the top of the world – a backdrop I always cherished – and sat at our usual spot. I closed my eyes, allowing my breath and the smell of grass to fill me slowly. There were a few flowers under the cover of the nearby trees and their perfume erased all souvenirs of the polluted city. The breeze brushed my skin.
I sighed.
Tech by-products ran through my veins, redoubling in mind-altering effects since I slowed down; my resting metabolism didn’t burn them as fast. Reality was stuck in a cloud, just out of my reach, just as it ought to be now; its distance left room for calm, for the peace I felt when I put a bullet through my father’s head to persist a little longer.
All the relief I felt today only existed because the end was near, of course.
The end was here. Finally.
No more second guessing. No more skills I never wished for. No more acts I might have never condoned. No more power plays. No more tech.
No more people robbing me of my choices.
There were loopholes in my contract with the secret task force. Some of them insignificant, others vital. One clause stipulated that following the event of my untimely death, Vexx’s situation would be dicey. A special tribunal would judge him based on his help and how far I fulfilled my contract.
Nothing kept me from bequeathing the house and Merrilyn Tech – which I would soon inherit from my dad – to him in order to secure his usefulness for the task force. He would complain and doubt at first but I hoped someday it would see it as the gift it was.
Freedom and chance to change the company that hurt him.
My way of saying sorry I ever doubted him.
He would do a great job heading Merrilyn Tech. The inventions he would come up with would save hundreds.
Removing myself from the equation was better for everyone. And essential for me.
“All our time have come,
Here, but now they’re gone
Seasons don’t fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain.”
As I sang to myself – because I didn’t want to turn my music chip back on –, I walked to the edge of our picnic spot. It would be a respectable fall to the ground. High enough to stop this nightmare.
This was my choice. At last.
The machines in my body didn’t fear the reaper and I could be like they were. I wanted it.
I swayed with the breeze as I sang the whole Blue Oyster Cult song.
It was such a perfect day.

Finale C – Release >>