I blame my conscription for everything.

Omega [REDUX]

Chapter 48

Hans frowned at the news. "You're sure?" he asked his officer once again.

"Positive, sir," the man replied. "They're not showing up. Anywhere."

"And you're sure they left with the hover-drone?"

"The wreckage suggest that the drone was their only possible escape vector."

"Run a diagnostics on our scanners once again, just to be safe." Hans dismissed the soldier and turned back to his console. To call this recent development a setback was an understatement.

Getting the two active UIF Ascendants out of the picture had been crucial; only they would know the true nature of the Ascendant program, and would be the most viable opposition to his plans. No matter, he found himself thinking, as he brought up his system files to continue constructing his statement to the legislative arm of the UIF. Humanity's evolution will not be halted, even by accidents such as these.

He would have to reframe his future speeches to the UIF leadership, and the public. Brand both Anna and Elsa as traitors. Renegades. Treasonous individuals who now hold the public's safety hostage. That would give him the justification needed to push for the next phase of his plans. Politics was never Hans' favourite battleground, but he still appreciated his natural affinity for it.

The real difficulty would be tracking down his escaped targets.

He'd premised his entire set of containment contingencies on the kinesis trackers being able to pick up their scent. If his officers were telling the truth, then that was no longer a viable option. It was dangerous to have the Ascendants both out in the open, its severity matched only by how confounding it was that he had lost them. He was sure the scanners would have picked them up by now.

Hans, however, was not the type to at least have some kind of insurance for every scenario.

Three figures appeared in his doorway, clad in UIF standard-issue powered armour. "I hope you're ready," Hans said, without even looking up from his holo-screen. "You all know what your counterparts are capable of, and they could be anywhere."

"Any ideas where we should start?"

Hans shifted in his seat, bringing up a map of surrounding UIF territories. "Take a section each and check it out," he said. "Their hover-drone couldn't have been on high energy supply; I've marked out the likely landing radius given the fuel they should have been carrying." He drew his lips into a thin line and regarded his operatives. "Do not disappoint me."

Elaine, Edward and Edmund smiled back at him.

Elsa had learnt to think many steps ahead of her opponents. She knew, to a reasonable degree, how to play mind games, execute psychological tactics, and how to act in the most unpredictable manner possible.

This, however, was the biggest risk she'd ever taken in her entire life.

She didn't think Hans thought much of her. A lethal operative Elsa was, Hans would acknowledge, but to call her a tactical genius would be exaggerating a tad, or so Hans should think. Her plan now hinged on Hans' underestimation of her abilities and capacity to plan, fight and survive.

So instead of escaping as far away from Ashton City as she possibly could, Elsa chose to land in it instead. Why would the long-range kinesis scanners give any precedent to local forces to even begin their search within the city borders? And even if the thought did occur to the administration, Elsa would have discovered better ways to hide from them. At least, that was what tended to happen. With everything so off kilter already, Elsa could only hope.

The Ascendant pulled the aircraft into a steep turn, popping landing thrusters as she positioned the craft above the roof of a hotel, setting it down without a hitch. She drew on whatever remnants of power she had left to strengthen the stealth coating on the hover-drone; it took all of her effort, but she got it done.

You can worry about your powers later, she forced herself to think. You have more pressing priorities right now.

Elsa deployed the ramp, seized an ASR-A from their weapon cabinet and scanned the perimeter. She wasn't sure how many forces the UIF would deploy to search for them within the city limits, and it would pay to be cautious. Nothing. She ran back up the ramp and shut off the drone engines, powering down secondary systems while prepping a self-destruct program as insurance.

Through it all she grit her teeth, her hand still ravaged by her less than ideal extraction. Her blood came small but steady streams; her uniform, and the floor beneath her, had become stained with red.

The wind whistled in her ear as she exited the craft again, surveying her surroundings. The hotel wasn't the tallest building in the region by far, but it was of an ideal height; not too tall to attract unwanted attention, and not too short to avoid easy detection. Elsa slung the rifle over her shoulder, pondering her next move and ignoring the pain in her arm.

"Wha . . . where?" Groaning behind her drew Elsa's attention, and she rushed to Anna's side. Her companion was drowsy and disoriented, no doubt a result of taking a beating from the augmented guard on the transport.

"Easy," Elsa said, pulling Anna into a sitting position at the top of the ramp. "You took quite the hit." She hadn't had the time to attend to Anna till just then, and she rushed off to draw a medkit from its compartment, intending to tend to Anna's wounds.

"I'm good," Anna coughed as she realised Elsa's intentions, trying to shrug her off. Elsa wasn't sure if it was because Anna was really fine, or because she refused to accept Elsa's help.

Not that Elsa had any right to blame her. She sucked in a breath and began bandaging her own wounds.

"What's our move?" Anna asked.

"We're on a hotel roof," Elsa replied. "I need you to hack into the database and get us a room."

Consternation, embarrassment and a spark of anger flared in Anna's eyes, prompting Elsa to clarify: "The UIF won't think of looking for us too closely within Ashton City itself, and they've probably locked everywhere else down, Cradle Alpha included. We need a temporary base, and this was the best building I could find."

She could see the conflict in Anna's eyes. Nothing had changed between them since the last time they fought. It broke Elsa's heart.

"Okay," came Anna's reply, without a tinge of emotion. "Tend to Merida. I'll get us a space."

The silence that hung in the air thereafter was unbearable.

Kristoff found Charles on the base rooftop, overlooking the rapid-response runway. He'd know Charles for a long time; ever since the Elsa incident Charles had fought to keep his nervousness under control. It had been difficult, but he'd managed to keep his nervous ticks in check; Charles' had had the most trouble with incessant finger tapping, and considered it a personal achievement when he curbed the habit.

Now Kristoff looked at his friend drumming his fingers on the handles of the wheelchair, and he knew something was wrong. "Now what?" he asked.

"Now we find them," Charles said. "Before the rest of the fucking UIF does. And without contacting them directly so they can remain concealed at the same time."

"It's not like them to just attack a UIF convoy and be off just like that," Kristoff replied, leaning against the parapet, "at least, not since the last time we saw them. Something must have happened."

"Yeah," Charles agreed, pushing his wheelchair back and wheeling around, triggering a few wheelchair console functions, "let alone disappear off the fucking grid with no traces for us to follow. You'd think they'd leave a message of some kind if this was premeditated."

A silence hung between them as Charles brought up a personnel list of the UIF forces within Ashton City. Kristoff narrowed his eyes, studying the troop movements. "They're spreading outward from the city," he noted. "They think our Ascendants escaped."

"Routine patrols, their logs say," Charles scoffed, leaning back in the wheelchair. "As if that's going to fool anybody."

"But if their radius is as big as this intel indicates," Kristoff said, "then Anna and Elsa could be anywhere. We wouldn't know where to start, let alone beat the rest of our forces to the punch."

"On the contrary," his companion noted, "it also indicates that the rest of the UIF also has no idea where to start. That's why they cast their net this wide. We're still on equal ground."

A Hummingbird dropship blew hot air into Kristoff's face as it took off, prompting him to squint. He turned to Charles, who was still navigating the display. "With any luck," Charles muttered, "the Ascendants will know how the UIF wants to search for them, especially since they replaced the kinesis signatures. They'll make our job easier for us."

"That's still not an answer—"

A slow beeping emanated from Charles' wheelchair comm. "That is," Charles replied.

Anna found an exposed datapoint on the hotel roof. She morphed her hand into an interface and wired herself in; it wasn't difficult to fake a data entry to book themselves a presidential suite. They would need the space to store weapons and gear, and anything else they might scrounge together in this city-turned hellhole.

"Got the room," she radioed to the hover-drone's systems. "Room 3313, on the floor just beneath us."

"Roger that," came Elsa's reply. "I'll carry Merida there. Secure the area until I get back to retrieve the weapons."

Anna shut off the comm and disconnected from the datapoint.

It still hurt to talk to Elsa.

She missed everything about her and she couldn't force herself to reconcile everything she felt from both sides of her emotional spectrum because she loved Elsa and she kind of hated Elsa and she couldn't bear to hate her either—

Anna sucked in a breath and clenched her fist. Productive steps, Anna, she told herself. Keep making productive steps. Deal with this slowly, but carefully.

She drew up her comms and linked up to the UIF info network, isolating her signal and tracing for the contact she desired. Anna secured the line, and patched herself through as her target picked up.

"What the fuck is going on?" Charles yelled in her ear, causing Anna to flinch. "Where have you been? And why is every other soldier on this base looking for you?"

"What he means to say," she heard Kristoff cut in, "is are you safe? And how long can you hold out? What happened to you?"

"Hans betrayed us," she replied. "He captured Elsa and tried to kill me using one of my friends. He indoctrinated her. She – "

God, she thought, realising she hadn't had time to process Rapunzel's death as tears came to her eyes, her voice choking up. "She blew up. They turned her into a living bomb."

Silence from the other end of the line. She heard Charles utter a profanity as her message sunk in.

"God . . . damn that snake," Kristoff snarled.

"I don't understand either," Anna said. "He . . . he was one of the only people who cared. And then he took Rapunzel and stripped away her personality, and brainwashed her, and—"

She felt her breath catch in her throat, and it turned into a sob. Then another. And another. It wasn't long before she found herself openly sobbing, leaning against the cold metal, hot tears spilling across her cheeks. Her rage and sorrow tore at her heart, searing her from the inside and knocking the wind out of her chest.

She hadn't felt that way for what seemed to be a long time. The events of the past few days . . . Anna had forced her feelings underground, kept them suppressed in the name of objectivity and survival. She knew she would have to grieve for Rapunzel's death later. She knew that she would have to reconcile her hatred for what Elsa had done with her own burning desire to rescue Elsa when she was kidnapped. She knew everything would come crashing down upon her.

She'd just forgot that it would feel like this.

". . . Anna."

A faraway voice called to her. She blinked tears away and refocused. "I'm sorry," Anna managed. "You didn't need to hear that."

"You didn't deserve to bottle all that up either," Kristoff replied. "Everyone needs an outlet eventually."

"But you need to keep it together," Charles interrupted, and Anna felt her heart sting from his apparent disregard for her plight. "More than ever right now. You've got to stay focused. Can't afford to let anything to affect you."

"I don't know if I can do that." Anna sighed, leaning against the wall, sliding down into a kneeling position. She felt exhausted, both in body and in spirit. "Especially with what happened with Elsa—"

"I know how you feel about what she's done," Charles continued, "but right now, you have to let it go."

"Easy for you to say," she shot back. "You're not the one that can't decide if she's to be loved or hated."

"With all due respect to what you're feeling right now, your emotions are important in so far as they serve as a performance hazard."

"How can you say that?" She could feel the ire in her rise in conjunction with her voice tone. "I can't just invalidate—"

"Your circumstances dictate a dire need to work together. It doesn't matter if you never reconcile the relationship you once had, but it does matter that you cooperate and execute. Your survival depends on it."

Anna sighed again, letting it punctuate the call as she tried to find the words to reply. "Everything hurts, Charles," the Ascendant said. "My head, my heart, not to mention all my limbs and fingers. How am I supposed to get through this?"

"Because you and I both know you're stronger than you think."

She didn't know how to respond because Charles should be wrong. She wasn't stronger. She couldn't be stronger. She was weak, in this state and in every state, and there was no way she could overcome the full might of the circumstances that confronted her. She could feel the ache in her heart and the heat on her face, her mind confused and scrambled and afraid.

And yet empirical evidence would, if she could find the frame of mind to think about it, disprove her irrational thinking. Against impossible odds she'd trumped her entire cohort of military trainees, survived hostile augmentation and transformed into a lethal supersoldier. Against similar odds, she'd become friends with a distant, mysterious woman, and became her girlfriend despite their checkered pasts and uncertain future.

Every time she told herself she would never make it, somehow she did.

Anna sucked in another breath. There was no point worrying; she needed to act.

"What's your location now?" came Kristoff's voice. "Do you need any supplies? Immediate concerns? We can't promise much at this point but—"

"I'll transfer coordinates ASAP," Anna replied, "but other than that we should be good. Try not to contact us unless it's an emergency, so we can avoid detection."

"You don't need to tell me twice," Charles said. "We'll keep checking things on our end. Stay low, and good luck. Not to belittle your chances, but we both know you'll need it."

Elsa terminated Anna's transmission and scooped up Merida's prone form. With a final act of will she rendered the drone's outer surfaces invisible, then with strained breaths, carried Merida toward the maintenance corridor.

With any luck, she thought, no one's going to look too hard at that particular spot on the roof.

The Ascendant pulled open the door with one hand, sidearm in the other, hidden beneath Merida's body. Elsa swept the area, eyes peeled for movement of any kind; no one should have known they were there, but they couldn't afford to be careless at this point. She descended the stairway, careful to avoid bumping Merida's head against the myriad of piping and wiring that adorned the concrete-alloyed walls.

Step after step lead her to the base of the corridor, and the entrance to the hotel's main areas. A gentle push granted Elsa the slightest of openings to peek through. The hallways, furnished in ceremonial golds and reds, were abandoned to the best of her knowledge, at least for now.

Something was wrong. Not about her situation, but about herself. Elsa realised this as she pushed open the door, shut it behind her with an efficiency she'd forgotten she had, and moved down the hallway to suite 3313.

It had been faint, this change, and it had been nagging at the back of her head ever since she had a moment to herself in the drone. But she knew for sure it was there; the loss of cognition, the regression in thought, and the draining of her confidence. Suppressing her emotions was a skill that Elsa had taught herself, but this too had changed. Her emotions were not so much suppressed as they now were . . . diluted.

Even in what she perceived to be a cognitively impaired state, Elsa knew what she should be feeling now: acute fear, a sensation which she would have to keep under wraps with conscious effort, stemming from anxiety for the future, and the situation that had unfolded with Anna. She should feel punctured with grief and riddled with fear, but she didn't. Instead, in their place, was a dull, unnerving sense of despair.

Elsa remembered herself in her darkest moments, where she was beset on all side by an assault of self-hate, loathing and quite notably, despair. She knew this was different. She couldn't feel as much as before, and she couldn't think as much about her feelings as before.

Curious.

And worrying, another voice chimed into her thoughts as she pushed open the hotel door, thanks to Anna's hacking, and set Merida down on the nearest couch. She assessed her surroundings, blocking out the standard hotel complements and scanning for objects of interest. Elsa noted the lack of security cameras in the suite, which would prove very useful in the long run. For all intents and purposes, her location would be secure and comfortable, given the amenities lying all around her.

Everything except her mental state was secure, she concluded, still trying to grasp at what the hell was going on with her and why was she feeling this way, and why couldn't she just get a grip on her fear and pain when she thought she was feeling a null despair before and what in the hell is going onEMPYREAN EMPYREAN EMPYREAN—

Her hands flew to her head, clutching and grasping at her head, her eyes shut tight in a desperate attempt to block it out. She should be used to this, she should know how to deal with this, but every aspect of this attack was foreign, everything about this felt wrong, and her heart hammered in her chest as she is overwhelmed by the sensation. Static filled her head, blocked out her thoughts, a constricting grip upon her inner self that threatened to silence all of her.

And through it all she could hear footsteps. Encroaching towards her position. She was in no right mind to defend herself; she was physically burdened and mentally compromised, she was unarmed and de-powered. Still, the footsteps came. Elsa feared the worst.

The door burst open. She whirled towards the latest entrant, ready to spring, to pounce on an attacker if need be, to defend Merida from—

It was Anna.

Just Anna.

No UIF units scouring for her whereabouts. No black ops soldiers coming in guns blazing. No Ascendants ready to crush or impale her.

Elsa felt her breath return to her, the heaving in her chest beginning to recede.

I thought I was losing the ability to feel and think. What the hell is going on with me?

If the mental turmoil wasn't evident on her face, then Anna's bioscans would tell her everything. Her companion shut the door behind her, and approached Elsa with a caution that spoke less of what she thought of Elsa's past actions, but more of what she was seeing now.

"Are . . . you okay?" Anna asked. She placed her payload of weapons, salvaged from the drone's armoury, to the side. "And before you shrug it off, I can see your vitals spiking. Are you feeling anything in particular, or is it a general sense of distress?"

"Feels like a little bit of everything all at once," Elsa managed, for once able to look straight at Anna. Something about going insane seemed to make everything far more surgical. "My thoughts are scattered, my emotions are wild. I . . . I'm getting the stupid Empyrean screaming again."

She watched Anna's eyes narrow. "That's unusual," the Ascendant noted, kneeling down next to Elsa, who only now found herself in a sitting position, leaning against a glass window. "We've seen you experience those attacks before, but nothing quite like this—"

"Did I mention I lost the ability to use my powers?"

Anna's mouth opened, as if to say something, then closed when nothing came out.

Elsa let her head tilt back, knocking against the glass. It's hopeless, she thought. I'm just going to slow Anna down, jeopardise her chances of survival. I can't fight, I can't run, I can't even think properly. At the end of the day I've always been and always will be a burden.

"How . . . what?" Anna turned around and sat beside Elsa. The latter swore she shivered at the close contact; she hadn't realised just how distant they had become. If Anna felt the same way, she'd become exceptional at hiding it. "How did you find out?" Anna pressed.

"When I woke inside that pod I naturally tried to break free," Elsa began, cringing as she remembered the helplessness she felt. "I nearly cracked my wrist when I punched the casing. And I couldn't—" She raised a hand to demonstrate, willing her cryokinesis to materialize in some shape or form, but to no avail. "I can't use my powers. No matter how hard I've tried."

"How bad is it?"

"I have control over basic things, like resistance to cold, and the stealth layer on our drone. Other than that—"

Anna held up her hand, motioning for Elsa to stop talking. Her eyes took on an intense stare, and Elsa felt her skin crawl. Her companion's attention was directed somewhere on her, or behind her in some manner. Elsa watched as Anna's irises shifted and morphed, no doubt conducting various scans of differing magnification, and the hand she held up began to pulse with electricity.

"This might sting a bit."

Elsa didn't have time to respond before she felt the jolt on her neck. She cried out in pain, then reached to stifle herself; attention drawn towards them was something they didn't need right now. From behind Anna pulled back her hand; on her finger appeared to be a tiny chip.

"That wasn't there before," Elsa managed, still reeling from the pain.

"Think Hans put it there?" Anna asked. "Because if you had this before today's events, I should have spotted it. Maybe it was there to scramble your brain like what you experienced earlier, or to curtail your powers . . .?"

Elsa opened a palm, willing the frost to come forth. Nothing. Not even a speck of snow. "Perhaps not?" Anna began. "Regardless, I'll begin analysis after we've further secured our location—"

Elsa slammed her fist into the carpeted floor, knowing it did little to vent her frustrations. "Well we're fucking dead in the water now," she spat. "Look at what we have. A handful of guns, whatever armor we still have locked up in the drone we parked, diminishing medical supplies for two wounded operatives, and—"

She felt Anna's arm around her shoulder pull her into an embrace, and Elsa found herself leaning against her former lover, her own breath ragged and pained, her eyes burning and brimming with tears. This was the last thing Elsa expected. She didn't think Anna would even consider the thought of being close to her. And yet, here they were.

"I'm scared too," Anna whispered into her ear, her embrace tightening. Elsa could feel Anna's warmth pulsing against her, both of them too petrified to speak further, instead choosing to tighten the distance between them.

It was a pragmatic gesture, Elsa told herself, nothing more. There was no other conceivable reason why Anna would do this. It was an opportunity that she saw, and seized, to attempt to repair the divide that had emerged between them. And why shouldn't she? Anna knew as well as Elsa did that a healthy working relationship was not just essential, but life-saving in the circumstances they faced. They could not afford conflict, and any tension and anger should be turned against those that would see them dead.

And yet, if it was as pragmatic and cold a gesture as Elsa conceived inside her own head, why did it feel so real? So warm? So unmistakably human?

Questions for another time, Elsa decided, as she snuggled deeper into Anna's shoulder. If anything, it was a welcome reprieve.

She wouldn't realise it was a reprieve for the two of them.

In all honesty, I'm considering taking down the story in favour of a total reboot, but I'm still undecided. Just a head's up on the off chance I pull the plug some day.