Stormblood, стр. 147
The world flashed with sharp, stabbing pain. I watched helplessly as Hideko kicked my brother’s body to make sure he was dead. Her face twisted in mock sorrow, hands pressed to her cheeks, her shoulders shaking as she mimicked my tears with little weeping noises. ‘“Don’t die, Artyom. Please.”’ She cackled with laughter as the world dissolved with tears again. She spat in my face before driving her boot into my testicles. Pain exploded in my abdomen, spraying into every part of me. ‘Worm.’
She locked her arm tight around my neck, hoisting me upwards while the other hand jerked my hair back until my scalp stung, tilting my head up towards Jae. I was shaking so hard I could barely see. My grief slowly collapsing me. Everything inside my body going numb and dead, swallowed by a writhing dark nightmare I’d never wake up from.
‘Are you listening, Vakov? I hope you are,’ Jae said calmly. ‘Your little brother died like a mangy dog. But you don’t understand true pain. You don’t understand what every innocent Harvester felt. But you will. Over the coming decades, we’re going to teach you a lesson in suffering.’ I wasn’t in my own body anymore. I was somewhere far away, watching whatever remained of the person I’d been crumble. Jae started to walk away to the cycling chamber. ‘Hideko, strap this little worm into a restraining harness and dump him in a crate with his brother and seal it. Let them have their time together.’
Hideko made a face. ‘Artyom’s leaking everywhere. It’s disgusting. I don’t want to touch him.’
‘How you do it doesn’t concern me. Just get it done.’
Grief still smothering all logic and all senses. Even so, something warm and familiar was trickling through. Feeling in my legs, the stormtech massaging the immobilising agent away. Hideko dragged me by my hair away from my brother. A tinkle as she retrieved a restraining harness webbed to the wall. She cursed, reaching around with both hands to tug the buckle free. She leaned down towards me, trying to loop the straps over my shoulders. Energy born of some mad, animal fury burst through me as I surged to my feet, grabbed her by the back of her neck and brought her face smashing down on the terminal, once, twice, three times, the glass splintering and cracking louder with each smash, leaving bloody stains. She reared back, whipping a burning stripe across my back with the straps. I ripped them out of her hands and scythed her legs out from under her, sending us both crashing to the ground. I wrapped the straps around her neck in three overlapping layers, tightening the buckles until the mechanism threatened to break, then jerked back, my teeth clenching.
Hideko’s eyes bulged, her hands clawing at her neck. Her face slowly turning the colour of a bruise. Her legs thrashing against mine. Body jerking back and forth. I stared at my brother’s corpse and empty, dead eyes. Called on every untapped nugget of strength in my body and pulled so hard I felt my joints straining, my muscles aching. The buckle’s edge clawing bloody furrows in Hideko’s cheek, the leather straps creaking and groaning, slicing into her neck, her arms shuddering like a flopping fish.
And then they didn’t flop at all.
I stood. Jae had emerged from the cycling chamber. Her eyes went wide with horror as she surveyed her dead friend before snapping back to me. I bared my teeth, and for the first time I saw something silently ignite in Jae’s eyes. The very thing that she was instilling in so many others.
Fear.
She tore for the desk. Maybe looking for a weapon, I didn’t know and I didn’t care. My legs were soggy cardboard under me as I surged after her, but blue lanced down my spine and spread to my limbs. I drew on it, letting my grief and anger burn through me.
She clawed up a slingshiv, placing her body between me and the Surge machinery. I wobbled left, her stabbing blow shearing harmlessly past me. I smashed my elbow into the side of her head and kicked her flailing to the ground. I tore towards the machinery, clawing something off the table. But I heard her running up behind me and spun sluggishly, the residue of the drug slowing my reaction. I held my arms up in defence as she slashed downwards, slicing open my left arm. The metal edge of the table jarred my spine as I retreated and she swept forward, slashing open my right arm and nicking bone. She reached out to stab me in the face. I caught her arm mid-strike, the slingshiv’s serrated edge inches from my eye. Vision smeared with sweat, muscles creaking, I slammed my elbow into the side of her head. She staggered backwards and I ripped the slingshiv out of her hand, lunging forward.
She didn’t so much as gasp as I drove the slingshiv hilt-deep into her belly. Our noses were touching. Chests inches apart. Her eyelashes fluttered with confusion, even as I stabbed her four more times, before twisting the blade up towards her sternum.