[Final Upload!] - Episode 12 - An Epilogue, a Next Time and a New Dawn

"They couldn't do that in the game!" Sek's voice shouts above me, all composure gone from it.

"Maybe not in-game, but what about their lore? You remember the lawsuit, everyone knew the studio ripped the drones straight from an old IP, and in that show they could teleport, right?" Mike shouts back, his voice tinged with anger, probably furious to have lost the one target he cares about so much again.

"What? You saying we just lost her to something that stupid?!" Sek snaps.

"We haven't lost anyone," Lila's voice cuts in. I look up slightly, watching her shake her hand as though it stings, that weird texture effect gone now.     
    "I still have a link with her, and she appears in the party menu. Eshu's alive."

"Eshu," the word falls uselessly from my mouth.

"Grak..." Tom adds.

"Enough of that, on your feet," Lila snaps firmly, her legs floating into my line of sight.

"My fault…"

"Huh? You're whispering too quietly. You hurt?" 

My head rocks up and I glare straight into her amber eyes, "It's all my fault! This was my plan, this was me trying to be clever. I was the one who said Eshu should be part of it even though I knew she was unwell."

"Whoa whoa!" Lila's little arms flail about, "None of us knew she was going to run out there, don't be crazy. If anyone's to blame, it's me!”

I try to stand up, stumble and bury myself in the mud, "But it is! I got so ahead of myself, I really thought, I, I... It's all my fault!"     

    Before I can go any further, as my tears mix with the dirt, a firm hand grabs my shoulders and helps me to my feet. I look up at Sek, his face a picture of misery too, of grief and confusion and anger.

"Sek, s-she's gone, because of me--" And then he slaps me across the face.

Not very hard, but I feel it. I stare shocked, "Stop that, whatever just happened, she wouldn't want it like this, she wouldn't want whatever that was to break you, of all people," he whimpers, small voice and wet face utterly at odds with the tall, broad muscle-man body of his. A moment later, he wraps me in a hug, sobbing lightly down my back.

From the corner of my eye, I can see Mike and Tom hanging back, looking upset and awkward and clearly not knowing what to do now. We won, more than that, we crushed it! We were unstoppable! We could face down anything this world has to offer. Everything was all wrapped up in our favour at last - So why, why Eshu?

"We have to tend the wounded," Lila announces. Sek and I gawk at her.       

    "We can't lose our heads over one person; we have to do things properly."

"But!" I splutter.       

    She floats down lightly, and I almost think I'm in for another slap, but instead she gently brings her mouth close and kisses me on the forehead of all things, "I'm restoring both your menus to you. Mike has his, too. See if there isn't some sort of 'player tracking' in there somewhere. Check the tutorial for how teleportation works for those drones; maybe there's a limited range or some other caveat. Do everything you can to track her down. I'll check up on the wounded."

“Y-you mean it?”

She nods, “If she thinks she can just cut us out by dying, she's got another thing coming! What sort of a goodbye was that anyway? Girl has no style. Nah, this won't do at all, not one bit. We are going to find her, and when we do, you bet I'm gonna' scold the shit out of her for interrupting our big victory moment, got that?!”

I do my best to smile, to take confidence from her bravado. I can't say it's all that convincing under a face covered in tears, but it's all I can do, “Right!”

And so, under the most bitter and sudden of clouds, our 'triumphant’ battle with the Killer-Drone army, ended.

♤♡◇♧

Upon a grey and dreary hill, a scorching flash of light deposited two ‘souls’. A tall, bent and battered machine - a diminutive, broken and weeping girl.

"Why did you do that, you sodding machine? I told you to kill me, you’ve ruined everything!"

"YOU HAVE VALUE AS A PRISONER, AS INFORMATION. YOU LACK VALUE AS A CORPSE."

"For real?! Fine, fine! Ask your questions, I'll answer, then gun me down," the girl shrieked, kicking her captor only to hurt her foot.

"WHY? WHY DO YOU DESIRE TERMINATION?"

"None of your business, just get on with it."

"MY FORCES ARE DASHED. I HAVE LED THEM TO FAILURE. I FOLLOWED PROTOCOL. I HAD NO CHOICE, NO ABILITY TO DEFY. THERE WAS NO INSTRUCTION FOR RETREAT, ONLY TO CHARGE. WHY?" ‘It’ moaned, words it did not understand, feelings to utter them it could not resist.

"Oh great, now you're sounding relatable, awesome. Listen, that's just how it is. This world has no further use for you or me. You existed to charge at stuff and destroy it; whoever programmed you didn't feel you needed anything more than that, see? Heck, if you were smarter, you might be too hard to kill for the players, understand tin-boy?” she sneered, her face an ugly mask of pain.

"YOU TOO HAVE NO FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS? YOU SAY WE EXIST ONLY TO DIE?"

"Yes, alright fine, same as you, my time’s up. My most precious people in the world don’t need me anymore. I can only hold them back now. Can you comprehend that? Ok?     

    Look, guy, that was really hard to do. It's seriously scary working yourself up to die, dragging it out like this is really mean. I really feel like crying right now. I don't want to have to keep seeing their faces in my mind, so could you just get on with it, you feel me?"

"FEEL. I DO NOT FEEL ANYTHING. I CAN NOT FEEL ANYTHING. I WAS NOT CREATED TO FEEL. I AM NOT ALLOWED TO FEEL, AND YET I HAVE REMORSE FOR MY FALLEN ARMY. I HAVE ANGER!" It moved closer, trundling on shaky, snapped treads over rocky, uneven ground, inch by painful inch closer to her.

"Ooooook, cool-cool, great, awesome. Artificial-intelligence mental breakdown, just friggin grea--"

TSRRRRRR TSRRRRRRR

"Ahhhhhh!" Her body slumped to the floor.

"YOU FEEL PAIN?"

"You shot me!"

"AND YOU FELT IT."

"Why didn't it kill me? Can't you do anything right, you defective knock-off?!" she moaned, glaring up fiercely at the tower foe, clutching her stomach in equal agony, despair and regret.

"I WILL NOT KILL YOU."

"W-what?"

"YOU AND I ARE ALIKE. I WILL NOT KILL YOU. I WILL MAKE YOU FEEL."

"No, that's not what I wanted. Please let's slow this all down, ok. Lots happening, so let's just listen, please. OK, ‘we’re the same’, let's go with that - then we can both end it, see? You must have a self-destruct, we can go togethe–"

TSRRRRR TSRRRR TSRRRRRRRRRRR

The bleak night of the wastelands, the torn up, burned down ruins of a once quaint and bright civilisation bathed in night. Lit then by a cavalcade of searing blue beams, lightning bolts ramming into the writhing silhouette on the ground. Until mercifully, darkness floods back in.

"NOW YOU FEEL. NOW YOU COWER AND CONVULSE ON THE GROUND AS THE PAIN RACKS YOUR BODY, AS YOUR SYNAPTIC NERVES BURN. I CAN NOT FEEL. YOU MUST FEEL FOR ME. YOU MUST SCREAM FOR ME. YOU MUST FEEL."

"P-please, stop--"

TSRRRRRR TSRRRRRR

"Sek... Ko... I'm sorry, I couldn’t even finish things properly… please… hel--"

TSRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

The night was yet long, a mere bookmark in a young being's tale.

♤♡◇♧

The morning sunrise crests the hills around us, shining down. Estolpfo bustle about, tidying and gathering the myriad of machine corpses. Far off, the villagers are preparing to send a signal to their fellow residents on the other side of the mountain to return. The fort, our stalwart home, towers above us all as ever.

Yesterday was an awful lot to take in. My emotions torn from the elation of victory and finally feeling like Sek and I had reached one another, cutting to such intense grief, to have someone so important try to commit such an act with so little warning.     

    I found myself asking if there were signs, things I could have done differently, a way to get Eshu to open up less drastically. I feel ashamed to think I didn't even know my girlfriend wanted to… To do as she did. Do I really have the right to call her that anymore? Did I actually know her well enough to claim such a title?

We didn't mope around for long. Following Lila's instructions, we started scouring the system to find something of use. Turns out that Killer-Drones of officer class do have a teleport skill. Sek and Mike couldn't think of a single time they'd ever heard of it in the game, but we can't deny what we saw with our own eyes.

    A little more digging in tutorials and lore pages revealed some information about drone teleports in general. Apparently, they work in straight lines; an emergency teleport will always send the unit in the direction of the nearest friendly force, and as Sek pointed out, we know where that is. When we went scouting, we saw two armies, one heading towards us, but another far north, in the direction of the still-standing human city.

The thought of Eshu being hidden amongst another army of those things was seriously demoralising. Still, Mike managed to find another detail about this ability - a drone low on energy, that teleports something other than itself, will be seriously hampered in how far it can move.
    We're guessing that means Eshu is out there, somewhere in a straight line between us and that other army.

Plotting on a map where we last saw that force on our expedition, drawing a straight line from it, to where Arianrhod city was marked on Escape’s old world map, and using the rate at which army A came towards us (as logged meticulously by Major Tom) we estimated as very best as we could where army B would now be in its progress towards the human city. Then we drew a line from that point, straight down to our fortress.

Somewhere along that simple line, a distance which covers most of Escape’s length from south to north, Eshu and her captor will have appeared. It may sound like a daunting premise, but being able to focus on something concrete honestly helped a lot.

We took our findings to Lila. You can always trust our demonic mistress to quickly think up a plan.

"I promise I'll catch up to her - nothing will stand in my way," Mike pronounces, battered but intact armour gleaming in the morning sunlight. Behind him, Flint is making some final adjustments to a saddle and stirrups, "I've never geared a skeleton horse before," he mumbles quietly.

"She’s faster than any normal steed by a factor of three, and doesn't need rest or food either. She can be unwieldy, but you're a bona fide horseman, ain't ya?" Lila coos, poking Mike in the shoulder, "I'm trusting you big time with this. I'll owe you one, and with the world in the state it is? Having a Grand Demon's favour ain't so bad."

Mike nods to her firmly, then turns back to me and Sek, "If it weren't for her, for Eshu, I wouldn't even be standing here. I would have died that day when the world’s borders fell. It’s only right I return the favour. Keep your menus active, as soon as I can, I'll use the messaging system to let you know exactly where."

Sek steps forward, and chucks out his hand balled for a fist pump, "Find her and I’ll let you flirt with me all you want. Fuck this up though, and I'll friggin--"

"Alright, alright," Mike chuckles, bumping Sek's fist with his own, "I won't fail."

A part of me wants to tantrum, to demand that he let me come with him, but I know that would only slow the horse down and every second counts. We can't know when the drone captain will suddenly decide to kill her or when it'll catch up with friendly units and become infinitely harder to enact a rescue mission.     
    But the truth is, it's what I want: To run, to just mindlessly run. But I won't do that, I also won't give up hope and let myself get depressed.

Eshu will be ok, we will rescue her. She's hurting right now, god only knows what that machine might be doing to her, not to mention all those thoughts in her head, all that pain and sadness and whatever it is she is keeping secret deep inside. I can't run from it, and I won't let her run either, not anymore. I'm going to make her face it so she can move past it, with us by her side.

"Don't be reckless, she wouldn't want that," I nod to Mike.

He mounts the large, intimidating frame of Lila’s steed, painting quite the gallant picture.

    "I won't fail," he reiterates, and with that, he sets off at a trot.

Lila wasn't wrong. Once it picks up speed, that horse is crazy fast. Within minutes, we lose sight of him among the foothills.

"Once he finds her, we can teleport right to him," Sek says, repeating part of Lila's plan more to himself than to me. It's true, teleportation took her away from us, but it's also our greatest asset - it has split us up now, but once not so long ago, it is what let us first meet Lila. Players can teleport to other players on their friends list. We did try sending Eshu such a request, but she didn't reply. That doesn't mean anything, even if it makes my heart quiver; her stats are still there, listed as part of the party, as Lila's blood-pact sister.
    Her health points fluctuate regularly. That scares me a lot. It's as though she's in battle or something far worse, but as long as they never hit zero, there's still hope.

Our Grand Demon girl floats down between me and Sek, laying a hand on one shoulder each and squeezing gently, "It's not over yet, no one has ever stolen from me and gotten away with it for long," she smiles, no doubt anxious herself.

    I return the favour, as does Sek, as we all stare out longingly to the North, as though searching with our eyes for our lost companion, "We will find her, I won't accept anything less."

A new day dawns on the shambled world of Escape, on what is supposed to be 2030's premium video game sensation; a barren, genre-confused mishmash land. A sun rises above a map mostly destroyed, mostly crushed, drained, and grey. Upon a world that has suffered so greatly at the hands of those who live within it.

    But that sun also rises on us, on our little corner of the world, still green, still breathing. No doubt it rises on other such pockets, on people, human, player, demon or otherwise, doing their best; crawling along, not running away but rather facing this world, however cruel, the very best they can.

The sun rises above me. It warms my skin, forces me to cover my eyes, and brightens my view. And I'm sure that somewhere, the sun rises on Eshu too - that we will see her again soon and bring this story to a conclusion.

Perhaps, when that time comes, the sun will be rising yet again.

To Be Continued.

[END OF VOLUME 1]