Skane - Crash Scene

Crash Scene

Skane came to with his face planted firmly in the fine sand of the Arabian Desert. He didn’t wake up so much as he gradually slid into consciousness, slowly becoming aware of the world around him. When he was sufficiently lucid to understand his circumstances, his training kicked in, and the situation became rather clear. Skane bolted upright, a jet of adrenalin drowning the sharp pain lancing up and down his left arm. His body was a broken thing, bleeding from a dozen wounds, any one of which might be life-threatening in its own right. His uniform was torn and sullen, its royal black hidden behind a veil of bloody red and dirty beige. The sandy hair which had once contributed so much to his shocking handsomeness was matted to his head in sticky clumps, taking on the same dark red as his uniform. His crippled right leg screamed obscenities in the form of agonizing jolts of pain at him, protesting the current, unnatural angle into which it was bent. Blood flowed readily from a long slash on his cheek, drenching the entire left side of his face. The world was spinning, distorted as if observed though a mirror in a children’s funhouse. He knew instinctively that if he were to bring himself into an upright position, he would immediately topple over.

Must be a head injury, he diagnosed.

And then, one thought rippled across his mind, muting all others in a shriek of panic. Tallulah!

The soldier scrambled to his feet, ignoring the stream of arterial blood springing from a gash the size of his fist in his left leg, and an obviously broken bone in his right. He spun around casting a feverish gaze upon the only source of light on this moonless night: the wreckage of their chopper.

The machinery was in tatters, all twisted metal and scorched carbon fiber. The chopper itself was half buried in a little impact crater of its own design, ringed by a halo of debris that had been flung free by the force of the impact. The whole scene was burning slowly and steadily, evidencing the fact that the fuel tank had been breached, its contents spilling over the crash site. Through the smouldering heap of metal and carbon he could see nothing that might hint the existence of another survivor. There were no screams to be heard over the din of the fire, no cries to be heeded, no sobs to be felt.

No. She had to be okay. She MUST be! His heart leapt from to his chest to his throat, settling there in a hard knot that he couldn’t manage to swallow. He willed his damaged legs into action, demanding that they carry him toward the funeral pyre before them. They refused, bringing him crashing back to the sand beneath him instead. With a bark of agony betraying the extraordinary pain radiating out of the gash in his leg, he scrambled again to his feet, gnashing his teeth against the “reality” of his injuries.

Having successfully clambered to a standing position, he again set out for his beloved Tallulah. This time, his legs did not stop this pursuit, settling for a loud protest in the form of a bolt of white-hot pain and a jet of fresh blood.

So Skane managed to scramble, claw, and limp the several dozen meters to the scene of the wreck, each step fuelled by adrenalin and the terror of a man fearing the worst. Terror clutched him, threatening to disable him more completely than any mere bodily injury might. Sweat poured down his face, mingling with the blood and grit already there. He almost stopped. The thought of knowing that she was dead, rather than just suspecting as much was almost too much to bear. But he kept driving forward, allowing to burn the tiny flicker of light in his soul - that she may have survived. After all, Skane rationalized, he had obviously been cast free, why could the same not be true of her?

He finally arrived at the wreck, accompanied only by the constant agony of his injuries, and a half-hysterical sense of determination. Skane cast about, desperately hoping for kindling for that tiny flame in his chest. What he found didn’t do anything to alleviate his fears. The site looked much the same from up close as it had from a distance, barren, lifeless. No sign of Tallulah.

Perhaps she was on the other side of the wreck! He stumbled over the sand and around what was left of the chopper to the other side. Through the smashed cockpit window, flames leapt, fueled by burning industrial-grade immulsion. As he became aware that there was no sign of his lovely Tallulah outside the burning heap, he felt his heart begin to plummet from that hard place in his throat back towards its rightful seat behind his ribs. Skane gazed into the remains of the cockpit, willing the flames to part long enough for him to get a clear glimpse into the interior, long enough to KNOW. It never happened. Even so, the conclusion was inescapable. She had been wearing her safety harness when the aircraft hit, unlike him. Whereas he had been flung out of the shattered vehicle to relative safety, she would have been restrained by the measures meant to keep her safe, burnt alive by those meant to whisk her away to freedom.

His heart continued its long descent through his innards, settling in a lump in the vicinity of his gut. She was gone. Really, truly, gone. That fire, that interminably low, consistent fire had claimed her from him; snatched her out of his very arms, and reduced her to nothing more than a burnt carcass. The flames had no remorse; they wouldn’t apologize for that greatest of all sins. They would just keep burning in their damnedably mindless way, unaware of the great turmoil surrounding them.
Skane was suddenly acutely aware of every cut, bruise, and broken bone in his battered body. He collapsed to his knees, incapable of convincing his legs to bear his weight any longer now that they knew that there was nothing left to bear it for. The soldier’s wounded leg bled profusely, as did a dozen other injuries scattered about his body. His uniform, once impenetrably black, was now torn, dirtied, sullen, the sand of the desert coating it, reflecting the light of the fire. The reality of the blow to his head became apparent, as the world began swimming, direction losing all meaning.

He threw up. It was white. Pure white. Skane, the fraction of him that cared, noted that it meant he was suffering from a potentially lethal lack of Clear. That fraction remembered, with emotion that was equal parts nostalgia, ironic sentiment, and dreadful regret the first time he had seen a man die form lack of Clear. It had been during the First Great War; a soldier under his command refused to take his dose of the drug, protesting what he considered a gross misconduct on the part of the officer corp. involving the murder of a local farmer. His commanding officer had deprived the rebel of all his future doses, not relenting even after the grunt begged forgiveness. In effect, the officer had killed him; robbed him of his life for standing up for what he believed in. And Skane had done nothing but stand by and watch. He could have offered the objector some of his dosage, or some rations to ease the pain. But Skane, in concordance with orders and a lifetime of indoctrination, did nothing.

He threw up again.

In any case, the experience with that young man in the First War had taught him that his would be a slow, creeping, painful death; one defined by a quick decent into madness, followed by successive seizures, each worse than the last, and made complete by crippling stomach pains. If anyone had been around to take stock of his current condition, they would take note of the large black smudges already overtaking the area around his eyes contrasting the shockingly pale shade his face had taken on. They would think that this state of being made him look as if he were a caricature of his former self-a crude approximation of his true livelihood, marred by some suddenly manifestant reflection of a life lived devoted to lie, al life whose allegiance was sworn to sin, whose singular source of vitality was born of violence and hatred. They would perhaps think what an appropriate mask it was for such a creature to spend its final moments in.

Now, with the heat of the fire caressing the side of his bloodied face, he reflected upon the suffering and strife brought on by his numerous transgressions against humanity, all absolved by that one final transgression; that singular barbarity to wash away all previous barbarities.

Skane grinned. He grinned despite the fact that the love of his life was dead, grinned despite the fact that these were to be the last few moments of that life. He grinned because he was clean.

His knees gave, and he collapsed onto his back in the fine sand. The light of the fire bathed half of his face in illumination, warmth.

He was ready to die now.

But he’d be damned if it were to be by any doing of the state’s. No, it simply wouldn’t do to be killed by a tool of that beast. The same tool the beast had used to manipulate and indoctrinate Skane into compliance and complacence. The same tool that had welded him into the devious, calculating machine which now lay on its deathbed. No, Skane’s death would be more honorable than that.

He reached into his chest pocket, withdrew a capsule from a small plastic case, and quickly popped it into his mouth. The poison would take him swiftly, painlessly, honourably.

So there he lay, face pointed up, towards the heavens, reflecting upon his own mortality and waiting for the inevitable. Slowly, ponderously, he became aware of a brightness directly above his face, high in the sky. What is that?, he wondered. It was no more than a mote, a spark, but after some time seemed more luminescent than anything he had ever seen. And it was growing. Soon, it shone brighter than the fire, eclipsed the stars behind it.

Skane reached out with his uninjured hand, suddenly desiring nothing more than to be able to touch the light. It blanketed him, soothed him. There, in the middle of the desert, surrounded by the shattered remains of his former life, bathed in the blinding light of retribution, arm grasping toward the stars, clawing at the doorstep of salvation, Skane felt more peaceful than he had at any other time in his life.

The light kept coming closer, Soon, it overtook all else, blinding him to the desert, the wreck, the world around him. It wrapped him up in its forgiving rays, and carried him up, high above the scene below. Beyond his body, his life. Without so much as a whisper, it whisked him away into glorious death.