August 20th, 2028. Punta Roca Partida, Mexico.
Rhys wasn’t sweating because of the heat. I could tell.
Everyone was gathered in the church. She’d specifically requested it.
She and Rhys first met doing some charity work in the town this church
overlooked, a month after the UISC and USA stopped trying to kill each other.
The UISC had really screwed Mexico over during the war. They bonded over that
week of renovating churches and feeding kids. When Rhys came back, he had a
beaming smile on his face and was always texting and phoning her. The first
time we all met her, we could tell the two really loved each other. 3 years
later, here we were.
I’d never been anyone’s best man before. It was weird. You had to talk
to loads of people, and they talked to you. But I was glad I was that
day. It was my brother’s wedding, after all.
We heard the doors open. Everyone but Rhys turned to face it. She was
clad in a white wedding dress (and sneakers), holding her dad's hand. “Ok… ok.”
Rhys muttered to himself. He was nervous.
“Mason, I… uhm… I’m scared.”
“What you scared of?” I asked.
“What if I… what if I muck it up. What if I say the wrong thing, or…”
“Look man, you either do this now or you never do it again. And besides…
you love her, don’t you?”
“Yeah… Yeah I do.” He replied. She was right next to him, but Rhys’
nerves seemed to have calmed.
He took her hand and walked up to the altar.
The balding priest guy opened his book.
Rhys took off her veil. They both smiled at each other.
“Ok, so if you could recite these words after me, please.” Said the
priest. His English was pretty good.
“I, Rhys Smith…”
“I, Rhys Smith…”
“Take thee, Sarah Hargreaves…”
“Take thee… Sarah Hargreaves …”
“To be my lawfully wedded wife.”
“To be my lawfully wedded wife.”
“To have and to
hold…”
“To have and to hold…”
“From this day
forward, for better, for worse…”
“From this day forward, for better, for worse…”
“For richer,
for poorer…”
“For richer,
for poorer…”
“In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish…”
“In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish…”
“Till death do us part…”
Chapter 11: Till death do us part.
It’s not every day your
brother-in-law asks you to help him steal and ambulance and try to save his
friends from the police or a bald mind-controlled assassin that shot her
co-worker. She took it pretty well, all things considered.
The last time we met was a
week after the accident, at Rhys’ funeral. It was… strange. I’d never actually
been to a funeral before. Rhys wanted to be cremated, but dad wanted to be able
to visit him without having to go to the Himalayas, or wherever he said he wanted his ashes scattered. I was
sad but… I didn’t think it was real. Me and him, we’d known each other our
entire lives. We’d gone our separate ways in the past but… we were like the
same person. It just felt wrong.
Like, in some weird way, a
part of me was gone too.
Sarah wasn’t very cheerful
either. The last thing she said to me was “I don’t ever wanna see your goddamn face
ever again.” I used to think she slipped up with her words, because me and Rhys
literally had the same face. Now, I realise meant what she meant. She didn’t
want to see Rhys’ face ever again. They were as close as two people could be and,
I think, losing him really got to her. After that I heard she joined Themis as
a paper-pusher.
That was five years ago.
I’d got excited about
hearing Sarah was here when I was talking with Akira, but I didn’t know what to
say to her. “Hey Sarah, person I haven’t seen in five years! I need you to
steal an ambulance with me!” It didn’t feel right. To show up after all those
years out of the blue and ask for a favour like this.
But Lilian and Unger could
be in danger.
I couldn’t call them, driving
into the bay had broken my phone. I could use a stranger's phone or the hospital
one, they wouldn’t respond to an unknown number. My only way of contacting them
would be in person.
…
She was fast asleep when I
found her in the hospital waiting room lobby.
Weirdly, she was still in full
Themis uniform. Standard issue police cut, dark blue Jacket, grey gloves,
black trousers, she even had her Themis Taser pistol on her. The way she was
sitting was… awkward. She was leaning forward, but she was sitting mostly upright,
like her back was keeping her there. The only thing she didn’t have were the standard Themis boots, because she was wearing those sneakers. I chuckled to myself.
After 5 years of being in Themis, she was still sort of the same. I didn’t
expect her to be an officer either, but I guess they needed the manpower. Or
she was just really good.
I couldn’t waste time, so I
tapped her lightly on the shoulder.
Nothing.
I tapped her a bit harder.
Nope.
I gave her a light shove.
“AAARGH!!” she jumped to
consciousness with a shout, making me and a lot of other people in the lobby
jump. Her hand went to her gun.
I raised my hands in
defence “Whoa! Sarah, Sarah! It’s me.”
She took a second to recognise
me. She squinted at me, thinking I might have been a stress-induced
hallucination. But then her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and she rested her
gun hand on her leg.
“R-Rhys?” She asked,
quietly.
“Nah… sorry.” I said.
“Mason?”
“Yeah.”
…
“What are you doing here?”
She finally broke the silence.
“I… I need your help.” I
told her.
“What with?”
My mind was racing to find
a way of explaining my situation. I couldn’t tell her that I was trying to help
the people indirectly responsible for the bank explosion. But I couldn’t lie to
her either, not after all these years.
Then I remembered.
“Y’know the guy who shot Captain
Shinkawa?” I asked.
“Yeah… wait, how do you
know about that?”
“I had a chat with him just
a minute ago. Anyway, Felix’s coming after my friends next. And we… we need to
get there before he does.”
“Okay, okay, slow down!”
She said. “Why is Felix after them?”
Oh. I hadn’t thought of
that. “Uh, we… we…”
Screw it, I thought to
myself. I’ll tell her what actually happened.
“I got involved in a group
of idiots who wanted to rob the UISC western bank…” I whispered.
“Wh-WHAT!” she shouted,
before remembering she was in a public place.
“Look, I know it sounds
bad, but the explosion wasn’t our fault. There was a gas leak in the main vault
and one of our guys was…” I cringed to myself. “… trying to burn the money.”
…
“R-Mason… you’re telling me
you and your friends…” she briefly looked over her shoulder “…blew up a public
place ‘accidently’ and put several people in hospital?!”
“… It… was… an accident.”
She didn’t look happy.
“I should get going. Akira
wouldn’t want me moping around here all night.” She started towards the door.
“Sarah, wait!” I shouted. I
couldn’t let her go. She was the only way I could save them.
“I really need to get
going.”
“You haven’t even let me
explain my pl-”
“BECAUSE MY ANSWER IS NO!!”
I paused in shock. She
looked at me for the first time since I woke her up, before turning to the
door.
That… that hurt. She was my
only real connection back to Rhys. I hadn’t been able to call Dad since after
the UISC was formed. Something about preventing foreign powers from interfering
in national relations, or so they said. Rhys’s friends had stopped talking to
me after his death and mum… mum…
Let’s just say I won’t be
seeing her for a very long time.
…
Eventually I mustered up
the courage to walk out the hospital door. My fear was a mix of “What if I get
seen and sent back to re-education” and “What if Sarah isn’t there.”
As I walked through the
double doors, I heard a muffled sobbing noise. I looked down to see Sarah
wiping her eyes on her Themis jacket. She’d been out there for quite some time.
“I… I miss him.” She said,
quietly.
“I miss him too.”
“I just thought… I thought
just for a second… maybe he was back. Maybe the whole accident, the UISC and
this whole nightmare was just… well, a nightmare. Maybe this whole thing was
just me coming up with the worst possible outcome.”
I sat down next to her.
“Rhys isn’t dead.”
“… Mason I really don't need this right now.”
“But we still remember him,
right? You and me both knew him better than anyone. And if someone is still
remembered, even by just one person… they never truly die. Not really. So, what
I’m trying to say is that Rhys isn’t dead… because he lives in us. And right
now, I feel like he’s telling me that two good men are in trouble.”
“Two criminals I could
arrest for conspiracy, theft and arson, more like.”
I decided to pull my last
trap card. It was oddly convenient that Sarah was here, but there was someone
else.
“One of those criminals is
Lilian.”
Her eyes widened. “Lilian,
as in, Lilian Wood?”
“Yep.”
“Your friend who hacked and
blew up some college professors computer because some guys asked him to?”
“The very same.”
She knew Lilian well. They
where both hated how the many lives the UISC had destroyed during the war, and
they had mutual friends in Me and Rhys. She was one of the only people Lilian
seemed truly comfortable talking too, because she treated him like an equal,
something Lilian didn’t usually get treated as. Yet another friend she hadn’t
heard from in years.
I then heard the words I’d
never think I’d hear.
“Ok then. What’s your
plan.”
…
At this point, most of the
ambulances had finished delivering the injured to the hospital. Most doctors,
nurses and MEMEC personnel where indoors treating them, so security wasn’t too
tight. But there were still the security cameras that watched the hospitals
perimeter. Because of course a hospital needs constant surveillance. Sarah also
pointed out that MEMEC ambulances need biometric authorisation to start, which
complicated things.
But that was before it
started raining.
Because of how much had
happened that day, I almost forgot about the acid rainstorm that had been
forecasted like crazy. Come to think of it, that was why Unger chose today to
pull off the heist. No one would be outside when it started raining, so we
would’ve just hid with the money. Unfortunately, that wasn’t how it went.
One by one, each camera
looking out from the hospital slowly turned off. So after getting under the
hospital garage overhang, we started working on getting the door open. That
also needed a biometric signature. I cursed to myself, but then a man wearing a
poncho came up to us, and told us to get out of the rain. I could spot his medical
scrubs under his coat. Me and Sarah looked at each other, nodded, and both drew
our guns. We told him to get over here and open the door, which he did without hesitation.
He used his handprint to
unlock the garage door, and we all went inside. I didn’t feel bad for the guy.
It wasn’t like I was gonna to shoot him. I was just desperate. Sarah shouted at
him to open the ambulance as we both raised our guns again. He complied, jumped into the driver's seat, placed his palm on the ignition and
the ambulance revved triumphantly. It was in that moment I thought we could actually
make it back to the centre.
Sarah jumped into the driver’s
seat, as I climbed into the back cabin. I was going to threaten the guy into
not telling anyone, but I went against it. So I told him “thanks” before I closed
the ambulance doors and we headed off into the rain.
As we drove out of the
hospital parking lot, I remembered what Unger said before the heist began. “This is it, don’t get scared now.”
I repeated that sentence a
few times in my head.
This is it, don’t get
scared now.
This is it, don’t get
scared now.
This is it, don’t get
scared now.
