Tick. Tick.

Tick. Tick.

RAYAN

Blood splattered across concrete with each fallen life. He called over the sirens and flames, "We've got people trapped in buildings! Has Aaron started the evac process?"

"We're trying!" an Insurgent responded through the smoke. "We're surrounded! We can't do anything!"

Flames billowed out pillars of destruction to block the beauty of the painted stars. Rayan scowled. "They're trying to drown us out!" he explained when the Insurgent blocked their brow from a breath of debris from a falling building and the screech of artillery almost smothered his voice, but he refused to go quiet into the night. "They're going to try to force us into the center!"

Sanctum Titan's stormed the last bastion of the First Insurgency. But why have they brought so much force? Was Seeto that much of a threat? He's dead. Rayan tested the option of diverting their attention to stop the attack, but something in the air caught his attention. "Do what you can!" he yelled over the screams which merged with Eastpoint when he turned his back on them. "Don't leave anyone behind, understand?"

He led the way through the ember rain with the Insurgency racing to keep his pace across the burning streets.

A flash from a nearby generator tower caught his eye.

Frozen moments stretched around him and never gave him time to react with the click.

The ground quaked beneath his feet and silenced the world.

Fire tore through his shoulder blade, and he screamed when he tumbled to the ground when it chewed through his plastered shirt. It washed through the rest of his body when he rolled across the concrete, where the stars fell through the smoke and crashed into his head.

"Falae!" the Insurgent snapped and switched their path to rush for him.

Everything blurred when he raised his hand to his shoulder. Blood oozed between his fingers. His blood. It bloomed over his arm while the world crackled in his vision. He groaned, and rolled onto his stomach.

They missed... they didn't even get me in the head.

His ears rang, and he winced when someone dragged him behind a crumbled alley. Rayan snapped his head up when the building next to them cracked and sent debris into the air.

I...

The world snapped back into focus when pieces of wiring and foundation snapped apart on its own supports. He squirmed onto his feet and shoved the Insurgent out of the killer waterfall. Debris lodged into his arm, and he gasped when his blood slicked across his boots. "Fuck!" He bit down on his tongue, he settled himself on his knees and rested against the broken wall.

Crimson clouds danced on the edge of his vision while smoke and ash burned his lungs. Blood stuck his shirt against his chest, and he rested his head against the wall to hold on.

So much for that perfect world...

He lost his voice to the searing pain in his shoulder. Blood ran down his arm until his skin stained red. Ashen landscape covered everything and anything in the colour of soot. He pressed himself deeper into the steady force, his last stand against the desolation before it crumbled. Questions danced around his mind, but the world darkened.

Why did they miss?

Tick. Tick.

He heard the SAI call the time of the end.

Sanctum ships roared and spun his mind into the drain with the gravitational pull of the black hole. He sucked in a breath and tugged out his absorption rod. His strength sucked out to his fingertips, and the rod rolled out of his limp hand.

Why am I trying? We can't escape the strike and the sniper.

If only he could move.

If only he could stand.

If I can't escape the flames, I can at least make sure others can.

Blood slipped down the wall to mix with the ash and debris near his hand. In the negative space, he blanked for options while his injuries taunted him. He tried to move his ravaged arm, but gasped at the pain which cracked in his veins. Fire blazed straight into his scorched heart.

Tick. Tick.

Smoke strangled. Heat licked. Crimson stained. Rust dripped down his tongue and took away his taste.

He couldn't breathe.

Buildings groaned with him.

His eyes drooped, but frowned when a familiar voice whispered in his ear.

It's okay to smile, you know. It's something I tell my brother a lot, Ava had told him once upon a bubbled time. Her two slender fingers pressed into her cheeks. Sometimes, that's all you need to go on. Smile, even though it's hard.

Rayan gripped the absorption rod and shoved it into the ground beside him. He yanked out a capsule out of his toolbelt. It's not going to be enough for too long... but maybe all I need it to be is just enough. Bandages in his other hand, he shoved them between his teeth.

Maybe for that perfect world — maybe for that nightmare to stop...

He tapped open the capsule and dumped the contents onto his wound. It dragged its cold teeth against his skin and dug deep into his veins. It curdled his blood, and he clenched his jaw against the bandages to drag himself from the pain which racked his body with torment.

But the fight was far from over.

I'll see you in the Void Hells, Seeto.

First... I've got a date with a sniper.

Embers fell around him, and he held out the rod. It tugged at the heat shimmering in the air and blazed with orange and left naught but dim charcoal. Maybe... Maybe this is my fault. People get hurt around me... and I think I can accept that. He clutched the base of the rod and glared at his useless arm. Fire raged in his mind, his heart, his skin — in his very soul. Flames took all he loved, but it'd give him something in return.

I do this for my ideals. I do this for my cause. I do this because who will?

Bandage stuck between his teeth, he braced himself against the wall and shoved the burning rod against his red skin.

His grip on the rod faltered from the cruel cauterization, and the bandages muffled the sound of his scream to avoid giving away his position. Sweat rolled down his forehead and mixed with the burn. As the rod dimmed, he tugged it off his sizzling skin. Huffing through the pain he dragged the bandages out of his mouth when it turned into a dull throb cloaked by adrenaline. He breathed deep as he used one hand to wrap the cauterized wound to the best of his ability. He caught his breath while the artillery strike worsened around him.

Eastpoint. Aelius' hospital. Ava. Aelius. Meryn.

James...

Rayan sighed then tapped his bandaged arm one time. One more time to the end. Not a lot of mobility... but I can still use it.

And like a smile, it was all he had.

It'll have to be enough.

He forced a smile on his cracked lips and let out a soft laugh instead of his pain. Tears ran down his cheeks and soaked the grime.

It's all I have. It'll be enough... even if it won't be enough to save me.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Rayan forced himself to his feet while flames swallowed the painted landscape. He stretched out all his fingers and winced from the pain. Coughing, rust splattered against his tongue. Hand on his shoulder, he hauled himself up a nearby fire escape to gauge the situation.

Teams of Elites phased through the streets and into distant buildings while the Sanctum ships groaned with the storm. Sirens wailed for the pointless destruction along with the people crying out for help which scorched his heart.

In a single night.

Rayan shambled across the rooftop where parts of it crumbled with the excess weight.

Tick. Tick.

"I was wondering where you disappeared to this time, Rayan Falae."

Ice crawled through his spine at the ceaselessly familiar voice. He twisted around and refused to kneel and run when he came face to face with the ashen reaper. It formed out of the smoke with a pained laugh of his best friend — a laugh he longed to hear the truth from, destroyed by war. Its red eyes gleamed as they walked with tormented purpose. "I used to wonder if there was some cruel irony to why this happened," the Elite said. "This just showed me what the purpose of me surviving Eastpoint was. It was for this moment right here — it is cruel irony. I was starting to wonder if they were just going to salt the ground with how many times I dodged death just trying to find you."

He sounds...

The Elite snapped their hand to their mask, and it burst into red pixels as they tossed it to the side. Dirty-blonde hair soaked with ash as James lifted his head. Emptiness, despair, and a wild sense of desperation filled the hazels. Rayan readied himself, then replied. "This doesn't need to happen, James. Seeto's dead. The First Insurgency is gone. There's no need for this."

Shadows hung underneath James' crimson-stained gaze. He raised his curved blade at him with a frown. "Rayan Falae," he said. "You've been sentenced to die by the Sanctum Strike Forces."

"What?" Rayan shook. "Who? Who gave that order?"

James stared at him. "It doesn't matter now, does it? Only that I've been chosen as your executioner, but you know what's funny, Falae?" He let out a breathy, almost wild laugh while the flames immolated his friend in front of him. "All this could've been avoided if I had just let you die in that hospital." His grip tightened on the weapon, and Rayan gazed at his friend who fell into his own despair. "You're the threat — I'm just here to erase it. I'm just here because someone else wouldn't let me die."

"James—" Rayan choked at his loss of control.

"You know what? Now that I know that everything built to this moment—" James lowered his weapon to tug out his shields from his gauntlets. Rayan swallowed on blood when he crushed it in his palm, where sparks danced around his hand and he threw it to the side. "I'll give you an option. You either kill me here, or I kill you first. How's that for following orders? Because, at least, no matter what, someone gets away with this." His entire body trembled, and the landscape pushed all its terror onto one single person. "You can try to run, if you want, it wouldn't be the first time."

Oh, James...

"I don't plan on running away, not this time," he said, and he tugged his sword out of his edevic scabbard with a hiss. "In fact — I plan on making us both stay. Just for us, because I know deep down you know this is wrong."

Emotion bled into the crimson. "You know nothing about me, Falae."

Rayan ignored the burn in his nerves, and an explosion snapped James into action. He phased into his lunge, but Rayan jumped out of the way, and brought up his arm shield when James took a wild potshot into its center, and the brunt of the pulse knocked him back to the rooftop. Several potshots redirected off his shield, where James gave him no leeway to make his own.

What can I do, at this moment? He's fighting desperately. Rayan dodged out of a swing. This is bad.

He had little time to think with James on the brutal, crazed offensive. Forced onto his back foot, his injury slowed him down.

If only I could just reach out.

I can't keep this up for long.

His arms stung when he parried and ducked out of James' shift into close-quarter combat, and he skidded off the roof at an angle. Broken pieces fell back into the river of flames on the street. He regained his balance and ran across the roof to ready another phase jump.

James was faster.

An edevic pulse slammed him in the back and threw him to his intended destination. The roof of the warehouse crumbled underneath his weight, and horrific pain cracked his bones when he rolled onto a catwalk in the burning storage house. He slipped when he fought to get back to his feet, nauseated from the embers swirling in his nose when he retreated into the ashen mist.

I just need a moment.

He ducked when James ran through the wall of fire and swiped his blade downwards. Hand on a railing, he launched himself onto another catwalk, but he grunted when it cracked underneath him when James leaped onto it, and they both tumbled to the ground. Rayan sent his force emitter into James' chest, throwing him back and he rolled across the concrete.

Just one!

His hand found the grip of his blaster, and he whipped around to point it at the enemy.

James stood a few feet away from him, aiming down the iron sights with his hair flyaway and an empty expression on his face, lips parted in breathlessness.

Is this what we've become?

His world burned around him as he lost everything. His dreams. His ideals. His friends. Everything he loved. Embers cracked against the windows, and he found himself in the heart of the volcano, with only him and James at the center of the supernova.

"Maybe I'm sentimental," he mumbled with his finger on the trigger, where one shot and he'd lose the last thing he had left. "We both made our choices, James." Tears rolled down his cheeks when James continued to aim at him, but his brow creased. "You know, there's not a day that goes by where I wonder if there was something I could've done differently... on so many things." Mist replaced the ash. "I couldn't stop her, I'm sorry, and not a day went by where I didn't think about everyone — about her. About you." He choked the blaster. "Is this what you want, James?"

A touch of Ava returned to the hazel and her twin brother silently gasped for life.

He couldn't stop the ocean of tears leaving his eyes as he burst out into his own laughter at the cruelty. "You have no idea how relieved I was to see you, James," he forced through his own sob. "Because maybe we could've gone back to normal, we could've gone back to that time before... before I ruined everything." His world stung, but he stood strong on his two legs. "I'm an idiot. I can't go back... and make it right. What else can I do?"

More silence, and James hadn't pressed the trigger.

Ash billowed into the building and his heart.

"And... I knew some things about you," Rayan whispered. "I used to. You wrote the most impactful things in the shortest amount of words. You loved looking at the stars and taking pictures of the world around you. I never met someone who captured it the way you did, James." He bit on his lip. "When you laughed, everyone else around you did too. You broke into giggles, then laughed as if you were trying to stop yourself and failed to do so." He breathed in the broken love. "But... maybe I didn't know you at all."

James' eyes widened.

Rayan growled out his frustration. "So, tell me! Tell me who gave you the order! Tell me who forced you to relive this!"

"It doesn't matter, I chose this, like you said," James said after a frozen, silent moment. "It's too late, I just have one last request to follow through on." He lifted his head, where tears swallowed the hazel. "Your mother told me 'don't let him suffer anymore.'"

Her voice rang out past space and time.

Don't let him suffer anymore.

Rayan clenched his fists. "I see."

He raised the blaster, and James followed.

And Rayan threw it to the side, where it clattered into the dust.

"I won't kill you, and if that's how it must be then fine. If you want to follow that order, then I accept it," he whispered, and with each step he took, he returned to Eastpoint, to James. "But don't ask me to kill my best friend."

James straightened himself out but never let it go. Rayan pressed his hand into the gun, and pushed it to the side to free the way to James. His arms wrapped around him, where his fingers wound through his hair and he breathed deep of the autumn flowers.

James let go of his rifle, where it fell to the dust.

A crack sounded through the flames and sirens while an eerie metal groan sounded above them. He bit down on his tongue when James wrapped his arms around him.

Yes, just one moment.

He lifted his head to the roof, where the steeple of the neighboring building tore in two in slow motion.

Tick. Tick.

'Can you promise me something, Ray?'

Tick. Tick, and he dug deeper into James for the frozen moment.

'Promise me you'll protect my brother'

As if you ever had to ask.

He used the last of his strength to ready his force emitter, where James twisted to investigate, stuck in the same moment of time. He choked his collar, causing James to widen his eyes in confusion. "Here's the price I pay," he growled through the pain. "For being a sentimental jackass."

For being a stupid teenager in love with his best friend.

With the momentum of his immovable edevic phase, he threw James to the side while the shadows and waterfalls of destruction descended. James stretched his hand out, but then the neverending darkness embraced him.

Tick. Tick.

If it meant the end of war.

Tick. Tick.

If it meant he could save one life.

Goodbye, Jamie.

Tick. Tick.

Tick. Tick.

...