Until the End of the Line
Caitlyn kept the barrel of her gun trained perfectly on Maddie. She didn’t flinch once, not at the wailing, screeching sirens, not at the ice-cold comments, not at Nolen’s sharkish grin.
She had a job to do.
“Don’t make me kill you, Maddie,” Cait growled, slow and low.
Instead, Maddie hacked out another chuckle. “Why hesitate? If the rifle was pointed in the other direction, your brains would be up the wall by now.” She sighed, clicking her tongue and shaking her head. “I’m disappointed.”
The captain’s trigger finger hovered heavily. She’d come all this way, diverted from the original mission, just to take care of Maddie; to end this once and for all.
But she couldn’t pull the trigger.
Why?
It dawned on her like a flash of bright light, a realisation. “You’re defenseless,” she admitted – both to Maddie and herself.
Caitlyn still couldn’t understand. Why now? She’d had no quarrels with shooting unarmed people before, if they’d deserved it. Hell, half of her time on these latest missions had been spent shooting at retreating bodies. So why now?
Her conscious and rationality were brutally cagefighting in her skull, squabbling and bickering and bouncing each other off of membrane walls – and Caitlyn really didn’t know who was going to win.
“It’s a mighty thing, that moral compass of yours,” Maddie hissed. The smirk was wiped from her face now. Her lips pressed into a thin line, jaw lowered, glaring at Caitlyn through her eyebrows. “Perfectly balanced, teeter-tottering between the woman you are and the woman you want to be.”
Cait’s grip on her rifle tightened. “You know nothing about me,” she spat.
“I know enough.” Maddie bolted up from her desk, hands still fumbling beneath the surface. Caitlyn couldn’t make out what she was doing, her fingers obscured, only the slight jolts of her wrists giving away that she was searching for something. “Tell me, captain, what would you do if someone you loved were as sick as I? If it was your precious pilot, diseased and dying, with the enemy holding the cure for her ailment? Would you, too, turn your back on your country?”
Maddie’s words cut coldly through Caitlyn like razor-sharp daggers. “Don’t bring Violet into this.”
“My dear, I didn’t bring Violet into anything. let into anything. You did.” Nolen placed her hands flat on the wooden table, staring straight through Caitlyn. “I didn’t ask to be assigned to her case. I didn’t request for her to be assigned to my stupid little strike team. I didn’t blur the lines between personal life and professionalism. You did. And if Vi comes home in a flag-draped coffin, well,” she huffed a menacing laugh, “that’s on you, too.”
Maddie’s hand moved a split second after she’d finished talking. She plunged an arm under her desk, re-emerging with a glinting metallic object gripped between her fingers.
Cait’s survival instinct won over after all. Without even registering what Maddie was holding, she squeezed the trigger hard.
A single bullet sunk straight into Nolen’s chest. The force catapulted her back into her chair, hot red crimson blooming into her white cotton overshirt. A deflated wheezing sound escaped Maddie’s lips as she dropped the pistol from her weak hands with a loud clatter.
The acrid smell of death wasn’t one Cait was unfamiliar with. But when it was someone she knew, someone she trained with, someone she’d fought alongside, someone she’d sworn an oath to protect, it was the complete opposite of what Cait was expecting.
She didn’t move an inch. Just stared, stared, stared, as the life slowly trickled out of the girl before her.
Maddie exhaled slowly, her chest dipping in shallow ragged breaths. “I knew you had it in you,” she breathed quietly.
The captain didn’t respond. She peel her eyes off of Maddie. Blood began running down her fingertips and pooling onto the floor beneath her like dark angry oil slicks.
Before Nolen took her final breath, before her eyes went blank and her body went still, she muttered a phrase.
Words which made Caitlyn’s nerves run cold beneath her skin.
Words that followed Caitlyn as she left the office, snaking down the winding corridors on the search for Vi.
“Hail Noxus,” Maddie had croaked through bloodstained teeth.
***
Vi’s heart fluttered in her chest angrily. The two purple-hued eyes grew closer and closer, a low, guttural groaning following in their wake.
A pair of enormous, grizzly shoulders emerged from the mist, followed by huge, muscular arms, gritted bared teeth, dirty blond hair, a scowling, determined face. Indigo tendrils spooling across every inch of exposed skin.
Deckard roared and charged at Vi. She raised her rifle, but was too late to react, stumbling backwards as the broad man grabbed the barrel and pushed it up into the air. The muzzle flashed as shots flew into the ceiling above them, raining small chunks of debris onto their shoulders as he violently slammed Vi into the surface of the bomb.
Any other person would at least be flinching at the contact heat of the gun being fired. But not Deckard. He was no normal man anymore. He wasn’t even him anymore, he was something… else.
The man ripped the rifle from Vi’s grasp and sent it flying down by their feet. It clattered across the floor of the lab. “The daughter of the infamous Hound of the Underground, scared of a little fistfight?” he roared.
Vi felt a paw-like hand closing around her throat. Her legs thrashed defenselessly as she felt herself going weightless, her back sliding against the cool metal behind her. Deckard’s grip around her throat tightened as he began to constrict her windpipe.
“You’ve been a thorn in Noxus’s side for too long now, pilot,” he growled. His face pushed closer to Vi’s; she could feel the warm acrid breath from his lungs tainting the skin of her cheek. Beads of spit catapulted from his mouth as he berated her. “I should’ve taken care of you back in that restaurant, you filthy traitor.”
Vi opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out, instead replaced with jagged choking sounds. Saliva pooled against her tongue as she fought against Deckard’s grip, nails dragging desperately against his hand and outstretched arm, her vision starting to swim and darken.
“I know what Vander did,” Deckard spat, and tightened his chokehold further. “My Dad came home to me in a coffin. And now, I’m going to send you home the same way.” He added the last part with a manic grin, eyes flaring wide with sadistic gratification.
His words were distant and drowned in the pilot’s ears. She couldn’t focus on anything but the pulse running up her neck and against Deckard’s iron grip, blood rushing like geysers in her ears, the feeling on her skin slowly going numb and distant. Dark spots began to cloud her eyesight pushing all the light of the room into single pinpoints.
She was going to die like this. She was going to die, pushed up against the primary target of the mission, choked out by a man she’d grown up on the same streets of.
Fleeting memories whipped through her mind. Vander. Powder. Ekko. Mylo. Claggor. Jayce. Caitlyn.
Caitlyn.
People to come home to. People to fight for.
Death would come for Vi at some point. But she wasn’t going to let it be today.
In one last valiant effort, Vi mustered all her remaining strength into her thigh and aimed her knee into Deckard.
The bone connected with his crotch precisely. The great man yelped in pain, grip loosening on Vi’s throat entirely, and he staggered back.
The pilot dropped to the ground in a crumpled heap. She planted a hand out in front of her, contacting the cool industrial floor, desperately sucking air down her bruised oesophagus and into her empty lungs.
Unfortunately, Deckard gave her little time to recover. “Youfuckingbitch!” he roared, arcing his fist back and clutching the hem of her shirt to drag her up.
Hardened knuckles crashed square into Vi’s face. Her head snapped to the side, droplets of blood launching from her lips. She fell to the floor again just as Deckard drew his leg back and kicked a full booted foot right into her gut.
A soft click. Deckard had reached into his belt holster and produced a small metal pistol. He lowered the barrel in line with the pilot’s face. His lips curled into a sinister grin.
Vi ground her molars together. Her eyes flickered briefly down Deckard’s barrel; she could see the single brass round loaded into the chamber. Then, her face relaxed, eyelids closing, accepting her fate.
“Look at me while you die, Vanderson,” Deckard growled through gritted teeth. “Look. At. Me.”
“Violet!”
A desperate strained voice called out into the room.
Followed by a single gunshot.
***
Was this what death felt like?
Vi hadn’t opened her eyes.
Her eyes were still squeezed shot. Nothing got through. She couldn’t hear anything, see anything, feel anything. Like she was floating, weightless, transcending from the spot she’d just been in.
She had no orientation of the world around her. No indication of where she was. Just pure nothing.
Was this what Ekko felt?
Slowly but surely, Vi regained her balance on reality. Her eyelids fluttered open lazily.
Deckard’s agonised screams filled the silent vacuum in her ears.
His eyes were blown wide in terror and shock, mouth agape in a constant shriek, gawping at his hand.
Or rather, the spot where his hand should have been.
A bloody, sinewy stump had replaced where Deckard had been holding his pistol just milliseconds before. Hot arcs of crimson squirted from severed arteries, splashing down across Vi’s complexion.
In the next moment, the pilot didn’t think as she unclipped her ballistic knife from her thigh holster (thanking her lucky stars that she’d remembered to pack it last minute), drove herself up off her knees, and screamed as she plunged the knife deep into Deckard’s chest.
The blade sunk through the skin like it was hot through butter. A confused, deflated moan escaped Deckard’s lips as his gaze went south, jaw dropping further as he noticed the steel now sticking out of his ribcage. Vi grabbed the hilt and pushed the knife further up, making a sickening wet crunch as it passed through the man’s sternum.
The officer took a staggered step backwards. Deckard sunk to the floor, hands steadily flocking to the knife, fingertips grasping at the handle weakly.
The eyes of a dying man met Vi’s one last time before he fell onto his side. A final pained exhale left his lungs before Deckard went stiff.
Vi didn’t move. She just stared down.
“Vi?”
A voice called out to her.
“Vi?”
She didn’t respond.
Vi wasn’t looking at Deckard’s body anymore. It was Ekko, back on the floor of that dungeon nestled somewhere in this very facility.
“Violet!”
Deckard’s body morphed back again. A hand fell onto Vi’s shoulder.
The pilot turned around. Her captain was standing there, panting, a flame of concern dancing behind her eyes. Her rifle was slung over her shoulders.
Caitlyn was there.
Caitlyn had seen Deckard about to shoot Vi, and blown his fucking hand off in return.
She pulled her captain into a tight hug, burying her face into the crook of her neck. The captain held her close, fingers forking into damp hair, both wheezing heavily in each other’s arms as they caught themselves.
Vi was the first to pull away. Her gaze met Caitlyn’s. “Maddie?” she asked.
The other officer’s lips drew into a thin line. “Neutralised,” she said plainly.
Vi grunted. She swiped at a small trail of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. “And Ambessa?”
Caitlyn shook her head. “Didn’t see her,” she admitted defeatedly. “After the alarms went off, I’m guessing they got her out before we could get to her.”
Vi huffed a small puff of air out of her nose. “Yeah,” she said dryly. “Yeah. Probably.”
The two stood in silence for a few moments, soaking in their surroundings. Allowing the dust to settle.
“We still need to set up the rest of the charges.” Cait’s command cut through the air. Ever the professional.
“Yeah, we do.” Vi cleared her throat and ran both hands over her face before walking back over to the table where she’d set the charges down earlier.
In silence, two officers continued to plant the explosives across the lab.
***
“Is that enough?”
Nearly all of the charges had been placed now. Vi had taken to dotting them over the hull of the bomb, whilst Cait had gone to the machinery. Only a few spare explosives remained, yet each surface had been covered, explosives set out evenly.
“Should be.” Vi nodded in confirmation. She held a rogue charge in her hand, toying with the outer paper shell mindlessly in her palm.
Cait reached a slender finger up to her earpiece and held the microphone down. Her other hand went into her pocket and produced the remote detonator. She flicked the red cover open, fingers hovering over the switch nervously. “Viktor, find us a route to the nearest vehicle depot. And get Heimerdinger on the line.”
Viktor’s voice crackled on the other end. “Captain, I haven’t been able to reach him, is-“
“Get Heimerdinger on the fucking line. Now.” With her final daunting demand, Caitlyn dropped her hand.
“Ambessa’s gone,” said Vi blankly, avoiding Caitlyn’s gaze. She continued to stare down at the bomb in her hand.
“Yes, she is.” The captain folded her arms over her chest and leant back against one of the tables.
“How much time will we have?” Vi gestured to the trigger in Caitlyn’s grasp. “Once you set that?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Cait confirmed with a disgruntled exhale. “Let’s hope our man in the chair finds us something close before then.”
Right on cue, Viktor’s voice carried over the radio again. “Captain, there’s a loading dock not far from the laboratory. The way you came in, to your right. From the satellite scans, there appears to be a helipad, too.”
Vi’s ears twitched with excitement at the mention of a helipad. She fancied their chances in the sky much more than a terrain-based escape.
Before Caitlyn could reply, another voice cut into their feed.
“Kiramman?” A distorted voice, but undoubtedly Heimerdinger’s.
“Commander!” Vi winced at Caitlyn’s exclaim of excitement, which pierced right through her eardrum.
“It’s wonderful to hear your voice again, captain,” Heimerdinger said joyfully. “Is Vanderson with you?”
Vi placed her finger to her ear promptly. “Accounted for and present, sir,” she replied with a grin.
“Brilliant, brilliant.” There was a sound of his hands clapping together. “Apologies for cutting straight to the chase, but what’s the status of Doomsday?”
“Deckard and Nolen have both been neutralised, sir,” the captain explained. “The lab is rigged to blow, and…”
As Caitlyn continued to explain their situation, Vi’s fingers continued to play and pry at the charge. Her sweaty fingertips had weakened the adhesive around the edges of the cover, peeling back some of the paper, revealing the same coloured outer casing beneath.
Vi let her curiosity get the better of her. She stripped the paper back further off the charge.
In that moment, the pilot’s heart sunk out of her chest and through the ground.
There was a thick blue line running across the casing of the inner explosive.
“Cait,” Vi muttered quietly, trying to get her captain’s attention.
She couldn’t pry her eyes away from the device in her hands.
“Caitlyn,” she repeated, more urgently this time.
“We’ll need an evac soon, sir,” Caitlyn finished saying to Heimerdinger before removing her finger and turning her attention to Vi. “What is it?”
“Where did you get these from?” Vi held the charge up in her hands. The undercurrent of concern began to grow thick in her words.
“Jayce picked them up from a supply cache. It’s where he got these for us, too.” She gestured to the rifle on her back. “Why?”
Vi dropped her voice low and quiet. “They’re duds.”
“What?”
“They’re fucking duds.” Vi’s fingers ripped off the rest of the paper to show the blue marking. “They’re dummy rounds. Used for training. We use blue rounds on our choppers when we know we’re not firing live.”
Caitlyn cursed under her breath. She shook her head in disbelief, placing her hand to her ear one last time, shaking like a leaf. “What’s the update on that evac, Commander?” she asked nervously.
Heimerdinger’s cool and collected tone cut across the line. The blood ran cold in their veins as he spoke his next words.
“I’m sorry, Captain, but I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
***
“What do you mean, ‘not possible’?” Caitlyn’s tone was shrill, borderline hysterical, as she responded to Heimerdinger.
The commander sighed. “Doomsday’s primary objective has… shifted. Your expertise are no longer required. Thank you for your service, officers; you’ve done your country a great deal. I would have let you in on these changes of plan, but-“ there was a brief pause, “-you know how I feel about loose ends.”
There was a click as the line went dead.
Cait’s finger tapped rapidly, desperately, at her earpiece.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
She began flicking the detonator switch backwards and forwards.
There was no change to the explosives. No flashing light, no indication they were primed, nothing.
“What the fuck?” Vi exclaimed. She threw the dummy charge down by her feet, sending it scattering across the floor. “What the fuck does he mean, ‘loose ends’?”
“It means he doesn’t need us anymore,” Caitlyn spat, but not at Vi. She was fuming, betrayed by the same flag and commander she’d sworn to protect and honour. Her blood boiled. “We’re expendable. He doesn’t care if we make it out alive.” In a flash of realisation, she added, “He doesn’t want us to make it out alive.”
Vi swore again. Much louder this time. Her voice echoed through the barren laboratory, reverberating across the walls. “What the fuck do we do, Cait?” Vi shouted, her voice hoarse and strained with desperation.
Caitlyn breathed out. Her teeth clenched together, muscles of her jaw feathering. “We finish this ourselves,” she said curtly.
“But why?” Vi threw her hands up in defeat. “We’ve got a good shot at getting out, why-“
“Why do you think Heimerdinger gave us dummy rounds, Vi?” Caitlyn interrupted. “Why do you think the mission’s changed, why he doesn’t want us to blow this place sky-high anymore?”
Cait saw the exact moment the penny dropped in Vi’s mind. Her lips made an ‘O’. “He wants Shimmer for himself.”
“He wants Shimmer for himself,” Caitlyn repeated. “And the bomb.” To emphasise, she pointed to the great metal mass behind her. “We can’t let this fall into anyone’s hands. Not Ambessa’s, not Heimerdinger’s, no-one. This ends today.”
Vi nodded firmly. A gravelly, determined look settled on her face. “We finish this today, then. Until the end of the line.”
“Until the end of the line,” Cait parroted in agreement.