Ringwood's #IAMTSW backstory entry: "Before Her Eyes"

Antida in Games, The Secret World 0 comments 26 APR 2015

Before Her Eyes

With the last of the Orochi security cleared from the warehouse, Felicity and Beca fanned out to check the cargo. Crate after crate yielded nothing special: just armor and guns.

Until the last one. Felicity opened the crate and whatever was inside erupted in a flash of sizzling white light. With it a heaviness sunk into her limbs; she felt… lesser, somehow. Changed. Adrenaline shot through her body in a vain attempt to quicken it.

A .50 caliber bullet shot cleanly through her left knee with a sledgehammer punch. She wanted to pivot and return fire. She couldn’t. Time slowed and stretched and she saw what came next: hitting the pavement, tasting her own blood, then… what?

But she wasn’t there. There was no pain. There was sunlight, and fresh air salty from the Atlantic, and the pungency of motor oil. Felicity stood on tiptoes on her little stepladder, the red one with her nickname on it, and peered into the engine block of her dad’s truck parked in their driveway. Her dad – tall, godlike – wiped his hands on a rag.

“You’ll never master a car, Flick – God and luck will see to that – but if you take care of it, your car’ll take care of you. I’ll show you how.”

She smiled up at him and he smiled down at her, and it felt like the sun was rising inside her –

Day changed to night; sunlight turned to the fluorescent lights of a parking garage. Felicity, now old enough to know better, bent forward in the driver’s seat of a car that was not hers and cracked the case under the steering wheel to get to the wiring beneath. In 60 seconds’ time, she’d be tearing down the road and screaming – just screaming.

“I’ll show you how,” she mumbled, without realizing she had. Her dad had been swept off the deck of a fishing boat a month earlier.

The crack of another shot heralded the bullet that tore through her guts. Her belly pulsed with fire. Jesus Christ, it hurt so bad.

The pavement rushed up to meet her.

But she wasn’t there. She was a teenager in her bedroom with a pawn shop Gibson, mastering her Joan Jett howl; she was on stage in a punk club that reeked of cigarettes, pouring everything she had into the microphone. She filled that shitty little bar with so much fury it trembled, and they loved her for it. She was 21, and she felt so alive it almost hurt.

A third shot; a third punch. The bullet ripped through her lung, but she no longer cared. Old news from a distant country.

Because she wasn’t there. She was staring at herself in the bathroom mirror of a Manhattan club, watching blood trickle from her nose and drop onto the crisp white lapel of her shirt. A light dusting of white powder still decorated her nostrils; she sniffed and moved to wipe her nose clean, then saw older blood stains on her cuff. The man she’d shot because he’d owed her bosses too much for too long. Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me” played so loud on the club’s sound system the bathroom door rattled in its frame.

Felicity Bane, this is your life, said the game show host in her head. She wouldn’t quite call it her conscience.

The fourth bullet smashed the delicate bone-work of her shoulder to splinters. Felicity hit the pavement with a meaty thud. Dimly, she sensed men closing, rifles at the ready and laser sights playing across the floor.

Here? Or home, watching her cat chase a laser pointer around to the tune of Mihaela’s bright, bubbling laughter?

Oh god.

Here, or on the run, sketching a path across New England and waiting for her old bosses to put her out of everyone’s misery?

Mihaela.

Here, or waking coughing in some motel room, wrenched out of a dream about… what, exactly?

I need to hear her laugh one more time.

A recruiter who found her when the mob’s best and scariest couldn’t. A plane ticket. London. The promise of a second chance. All it took was a gun and the will to make things right.

One more time. Please.

There’s a last time for everything, said the game show host. But you never know when until it’s gone. A studio audience laughed.

Somewhere, not here, Beca screamed. Bullets flew. A pool of blood framed Felicity in red.

Please.

But she wasn’t there anymore.


Source: The Secret World Ringwood’s #IAMTSW backstory entry: “Before Her Eyes”

Antida
Latest posts by Antida (see all)