the_last_resort | Belloq chose...poorly

"Did you." The first crack in her calm, or rather a drop in the temperature, a bit of air going out of the room. "So you're mixed up with them." She didn't really care which them it was. The local staff at the Agency warned her about the gangs, and she was grimly unsurprised that all of this had something to do with them.

"He trusted you," she said. The second crack, a roughness on the word trusted. Then, practically an afterthought: "I trusted you."

And you took advantage of us both, she thought but didn't say. Didn't need to.

Edited 2015-01-28 13:29 (UTC)

"I never wished him ill." And that was also true. Even as he was sealing him in a chamber to die, he never wished him ill. There was never any malice, just the callus arithmetic that, regardless of friendship, of fond feelings, of camaraderie, his own life held more value to him than Niko's.

"I'm sure." It wasn't my fault. I was only following orders. I had no choice. I didn't mean to. All the world's great mealymouthed excuses for which Una had very little patience. She stood up, glass in hand, and walked around her desk to stand closer to him—not as a threat, but a kind of sympathetic intimacy. She pulled back at her composure, keeping her tone soft now, almost kindly. "But you know what they say about good intentions, Rene. In the end, what you wished doesn't matter very much to most people. Only what you did."

He nodded once, solemnly and recited a passage from Virgil.

"Facilis descensus Averni: Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est."

The descent to hell is easy. Night and day the gates of dark Dis lie open. But to turn one's steps back and to see again the skies of heaven, this is hard work, this is effort.

He chose the downward path long ago.

Una set her glass down and leaned forward, almost as if she were about to kiss him, and slipped her hand into her inner jacket pocket. Her fingers curled around the handle of the needlegun. And instead of kissing him, she tilted her head, brushing lightly against his cheek, and whispered in his ear:

"I don't speak Latin, Rene."

And then with one swift movement, she pulled out the needlegun and fired a dart into the side of his neck.

The sedative would take effect within minutes. It was a Travel Agent special; sometimes, when extracting a guest, you needed to quietly get other people out of the way. Killing wasn't an option, and tasers were too noticeable. The darts, on the other hand, were subtle and quick.

She pocketed the needlegun again and didn't move away. Instead she stayed close, to hold him steady when the drug kicked in.

Belloq tilted his head into what he thought was going to be a kiss, a slight smile curling his lips. The smile faded to confusion when Una shifted, and instead of a kiss he received a breath of words in his ear.

The confusion didn't hold for long. A sharp, biting sting pricked his neck and his hand flew up to the spot in shock. There was something... He pulled out a tiny dart and examined it in a shaking hand. He was reminded of the poison darts the Hovitos used to kill their enemies.

"What...what is in the needle?" He rasped out in horror. His limbs were beginning to feel weak.

"Do you know, I'm not completely sure what it's called," she said conversationally, gently plucking the used dart from his fingers and setting it aside. "But please don't worry, it won't kill you. You'll just start to feel a little sleepy soon." He was plainly more distressed by the dart than she'd expected and she almost felt bad...but not quite. "Come now, I don't want you to fall and hurt yourself."

Edited (typo fussing ) 2015-01-31 10:02 (UTC)

"What..." What are you going to do to me? he wanted to ask, but his lips felt clumsy and his tongue heavy, like an ox stood upon it and rendered him silent as Agamemnon's watchman.

But she wasn't going to poison him; at least there was that consolation. He reckoned that he shouldn't be surprised by it, or excessively reassured. Una Persson was more Penthesilea than Medea. If she wanted him dead it wouldn't be by poison.

No, when Una wanted someone dead, she was impeccably direct about it: a clean shot through the heart. So Belloq's survival was at least assured.

She eased him down and waited, silently now, for the drug to complete its work. Once he was well and truly unconscious, she got to work.

Some short time and a passage through the transporters later, Belloq would awake to find himself sitting propped up against a pack of some kind in a sort of hollow in the earth, like a battlefield foxhole, on the top of a barren hill. All around, the landscape seethed and burned with unnatural colours; in the near distance below armies clashes with a fearful sound of swords, pikes, and armour. And nearby Una sat on a rock, impassively watching the battle and smoking a cigarette.

When awareness first crept upon him again, he first thought he was having a nightmare about Passchendaele. The earth, the stink of fear and war. But then he regained full consciousness and recalled Una and the dart. He glanced around wildly, still shaking sleep from his limbs.

"Where are we? What is this place?"

Not Blackway, he knew that. Not anywhere on Quadratus.

She took a last drag on her cigarette and put it out, carefully secreting the stub somewhere in her pockets. "Ah, you're awake. As to your question —" She shrugged. "It's hard for me to describe to someone used to living in a linear mode. It's a plane far from the Earth you know—or perhaps it predates your entire known universe. Or both. Time is stranger than you know, Rene." She stood up and stretched. A cry went up in the battle below, coming from the throat of a white-faced man in black armour, riding a massive black steed and wielding a black greatsword that seemed to glow hellishly as he laid about him. "Really, the important bit is that you're a very long way from home. And now that I'm satisfied as to your welfare, I'll be on my way."

She pulled up the cuff of her jacket and began making minute adjustments to the device that would send her back to Quadratus.

Edited (effin typos) 2015-02-01 03:24 (UTC)

Belloq scrambled to his feet, still unsteady from the soporific in the dart, but desperate. He started and flinched at the crash of battle nearby, his eyes wandering in their sockets as he tried to make sense of the strange and unholy landscape before him.

"You can't leave me here!" He reached for her wrist to grab hold of it.

It wasn't as if she could fail to see him coming; she jerked back and took a step away.

"Can't I?" She shook her head, almost sadly. "Is that what Niko said when you left him? Ah, Rene, you've made the classic mistake of thinking that I'm actually a nice person. Which is fair enough, since it seems I made the same mistake with regard to you."

And with that, she flicked a button on the transporter control and vanished.

Not that she actually meant to leave him. Let him stew for ... oh, it wouldn't even have to be that long to put the fear of God in him, would it? Ten minutes, perhaps?

In the transporter room back on Quadratus, she set her watch and sat back to wait.

"No!" he shouted as Una vanished. And then he was abandoned here, in this place which made no sense, but was very obviously dangerous.

He had to stay alive, that was his first priority. He fell immediately into the old patterns of the Great War. Down here was safer than up there, so down here he'd stay. He took handfuls of dust in his hands and smeared it over his face and his white linen suit so he would blend in better to his surroundings.

But beyond that, he had no weapon, no food, no supplies, not so much as a compass to help him find his way. Logically, he knew there was no way he would be likely to survive this.

It had all gone so wrong.

Meanwhile, Una finished her latest cigarette and stepped back onto the transporter pad.

She'd had time now to feel a little guilty about what she'd just done. There was always the chance that something might go terribly wrong and Belloq would get killed—even if the warriors of that age had plenty on their minds without having to pay attention to him. As well, the more she thought about it, the more this gesture seemed ... a bit childish. It was the metatemporal equivalent of hanging someone off a high ledge by their ankles to frighten them.

Still, it *had* cheered her up a bit. And hopefully underlined to Belloq just how dangerous she actually was, which was much of the point.

She touched the controls and in a glimmer of light, she reappeared at the edge of the hollow. She stared down at Belloq, at what he'd done to himself—and she was soldier enough to understand—and sighed.

"Come on, you fool," she said, extending her hand. "I'm not a nice person, but I'm not as cruel as all that."

Chaos was surging up toward them now, a mass of seething creatures that were not quite men, not quite beasts. As soon as Belloq took her hand, she would activate the transporter recall and return them to Quadratus.

He hesitated to take her hand for a moment, but only for a moment. She was his only hope out of this place and he couldn't afford suspicion. He took her hand in a firm grip and waited for whatever would come next.

She wrapped her hand firmly around his wrist, in a way that made it clear she wasn't going to let him go, and triggered the transporter. Only when they were safely materialised did she release him—and that she did quickly.

She resisted the urge to wipe her hand off on her trousers and folded her arms, watching him. After a moment she took a clean handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to him.

"I suppose you'd like to know why," she said, after giving him some time to recover.

He took the handkerchief, wiped the dust off his hands, his face. He pulled in a few deep and steadily breaths before responding.

"For you, or for Niko, I imagine. Or perhaps for both deceptions."

"The injury done to Niko, the matter of my own wounded pride—" a little self-conscious, theatrical irony on that phrase, "yes, there's that, but here's the real point."

She sat down on the edge of the transporter platform and, with a nod of her head, indicated that he should do the same.

"They didn't hire me as a Travel Agent just because I was an actress with a pretty face," she said. "Nearly every sentient being passes through time in a linear mode, but I don't. I haven't since I was very young. I have rescued people from temporal zones even more hellish than the one you saw, and I've left men suspended in Limbo on the point of life and death for all eternity." She wasn't bragging; it was just a flat, calm statement of fact. "I could have helped you. I also could have destroyed you. But you've lost your chance at the former, and you just don't rate the latter."

He sat at her urging. He didn't dare not to. He listened, only half understanding, just as he could only half understand what he saw in that place she took him. But he understood enough to comprehend her point.

"I have not trusted in others to help me or save me in a very long time. Perhaps that is to my folly. Although my opinion may be worth little to you now, I do like you. And Niko as well. That was never pretense. You were both far better friends to me than I was capable of being for you. The ending was inevitable, I think, like the ending to Aesop's tale of a farmer and a viper. But I am sorry for it."

She looked away, so that he wouldn't see the emotion that passed over her face—anger, regret, a kind of grief. She felt sorry for him—really, genuinely sorry, though that didn't diminish the awareness that even the most monstrous people had their human sides. And Belloq, plainly, was no exception.

"Go home, Rene," she said wearily. "Go by way of the alley behind, and keep to the shadows. You should be safe that way."

He said nothing. There was nothing left to say. But quietly took his leave, slinking into the shadows alone.

Belloq chose...poorly

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