Waking from the Nightmare

[Toaster]

Olivia stood over the body, gazing down at the pale, bloodied face of the man she had killed. It was over. Pedro was dead and she was free. No longer would she have to spend her days looking over her shoulder, in fear of the man stepping out from the shadows with a new ploy to entangle her in. No longer would the lives of her family be at risk.

She was supposed to be happy, Olivia thought. Instead, she felt... What? What did she feel?

Exhausted. Like she had spent years carrying a heavy burden only to have finally dropped it from her shoulders.

Olivia knelt down beside the corpse and wiped her fingers over Pedro's face, closing his eyes. For his daughter's sake, she would grant him at least that last dignity.

The crackling of static in her earpiece interrupted her thoughts.

"Sable!" It was Beige's voice. "I hope you're just about done up there, because we're about to be all kinds of fucked! " The roar of gunfire supplanted his shouts.

Olivia got to her feet and strode out of the room, leaving Pedro behind.

"Beige, Blue," she barked into the comms channel, "get to the landing pad. Maroon, can you secure-"

"Already done," Maroon's calm voice interjected. Olivia broke into a run down the hallways, heading for the southern exit and the mansion's landing field beyond. The fresh night air was filled with the sound of shouting and gunfire. She hurried to the illuminated pad, a sporty private shuttle parked on it. Maroon stood before it, surrounded by half a dozen bodies, their blood coalescing into one big pool. He nodded at her as she approached, keeping his submachine gun trained at the villa behind her as she clambered up the access ramp into the shuttle's cockpit.

"Where are you?" She spoke into her earpiece, flicking switches and igniting the craft's engines.

"Almost there!" Beige shouted back into her hear. The door Olivia had exited the mansion through erupted into smoke, fire, and splintered wood, and out came Beige and Blue, wildly firing their weapons behind them. They were covered in bruises, blood, and soot, but looked very much alive. Maroon fired bursts past them, showering their pursuers as they piled out into the yard. Cretans went down, struck by bullets and tripping over each other. Bolts of energy splashed over the shuttle's hull as the guards returned fire at the fleeing mercenaries.

"Come on, come on," Olivia muttered through gritted teeth, retracting the shuttle's landing gear. The ramp dug a deep groove into the lawn as she turned the craft to face the house. With the flick of a switch, two energy blasters protruded from the craft's nose. Olivia pulled the flight stick's trigger. The villa's facade erupted as bolts of plasma blasted into it, showering the grass with molten rock and dust. The Cretans scattered.

Blue and Beige bounded up the ramp into the passenger compartment, followed by Maroon, calmly firing off a few last bursts as the ramp retracted after him. The shuttle took off, rocketing into the starlit sky. A few tracers followed them, disappearing into the dark.

Olivia glanced out through the canopy at the countryside below them. In the distance, near the ground, she could make out their dropship, its engine plumes lighting up the rocky terrain beneath it. It accelerated skyward, following the small shuttle.

Blue stepped into the cockpit and rested one bloodied hand on Olivia's shoulder.

"It's done?"

Olivia nodded. Blue gave her shoulder a soft pat and returned to the compartment.

Outside, the stars brightened as Crete's atmosphere receded around them. Olivia set a course out of the system and engaged the autopilot.

All she wanted now was to rest. To sleep and not be woken by a nightmare.






//End.

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Olivia Sable