Vash locks one more bullet into the chamber. “Just hang in there.”
It’s simple. Really fucking simple. To win a war, relinquish yourself to nature. The more you focus on yourself, on your body and what you’re feeling, the easier your death comes.
An Ouroboros always makes the first move. Surprise is key. But when all else fails, it is in his nature to disappear. To wait. To listen until that moment of doubt hits the opponent.
So Vash waits. He listens to the bullets hitting the plane. He visualizes where the alpha is standing. And as soon as the idiot runs through his clip, Vash jumps up and says, “Your eagerness to kill has left you with one choice. Death.”
Vash’s aim is superb, the best marksman the Ouroboros had. All it takes is one bullet to the heart to take the brute down.
He falls into the snow, grunting and huffing. Vash walks toward him, Revolver pointed at the twitching body.
With what little strength he has left, the brute aims the rifle but cannot make the shot. Vash watches as the life drifts out of him.
The rain clears, and the snow that’s left turns red with blood. Splattered like a cruel modernist painting.
When he was a warrior, he slayed thousands. Innocent lives bowed before him. But everything has changed. There’s a cruelty to death that Vash can’t ignore. The normal alphas can’t have another life like the clones. Cassian never got that far.
He almost just lost the only life he had left.
With the children to carry, they can’t continue this path of bloodshed. They can’t keep taking on the feral alpha tribes. This fight was far too risky.
He envisions a different life, one where he can toil the land. There are other places out there, entire villages that exist on the peripheral of violence. They could find their place. They could find the way to override the extinction gene.
Optimism isn’t one of Vash’s crutches, but he holds onto it like a strange memory of something better.
Vash hears a noise and witnesses Killian climbing over a hill. He collapses against the ridge. “Got him,” he moans. “Left him dead in a ditch.”
“He got your shoulder,” Vash says, breath white against the wind.
“Bastards nicked my shoulder,” Killian curses. “Tend to Ruby. I’ll grab the children and pull out the bullet fragments myself.”
When Vash returns to the wreck, Ruby’s body has sunk into the blanket. From his bag, he grabs a towel and dries her.
She forces a smile. “I told you I wouldn’t close my eyes,” she says.
“You did great, kid,” he mutters and looks toward Killian.
He doesn’t have the heart to tell her she doesn’t have much time. The wound will probably infect, and her body will turn on her. If she doesn’t find a doctor, she’s a goner.
But where can they find a doctor out here?
Killian searches the bodies. Vash watches him take whatever ammo he can find, alongside an emergency medical pack. Pulling out a syringe, he says, “Liquid antibiotics. They’re expired, but they might help.
Vash nods, mind racing. “Give it to her,” he says. “Quickly.”
Killian pierces the syringe into a small glass bottle. Upon sucking up the liquid, he looks satisfied.
He injects it into her arm.
Miles behind them is a rocky, barren landscape. Rising out of the center of the earth is a massive cylindrical machine. “The Iron Eye,” Vash mutters.
They’re not close. It’ll take them another day to get there.
A shiver runs through his spine.
This is it. It’s the moment he has been dreaming about. So why does he feel so worried?
A mist has fallen over the landscape, shrouding their visibility.