Alive

Simon-G294 awoke to pain and fire and smoke, only dimly aware that he lay in a pile of rubble. Blood from a dozen wounds leaked out from beneath his battered armor. His eyes opened and found themselves staring at a red, smoke-veiled sky. Staring up at the sky made him realize that he was no longer trapped and buried underground. He remembered the fierce, animal panic, the crushing weight of the rocks, the searing terror as he cried out to Diana... Reaching up with aching hands, he dragged off his helmet and let the unfiltered air wash over his bare face. It reeked of smoke and shattered concrete, but it was air and that was enough for him. He closed his eyes and let the filthy air fill his lungs. He was alive. He was free. And then he opened his eyes and saw exactly what that survival meant. Philadelphia burned around him. Fires raged through towers in the distance while more flames lapped greedily at the ruined streets surrounding the crater that had been ONI's subterranean blacksite. Simon-G294 pulled himself up, crawling up through the rubble to the crater lip and drinking in the carnage with wide, stinging eyes. “And here I was worried you'd died after all," a voice purred up from the helmet still clenched in one trembling hand. Diana sounded pleased with herself, as she always did. "You really are a hard kid to look after, you know that?" “You... I... I was trapped..." Ruined cars littered the shattered streets. And around them, limp bodies like broken dolls. "Yes, you were. Good thing I had a backup plan. But you can think me later." The AI laughed cheerfuly. She sounded as happy as Simon had ever heard her. "So what do you think? Mission accomplished." Mission accomplished. What was he doing here? He'd come here to do something, to save someone. Someone important. Someone precious. Yes, Simon had come here for that. But he couldn't think, couldn't remember at all what he was even doing here. All he saw now was the ruined city. The carnage Diana had-no, that he'd unleashed. Because he remembered that last, horrifying moment, crushed beneath the rubble, his own desperate scream: Save me, Diana. And she had. He was alive. How many thousands lay dead or dying in this shattered hellscape? Maybe tens of thousands. Because of him. And still, he felt relieved. He was alive. And did anything else really matter? I came here to save someone, his own voice whispered, already fading away. He fell to his knees before the bodies, but only because that was what he was supposed to do. What a good person was meant to do. To be shocked and disgusted and horrified. But he felt none of those things. The relief and joy of being alive coursed through his aching body even as he struggled to find the horror and remorse, to feel the things he should at what he'd done. But instead he just found the writhing urge to laugh aloud because he was still alive. Thousands were not, but he was. Please, a tiny voice begged. Let me scream. Let me cry. Let me be disgusted. This isn't right. Instead he simply looked upon the carnage and saw a war zone just like any other he'd walked through on Tribute or Mamore. Ruined buildings and lifeless bodies stretching out before him to herald what the rest of his life would become. A simple reality, where the broken bodies and shattered lives held no horror or tragedy. All they marked was one more battle in a lifetime of war, one where he had survived and countless others had not. And even as the smaller part of him, the part that was still the kind, decent Simon-G294, buried his face in his hands because that was what a good person should do, the larger part of him, the useful part that kept him alive and did all the real work in the end, embraced the purest joy of being alive. Stray allowed his mouth, covered by Simon's trembling hand, to curve into a smile.