"Oh, God. What happened here?"
Simon swept the bombed-out plaza with his assault rifle and shook his head. "The same thing that happened everywhere else. Someone blew the shit out of it."
He stepped through the charred wreckage of a side-street bazaar. Everywhere he looked, corpses lined the streets, all of them Sangheili and most of them females and children. A part of him wondered if it was bad that he didn't really feel all that torn up about the carnage; he registered the massacre on a tactical level, just another sign that he didn't have to worry about causing a panic amongst the civilians because there were no civilians left to panic.
Maybe if it had been the Visag keep, with all the warriors and students and servants he had gotten to know over the course of his year-long stay there, Simon would have taken it all harder. But Mamore had taught him to stroll through the torn bodies of humans without pausing to be sick, and at the end of the day most Sangheili were as inhuman to him now as they'd been back during the Great War.
The remnants of a vender's stall collapsed as he and Zoey passed by. She squeaked and brandished the pistol he'd given her as if to ward off invisible attackers. Simon glanced down at the wares the vender had been selling: some kind of meat, from the looks of things.
"Diana," he said into their private com channel. "Anything on the 'net?"
"Yeah, we've gotten ourselves into a full-scale ground war from the looks of things," she reported. "Half the reports are screaming about the UNSC, the other half are ragging on the local government for not doing enough to stop it. Either way, we're looking at over five thousand meatbags dead in this city alone."
She paused before adding, "You know, business as usual."
"Out on the frontier, maybe." Simon stepped gingerly over the huddled corpse of a small Sangheili child. "But not on Sanghelios. This isn't just one clan getting pissed at another clan over farming rights."
Simon glanced at another body. This one hadn't died from plasma fire; solid bullets had torn her head halfway off her body. "The Path Walkers wouldn't have called this in, would they?" he asked, thinking aloud.
"Last reports I checked, they were tied up fighting around Cordial Harmony. If they wanted a bunch of meatbags dead, they could have called this in back over there."
She paused, as if waiting for him to say something. When he didn't, she said promptingly, "Worried about Doc?"
"She's not on Cordial Harmony anymore," Simon said wearily. "Last I heard from her, she and her clinic pulled out. I wouldn't let her tell me where."
"Aw, you're so sweet sometimes."
"Stuff it."
A few Phantoms were slipping through distant towers overhead, but none of them seemed at all interested in the bombed-out plaza. Behind him, Zoey gagged. She'd been sick three times since they'd escaped the landing pad. Everywhere they turned, more scenes of death and destruction confronted them, and Diana hadn't been able to tug anything definitive out of the com channels to tell them exactly what was going on.
So, we're blind, we've got no way off the planet, and the only thing keeping the army from coming down on me with everything they've got is some attack that we know nothing about. Business as usual.
"So," Zoey said wearily. "Do you guys have a plan yet?"
He looked back at her and reminded himself--again--of the payoff that waited at the end of this tunnel. Just get her to Earth and you'll never have to worry about money again." His hands tightened around the assault rifle at the mere thought.
"I'm working on it," he replied slowly. "I'm working on it."
"If we can get a ride out of the city," Simon said, drawing a small circle in the dirt with his metal fingers. "We can get out into the countryside and head for Visag."
Zoey's forehead wrinkled. "What's Visag?"
"A state that isn't far from Meru. I have friends there who can help us."
The plan was coming together in Simon's head as they took shelter in an alcove under a bridge that led out of the plaza. Below them, a river flowed gently off through the city, though its meandering pace was punctuated every now and then by a few corpses or a piece of debris.
"Yeah, they'll help us," Diana said in his ear. "Once you explain away the whole business about getting their planet locked in another war."
Simon gritted his teeth. He didn't like thinking about the reason the Sangheili were willing to pay Ro'nin for him. "Master 'Visag will listen to me," he said slowly. "He'll understand."
"So he's still 'master', huh? Quite the dutiful student there, aren't we?"
"Just shut up."
Zoey huddled against the alcove wall, fingers wrapped tightly around her pistol. "It must feel good," she muttered. "Just being able to deal with all this crap like you do."
Simon blinked at her. "What?"
She shrugged. "I mean, it must suck to have stuff like what happened on the landing pad happen to you, but at least you can fight back. All I can do is hope you're tough enough to get both of us out of this in one piece."
With a harsh laugh, Simon leaned back and rested his head on the hard wall. "You think I like this?" he asked, waving his mechanical arm over his armored frame.
"No, but it's better than having to wait around for someone to save you. Back on Famul, if you hadn't stepped in they'd have killed me and no one would have done a thing. But you, you risked your life to save me..."
"And that's where you're wrong," Simon cut in coldly. "I've never been interested in saving anything but my own pale ass. Don't go turning me into a knight in shining armor over something I didn't even do."
Zoey blinked at him. "But you stood up to those guards..."
"No, Cassandra stood up to the guards. There was no way she was going to back out. I just talked my way out getting cut to pieces, like I always do. Saving you was the easiest way to get out of there without a fight."
"Oh." Zoey seemed to deflate slightly. "You gave me money, though. When you kicked me off your shuttle."
"Cassandra wouldn't have let it go if I hadn't." Simon closed his eyes and hoped the weariness that was suddenly seeping into his limbs would go away. "Sorry to burst your bubble."
"All you really care about is money," Zoey muttered, as if she'd been mulling it over for some time.
"Yep."
"And Cassandra."
Simon's eyes shot open. "What?"
"Money and Cassandra. That's all you care about."
"Damn," Diana muttered in his ear. "She's got you nailed, dumbass."
Simon ignored her and shook his head. "What the hell gave you that idea?" he asked Zoey carefully.
"Everything you've ever done or told me about, you did it because of money or Cassandra."
"We went through a lot together," he admitted. "She's stubborn about stuff."
"So why aren't you with her?"
The words cut deep, far deeper than Zoey could have possibly intended. He looked at her, a small framed girl in dirty overalls, her flaxen hair wild and disheveled, and wondered what was running around inside that grimy head of hers. She certainly seemed intent on taking him apart, and that was something he couldn't tolerate, wealthy client or no.
"Oh boy, you're pulse is goin' up," Diana commented. "This oughta be good."
Simon took a breath, then lifted his assault rifle and tossed it over to Zoey. She nearly dropped it in surprised, but fumbled with it and held it at arm's length.
"See that?" Simon asked. The river, the bridge, the city, even the planet and the people who wanted him dead or imprisoned faded away, leaving just him, the rifle, and Zoey. "That's an MA-series assault rifle. Piece of shit model, always jams on me, but it works when it needs to. And you know what it does when it works?"
Zoey looked at him from across the rifle, her eyes confused. "It shoots?" she asked in a quavering voice.
"It kills," Simon told her. "It kills. I've been holding rifles like that since I was six years old. I'm still a shitty marksman, just ask Diana. But when it counts, I can kill people just fine. And I've been doing that since I was about twelve. With a rifle, with a knife, with my bare fucking hands. I've lost count of all the people I've killed." And I was the worst one in our batch. Spartan's a Spartan, killer's a killer...
Her eyes were wide as saucers now, sucking in every word he said. Simon remembered one of the Rat Pack kids, Isaac, that was his name, looking like that back when he'd helped teach them how to shoot. Damn, even his hair and clothes had looked the same. Isaac had died when an assault rifle just like the one Zoey was holding so gingerly had blown his arm off.
"If you don't think I tried settling down, you're wrong. Hell, Cassandra tries to get me out of it every time I talk to her. But this is all I know how to do, and no matter what I want there will always, always be people who won't let me just pull out and live the quiet life. Mercenary work keeps me fed and it keeps me right where I need to be in case something like this shit"--he gestured at the city around them--"happens."
Zoey shook her head, disbelieving. "So you just kill and kill and kill," she murmured softly in a way that sounded eerily like Cassandra. "Is this how it always goes out here? What's it all for?"
"For?" Simon laughed, but he felt hollow inside. "I've killed for money, for a cause, for friends. Just about every reason out there. But at the end of the day, it boils down to the fact that I'm still alive. And that's all that matters."
"What's the point of living like that?" she demanded.
Simon gave her a cold smile and closed his eyes again. His hand brushed against his helmet where it lay beside him. "Hell if I know," he muttered. "But better this than dead."
He hoped she realized how lucky she was, heading back to Earth where her family could keep her sheltered from all this. Life as a slave clearly hadn't been able to kill her, but it hadn't made her any smarter either. It was better that someone step in and keep her from being sullied by this shit any more than she already had.
Diana's voice snapped him back into the present. "Hate to cut the break short," she said, broadcasting through his helmet's external speakers. "But the local comm network just lit up. They aren't being really clear, but something big is headed your way."
Zoey bolted upright. "Big?" she asked, eyes wide. "What's that mean?"
Simon grabbed the helmet and crammed it over his head. "It means we're leaving."
He leapt up and snatched his assault rifle back. It felt comfortingly familiar in his hands. "Time to start running."