When You Have Nothing Left to Lose...
It was still a cloudy and rainy morning.
They were on their knees, upright, with their hands up, and had placed all their weapons on the ground.
They stood there like figurines, unmoving, unblinking. Only someone with very sharp eyesight could see them breathing.
They were drenched, still carrying traces of smoke mixed with the dense morning mist.
Gradually, a distant noise in the sky began to emerge.
It was vehicles. There was one black-gray car, and another twelve cars, all with red and yellow lights.
Slowly, the cars landed in front of them. Everyone was wearing a trench coat similar to Phoenix's and Hans's—completely black. However, these had a strange crest, difficult to identify in the rain.
A few seconds before the officers stepped out of the cars, H.K. muttered something under his breath, nodding his head.
...
All the vehicles had landed, and the officers rushed out of the cars, shouting something incomprehensible in German. Only Heinrich understood.
[1]
„Sie ergeben sich!" „Sie haben kapituliert!" „Verhaften Sie diese Bastarde jetzt!" „Haben sie Hans getötet?" „Ich wollte diese Hurensöhne töten!"
It was a chaotic succession of shouts from several officers.
Outnumbered, they were all handcuffed and placed separately in each car. The officers didn't ask many questions. After all, they were Germans, and they were Antiqua Tellurians. And luckily—as in every good story, there is always a bit of luck—they weren't thoroughly searched, as all the weapons had been laid on the ground. It was taken as a simple, easy surrender.
All the group felt was rage. Their hypocrisy… How could a network of mercenaries have a police force? How did the governments and emperors of the cosmos allow this? But the anger they felt was impossible to perceive because they stood there, completely expressionless, their faces cold from the rain, but seemingly dead inside as well.
The rain kept falling relentlessly. Could it be a failure in the rain system? What could have caused something like this? After all, it was an unusual day for everyone on that small yet advanced planet.
Each of them was placed in a separate car, with two officers in the front, while they sat in the back. The vehicles were very similar to the one Smith had been taken in, differing only in the lighting—probably for identification.
...
Inside the car, in flight, the rain still hadn't stopped, and the Germans kept talking about it the entire time.
H.K. was the most impatient and irritated, but like the others, he didn't show it.
[2]
„Warum regnet es so stark?"
„Ich habe gehört, dass das Regensystem beschädigt wurde … Von wem wurde es beschädigt?"
„Alter… was für ein seltsamer Tag."
„Wirklich … ich weiß nicht, was sonst noch passieren könnte! Es ist das erste Mal, dass wir so hart gearbeitet haben. Der Boss ist gestorben, und außerdem dachten wir, diese Mistkerle hätten den Boss und sich selbst in die Luft gesprengt."
PA!
POW!
Like a row of dominoes, the officers were taken down one by one.
They had hidden weapons in their clothes. Burton, Cassandra, Harvey, and Heinrich had torn the fabric at the edge of their pockets so they could easily access them even while handcuffed. Each had a knife tucked inside their pants, concealed within the torn fabric. At the right moment, they reached into their pockets and swiftly stabbed the officers. None of them had any trouble—before the police arrived, in the very rain, they had trained efficient techniques with Cassandra.
Meanwhile, Stjarna and H.K. used small stones they had hidden in their mouths.
Everyone with a knife struck directly at the officers' throats. They did it without hesitation, without guilt, without even considering the idea of not doing it. Stjarna also felt nothing. However, H.K. hesitated for a moment. And beyond that, he felt a slight pang of guilt for the slaughter.
They quickly opened the doors and unbuckled the officers' seatbelts milliseconds after killing them.
The officers never saw it coming. After all… they had surrendered, handed over their weapons, and hadn't resisted.
...
One by one, the officers tumbled out, and the group swiftly jumped into the front seats, shutting the doors. Before taking off, they rushed to turn off the radios—which, fortunately, weren't active in all the cars.
Cassandra, Stjarna, and Burton's cars were very high up, so they had no trouble maintaining control during this short moment of chaos. However, H.K., Harvey, and Heinrich struggled to manage the vehicles. H.K. didn't find it too difficult—after all, he was a pilot—but for Harvey and Heinrich, it was much more complicated. They knew almost nothing about piloting, even a simple vehicle like that.
One of the vehicles lost control and plummeted to the ground.
KABOOM!
Heinrich was terrified… He felt guilty. Everything that had crossed his mind until now… He felt like a burden. And he gave up on trying to survive.
The rest of the team, of course, quickly noticed, but they had all expected something like this to happen.
"Just one more!"
They all thought almost collectively. Nothing could shake them anymore.
They accelerated through the air as fast as possible, trying to arrive before the other cars that still had prisoners.
It all happened so fast.
They landed, smashing most of the car's body.
Harvey flipped in a loop three times before crashing onto the police station's roof.
Cassandra and Stjarna skidded across the ground, only stopping when they crashed into the station's wall.
The others managed to stay stable, though they landed just as fast.
...
...
Antiqua Tellus, April 12, 2099
Two men were walking across the cruel land, each with a purpose.
The sun had finally seemed to hide behind the thick clouds in the overcast sky.
Smith was drenched in sweat. The water from his perspiration seeped into his warm clothes, making him even more exhausted. His arms were numb from carrying that body.
Hans, on the other hand, was calm. He wasn't exerting much effort, as he was walking slowly to keep pace with Smith.
Smith couldn't take it anymore… And as always, he screamed.
--- I'M DONE! TO HELL WITH THIS SHIT!
He dropped the body onto the ground, propping it against a rock that had a slightly rectangular shape and was long enough to support it. Then, he sat beside the body, one of his weapons in hand. Still panting, he began shaking his sweaty and filthy white shirt, hoping to get some relief from the heat…
Hans stopped for a moment and looked back, but he showed no irritation. Instead, he walked toward his brother.
He sat down with his back to the body, on the other side of the rock. He was about to say something, but he was interrupted.
Suddenly, the corpse had an inexplicable spasm. Could it be a post-mortem twitch? Hans quickly reasoned. But that wasn't important—because Smith, startled, jumped from the rock and inadvertently fired at the body, hitting its face several times.
Hans had also been completely startled, and as he turned at the moment Smith fired, blood and bits of flesh splattered all over Hans' face and body.
The body fell backward, sliding onto the ground.
--- WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO, SMITH?!
Hans got up, his usual calm shattered. He stepped over the rock and, trampling the body beneath his boot, went straight for Smith and punched him hard with his right fist!
Smith didn't even respond. He just touched his nose, now bleeding from the punch.
--- SMITH! YOU'RE CARRYING THAT BODY JUST LIKE THIS! EVEN IF WE HAVE TO EXTORT MONEY FROM THE COPS! I WANT MY DAMN MONEY!
Smith remained silent, wiping his face and trying to clean the blood splattered on him with his shirt.
--- DID YOU REALLY HAVE TO DESECRATE AN INNOCENT MAN'S BODY?! KILLING HIM WASN'T ENOUGH?! YOU HAD TO MUTILATE A MAN YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW?!
Smith stayed quiet. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. Then, without a word, he grabbed the corpse by the arm and started dragging it.
The only thing that could be felt now was the nauseating stench of blood and death filling their nostrils.
Hans remained silent, walking a few seconds later while trying to cover his nose.
But before moving on, he stopped for a moment and looked at the ground, at the blood and guts spilled across it. He stared, but he felt nothing.
He looked at his hands, his clothes, and paused, lost in thought.
Why don't I feel anything? It's a human being, right? I should feel pity, shouldn't I?!
Regardless of what he thought, he kept walking, staring at the trail of blood left behind as Smith dragged the corpse. Watching the sound of flesh scraping against the earth—the land they were born from, the Mother Earth, Antiqua Tellus…
How far had they fallen? To desecrate God's creation like this? Deep inside, Smith and Hans questioned whether they were still human… And if they were, how much humanity was even left in them?
...
...
...
[1]
"They surrender!" "They have surrendered!" "Arrest these bastards now!" "Did they kill Hans?" "I wanted to kill those sons of bitches!"
[2]
"Why is it raining so hard?"
"I heard the rain system was damaged... Who damaged it?"
"Dude... what a weird day."
"Really... I don't know what else could have happened! This is the first time we've worked this hard. The boss died, and besides, we thought those bastards had blown the boss and themselves up."