62. COMPLETION
alistair
One hand remains pressed against the wound in my torso while the other hangs at my side with the suppressor still clenched between my fingers.
Blood slips through my hand with every step I take, leaving a dark trail across the laboratory floor that once represented everything the Dominion wanted me to become.
It seems fitting that the empire should drown in the blood of the weapon it created.
I drag myself toward the man who murdered my mother like gravity has lost permission to stop me.
The sirens continue screaming somewhere beyond the laboratory walls. Smoke hangs in the air. Some men are shouting outside the room.
I cannot spare any of them my attention.
There has only ever been one unfinished equation.
The Crown laughs, the sound distorted even without the machinery that had hidden his identity for decades.
“I should have killed you alongside your mother.”
An interesting statement. For years, I believed the same thing.
I stop in front of him and look down at the body lying at my feet. The bullet entered his chest exactly where I intended it to.
“Your loss,” I step over him, making him let out another ugly cry as my shoe comes down forcefully on the wound I put there.
My body also protests with sharp, immediate agony from the movement.
I ignore it. Pain has always been a reflection of how you’re being affected. Nothing else.
Swallowing down the pain, I bend down and remove the mask from his face. For the first time in my existence, I look directly at my father.
The laboratory disappears.
I remember standing outside a locked room since I wasn’t permitted to see my father. Didn’t know who he was.
I remember doctors and scientists discussing mother’s death as though they were reviewing failed research.
I remember him telling me that love and attachment are a biological flaw.
I remember promising myself that one day I’d destroy every person responsible for her death.
Somewhere along the way, I forgot.
However, the conditioning continued. So did the experiments.
The Dominion stripped away every unnecessary part of me until revenge itself became an inefficient use of energy.
Eventually, I stopped being a child with a purpose and started to become exactly what they wanted me to become. A machine.
Machines do not grieve or mourn.
Machines do not love or hate.
Machines certainly do not throw themselves in front of bullets.
Then Ariella Keinston walked into my life and ruined years of careful engineering of my biological brain simply by existing.
The man beneath me smiles. Even now, he believes this is a victory.
“You were always meant to become me.”
Every wall inside me seems to crack as I study his face with disdain.
The face I spent years imagining.
The face I spent years hating.
“I am you,” I tell him quietly. “And that’s why I know how this ends,” I raise the handgun and lower the barrel until it’s pointing directly at his hideous face.
For a brief moment, I think of my mother.
Just the memory of someone who once held my hand before the Dominion decided that love was a defect requiring correction.
I think of the promise a frightened twelve-year-old boy made beside a closed door by his mother’s lifeless body.
I think of all the years I convinced myself that I had abandoned that promise.
I was wrong. I simply forgot why I wanted to keep it.
Until Ariella reminded me of my purpose.
With no hesitation or emotion, I pull the trigger right on his face.
The first shot doesn’t even finish echoing through the laboratory before I’m pulling the trigger over and over again.
I keep firing until until there’s nothing left in front of me that resembles the man who built Triarch Dominion.
I keep pulling the trigger even though the barrel is sizzling and the bullets ran out.
Accepting that the gun is dead, I drop it aside with all the calmness. I only stop once I’ve made an ugly mess of his brains and blood, just like the failed Synthètes that I had to authorize to melt into a puddle of smashed flesh.
Silence detonates in the aftermath. The kind of silence that only arrives after an empire finally dies.
Slowly, I turn. My eyes immediately find those hazel orbs now rimmed red.
Ariella is alive, and crying.
I spent years believing I was incapable of feeling anything at all. Yet the only thought that survives the blood loss, the pain, and the destruction around me is the absurd relief that she is still standing there. Perfectly in one piece.
My mother wanted me to live.
The Dominion wanted me to survive.
That’s a difference I never understood until she happened. Until in this moments of finality, I look into those eyes.
A weak smile touches my lips before I can stop it. “Thank you, Ariella.”
The words are quieter than the silence surrounding us—save it for the dying sirens. But they are the truest thing I have ever said to anyone.
My legs finally surrender.
“Alastor!” somewhere in the distance I hear someone screaming.
My mother was the only person who ever pronounced my name that way.
For one impossible second, I almost believe she came back for me. Even if it’s the last beautiful dream I’ll ever get to see.
But the dream abandons me too, just like everybody else.
And I fall into the dark pit in peace knowing that the promise I made to her has finally been fulfilled.