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In less than an hour, the Malta operation turned from a guaranteed affair to an utterly baffling disaster.
Soyona doesn’t know why she’s surprised; in the days since her partner’s unexpected betrayal, she’s been on a very tight timetable set out by BioSyn to collect an asset (a human girl, at that) and get out of there before anyone could catch onto her whereabouts. She’s always been careful, but the precautions she’s used to taking can only be managed when she has adequate time to prepare.
What time she’s had before it all collapsed so majestically in front of her has been spent evading arrest and hiring hapless goons to do the dirty work. Hard to find good help these days, for some reason.
And that’s not even acknowledging the way her last partner sold her out so mercilessly.
It would almost be admirable, Soyona reckons, if it hadn’t stung so sharply. She’d known Brooklynn less than a month, and already the young woman had captured her attention, her interest, her affection. She owed her life to her at one point, recalls the tight grip coiled around her wrist that kept her from plummeting into the waiting maw of a mutated asset, and it’s been hard to forget how secure it felt having someone so ready to help her.
So Soyona had rewarded that, stoked that ambitious spark and canny intuition with all that she could find. Expensive champagne, always kept cool. Top-end coffee grinds, all to her taste. A new wardrobe, all likely worth double the cutting-edge prosthetic she’d been able to procure for her in addition.
And her lips. God, had Soyona never tasted such a remarkable set of lips. Forgive a woman for turning into such a romantic when the one person she believed she could trust accepted her genuine offers of company between the frenetic madness of their operations.
But Brooklynn’s allegiances ultimately laid elsewhere, in the arms of those damned friends of hers she’d all but believed her to have abandoned. No, not even that’s entirely true. Soyona suspected Brooklynn might one day return to the rest of the Nublar Six. She had just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.
Or that it wouldn’t interfere with her business.
But that’s why she’s here, now, making a quick escape to the airfield where her pilot is bound to be waiting. The bloody feds are on her tail, forcing her to wind through the busy, compact streets of where she might have once taken a relaxing little vacation; now, there’s no doubt she can never show her face here again.
The sole silver lining she can latch onto as she makes her getaway is that her raptors are likely tearing Owen Grady to shreds right now. She tries not to mix business with pleasure, but she can hardly help the gleeful little thought from playing in the back of her mind, nor the faint, hopeful smile it elicits. That ex-Navy meathead surely got what’s coming to him.
As for what’s coming to her? Well, she’s been on the opposite side of the law countless times, and each instance has only led to further success for her. In every failure is an opportunity to learn, to adapt, to cover up the gaps gone wrong with better solutions and better precautions.
And next time, she’ll be smarter than to let herself be roped into a deal with that dope, Lewis Dodgson.
Hopefully, she’ll also be smarter than to let herself get tripped up over some girl again.
The idea of it hardens her features, carves out what remaining affection has nestled deep into her heart and fills what space remains with a bleeding, blistering vitriol. She could have given Brooklynn the world, and in return asked only for cooperation, understanding, and companionship. What kind of person gives up that kind of an opportunity to run crying back to some meddling kids who have let them down on countless occasions, who could never understand the true capacity for her brilliant potential?
It’s no matter. Brooklynn’s name, once ornamented in gilded adoration, is a waste of air now, and with how fast she’s running (and in heels, no less), she’ll need every breath she can muster to make it out of Malta unscathed.
Which she can’t really say is the case for Ghost. Not after she turns a corner and skips down the limestone stairs just in time to watch the raptor plummet from the sky, her pilot’s jet soaring off ahead of her with its cargo bay sealing closed.
Soyona’s eyes widen in alarm, her feet planted as she takes the situation in. One of her assets? Down, possibly for good. Her ticket out of here and away from the law? A thousand feet above and away from her. Also possibly for good.
Any chance of a proper escape is dashed, and Soyona feels the rage simmer up into her cheeks before a livid, resentful roar fires out the back of her throat. With white-knuckled fists and tears stinging the corners of her eyes, Soyona lets the mounted frustrations of this god-awful week wreck her, splinter the polish she’s adorned herself in, crease the sharp and stony features of her expression beyond measure.
She screams at Kayla and her heart of gold, weighted in favour of screwing her over despite all the shine it’s always lacked.
She screams at Dodgson, whose eagerness to pioneer such a ridiculous scheme as giant fucking locusts has cost her everything she’s earned for herself.
She screams at her Handler for making her manage an entire pack of raptors on her own, and she screams at those raptors for being so inept as to let two American dunces evade them so handily.
She screams and rages and cusses out everything ahead of her, without half a mind to pay to what slinks up behind her; it isn’t until she stops to catch her breath that that sensation of being watched, being followed, being regarded with both pity and disdain returns to her, and she spins around to catch sight of the one person who she should be directing all this anger at.
Brooklynn.
Fucking Brooklynn.
She’s leaning against the limestone wall separating the road from the staircase, that blasted phone of hers raised to capture Soyona’s honest display of vexation. A cunning, devious smile splits across her features, far too handsome on her even as Soyona loses that one last thing she can hold onto.
Without dignity, Soyona snarls, “You.”
“Looks like you missed your ride, Santos,” Brooklynn remarks, angling her eyes towards the sky above. “Now was it TSA this time? Or just slept in?”
Soyona flares her nostrils and pinches her lips into a scowl; even while they were working together, Brooklynn’s attempts at jokes were always steeped in a forced cheekiness. Normally, she’d roll her eyes at these flippant remarks. Sometimes, she’d even find them quaint.
But she hardly has the patience for it right now. She can’t consider anything about Brooklynn beyond reprehension as she stands there, her presence practically a mockery of what they had – and what she took from her.
“What did you do?” Soyona demands with a growl.
Brooklynn shrugs, striding over to her with the ease of someone unafraid of danger. Perhaps she’s been put in peril far too many times, several instances of Soyona’s own making. Is it recklessness, or is it arrogance?
She laments that she may never have the opportunity to find out which one she wears more brazenly.
“I,” Brooklynn starts emphatically, “haven’t done a thing. That is, nothing new. I just came for the show.”
“I can’t imagine it was much of a show,” Soyona tries, barely managing to contain the warble of impatience in her tone.
Brooklynn just laughs at her, and once again the indignity of it rakes at the back of her mind. “You got your ass handed to you! Trust me, it was well worth the price of admission.”
“And what price is that?”
“Well, my friends had to push their trip home a few days back.” Brooklynn glances down at her phone and chuckles curtly. “Once I told them what for, they just had one request: take plenty of pictures.”
The shutter sound snaps, and so does Soyona.
She charges at Brooklynn, fury and defiance setting ablaze any reason she might have approached the situation with otherwise. She grips her by the shoulders, digging long, white talons into the pale skin she’d have once embraced with an equally burning desire, before grappling Brooklynn against the stone wall behind her.
“You bitch!” she roars, hisses, spits, hoping the way she says the word drowns out the sweetness she’s held her name with all this time.
But Brooklynn doesn’t take the assault lying down, cannily raising her palm to the corner of Soyona’s jaw and wrestling her fingers around the lobe of her ear. The strike manages to tug her earring aside, and a searing pain fires off across Soyona’s head.
With a grunt of both exertion and agony, Soyona tears herself from Brooklynn’s grasp, nearly losing the accessory in the process. She’s garnered enough scars in her line of work; one more wouldn’t make a world of difference, so long as it allowed her the opportunity to get the upper hand here.
Sirens wail in the distance, and Soyona goes stiff in alarm for a second, recognizing what little advantages she’s losing in this skirmish.
“Sounds like they’re gaining,” Brooklynn grumbles through gritted teeth. “You gonna go willingly?”
“Oh, you’d like that,” Soyona snarls. She curls her fingers into the fabric of Brooklynn’s shirt, digging under the hems of her sleeves before launching her aside with what limited force she has to work with.
The next thing she knows, she’s toppling down the stairs with her assailant, what remains of her left arm hooked around her waist as they tumble to the sandy cobblestone below. Several blows set her vision spinning, others leave her jaw screaming in agony, but it isn’t until they’ve finally settled on the ground below that Soyona’s able to catch her breath and recognize just what kind of sorry state she’s in.
Skinned elbows. Cuts and scrapes on her cheek and forehead. Blood gurgling on her tongue.
And above it all – above her – is Brooklynn, the beautiful, infuriating architect of her downfall.
She’s collected a few scrapes herself, though not nearly as many as Soyona reckons she has. After all, if she were just as injured, there’d be no chance for her to climb atop Soyona’s stomach, thighs pressed to either side of her as her knees dig into the stone beneath them. The faint light offered by a partly obscured sun catches in the teal of her unkempt hair, curves around her pale shoulders and ears, haloes her dimly in stark contrast to the darkness caught in her gaze.
Soyona sighs, her breath rattling in laboured apprehension. She should be so proud with how far she’s gotten, but all she can think of is the unspoken, unvisited potential of their partnership. It lies in tatters between them, blood-stained and choked into oblivion, and Soyona hardly has the strength or the resolve to reclaim it, not when Brooklynn has such a dangerous tilt to her features.
And then she’s struck, hard knuckles streaking across her cheek and nose, before Brooklynn growls, “That’s for the arm.”
She strikes her again, and Soyona’s vision hardly falters. This is the colour that suits her best, this passionate defiance and righteous fury. The blood pools in her cheeks, swelling beneath the bruises forming in the wake of each punch, as a flustered dusting of dark red blush circles them.
“For my friends.” Another strike, this one bloodying her nose.
“For all the people you’ve hurt.” Another strike, and Soyona feels herself sinking into a dizzied haze.
“For ever thinking I could be like you.”
And Soyona’s had enough. Atrociraptors may work as excellent enforcers, but her last resort has always been what she can carry herself: a knife, ivory-handled and kept polished since the day she obtained it. It’s never tasted blood, but Soyona has, and with it blossoming in her mouth and pouring from her wounds, nothing makes it boil more than the accusation lanced her way.
She unsheathes the weapon from her belt, levelling it with Brooklynn’s abdomen as she steels herself for what has to be a killing blow–
Brooklynn beats her to it, and the result of her arrogance is a splitting, searing pain between her ribs and a shuddering look of frenzied shock set upon her. Around her knuckles sit Brooklynn’s fingers, though hardly in any meaningful configuration. A moment of panic, of resolve, of desperation to keep herself intact, and Soyona’s paid the price for her partner’s determination.
She would be impressed, if it didn’t hurt so much.
Soyona’s fingers fall away from the weapon, but Brooklynn leaves hers around its hilt, keeping the blade in place as the stark white of her tunic soaks up the crimson of her wound. No words pass between them, the silence both damning and affirming. There’s no way Brooklynn can look upon what she’s wrought and feel anything but horrified.
“That’s it,” Soyona lets out breathlessly, barely managing to lift herself to be as level with Brooklynn as she can. “That’s the spirit.”
Soyona angles forward, even as the blade slices through her innards and draws even more blood to spill against the stone ground beneath them. The apprehension in Brooklynn’s gaze is palpable, an exquisite contradiction swimming in her features. Somewhere in that look is the Brooklynn that she worked with, that she got to know. The Brooklynn who recalls her story, who truly enjoyed her company, who so eagerly awaited every moment of bliss between them and passionately accepted every offered kiss and touch and embrace.
Maybe it’s the way her eyes stay in Soyona’s gaze, captivated by what she sees as the life slowly fades from her. Maybe it’s the rose dusting of blush beneath her cheeks, once seen in such an intimate light no one else might ever have the privilege of enjoying.
Or maybe it’s the blood on her hand, the hand set against her wound, the wound that will ultimately take Soyona’s life – and the killing that Brooklynn will take to her grave.
With one final, defiant urge, Soyona leans in and presses her lips to Brooklynn, ever closing her eyes, never letting the pain draw her back down. She wants to see the end, and she wants to see how Brooklynn regards her as she finally succumbs to the injury, her vision drawing dark and her jaw unclamping limply.
And she would have been in love, if love wasn’t what would ultimately destroy Soyona Santos.