Interviewer: Why do you wish to join the ARC?
Respondent: [Laughter] I want to be the best. I want to win. Is that enough? I want to take the enemy and grind them out of existence. I want victory.
Application interview for enlistment, EID: MATT26v48-52KJV, name, TRINITY KISMET HOPELAND. Collated by ARC Information Warfare Division, filed under “CASE ID ISAH13v10-13KJV”
GETHSEMANE Complex interior, Corpus Christi, Texas, Axis Mundi, Earth, UCF 05/20/454, 1440 hours
Hanabi squeezes her fingers around Trinity’s throat. It is soft and warm, and it gives under her grasp like ripe fruit. Hanabi thinks back to their first night together, Trinity giggling and kissing Hanabi’s own neck. Leaving marks to be hidden in the morning. These are my marks.
I’m sorry.
This is the most reprehensible, unforgivable part of the whole act. That she knows, she is sorry, and she will do it anyway. Trinity strains, clawing at Hanabi’s fingers, trying to pry them off, scrabbling like an animal. Pounding her small fists weakly against Hanabi’s arms. Blood vessels in her eyes bursting, smearing little red firework marks across her beautiful green eyes. Eyes like barium flames.
It takes so long.
Tears are flowing freely from both of their eyes now. Hanabi’s, from grief. She can only begin to guess the emotions flickering through her lover. Fear. Pain. Sorrow. Hanabi swallows the hope that it will be over soon. She deserves my full presence.
Trinity uses the last of her strength to whisper, in fragments.
“I was your friend… I trusted you.” Her fight starts to weaken. Hanabi squeezes harder.
“I know. And I loved you. And this war is so much bigger than any of us. It’s bigger than any of us who have come and who will come. And it has to end. It has to end. And so long as the UCF remains, it will not end. I’m so sorry. You were used. I wish it could have been different.”
Hanabi looks up at Trinity’s eyes.
“Trin—”
She is already dead. Her eyes are empty, hollow, like the shell of the ISCARIOT outside. In all likelihood, she didn’t hear anything Hanabi said at all. Too late now for last words.
Hanabi releases her lover’s throat, slowly, shaking. Trinity’s eyes do not blink. Her chest does not rise, hungry for air. She is still. Her arms curled, hands clenched in front of her chest in decorticate posturing from violent lack of brain oxygen. Those barium flames now dulled. Head ringed by a halo of hazelnut curls. Hanabi remembers, for the first time since leaving the Rumsfeld, that Trinity was beautiful. Even here, with her face bloodied and bruised, her lips cracked and oozing. She was beautiful.
Hanabi does not weep. She does not cry out. She just rises to her feet and walks away.
Trinity Kismet Hopeland is gone. Her corpse lies on the floor of the GETHSEMANE. Slowly leeching warmth into the lithosteel of the floor. Its eyes open and staring, surprised that this is the end.