Time flies, no more excuses can be used. After the events of yesterday, leaders had to take on a decision quickly, and Genova knew she was going to get what she wanted, as always. One last conflict, for the sake of a sick way of thinking. On her device, Genova watches tv, eagerly, and they admit defeat. Tonight, at seven pm, five different armies will fight against her. Expecting some help, a miracle, something, they started to think they had a chance. The population will be reduced because she engaged in a route filled with darkness and pain and chose perfection as a mentor.
Tanks and formations station at ground level, praying for whatever God they each think is the real one. Grabbing on their weapons with their gloves on, the sweat dripping from their forehead. Genova was on top of the hill, possibly fifty feet from the ground, laying down.
"Well, this is it. This is what I wanted. True, absolute terror engineering a war. They will see me win the greatest human battle ever. They're waiting for me. For me to start it. I really want to take a nap, first."
Genova got into position and closed her eyes. The entire place was rigged to the micrometer with electrical discharges and bear traps. And by respect also, nobody would ever dare to disturb her peace at the moment. So she used that loud silence as white noise to fall asleep. In a few minutes, she was dreaming of a sensation rather than a place. Heat. Comfortable warmth. Peaceful gestures. Safe environnement. She felt at ease, welcomed, at home.
"It's the bench. Hey, guys."
"You're not supposed to be here."
"Ismael, it's me."
"Genova, you've hurt me. I can barely talk and breathe!"
"It wasn't me, it was Raven."
"Yeah but you started this whole thing. You brought a knife to school, remember?"
"Raven, I don't remember..."
"That's enough, Genova. You've turned me into a monster, I don't recognize myself anymore. I don't like what you did to me."
"I didn't."
"And I was blown apart. Look at what's left of me. There's nothing."
"I wasn't there."
"Why do I know if people go to hell or heaven, Genova?"
"I don't know."
"What do you know? You just stand there. You look at the sun and you raise your arms, I mean that's all you do! You don't even belong here. The bench is full, there wasn't any place for you to begin with."
"What if you guys scoop up a little? So I can seat."
"Hey Genova."
"Yes, Ismael?"
"Let's get back up, all of us, and play ball!"
"Fine!"
Here he is, Ismael, the future sniper. In this dream where they are all still kids, Genova finally smiles of pure happiness.
"Catch!"
Genova catches it and it's a grenade, pin was pulled already. She stares at it and then looks back at them and in line they stare.
"You told us to get involved in the Killing of Nara. It was you."
Genova woke up screaming, for she thought she had exploded in her dream.
"It's not yet televised, nobody saw that."
Raven and Ismael, using her satellite images in real time, couldn't believe it. Genova had nightmares. This whole time, she might have had those nightmares surging and devouring her. The wound was real, but it was within. Invisible until now. Genova is afraid, human, yet still perfect at what she does. And it is happening now. They confirm it is happening. Even more soldiers have arrived at the scene. But she's not ready anymore. There is no preparation for the action. She can barely check the reload and quality of her guns. So she drops them on the rocky ground and holds her arms in distress, her messy hair and her body shaking.
One of the generals had a megaphone and warned the girl.
"Weapon trafficker Genova, if you do not come down from this hill in ten seconds, we will obliterate you. So far we've met your requirements. It is your turn to meet your recommendations on your deal."
There was a girl, on a hill, scared of what she had created. A girl with post traumatic stress syndrome who had the entire world against her. Who managed to anger every human on the planet. She wanted to be alone, and there she was, unable to express herself. So she hides her tears.
"The ego is gone. Raven, it's going to be Mateni all over again."
"There is no going back, Ismael. She went too far."
She jumps and lands in a good enough manner considering the height. She's armed to the teeth. She starts to shoot her guns and the bullets fire, the tanks aims at her but hesitates.
"The big canons are less precise, she's deceiving them. Look at the body language, she's out of herself. Dead eyes."
Raven's assumption was correct, Genova was daydreaming.
"I'll throw it back to you, Ismael. Your ball."
"No way, it'll explode at my face!"
"Then why did you throw it at me?"
"Because I want you to die!"
Her eye quickly glances at the youngest soldier on the left side of the formation, trips him and uses him as human shield.
"Give me your weapons and ammunitions, Ismael."
"That's not my name", said the soldier, trembling.
"All of you want me dead, right? Is there a place on the bench? Am I allowed?"
"Well...recess is still going. As far as I know. Why don't you just sit and use your knife on your own skin?"
"See if it hurts", adds Gloria.
"I want you to look, though."
"Okay! I can look!"
Gloria sits on the ground and watches Genova stab her own throat. In reality, she was arms in arms with the soldier, sat down and was shooting at random by her back.
"The knife was deeper. You have to hold tight. Like a sword, you know, like those cartoons we watch on the morning before going to school."
"I...get it...Raven."
"She's bleeding all right. She's doing it", said Gloria.
"Go further. Put a smile on that throat. If you can't make it, you're not our friend. You're a fraud."
"People who aren't friends are enemies", announced Ismael. "That's what you told us, right?"
"Come on, Gennie. You're good at everything, at the very least be good at killing yourself."
On the battlefield, she had found a way, by holding the soldier on her back and sprinting low, to get inside the formation. They were incapable of placing a bullet. One bullet. All it took was one good shot. But there were too many of them, so they improvised and withdrew from one another. She wasn't here anymore, she was hiding under the tank. Leaving a belt of grenades under it, she leaves the spot at the right moment to make it back into the crowd that she annihilates with her two Steyr TMP, one in each hand. Shoots below the tank and blows it up. She had planned the weather, and added to it the smoke from the fires she had set before dropping down the hill. She presses a button on her device on her back and the explosives detonated in just the right angle to shoot all of the bear traps into the groups of soldiers. "Going dark", she whispers to herself. The snipers couldn't get a shot. Theigon, hidden near a cave on the right side of the mount, couldn't get a shot at her.
She emerges and within the collective commotion, sees a young male soldier, losing his mind and looking for help.
"Gloria, are you happy, now? She did it. She put a smile on her throat. Now if she smiles, she'll actually laugh instead of staring at us like a rogue animal."
"Ismael am I your friend, now?"
"Depends. You're gonne have to lay under the bed so I can see if you go to heaven or hell."
Genova, in the battlefield, curled up to herself, thinking she was in recess still.
"She did it. She sucks at being a friend. She's good at everything besides being a friend."
"Hey, Genova. Maybe you can squeeze under, so we can't even see you, anymore. You really have to act dead. Okay, everybody! Move, now. Graves are for one person only."
Ismael puts his two fingers up, one knee down and touches the bench.
"Nothing happened! Purgatory!"
"She's so bad she can't even go to hell!"
"That's mean, Gloria!"
"That's the truth. She's insane. Nobody really wants to be her friend anyway. She's a weirdo."
Genova crawls back out, crying.
"You guys are evil. I was trying to make new friends."
Genova pulls out a desert eagle and shoots the kids one by one.
"I just wanted to have friends. I want to make memories."
So she gets in the middle, the corpses of her friends rotting at the sun. They converge on her and decompose on her.
"I'll be friends with cadavers now. They're warm. They don't judge."
Back to herself, she had made an infuriating carnage and left no one. She could not, for the life of her, remember anything. Theigon shoots and gets her leg.
"Viper to Eagle, this is how you do it."
"Roger on that one. Any visual on Tiger?"
"She left the site. I'm leaving. Got her left leg. My endurance is on the field. Not meant for tracking down targets. You do the rest, Eagle."
"Thank you for your work, Viper. Go drink a few and take some rest, we'll take it from here."
"Roger that."
"Isma, I have a reading on the east river. Something is swimming but as you might expect, that doesn't look human."
"I'm on my way."
"Wait, Isma. It's a cargo. Military, repurposed to transfer illegal merchandise. My take is that she prepped the whole scene to then flee from the killing to the ship to rest there while travelling safely to another location. That is beyond anything I could have ever come up with. This is asanine. Remember. She's highly unstable. Be sharp, Eagle."
"Roger that, Honey Badger", Ismael replied, high fiving Raven.