Emergence 0001  - Rock Bottom

​Brian Clausen died on the airship.

Despite this, he sat at the end of a frayed and mangled bed, surrounded by the rotting beige of a dronetown flophouse. His beard had grown wild; his hair matted and clumped. Blood stained his knuckles, bruises marred his face, and his breath stank of cheap whiskey. 

Clausen raised his bleary, blackened eyes, but he could not see his reflection. Shards of bloodied glass lay about the countertop below a shattered plastic frame, but Clausen did not perceive this wreckage, either. Instead, he dangled over a yawning abyss, clinging to Slim as they pitched past the ledge. The medic's stare pierced him, frozen in desperation and pain, but the man's body vanished below the waist, strung into burnt gore.

If Clausen had been stronger, Slim would still be alive.

That fact pounded at his temple, clawed through his chest. He had failed his men.

Clausen drifted without time or place. Each time he opened his eyes, he found himself in a new layer of hell.

He'd awoken in a hospital. Then, in a prison. He'd sat before a red-faced judge and watched the magistrate's spittle hang in the camera's flash. With every snap of a digital shutter, all he could see was Marcos's chest ripping apart, feel the wet heat splash over his face, and watch his friend's body slide down the wall.

If Clausen had been faster, Marcos would still be alive.

They'd read him his rights; they'd read him his charts; but, from bandages to manacles, none of it mattered. He was guilty. He was damned. When the mob jumped the bailiff line, and the fists and boots rained on his broken ribs, he'd deserved it. He'd earned it. With every blow, all he felt was the concussion from when Frank Parvotti placed that gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. 

If Clausen had been decisive, Parvotti would still be alive.

Stripped of rank and discharged without honor, the State denied him the mercy of a rope. It did not matter that the crimes were lies. They called him a mercenary, a murderer, and seven kinds of savage, but he did not protest. By inaction, he'd failed. Through complicity, he'd scuttled the Plymouth.

Twelve hundred sixty-eight. That was the count of the dead. He'd tried to read the names, but they wouldn't stick in his head, replaced by buzzing and blurring light.

Twelve hundred sixty-eight, by his hand. He'd ordered the charges placed; he'd severed the drive. Yet, the noose was more than he warranted, for in his moments of weakness, he'd wished Poole were alive - not for his friend's own sake - but so the officer could have given the order. In the deepest, piercing shame, Clausen had wished his friend had survived just to spare himself the guilt. Every time that treasonous thought recurred, the dagger twisted through his heart, and all the world bled away. In his truest, secret self, Clausen had learned himself so weak that he would dishonor the dead. 
Clausen drowned himself in a bottle full of loathing and let the universe wash him away. 

In flashes of a failing viewscreen, he watched the State sell him lies. They called Halstead a butcher. The Colonel had tried to save those people, and Clausen had failed. Let the living take the blame, not the dead. If he'd secured the drive faster, they would have more time. They could have evacuated.

He could have saved them!

Blood dripped from his brow. His left eye was swollen again, from another fight picked and lost. Brawls weren't hard to start. Find a bar, declare his name and rank, then wait for the rage and take it.

Drink the hate, swallow the pain. The bottle went up, and time went under.

Dronetown was dying. He could smell it in the ash barrels and the stink from the deep pipes. He could hear it in the baffles' screams and the blue siren flashes that slipped through blackout curtains. The espos were out in force, and they were always good for a beating.

That did make getting a gun harder. Harder, but not impossible.

He'd cleaned the pistol three times today, and only once sober. On the day he couldn't take it, when he grew too weak to continue, that was his escape. It waited by the bottles as a challenge and reminder: suicide was for cowards. He was here to suffer, not flee.

Clausen finished the bottle. It went down like water.

This bottle had killed his father.

Brian Clausen had grown up fast. He'd always been the strongest - the rock for others to lean on. He'd followed the rules and done everything right: Be stoic. Have a plan. Never bitch. Never flinch. His father had drowned in a shitty plastic cup, but Brian Clausen had saved his family from falling below the baffles.

But look where he'd landed, now - three decks below the pumps. 

Dronetown. Right where he belonged.

There was blood on his hands and dirt in his soul. He couldn't quench the rage, no matter how much he drank.

He needed more.

More, until he couldn't feel feelings. More, until he couldn't think thoughts.

More, until he burned up. More, until he plunged into the black.

More, until the numbness carved a tunnel unending and stole him from the day.

The bottle struck the dresser top, and it rang a hollow toll. It was empty, and he couldn't remember where it came from.
His lips were wet. He didn't remember drinking.

A haggard man stared back from a fragmented reflection, a cruel mockery of a soldier's memory.

Knives pierced his knuckles. 

Glass rained about his wrist.

Blood dripped from the shards and stained an ever-more-broken mirror.

Blood had run through the halls of the airship. It had seeped, hot and thick, from under every unopened door. It had sprayed from Parvotti's skull, dripped from Slim's ribs, and vented from Marcos' chest. It had filled the halls to bursting.
It covered him, head to toe, and not even the ocean could wash him clean.

Drink. 

That was his only command.

Drink, and drown in the nightmare.

Sarah was waiting for him on the other side. She was on a boat amid stilled waters, in another life he'd never known. All his team was there, gathered 'round and swapping tales. If he swam deep enough, he could reach them.

But every time he neared that still and welcome place, he would hear the petrels' call. He would smell the salt and oil and blood. 

He would wake to vomit and fire and hurt and remember that they should have left him dead. 

The doctors had saved his body. They'd stitched him whole and rolled him to trial, bound hand and foot, and delirious from the pain. 

They should have hanged him, but the judge had condemned him to live. This was his final mission: endure and soak up the shame. Every bit he could pull onto himself, he extracted from the dead. 

Let them rest in peace. This time, he would do his duty.

Clausen toppled against the bed. The cooler roared until frost grew from its vents. His skin burned, and the blankets were soaked with sweat. Another bottle thudded against the carpet.

He wasn't done. Not yet.

He swam through another drink. The white cap bounced away and clattered into a darkened corner. As he slipped into his twilight tunnel, he heard his door opening, and he wondered if these thoughts would be his last.

The tunnel broke, consciousness returned, and something was terribly wrong.

That unease blossomed into discomfort, then violent illness.

He vomited, forceful enough to smash his head against the toilet rim. Shit-stained ceramic swam through his vision, and the stink of bile filled his nose. 

His stomach churned. His knees ached on the cement floor.

The orange-flecked porcelain toppled closer, and rough hands grabbed his hair, a mechanical vice preserving him from plunging into his filth.

Another firehose spewed from his gut. He retched as the awful poison dissolved into an aching, relieved, empty.

The world swam again. Two more chokes and he toppled onto the floor, unconscious.

When he awoke, he lay propped against the headboard, with an IV strapped to his arm and a saline drip strung from the nightstand. His head pounded, and his vision swam. His stomach felt like a wrung sponge. A flash of half-formed memory rose with acid stench, and Clausen knew who was to blame. 

He tried to focus, but the yellow lights blinded. He tried to shield his eyes, but his shaking hand slapped dumbly against his chest. 

"It is a miracle you are alive," the stranger stated, his words laden with disgust.

Clausen knew that voice. The man sat on the dresser's wreckage, his back pressed to the broken mirror and his hand perched under his chin in a mockery of a thinker's pose. Everything about him breathed insolence, from his raised collar to his outturned boots. 

Berenson had come to gloat. 

Clausen's hate boiled like a volcano bursting from its caldera. "You!" he roared, rage shredding his aching throat. He lunged from the bed, his saline bag dragging through the sheets.

Berenson made no move but answered, "Me." 

Clausen lurched towards him, "You did this!"

"I did." Berenson echoed.

"You set us up! Your fault!" Clausen roared. The pain, the nausea, all vanished under the blazing clarity of wrath as he lurched from his sickbed. He snatched Berenson by the throat, his fingers carving into the too-smooth flesh to clutch the sinew and steel beneath. One slam. Two. Berenson's head bobbled like a rag doll. 

Clausen snarled, "Say something!" 

“Ta-da,” the genejob gurgled.

Clausen howled. In blind fury, he hurled the smaller man across the dresser. Bottles smashed. Clausen's vision tunneled red. He staggered forward, snatched the tumbling man from the floor, and rammed him, face-first, into the mirror's wreckage.

Glass shattered, silver shards marred with red. Clausen dragged Berenson by his heavy collar, used his coat for leverage, and pulled him about, face to face. He punched, screamed, and punched again, an incoherent inquisition conveyed with animal cries and brute wrath.

A distant corner of his mind reminded him that striking a man's face was a painfully inefficient method of disabling him. 
Clausen ignored the tiny voice and kept hitting, kept screaming.

By the time he ran out of fury, there was a head-sized hole in the wall, and Berenson's face was a mass of blood and broken features, a sopping jigsaw short a half-dozen pieces. 

Clausen staggered back, a single thought breaking through the haze: 'I killed him.'

He didn't know how to feel about that, and that worried him more than the murder.

He looked for his bottle.

In the corner, Berenson's corpse groaned in protest.

Clausen turned and stared, aghast, as the man sat up. 

Berenson raised one hand, took his own nose, and twisted it into place with a horrid gurgle. His face shifted. Rebuilt. His crushed features set, cuts healed, and teeth filled.  

"Bullshit," Clausen gasped. He collapsed back onto the bed. Adrenaline failed him, and his legs turned to jelly.

"I know," Berenson agreed. His voice was flat from crushed sinuses, but he continued, "Giff me a moment."

The two sat in silence, Clausen clutching his bottle, Berenson lying at the dresser's foot, impossibly healing. For an interminable wait, the only sound was that of popping tissues and mending bone, until Berenson admitted, "That could have gone worse."

"How?" Clausen asked.

Berenson shrugged.

"Yeah." Clausen glanced at his bottle and then at the injured man. Clarity dawned, and he asked, "You could have taken me. Why didn't you?" 

"You needed to spill blood, and I needed to let it. I live to serve." Berenson paused, worked his throat with a swallow, and added, "Good choke, by the way."

Clausen glanced towards his nightstand, where his gun waited.

Berenson sighed.

Clausen scrambled over the bed and snatched the pistol from its case. It sat too light in his hand. He spun it and found no magazine, while a press check revealed an empty chamber.

Berenson held up the missing box, half-heartedly waggling it from side to side. "I took it. Loaded guns and drunken fools do not well mix. I can recover from a beating, but a lucky shot..." he trailed off. "I am not allowed to die yet, Sergeant. I still have work to do."

"Hand it over," Clausen ordered. He stood and tried to advance towards the crumpled genejob, his every step measured and wobbly.

"No." 

"Give it."

"You will shoot me." 

"Likely," Clausen answered. "Give."

"Why?!" 

Clausen shrugged. "Can't think of any reason you'd come here other than killing one of us."

Berenson gave a grimace towards the pile of bottles. "Impressive reasoning. How much did you drink?"

"Enough," Clausen admitted. His head was pounding. The lights were screaming, the pain-daggers threatening to spear the backs of his eyes. He stayed on his feet. "Did you dose me?" 

"Oxidase and a chaser," Berenson said. "I needed you sober."

"Explain."

"We need to talk." 

"You set us up!" Clausen snarled. 

"I did," Berenson admitted. "But not like you think."

Clausen glared. The blood rushing in his head formed a vice. Fury and pain blurred with sickness, and he struggled to repeat the command, "Give me the mag." 

"No." 

Clausen held out his left hand, wiggling his fingers in the universal sign of 'hand it over'. He kept the gun in his right, close to his chest, and beyond Berenson's reach. 

The genejob pulled the magazine back, like a toddler guarding his favorite toy.

Even through his haze, Clausen knew this was insane. Absurd. He asked, "What the fuck are we doing?" He wanted to laugh, and he didn't know why. "Why are you here?"

"Intervention," Berenson said, as sincere as sunrise.

"That's what this is? You come to sober me up? You wanted to get shit-kicked? Why? Do you want me lucid for your gloating?" 

"I want - I need - your help." 

Clausen's head swam. Pain flashed, and he rasped, "Give me that mag, and I'll help."

"Not that way," Berenson said. He tucked the ammunition back into his jacket and stood. He stepped closer, re-hung the saline bag from its makeshift post, and said, "I expected to find you damaged, but this is beyond parameters."

"You framed us," Clausen accused. He kept his eyes locked on the genejob, watched for any sign of threat. None of this made sense. Berenson could have killed him in his stupor, but he'd sobered him, cleaned him, and waited for a talk. He wanted something.

"I did," Berenson admitted. "I set you up, along with the Agency. It was a fallback plan, like any other black op. You do know how burning works, right, Sergeant?" The last words carried a familiar cutting tone, but Berenson halted, something like sympathy in his eyes. He added, "It was not my intent."

"You didn't want us to die?"

"No. I wanted you to die as heroes. The context is important." 

Clausen blinked, unable to process. 

Berenson shrugged as if to say, 'You asked.'

The absurdity overwhelmed. Why would someone admit that? Without clear orders, Clausen defaulted to his last good instructions and pressed the attack. He held out his hand and demanded, "Give me the mag." 

"Killing me is a bad plan."

"Sounds great to me."

For the first time, Berenson's mockery blurred towards anger. He sneered, "Take a number, Mister Clausen! Far worse have queued for the privilege." As quickly as it came, the storm passed, and Berenson surveyed the room's wreckage. Almost absently, he said, "This must be crushing you. The world thinks you a monster, and you think yourself a failure."
"Fuck your head-shrinking." 

"You must understand. This was not my plan." Berenson's voice was plaintive. He spoke as if this were the most apparent justification in the cosmos. 

Clausen glared.

"I know my excuses are insignificant compared to my transgressions, but I am sorry. I made a grievous error. I thought Tiberius had turned the airship into a bomb to blackmail the Authority. He had not. Where I saw the advantage, he pursued poetry. He baited our attack and planned to lose."

"Good for you. You figured it out. Does that bring back twelve hundred people?"

"No," Berenson admitted. He glanced up, his face stuck in that infuriatingly serene stare. "But it means we have another shot."

"Fuck you." 

"Listen to me!" Berenson begged. "He tried to destroy you, and you survived. That is not much, but it is more than his plan allows. We can use this to ensnare and defeat him!"

"You mean, you can." Clausen derided. "We're just collateral."

"You might not have noticed, but I am not a people person." Berenson returned. "I have developed quite the following among the Agency, and not of the 'well-wishing' variety. I have pressing health concerns, I am being stalked by erstwhile allies, everyone wants me dead, and I am the only one who can outplay Tiberius. If anyone else tries, they will lose!"
Clausen glared.

"I know what I am, Mister Clausen. Do not think me ignorant! Trapped between the devil and the sea, you would pick from poor options, but that is what this is, and this is where we are. Your world is coming apart; the Agency does not trust me, and unless we do something, everyone will die."

Clausen seethed.

"I need you, Mister Clausen. You lead men, and they follow! You could put this team back together, and we could challenge Tiberius-"

"No."

Berenson switched tactics. "Colonel Halstead has been framed, utterly and terribly, by a plan I designed. He is dead, and we can not change that, but we can give his family back their hon-"

"Fuck you!" Clausen roared. "Do not speak his name! I will not let you dishonor him-"

"To be fair, I left the dishonoring to the experts-" 

"Get out." Clausen's voice fell to stern, icy command. He focused through the sickness and pain, and he advanced on the genejob.

Berenson stared up at him without fear. He held out his hand, the magazine in his open palm, and said, "Fine. Here it is. If you will not listen, then end me. I would rather die by your hand than those jackals."

Clausen snatched the black polymer, spot-checked the stack, and slapped it into his weapon. With a quick rack of the slide, he leveled the gun at Berenson's chest - low, controlled, and ready. "Get out." He ordered.

Berenson pleaded his case, "Mister Clausen, I have misled you, and for that, I apologize. I did not lie, but through my implications and omissions, I led you into disaster. I vow I will never do so again. Everything I tell you will be the truth - the whole truth, and nothing but!"

Clausen flicked the barrel towards the door.

"Work with me! We can change things! We can derail Tiberius's plot! Do you see it?!" Berenson's voice rose to a feverish pitch. "He tried to kill me! Not beat me! Kill! Tiberius would end the game of games! He must be stopped!" He took one step closer until the muzzle of the gun pressed against his heart.

Clausen half-squeezed the trigger. "Out." He whispered.

"Who are you, Sergeant?! A puppet?! Cut your strings and-" 

BLAM!

The pistol bucked in Clausen's hand. His ears rang.

Berenson staggered back, crimson and silver splashed across his breast. He slammed into the wall, his coat folding about him as the wine stain spread. He slid down the grimy beige paper, and the blood streak followed, four centimeters thick, topped with a speckled bullet hole, and ending when he slumped to the ground.

"You shot me," he gasped. "You actually shot me."

The air reeked of cordite. Clausen stared at the smoking pistol, half-shocked by the discharge. His hand shook. "I was trying to point," he admitted.
​
"Alcohol, oxidase, and chaser," Berenson excused. He winced as his fingertips brushed the blood-soaked hole in his shirt. "Those ruin fine motor control." He sucked a deep breath, ragged from pain, and added a slight, "Ow."

Clausen set the pistol on the nightstand, careful to keep his trembling finger clear of the guard. Numb from the toxins and the insanity, he asked, "Are you going to die?" 

"No. No. Clean through." Berenson said. "Damage to primary circulation, secondary respiration. Good shot." He winced once more. "The Titan Five chassis is quite regenerative." He drew another gasping breath. "Though I do believe I will... rest... for a while."

"I'll wake you if room service stops by," Clausen said. 

"In this hovel?" Berenson coughed up a metal flake, peeling it from his tongue with visible disgust. "That gunshot was a 'do not disturb'." He laid his head back against the bloody wall and added, "We should talk in the morning."

"Fine." Clausen agreed.

Despite his pain, Berenson grinned. 

"What's that?" Clausen demanded. His head was pounding, and the gunshot hadn't helped.

"This went better than I expected." The genejob admitted. He closed his eyes and slumped unconscious in a puddle of his own blood, his head propped against the ring of his reinforced collar.

Clausen sat in the echoing silence and stewed in the acrid traces of gunsmoke. Through the pounding in his head, he wondered what in the hell 'worse' might have looked like.

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