Season 05 - Episode 26

‘together the silence’

Ga is celebrating.

One of Mako's desk drones has pushed a tall glass into her hand filled with something cold, sparkling, alcoholic and wet. As she sips the drink and strokes Mako, Ga watches the crowds climbing the stairs and toasts them. Those higher up, those just setting off and those pouring out of the elevators to join them.

They've done it.

As she grins and chuckles another monitor catches her eye. It shows two Seraphim in the corridor right outside. Placing the glass back on the desk, to be whisked out of reach by the drone, Ga taps a few keys to bring up the sound.

“But I don't understand,” the first is saying. “There should be a room here.”

“Who cares?” says the second. “It's all over now anyway. Let's just get out of here.”

The two hurry away and Ga chuckles again. Despite all she has done, her first major hack, many years before, is still her favourite achievement. Tricking GovCo into bricking up her door for her, plastering over it to leave a perfectly smooth wall, then removing all trace of that work and her room from the system so that they never existed. It still makes her proud.

She looks at her huge, hairy hand with its perfectly shaped and painted nails and then around the doorless room in which she will live out the rest of her life. Then, nudging Mako out of her lap, she returns to her keyboard. The drones she dispatched the The Innersides will be arriving there any time now.

Ga has lots of work to do.

Iz is happy.

She is standing on the highest walkway in The Scapes, next to her shack, soaking up all the peace. Resting her hands on the railing, she looks out over the deep, narrow void, across to the other side and smiles to herself, content.

Her right hand is still bandaged, though the dressing has long since turned grey to grubby brown. She unwraps it now, revealing a fully healed, three fingered hand and then watches the fetid bandage unfurl and flutter away, tumbling easily down in to the darkness.

She allows her eyes to roam freely over all the many shapes and textures opposite. The empty metal walkways and stairs, the hollow, wonky shacks and rickety platforms, the lethal, swaying bridges. The metal and the shadows and so much empty space. Her smile falters a little as she continues to look, her eyebrows knitting together.

The silence has been wonderful, no-one pestering, no-one staring, no demands or hassle or stupid fucking questions. Now however, the more she looks at her beloved Scape, the less she finds and it all just seems so... boring.

“For fuck's sake,” she sighs, closing her eyes as her shoulders sag.

She takes one last look over the edge and then turns and hurries back to her shack to gather some things. If she's quick she can them catch up.

Ny is sitting quietly.

His chair is old and comfortable and as he sits he looks at the scorched lump of metal that used to be his hand. He bumps it up and down on the arm of the chair a couple of times and smiles to himself.

“We did it,” he says quietly, happily to the empty chair beside him. “We got them all out, got them away. A job well done.”

The empty chair does not respond but Ny looks at it anyway, seeing it as it was many years before, back when it wasn't empty at all.

“It felt good to be useful again,” he says to the empty chair. “I can't wait to tell you all about it. Thank you for being so patient, I'm ready to join you now.”

He smiles again, his body perfectly comfortable and perfectly relaxed, floating in total contentment. He thinks back over all he and friends have achieved and about what is now to come.

Still smiling, Ny closes his eyes.

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