technovember [002]
prompt list // fic index
The name of the gun is Sacrilege; like all good, honest weapons, it carries the name of an action. It is long, and slow, and patient, resembling a snake in all qualities except the straightness of its spine. If Rhea doesn’t kill her angel today, it will be her fault, not the gun's.
The target flickers below, moving from window to window of a skullfucked building like trash caught by the wind, like a long-exposure photograph of a moth, like a sky burial in plastic wrap. It everts its vector of a face into each shard-lined aperture in turn, methodically tasting the air within for ideocarrion, sonar pops and clicks bubbling resonant from stolen vocal chords. Rhea, curled in the hollow of the tallest ruin she felt she could risk, licks salt from her lips. Soon the angel will grow bored and flit away, or scent something enticing and pour itself through the nearest concrete orifice halo-first, and the moment will pass, and Rhea will not have killed it, and she’s doing alright on food but she only has filters for two more two nights, and if she goes back-empty handed Eldest Sister is going to kill her for expropriating her gun.
Sacrilege whispers through the small bones in her fingers, voice punching barrel-dark beneath the thrumming whine of angel telemetry. SIT STILL, it says, BE SLOW. BE COLD. DEEP BREATHS. I AM WITH YOU.
Rhea draws her tongue over her lips again, tastes iron in the cracks. Slow, she thinks. Cold. Deep breaths.
You are with me.
Sacrilege kisses the deep tissue of her shoulder with its recoil. A bullet casing hits her in the forehead. The angel dies silently, and unfolds, and unfolds, and unfolds.
