corpse (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
corpsefluid) wrote2026-03-16 10:20 pm
corpsefluid) wrote2026-03-16 10:20 pm
draft
The very first time Higgs had jumped was the very last time he ran away from home.
His daddy's hands around his neck, darkness creeping in from the corners of his vision. Reaching for anything that might have saved his life while his daddy cried about him not understanding his pain. He blinked and everything vanished, daddy and their shelter, gone.
He found himself sprawled across sand beneath an open sky. For several long minutes, Higgs had been certain he was dead. Dreaming was a possibility, but dead seemed more likely, he never had 'good' dreams.
Jumping had saved his life then, and probably hundreds of times since.
He now knew that first jump was an impossible miracle, but every time after was pure instinct.
Jumping was the one thing he could not do right now. Not because he didn't want to, Higgs wanted to run away so badly.
There was still a chance to get the bomb away from the city.
It had all sounded so simple when Fragile had told him there was something he could do to compensate for the trouble he'd caused with his drinking. Just two simple deliveries.
He hadn't been able to face her without a drink in him, but he'd managed to limit himself. Just the one drink to steady his nerves and hands, feeling good enough he didn't need to numb himself.
The look she gave him when they met, like he'd disappointed her again with that much, spoiled it immediately. Crushed whatever modicum of pride he'd felt in his restraint.
From the moment he received the packages, he spent the rest of the trip drinking. Enough that he barely remembered the first half of the delivery.
Only reason he wasn't for the second half was some of his crew intercepting him on the way from Middle Knot. His boys threw him in the back of a truck, confiscated most of his booze, and made him sleep it off. Dumped him outside South Knot merely hungover instead of completely blitzed.
That was probably the only reason he noticed anything was wrong.
The cargo tags matched what he'd been told about the cargo, but everything else was wrong. None of the other data on the delivery terminal matched, and yet, Higgs nearly walked away.
This was what Fragile wanted him to do to earn some forgiveness for his currently cascading wave of bullshit? He could ignore some fucked up data, especially when ignoring it meant he could return to sleeping off his hangover. A nice dark bunk, far away from the mechanical whir of sorting machines that exacerbated the pain in his skull.
But then an emergency ping went through, Middle Knot, the city the other half of this delivery had gone to, wiped off the map.
The place he'd delivered another parcel that had been all wrong, just like the one he just submitted. He thought it had been because he was drunk.
The disgusting feeling he'd woken up with was abruptly irrelevant. Higgs needed to know what was in that package.
It took some dubious work with the terminal to reactivate access to the tracking, but cracking a terminal in plain view of a camera was hardly the worst thing he'd done to his reputation in the past month. If he was wrong, he'd blame his drinking. If he was right... He wasn't ready to process the implications yet.
With the city's air purification systems filtering out chiralium, his abilities were useless. He had to pursue the truck the old-fashioned way, sprinting through streets and violating all kinds of contamination protocols doing it too.
Pure luck the driver had picked up his radio and pulled over at Higgs request.
Either Higgs was too breathless to be recognised or the driver was on the incredibly short list of distribution staff at South Knot that he hadn't thoroughly pissed off yet. He could never have caught up otherwise, not with the way every breath felt like inhaling shards of ice.
Turned out Ford... Harrison? Whatever the fuck it was, had been willing to listen because he was new and hadn't had the misfortune of dealing with Higgs before. True to form, Higgs was here to ruin the helpful new kid's day already. His only crime being that he didn't know to hang up on Higgs yet.
Trying to catch his breath was costing time. Between gasps, Higgs sputtered the tag information, then fumbled for his canteen. A few gulps of water followed by a long pull of whatever liquor had been in his flask. He'd forgotten what the rotgut was supposed to be, tasted too much like it was made for stripping paint to guess.
Its only job was to brace him for a bit longer.
Harrison located the package while Higgs was still negotiating with himself for one more sip from the flask.
"You can't just-" Harrison's protest died in his throat as Higgs cut through the tape, revealing what lay inside.
A nuke.
Something that could level South Knot same as Middle Knot was.
Thinking about it would paralyze him. Higgs straightened his shoulders and tried to at least pretend to be the leader he hadn't been to his company in a long time. If he panicked, Harrison would panic and they'd just waste time. Instead, he presented a front of authority he didn't really hold anymore, instructed Harrison to call it in, evacuate if he could.
Higgs picked up the case and started running for the second time that day.
Higgs endured the burn in his limbs and chest long enough to get out of the city. Feeling for the ambient chiralium til he'd be able to rely on his power again, the moment he could reach out and touch his beach.
The reconnection never came.
The chiralium was there, but his beach was not. Or at least, he couldn't reach it.
It felt wrong.
More importantly, he was still too close to the city. While Higgs knew a whole lot more about bombs than the average porter, defusing one was incredibly dangerous. Even if he was sober and not fighting a hangover, he wouldn't want to risk it this close to the city.
The tar pit then. Close enough that he could get to it on foot before the timer ran down, but without worrying about keeping an unknown yield catching any porters, preppers or smaller settlements.
As long as he kept moving he was getting it further from the city.
But picking his way through ruins and rough terrain made it obvious there were too many people around. Even on major routes you'd rarely see more than five people in a day, if you counted your partner. These weren't porters or MULES, the guns were too heavy.
Homo Demens.
Similar to MULES in the sense that they came from chiralium toxicity, but so much more dangerous.
And he was in their crosshairs.
Without access to his beach, all the training he'd been given abruptly seemed deeply inadequate. The abundance of cover could only do so much, no matter how he weaved or hid, there was far more of them than there was of him and they were closing in from all sides.
The only weapon on him was a small hand gun. Meant to be concealed, meant for self defense, not a firefight. It wasn't meant to go up against body armour. Without point blank range or an insanely lucky shot that Higgs was not nearly marksman enough to make reliably, he was unlikely to take out any of them. Even if he took one or two, despite using all the luck he had on just finding the bomb, he wouldn't be able to get rid of the bodies to keep them from creating a BT that might end up leveling the city anyway.
They hadn't fired a shot yet, despite having him in their sights. The only reasons he could guess they hadn't shot him yet was either that they didn't want to kill him, or they didn't want to risk hitting the bomb. Both options were incredibly unusual for their kind, but Higgs didn't have the time to puzzle that out.
His best bet was to find the weakest part of the net and try to sneak through it before it closed on him. Quickly while only a couple had sight lines on him.
Finally, Higgs spotted it. A gap where the men were further apart due to the terrain. If he stayed low and quiet, he might squeeze through.
Flat on his belly, inching his way through a concrete crevasse, Higgs' heart was in his throat as he waited for the boot steps to pass. Holding his breath as if hiding from BTs' searching hands.
Suddenly his radio, tucked under his hip, out of reach to silence in the tight space, crackled to life with a deafening burst of static.
"Boss told us you was a scaredy cat, why don't you come out and play?"
The voice sounded odd, like it hadn't really been used in a long time. Like the shapes of the words felt foreign to it. But the callout did its job.
The men who might have walked past him had both stopped. Either side of him, he could feel their gaze on his back seconds before they grabbed him.
Higgs tried not to make it easy, thrashing and squirming, doing anything he could to break their grip in hopes of a mad dash to freedom. Before a gun muzzle was jammed against his spine and aborted his efforts.
"There you are," The radio continued, the voice almost purring, "Boss'll see you soon."
Higgs was half dragged, half marched to the remains of a structure. Used to be a road was his best guess.
The rest of the group caught up. The bomb pulled from his cargo clip. In a moment, Higgs felt his beach open up to him. For a few beautiful moments, the chiral density surged. Before Higgs caught himself. He couldn't jump now, even though every instinct he had wanted nothing more than to run.
Especially as the men pinned him down and stripped his gear.
It didn't stop with taking his tools and his protective layers. They kept going, taking the clothes underneath it too. Just before they could strip him of his underwear as well, they were interrupted by the one Higgs assumed spoke over the radio.
"No one needs to see that." Higgs could hear the sneer in the radioman's voice.
Higgs flushed despite himself. The humiliation is one thing, but there was a distinct wrongness in having his skin exposed to the open air.
Outside of his beach and his very first time outside the shelter he grew up in, he'd never been less than covered head to toe in heavy plastics to ward off timefall. Checking every seal and examining every surface for the tiniest damage that could turn lethal. Though one bad fall could be just as disfiguring as a gear failure, only one of these things could be controlled.
Any other time, Higgs would have jumped to safety without thinking about it. One man, outnumbered and outgunned, didn't stand a chance, no matter his DOOMS level. Running away was the smart thing to do, but he couldn't just leave the bomb.
He was still too close to the city, if the bomb went off here people would die. If they took the bomb and left with it now, they could get it back into the depths of the city and get all of them. But the instinct still gripped him, running was how Higgs stayed alive all these years. Not doing so felt like trying to suppress a sneeze.
A shiver went up Higgs' spine as he felt the chiral density change. It wasn't him making it spike this time. He heard the folding of space behind him, but as badly as he wanted to look, Higgs was certain if he turned his head that fast he'd end up puking.
The nausea he'd been suppressing all morning was back with a vengeance now he could do little else other than kneel on the rocks and shattered concrete waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"You had one job Higgs."
Fragile's voice.
Higgs wanted so badly to believe there had been some mistake, that someone had tricked Fragile into handing him those bombs. His denial couldn't hold up to the evidence, but the evidence didn't make any damn sense either. Fragile had plenty of reasons to be angry at him, some more justified than others, but none of them made any sense as a reason to kill a city.
It couldn't be chiral poisoning either. This took planning, something that was very difficult when most people hit those danger stages.
"Why you gotta fuck me like this Fragile?" Higgs drawled, paper-thin false bravado was really the only thing he had to exert any kind of control of the situation. Better than cowering, no matter how hollow it felt.
Fragile grabbed his skull by the temples, tilting Higgs' head back to look up at her. She was wearing some kind of mask. Numerous golden hands sculpted from chiralium grasping at her face. In some ways it disguised her, but it did nothing to cover the fury in her eyes.
Higgs swallowed reflexively to keep the contents of his stomach where it was.
"You have to ask why? Higgs, you're drunk right now. On a delivery you took to make up for being drunk. Over and over, you make excuse after excuse and coast by with your power at the cost of my company's reputation- with my reputation."
On his knees, looking up at Fragile while she reprimanded him. That was straight from the play book of his wet dreams. Higgs could feel his body reacting to it even though the situation truly had nothing to do with any of those horny fantasies. She never looked at him with hatred in those dreams, never quite this much anger or disgust.
"That's no reason to kill a city," Higgs choked out, the protest sounded stupid before he said it out loud. Higgs had no reason to doubt Fragile knew exactly how many people this bomb could kill.
"Oh but I won't be killing a city. If you could take something seriously for once in your life, put some skin in the game, you could save them."
Fragile released her hold on his head, finally allowing him to lower his chin only to jump so she was standing in front of him.
"Oh, but you aren't taking this seriously, are you? Five men pointing guns at you and you're pitching a tent."
Higgs couldn't hope to hide it with his hands behind his head, but having it acknowledged made it worse.
"I can fix this." Fragile stroked his cheek in mimicry of reassurance. "I can make you take this seriously."
Fragile pointed to the open space beyond their shelter of ruins. The sky burst, timefall pouring in dense sheets of contaminated water.
Higgs felt the chiralium rise in opposition to the drop in temperature, he had to force down the reflex to jump yet again. It was a second nature to him, to run when confronted with danger. It would get him away from the guns and the timefall, but it wouldn't save those people.
He failed to hide the wince.
"You see Higgs, I'll let you save them, but you are going to give up the only thing you ever worked for in your miserable life." Fragile made it sound like they were simple chatting on the road, shooting the shit on a job, despite the cruelty.
"Unlike your power, you had to earn the ability to lift all those tons of cargo, to walk all those miles. You run through that rain, get rid of this bomb, be the hero that saved South Knot. Or-" Fragile clapped her hands together for emphasis, "You jump. You run away and let every one of those people die. You be the useless, pathetic, cowardly alcoholic you've always been. Go down as the man who nuked both cities all because you couldn't take a little responsibility."
Bile rose in Higgs' throat as he was hauled upright by a pair of the faceless gunmen. Even barefoot, Higgs was more than a head taller than every man here, but right in that moment he felt small. Like he was that little kid, imprisoned underground at the mercy of his old man, all over again. Just like the first time he ever jumped, when his daddy's hands were crushing his throat.
Higgs wanted to say something, anything, but his tongue stayed frozen. Fat and useless in his jaw. Couldn't even summon the shadow of false bravado.
The case with the nuke was shoved against his chest, he dumbly grabbed it. Feeling nothing but static screaming in his skull as he was walked to the edge of the cover. Close enough to feel the splash when the timefall hit the ground.
Then the men shoved him.
Higgs jumped.
It was without thinking, only a few drops of timefall touched him and he ran.
In a puff of chiralium, his hands were empty and there was sand under his feet.
Higgs felt like a snapped bow string, the tension gone. Going slack as the adrenaline left him.
For a few moments he felt nothing but profound relief in being out of the danger. No longer pinned between timefall and a firing squad.
Then the reality set in.
He ran away and condemned thousands just to save his own hide. His terror getting the best of him once again, too weak to resist it. Just like he'd been too weak to resist drinking himself stupid in the days before.
This time when his stomach rebelled, he gave in. Bringing up whatever he'd had left in him since what little food he'd managed in the wake of his hangover.
It wasn't the first time he'd been on his hands and knees retching in the sand, but it felt so much worse this time. Knowing his drinking played a part in this, but even coughing up dregs of bile, wondering how many people were going to lose their lives, all he really wanted was to get another drink.
A drink to steady his nerves, to still his hands, to quell the nausea. To not feel the crushing guilt for all the lives he just sold out because he couldn't handle the idea of becoming weak. Of becoming vulnerable. Of feeling small and unable to defend himself, just like the very first time he ever jumped.
It's psychosomatic when he feels hands crushing his throat, but knowing that fails to extinguish the rising panic it generates.
The gunmen took everything he had on him along with his clothes, and that was the only thing stopping him pouring the whole flask down his throat.
Higgs told himself it was the chiralium making him tear up, but he knew the truth. He knew how pathetic it was that he's sitting on his beach crying and wallowing in self pity instead of looking for another way. Instead of making a plan. Instead of doing anything useful at all to mitigate the damage.
The time he spent here measured in fractions of a millisecond in the living world. If he went back, took the punishment, tried to save those people...
But no amount of time was enough to steel himself to go back.
Even if he could trust they weren't going to just shoot him. Fragile knew him too well. Knew how to press his insecurities 'til he was too off balance to right himself. She had done it so often and so casually that only now did Higgs suspect it was on purpose.
All those times she would push and push until he would drink himself unconscious. That had been the point all along, hadn't it?
It would be easy to blame Fragile for it, but he'd had problems with alcohol before they'd even met. Higgs was a handful of years sober then. She couldn't have known, let alone planned for him to relapse.
She definitely meant for him to hurt though.
A gunshot obliterated his chain of thought, close enough to be deafening, for the impact to shower him with sand.
Higgs didn't think, didn't look for the source, just reached for his power and found nothing.
His daddy's hands around his neck, darkness creeping in from the corners of his vision. Reaching for anything that might have saved his life while his daddy cried about him not understanding his pain. He blinked and everything vanished, daddy and their shelter, gone.
He found himself sprawled across sand beneath an open sky. For several long minutes, Higgs had been certain he was dead. Dreaming was a possibility, but dead seemed more likely, he never had 'good' dreams.
Jumping had saved his life then, and probably hundreds of times since.
He now knew that first jump was an impossible miracle, but every time after was pure instinct.
Jumping was the one thing he could not do right now. Not because he didn't want to, Higgs wanted to run away so badly.
There was still a chance to get the bomb away from the city.
It had all sounded so simple when Fragile had told him there was something he could do to compensate for the trouble he'd caused with his drinking. Just two simple deliveries.
He hadn't been able to face her without a drink in him, but he'd managed to limit himself. Just the one drink to steady his nerves and hands, feeling good enough he didn't need to numb himself.
The look she gave him when they met, like he'd disappointed her again with that much, spoiled it immediately. Crushed whatever modicum of pride he'd felt in his restraint.
From the moment he received the packages, he spent the rest of the trip drinking. Enough that he barely remembered the first half of the delivery.
Only reason he wasn't for the second half was some of his crew intercepting him on the way from Middle Knot. His boys threw him in the back of a truck, confiscated most of his booze, and made him sleep it off. Dumped him outside South Knot merely hungover instead of completely blitzed.
That was probably the only reason he noticed anything was wrong.
The cargo tags matched what he'd been told about the cargo, but everything else was wrong. None of the other data on the delivery terminal matched, and yet, Higgs nearly walked away.
This was what Fragile wanted him to do to earn some forgiveness for his currently cascading wave of bullshit? He could ignore some fucked up data, especially when ignoring it meant he could return to sleeping off his hangover. A nice dark bunk, far away from the mechanical whir of sorting machines that exacerbated the pain in his skull.
But then an emergency ping went through, Middle Knot, the city the other half of this delivery had gone to, wiped off the map.
The place he'd delivered another parcel that had been all wrong, just like the one he just submitted. He thought it had been because he was drunk.
The disgusting feeling he'd woken up with was abruptly irrelevant. Higgs needed to know what was in that package.
It took some dubious work with the terminal to reactivate access to the tracking, but cracking a terminal in plain view of a camera was hardly the worst thing he'd done to his reputation in the past month. If he was wrong, he'd blame his drinking. If he was right... He wasn't ready to process the implications yet.
With the city's air purification systems filtering out chiralium, his abilities were useless. He had to pursue the truck the old-fashioned way, sprinting through streets and violating all kinds of contamination protocols doing it too.
Pure luck the driver had picked up his radio and pulled over at Higgs request.
Either Higgs was too breathless to be recognised or the driver was on the incredibly short list of distribution staff at South Knot that he hadn't thoroughly pissed off yet. He could never have caught up otherwise, not with the way every breath felt like inhaling shards of ice.
Turned out Ford... Harrison? Whatever the fuck it was, had been willing to listen because he was new and hadn't had the misfortune of dealing with Higgs before. True to form, Higgs was here to ruin the helpful new kid's day already. His only crime being that he didn't know to hang up on Higgs yet.
Trying to catch his breath was costing time. Between gasps, Higgs sputtered the tag information, then fumbled for his canteen. A few gulps of water followed by a long pull of whatever liquor had been in his flask. He'd forgotten what the rotgut was supposed to be, tasted too much like it was made for stripping paint to guess.
Its only job was to brace him for a bit longer.
Harrison located the package while Higgs was still negotiating with himself for one more sip from the flask.
"You can't just-" Harrison's protest died in his throat as Higgs cut through the tape, revealing what lay inside.
A nuke.
Something that could level South Knot same as Middle Knot was.
Thinking about it would paralyze him. Higgs straightened his shoulders and tried to at least pretend to be the leader he hadn't been to his company in a long time. If he panicked, Harrison would panic and they'd just waste time. Instead, he presented a front of authority he didn't really hold anymore, instructed Harrison to call it in, evacuate if he could.
Higgs picked up the case and started running for the second time that day.
Higgs endured the burn in his limbs and chest long enough to get out of the city. Feeling for the ambient chiralium til he'd be able to rely on his power again, the moment he could reach out and touch his beach.
The reconnection never came.
The chiralium was there, but his beach was not. Or at least, he couldn't reach it.
It felt wrong.
More importantly, he was still too close to the city. While Higgs knew a whole lot more about bombs than the average porter, defusing one was incredibly dangerous. Even if he was sober and not fighting a hangover, he wouldn't want to risk it this close to the city.
The tar pit then. Close enough that he could get to it on foot before the timer ran down, but without worrying about keeping an unknown yield catching any porters, preppers or smaller settlements.
As long as he kept moving he was getting it further from the city.
But picking his way through ruins and rough terrain made it obvious there were too many people around. Even on major routes you'd rarely see more than five people in a day, if you counted your partner. These weren't porters or MULES, the guns were too heavy.
Homo Demens.
Similar to MULES in the sense that they came from chiralium toxicity, but so much more dangerous.
And he was in their crosshairs.
Without access to his beach, all the training he'd been given abruptly seemed deeply inadequate. The abundance of cover could only do so much, no matter how he weaved or hid, there was far more of them than there was of him and they were closing in from all sides.
The only weapon on him was a small hand gun. Meant to be concealed, meant for self defense, not a firefight. It wasn't meant to go up against body armour. Without point blank range or an insanely lucky shot that Higgs was not nearly marksman enough to make reliably, he was unlikely to take out any of them. Even if he took one or two, despite using all the luck he had on just finding the bomb, he wouldn't be able to get rid of the bodies to keep them from creating a BT that might end up leveling the city anyway.
They hadn't fired a shot yet, despite having him in their sights. The only reasons he could guess they hadn't shot him yet was either that they didn't want to kill him, or they didn't want to risk hitting the bomb. Both options were incredibly unusual for their kind, but Higgs didn't have the time to puzzle that out.
His best bet was to find the weakest part of the net and try to sneak through it before it closed on him. Quickly while only a couple had sight lines on him.
Finally, Higgs spotted it. A gap where the men were further apart due to the terrain. If he stayed low and quiet, he might squeeze through.
Flat on his belly, inching his way through a concrete crevasse, Higgs' heart was in his throat as he waited for the boot steps to pass. Holding his breath as if hiding from BTs' searching hands.
Suddenly his radio, tucked under his hip, out of reach to silence in the tight space, crackled to life with a deafening burst of static.
"Boss told us you was a scaredy cat, why don't you come out and play?"
The voice sounded odd, like it hadn't really been used in a long time. Like the shapes of the words felt foreign to it. But the callout did its job.
The men who might have walked past him had both stopped. Either side of him, he could feel their gaze on his back seconds before they grabbed him.
Higgs tried not to make it easy, thrashing and squirming, doing anything he could to break their grip in hopes of a mad dash to freedom. Before a gun muzzle was jammed against his spine and aborted his efforts.
"There you are," The radio continued, the voice almost purring, "Boss'll see you soon."
Higgs was half dragged, half marched to the remains of a structure. Used to be a road was his best guess.
The rest of the group caught up. The bomb pulled from his cargo clip. In a moment, Higgs felt his beach open up to him. For a few beautiful moments, the chiral density surged. Before Higgs caught himself. He couldn't jump now, even though every instinct he had wanted nothing more than to run.
Especially as the men pinned him down and stripped his gear.
It didn't stop with taking his tools and his protective layers. They kept going, taking the clothes underneath it too. Just before they could strip him of his underwear as well, they were interrupted by the one Higgs assumed spoke over the radio.
"No one needs to see that." Higgs could hear the sneer in the radioman's voice.
Higgs flushed despite himself. The humiliation is one thing, but there was a distinct wrongness in having his skin exposed to the open air.
Outside of his beach and his very first time outside the shelter he grew up in, he'd never been less than covered head to toe in heavy plastics to ward off timefall. Checking every seal and examining every surface for the tiniest damage that could turn lethal. Though one bad fall could be just as disfiguring as a gear failure, only one of these things could be controlled.
Any other time, Higgs would have jumped to safety without thinking about it. One man, outnumbered and outgunned, didn't stand a chance, no matter his DOOMS level. Running away was the smart thing to do, but he couldn't just leave the bomb.
He was still too close to the city, if the bomb went off here people would die. If they took the bomb and left with it now, they could get it back into the depths of the city and get all of them. But the instinct still gripped him, running was how Higgs stayed alive all these years. Not doing so felt like trying to suppress a sneeze.
A shiver went up Higgs' spine as he felt the chiral density change. It wasn't him making it spike this time. He heard the folding of space behind him, but as badly as he wanted to look, Higgs was certain if he turned his head that fast he'd end up puking.
The nausea he'd been suppressing all morning was back with a vengeance now he could do little else other than kneel on the rocks and shattered concrete waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"You had one job Higgs."
Fragile's voice.
Higgs wanted so badly to believe there had been some mistake, that someone had tricked Fragile into handing him those bombs. His denial couldn't hold up to the evidence, but the evidence didn't make any damn sense either. Fragile had plenty of reasons to be angry at him, some more justified than others, but none of them made any sense as a reason to kill a city.
It couldn't be chiral poisoning either. This took planning, something that was very difficult when most people hit those danger stages.
"Why you gotta fuck me like this Fragile?" Higgs drawled, paper-thin false bravado was really the only thing he had to exert any kind of control of the situation. Better than cowering, no matter how hollow it felt.
Fragile grabbed his skull by the temples, tilting Higgs' head back to look up at her. She was wearing some kind of mask. Numerous golden hands sculpted from chiralium grasping at her face. In some ways it disguised her, but it did nothing to cover the fury in her eyes.
Higgs swallowed reflexively to keep the contents of his stomach where it was.
"You have to ask why? Higgs, you're drunk right now. On a delivery you took to make up for being drunk. Over and over, you make excuse after excuse and coast by with your power at the cost of my company's reputation- with my reputation."
On his knees, looking up at Fragile while she reprimanded him. That was straight from the play book of his wet dreams. Higgs could feel his body reacting to it even though the situation truly had nothing to do with any of those horny fantasies. She never looked at him with hatred in those dreams, never quite this much anger or disgust.
"That's no reason to kill a city," Higgs choked out, the protest sounded stupid before he said it out loud. Higgs had no reason to doubt Fragile knew exactly how many people this bomb could kill.
"Oh but I won't be killing a city. If you could take something seriously for once in your life, put some skin in the game, you could save them."
Fragile released her hold on his head, finally allowing him to lower his chin only to jump so she was standing in front of him.
"Oh, but you aren't taking this seriously, are you? Five men pointing guns at you and you're pitching a tent."
Higgs couldn't hope to hide it with his hands behind his head, but having it acknowledged made it worse.
"I can fix this." Fragile stroked his cheek in mimicry of reassurance. "I can make you take this seriously."
Fragile pointed to the open space beyond their shelter of ruins. The sky burst, timefall pouring in dense sheets of contaminated water.
Higgs felt the chiralium rise in opposition to the drop in temperature, he had to force down the reflex to jump yet again. It was a second nature to him, to run when confronted with danger. It would get him away from the guns and the timefall, but it wouldn't save those people.
He failed to hide the wince.
"You see Higgs, I'll let you save them, but you are going to give up the only thing you ever worked for in your miserable life." Fragile made it sound like they were simple chatting on the road, shooting the shit on a job, despite the cruelty.
"Unlike your power, you had to earn the ability to lift all those tons of cargo, to walk all those miles. You run through that rain, get rid of this bomb, be the hero that saved South Knot. Or-" Fragile clapped her hands together for emphasis, "You jump. You run away and let every one of those people die. You be the useless, pathetic, cowardly alcoholic you've always been. Go down as the man who nuked both cities all because you couldn't take a little responsibility."
Bile rose in Higgs' throat as he was hauled upright by a pair of the faceless gunmen. Even barefoot, Higgs was more than a head taller than every man here, but right in that moment he felt small. Like he was that little kid, imprisoned underground at the mercy of his old man, all over again. Just like the first time he ever jumped, when his daddy's hands were crushing his throat.
Higgs wanted to say something, anything, but his tongue stayed frozen. Fat and useless in his jaw. Couldn't even summon the shadow of false bravado.
The case with the nuke was shoved against his chest, he dumbly grabbed it. Feeling nothing but static screaming in his skull as he was walked to the edge of the cover. Close enough to feel the splash when the timefall hit the ground.
Then the men shoved him.
Higgs jumped.
It was without thinking, only a few drops of timefall touched him and he ran.
In a puff of chiralium, his hands were empty and there was sand under his feet.
Higgs felt like a snapped bow string, the tension gone. Going slack as the adrenaline left him.
For a few moments he felt nothing but profound relief in being out of the danger. No longer pinned between timefall and a firing squad.
Then the reality set in.
He ran away and condemned thousands just to save his own hide. His terror getting the best of him once again, too weak to resist it. Just like he'd been too weak to resist drinking himself stupid in the days before.
This time when his stomach rebelled, he gave in. Bringing up whatever he'd had left in him since what little food he'd managed in the wake of his hangover.
It wasn't the first time he'd been on his hands and knees retching in the sand, but it felt so much worse this time. Knowing his drinking played a part in this, but even coughing up dregs of bile, wondering how many people were going to lose their lives, all he really wanted was to get another drink.
A drink to steady his nerves, to still his hands, to quell the nausea. To not feel the crushing guilt for all the lives he just sold out because he couldn't handle the idea of becoming weak. Of becoming vulnerable. Of feeling small and unable to defend himself, just like the very first time he ever jumped.
It's psychosomatic when he feels hands crushing his throat, but knowing that fails to extinguish the rising panic it generates.
The gunmen took everything he had on him along with his clothes, and that was the only thing stopping him pouring the whole flask down his throat.
Higgs told himself it was the chiralium making him tear up, but he knew the truth. He knew how pathetic it was that he's sitting on his beach crying and wallowing in self pity instead of looking for another way. Instead of making a plan. Instead of doing anything useful at all to mitigate the damage.
The time he spent here measured in fractions of a millisecond in the living world. If he went back, took the punishment, tried to save those people...
But no amount of time was enough to steel himself to go back.
Even if he could trust they weren't going to just shoot him. Fragile knew him too well. Knew how to press his insecurities 'til he was too off balance to right himself. She had done it so often and so casually that only now did Higgs suspect it was on purpose.
All those times she would push and push until he would drink himself unconscious. That had been the point all along, hadn't it?
It would be easy to blame Fragile for it, but he'd had problems with alcohol before they'd even met. Higgs was a handful of years sober then. She couldn't have known, let alone planned for him to relapse.
She definitely meant for him to hurt though.
A gunshot obliterated his chain of thought, close enough to be deafening, for the impact to shower him with sand.
Higgs didn't think, didn't look for the source, just reached for his power and found nothing.