DT 2023: Andra's Mercy

Andra leaned against the wall in the basement of Koizumi’s hospital. Her Mjolnir armor’s weight would crush any reasonable chair so she compromised. Considering the two story building served three townships and barely ten thousand people, she felt it more appropriate to label it a “field clinic” at best. But she held her tongue – out of politeness, and because the current crisis had Cassandra neck deep addressing first aide to a hysterical crowd.
Above, the living echoed downward with certainty of their existence. Footfalls stomped and vibrated the ceiling hinting to a chaotic situation. Andra kept her hand clasped around the plasma pistol latched to her thigh. Even if her fellow Spartans said things were under control, was it true?
Right now, she could imagine all the frantic movement not as nurses checking people into rooms or clearing their conditions as healthy. Andra imagined hissing and screeching as bones broke, flesh tore, and tendrils curled. But there was no screaming. Andra stayed her hand and did not put into practice her Spartan training from the UNSC Infinity.
Andra instead waited in the relative silence and bated breath, the basement increasingly becoming part to the land of the dead. Titanium box lockers on rollers rest against the far walls, and a clinical space with unforgiving steel tables confirmed this place as “our morgue” as Koizumi told her it was. On the closest steel table, a child rested like a mummy with a thin sheet layer and clothing against the dry, freezing room. Andra might join the land of death if her nerves finally burned out over watching Antonia.
She wondered, having never considered, the possibility of Spartans dying to shock or fright. She would ask Cassandra about it later. But Antonia left her speechless, scared, pinned to the spot. At ten years old, she was already beautiful with strawberry blonde hair and tanned skin with freckles. She would fit in as a half sister between Andra and her old friend Roxanne if someone could find them in the same place to take a picture. Antonia seemed to sleep soundly despite the few items provided she could barely call creature comforts.
Andra was the one who asked for this arrangement. She had to accept her own choice of spartan accommodations. Antonia’s clothing was soaking wet from the chemical disinfectant shower. And the air cycling system above sucked out all the moisture in the room while they turned down the thermostat to refrigeration levels, in theory to “preserve the corpse/condition.” She kicked everyone out then, told Cassandra she could handle it. Told the medical examiner, Doctor Koizumi, and the nurses to not come back down until she radioed back. They had to take Antonia’s mother, a woman named Leila, kicking, and screaming from the morgue. This was her daughter after all. She called Andra something which drew a rare flinch, even for someone hardened like the twenty-year-old Spartan supersoldier.
“You’re a Covenant whore! Venter’s little bitch!”
Technically the description was better meant for Cassandra as Simon’s partner, but Andra didn’t respond. Not when she gave the order to vacate. Unlike Cassandra, Andra trained to deal with the Flood. Two weeks of training at best, but at least she had training. But all the Infinity curriculum taught her was to expect the worst.
After four hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty-seven seconds, Andra looked up at Antonia’s body to the sound of stirring. Andra’s polarized visor glared down at the little girl’s face and met chocolate eyes staring at her.
Andra tried her best child voice “Hey princess, are you feeling alright?”
The girl didn’t respond, her chest continued to rise and fall in rhythm and her eyes followed Andra’s head as the Spartan moved closer.
“You okay, Antonia? How are you feeling?”
Antonia’s lips quivered but no sound slipped from her tongue or lips. Andra glanced down to the girls  hands and meant to reach out to reassure. She stopped when she noticed a spasm. Antonia lifted her hand a centimeter off the fabric liner and held it flat while wiggling her fingers. The hand activity repeated twice before settling back on the table. Andra looked to Antonio’s left hand and noticed it repeat the same ritual.
Andra dragged her eyes to Antonia’s face and saw the same emotionless, watching stare. Her eyes were alive, but incomprehensible. Wide in fear, and yet cloudy with new subtle cheek movements. Traces of emotion: anger, depression, happiness, frustration, glee, rage, on and on.
Not human. The phrase never left Andra’s lips but she thought it.
Without a word of warning, Andra grabbed the girl’s shoulder and raised her back so Antonia faced the morgue lockers. Her spine was black with char from the plasma pistol bolt Andra fired into her back. A Flood scrapper, a proto-infection form of sorts, attempted to burrow into the child’s back. Andra thought she saved the girl’s life. Cassandra and Dr. Koizumi thought they eliminated any Flood residue with good confidence from the wound.
Even if Antonia would spend the rest of her life paralyzed from the waist down, Andra thought it was a better fate. At least a better fate than this. Her eyes followed up the remainder of the girls spine to the base of her skull. The skin turned a sickly green and purple. Her veins were brown and seeming to shift beneath the increasingly swelling skin. Andra gave her own nonexpert, informed prognosis.
They failed to cauterize the infection. The Flood supercells climbed up the girls nervous system and probably to the brain. That was it.
Andra switched hands on Antonia’s shoulder and did not dare look into the girl’s eyes again. She pulled out her plasma pistol and aimed for the base of the skull.
She continued, “Alright Antonia, Andra saw there’s still a little spider bite. I’m going to make it better alright?”
Andra didn’t wait for a response from the little girl. She pulled the trigger and a bright green flash enveloped the room. It was quick, the plasma heat radiating down Andra’s nerves carrying the weight and acknowledgement of death through her body. Smoke rose from the crater made in Antonia’s body, now bisected into two blackened pieces: a skull and upper spine, and the rest of the body.
Antonia did not stir.
The Spartan pinged her SQUADCOM line to Cassandra, holding back the sob ready to tumble out for four more seconds. “Cassie. I killed her...” Tears followed.
Category:Short stories