Sins: Aftermath

[ladyofscorel]

The town was silent. A marked contrast from the previous hustle and bustle. I had found myself with my pistol in my hand, in the centre of a group of very nervous fighters. Sash was on point, her cannon sweeping the streets. Cyrano and Mako were flanking her, predatory and graceful. The streets were painted practically red, bodies and the requisite parts for building them strewn over the ground.
Sash stopped abruptly, as a soft sound floated down the street.
"The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a summer's day."
Cyrano shook her head violently. "No," she mumbled. "They- No."
"The knave of hearts he stole the tarts and took them clean away."
She broke from beside Sash, striding ahead. Sash swore and started moving, Mako at her heels, and we followed after.
"The King of Hearts called for the tarts and beat the knave full sore."
Everyone was dead, but children's voices still floated eerily through the street.
"The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts and vowed he'd steal no more!"
Cyrano had pulled up, staring at the end of a strangely clean street.
Two children were playing in the street, singing as they did so, some kind of skipping game.
"Fuck," Cyrano breathed, hands bone-white around her shotgun. "Fuck you, Ira. Fuck you and damn you and the rest of the Sins with you."
Daubed over nearby buildings, repeatedly, in blood-red letters two-foot high:
What do you do?
My blood ran cold.
Because even after an eighty year hiatus, some things remained fairly common knowledge.
The Sins had never killed children, although they had been blamed in some instances. Odd, given there were documented occasions of them saving children from their carnage.
Only.
Only the governments couldn't trust that they could clear the children. They'd wiped them out, without fail.
I backed away, hands coming up automatically to cover where my mouth was under my helmet. Sash was practically vibrating.
"This is too far."
I wasn't sure if anyone said that or if all our thoughts had coalesced into something audible.
What do you do, when all roads are equally painful?
What do you do when either choice turns you into a monster you don't want to be?
***
BANG.
Everyone jumped. Even Cyrano, who's shotgun was smoking slightly. One of the others brought his assault rifle up and fired a controlled burst into the other child.
I stared.
This was the true horror of the Sins. This was what they did.
They massacred millions, forcing people to turn against each other to wipe out cities in a short space of time, and when all was said and done? They caused people who they hadn't affected to take courses of action that no-one would agree with, that no-one would forgive.

*****

The house she lead us to was a single-storey construction, hiding between two larger buildings. Cyrano pushed at the door, which swung open, half hanging from the hinges now the frame wasn't keeping it in place. I gagged. Despite the seals on my suit that were supposed to be keeping the external atmosphere out, I could smell the decay. Or maybe it was just an overactive imagination.
The walls were spattered with dark rust-red arterial spray, and the floor was tacky to walk on. In the middle of the room we'd stepped into, a dissected torso lay. Hanging around the walls in a grotesque imitation of decoration, limbs that looked like they'd been torn, rather than severed, hung, decomposition setting in. On the table, by the window, what was left of Blue's head was sat, eyes clearly gouged out and tongue nailed to the surface.
Behind that, the blood spatter had been smeared into letters.
Don't you love our art, Cyrano?