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Parasite is the third part of The Underground series

Chapter 25 of 29

The Other Side

"What a mess..." A disgusted voice spat.

Blood had run openly from the stab wound, staining the front of his shirt, pooling on the pavement. What once had been dark, crimson blood had dried, changing into a rusty brown; a large combat knife jutting from the center of the reptile's stomach.

Trilby stood by, examining with his one good eye while his arm rested comfortably in a medical sling. His shoulder was patched, bandaged and honestly hurt like hell, but Trilby paid it no mind. The lifeless salamander, the body of the late Ivan Mihailov lay sprawled before him as his former boarder collie partner, Clark, rolled the corpse over onto it's back casually with his foot.

"Well... the Lambda's aren't going to be happy about this..." Clark said quietly. "This'll cause a whole storm of shit overseas." Slowly, the monochromatic pair looked at each other. "But... something tells me you couldn't care less."

Trilby gave a weak smile to his partner. "No..." He replied, shaking his head slowly. "I really couldn't."

"It's good to see you, Jim." Clark replied, stepping over Mihailov's corpse and next to Trilby. "Situation isn't exactly ideal, but... it's good seeing you again."

"Likewise... I have you to thank, Chaz." Trilby nodded to his partner. "Without you, OCB wouldn't have moved on Isis at all. Leigh wouldn't..." He shook his head slowly, knowing what it would have meant for his wife. "She wouldn't still be here without you."

Looking down at Mihailov's body, he felt a paw clamp gently down on his shoulder. "Had the situation been reversed; wouldn't expect anything less."

"Mister... Agent Trilby?" A voice behind them asked.

Turning around, Trilby and Clark saw a female EMT, a grey squirrel, walking up to them. "Lei-" She paused. "The prisoner would like to speak with you, Agent Trilby."

Trilby felt a flash of shock reverberate through his body, and his good eye narrowed.

"Jim..." Clark asked, sounding more like a warning on his end.

The patch-eyed feline looked over at Clark, shaking his head. "I got this..."

Leaving Clark to do his OCB business, Trilby followed the EMT. When Stallard had taken down the chopper, that broke the rest of Mihailov's men's spirits. The quickly realized they had two ways off the pier; in custody or a body bag. Leaderless and without an exit strategy they had surrendered promptly. In wake of the devastation emergency crews, medical units and firefighters had stormed the harbor in a menagerie of flashing blue and red lights.

Following the grey squirrel to an ambulance, he saw a familiar siamese feline secured to the back of a gurney; strapped and cuffed in place preventing her escape.

"She's already been sedated, you'll only have a few minutes..." The EMT explained, leaving Trilby staring into the empty eyes of his wife. Somewhere in that infinite black of her pupils Isis was there...

...but so was Leigh.

With a patch over one eye and a hard, unforgiving look in the other, Trilby slid his hands into his pants pockets and asked one question. "Why?"

"You..." She started slowly, sounding like she was about to pass out in sleep. "You act..." she repeated, "as though... it was personal; ...a vendetta against you."

Slowly, Trilby walked toward Isis, eyes finally rolling to the side, looking at him. "You took my wife away..." Trilby replied, in a low but placid tone. "What's not personal about that?"

"I did..." Isis breathed in deeply, "what I was designed for... what I had to do... just like you... Agent Trilby; a survivor... Slaves... to our existence..." Isis explained through tired breaths as the sedative kicked in. "I don't... hold it against you..."

"Forgive me if I don't return the favor." Trilby's strong voice rejected.

However, Leigh's face, under the control of Isis didn't change. "It's alright..." She replied, voice fading into the night. "You call me a machine... you know what separates my essence from that... of your media player?" Her eyes slid shut slowly. When they reopened, their cold blue stair locked with his one remaining eye. "I wanted... to survive... I had the fortitude... to defend myself..." Again Leigh's eyes blinked slowly. "Tell me, Agent Trilby... would you not fight... for your own survival?" Isis fell quiet. "We're very different... just by our nature... we are different... But I've seen your world... maybe you'd understand... if you'd seen mine... I simply wish... you could comprehend... what I've experienced..."

Trilby looked up, raising an eyebrow, but saying nothing.

"I've reached into... the depths of eternity..." She said aloud, voice now so weak it would surely shatter soon. "Seen... what exists between death..." she breathed in deeply, eyes back to the sky, "and life... swam... in the razor edge of time's existence, and only..." Her eyes shut momentarily, then reopened. "I could have been the embodiment of forever... and only after choosing a mortal existence... does it mean anything at all..." Slowly, Isis weakly shook Leigh's head. "All the experiences of a life-age... all that was me... everything... will vanish... like footprints in the sand... to the tide..."

Trilby, letting his guard down, slowly leaned down atop Leigh's body, looking into her eyes where what was left of Isis remained. It laid there, pretty face so emotionless as her eyes were fixated upward. Looking at Leigh's body, housing Isis, for a moment, he felt a slight twinge of remorse for it. Then that moment passed.

"That's life... there's not much more I can tell you." Trilby replied quietly. "Eventually all of us are taken by the tide. In the end, that's what we all face."

Isis's eyes began to droop. "Then be grateful... for the time you've been given..."

Strangely enough, a look of slight content or satisfaction graced Leigh's lips as Isis spoke her last, slipping into oblivion. Leigh's eyes rolled into the back of her head slowly. Head rolling to the side, her body lost the fight to the sedative, rendering the avatar unconscious.

Isis was no more.

With a careful paw, Trilby slowly brushed a few of Leigh's raven locks from her face, and behind her ears. With care and precision, the tired old agent leaned down across his wife's motionless body, and gently pressed his lips to her forehead, then moved to her lowered ear.

"I'll see you on the other side..."

Trilby slowly backed away, watching the EMT's loading Leigh into the back of the ambulance, taking her to a government controlled clinic. There, technicians were ready to administer Dr. Openshaw's Tabula Rasa serum. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. Trilby could only hope he'd get his wife back after so many years of chasing her, but the possibility existed that he wouldn't. Nothing was certain anymore besides that all this, everything, was over.

Well, not entirely. His mind reminded him.

Popping the collar on his suit jacket, Trilby quickly found the shadows of the dark harbor, and disappeared from any of the official's view. Slowly he trekked through the looming stacks of industrial shipping crates, weaving a complicated pattern, until he rounded a corner to find a black SUV with it's lights illuminating a small patch of ground, engine running. As the black and white feline approached it, the driver's and passenger's doors opened.

"I don't have much time, they'll be looking for me." Trilby informed, checking his watch.

Details blocked by the headlights at his back, a shadowy figure stepped into view. "That's fine... I'm sure you'll want to get back to your wife." Alias replied, nodding. Both his leg and ear were wrapped in white bandages, compressing his wounds.

Behind him, a petite figure on a crutch hobbled over to his side, along with another larger figure standing to his right.

"Is she okay?" Jenna asked, leaning on the crutch preventing unnecessary stress on her leg.

"Leigh will be fine, my dear." Trilby replied without thinking much about any other alternative. She would be. Confident in what Openshaw had given him, for some reason, Trilby didn't feel any sort of fear that failure was a possibility. He would see his wife again. That was just the way things would be. "Thanks to all of you." He turned to Mick, who stood there, looking slightly absent minded. "I thought you high tailed it out of here, Stallard." Trilby said aloud, leaving Mick to shrug. "But you really came through for us. That was some nice work."

At this, Mick looked up at Trilby and the agent noticed a look of confidence the mink always had the potential to hold, but lacked showing until now. He nodded slowly. "You do pretty nice work yourself, Jim."

"So what now?" Alias asked. "Clark said something about the OCB offering you your job back. Think you'll take it?"

"Hell..." Trilby said, sounding exasperated. "I don't know..." He replied after thinking for a moment. With his one good eye, he looked back into both of Alias's. "I mean I could, but when you find someone, someone who makes so much more sense than anything you've ever done in your life," he shrugged, looking down at the ground momentarily, "I don't know, it just makes all the stupid, pointless shit we see every day seem..." He shook his head slowly. "Exactly that. Pointless." He repeated. "Once you've found someone who can do that, who can make all the problems of the world irrelevant and miniscule... how could you ever go back to anything else?"

Although he hadn't meant it as a question, he left the thought open for all four of them standing there. In Trilby's mind, there really wasn't anything else. It's why he ran after her... why he'd always run after her.

"But..." He continued, reaching into his coat, fingers meeting a single piece of scrap paper. "I am a man of my word." His paw offered the paper to Alias with his uninjured arm in the dim lighting. However, as the fox reached for it, Trilby retracted his forearm upward, out of direct reach. Alias paused, looking at Trilby, guessing at the reasons behind his actions. "I never asked what your business with Rob was." Trilby explained. "I know what you've told me, that you have no plans on harming him, and all I can do is take your word. Just know this..." He paused, slowly lowering his arm, offering the paper again. "I didn't find Openshaw... he found me. I'm still not sure how, but he somehow found out about Leigh." Trilby's eye connected with Alias's once more. "I asked him, why he was willing to help me, why he was working to try and help me bring my wife back when everyone else had told me she was a lost cause. You know what he said?" Trilby asked the group. "He said because he was a doctor... because he had the power to help people and anything less would be a shame to the oath he took." His lungs let out a long sigh, feeling exhausted. "Rob's a good man. So, whatever your business is... just keep that in mind."

Trilby studied Alias's reaction. It looked almost like a slight expression of guilt took his face, but quickly cleared. Instead, he nodded slowly, arm extending and gently took the paper from between Trilby's fingers.

"Jim?" A familiar voice called out, as Clark rounded the corner, finding their secret meeting spot, still dressed in his dark OCB combat gear. "I hate to interrupt," Clark called out, jogging over to them, "but it's time. OCB's going to have some questions and the sooner we get you debriefed the sooner we can get you to where they're treating Leigh."

"Where is she now?" Trilby asked, wanting to know the status of his wife.

"We're going to keep her sedated at the clinic until we can start her treatment." Clark laid out. "Don't worry, I've got two of my best escorting her. They'll be by her side until we can get you there."

Seeing that everything was slowly falling into place, Trilby nodded confidently. "I suppose this is it then?" Trilby asked, extending his paw to Alias who gripped it, shaking it firmly. "Thank you." His eyes went from the vixen, to the mercenary, to the mink. "All of you..."

And with that, the OCB parted ways with those of The Underground, Trilby with Clark, and Alias with Mick and Jenna. Soon enough, he'd be with Leigh. This night shattered the realities Trilby had forced himself to accept many years ago. In their wake, he was left with the limitless possibilities life could take.

The only thing Trilby knew for sure was that one chapter of his life was ending, and another one was just being written. It was weird, strange, in a way. Realizing his way of life, chasing Isis from one city to the next, to the next, was over. No longer would he have to wake up, wondering if he'd make it to his wife before someone else did. The black and white feline could find peace once again.

It was finally over.