The Fall

The order was absolute.

"Run!" Jaxen screamed, shoving Sera violently toward a narrow service corridor behind a catering station that hadn't been sealed yet.

Then, the Alpha-Prime unleashed hell.

Jaxen didn't try to shoot his way out. He was outgunned. Instead, he threw himself directly into the closest squad of Enforcers, utilizing his enhanced speed and cybernetic strength. He moved like a blur of white and silver, a force of nature driven by pure, protective fury. He shattered jaws, snapped arms, and used the bodies of his enemies as human shields against the ensuing hail of blaster fire.

The ballroom erupted into absolute chaos. Elites screamed and scrambled for cover as plasma bolts scorched the crimson silk and shattered the crystal pillars.

Sera stumbled into the service corridor, her gown torn, her breath tearing through her lungs like glass. She looked back.

Jaxen was a god of war, tearing through the ranks, drawing every single gun in the room toward himself to give her time to escape. He fought with a brutality that the State had taught him, but he fueled it with a love the State could never understand.

But there were too many.

A heavy plasma round caught Jaxen in the shoulder, spinning him around. He barely grunted, immediately surging forward to crush the throat of the guard who shot him. But the break in his momentum was all Vane needed.

Commander Vane stepped up onto a raised dais, calmly raised a high-powered sniper-blaster, and fired.

The bright blue beam of concentrated plasma struck Jaxen dead center in the chest, piercing the silver cybernetic plating and burning straight through his heart.

Jaxen froze. The roar of the battle seemed to mute around him. He slowly dropped to his knees, his ceremonial blaster clattering to the floor.

"NO!" Sera shrieked, a sound ripped from the very bottom of her soul.

She didn't run. She couldn't run. She burst back out of the service corridor, ignoring the screaming guards, ignoring the weapons aimed at her. She threw herself across the blood-slicked floor, sliding into Jaxen just as he collapsed backward.

She caught his heavy head, pulling him into her lap. His white uniform was charred black and soaking wet with his blood. His pale blue eyes were hazy, fluttering as the life rapidly drained from his massive frame.

"Jaxen, stay with me, please, please," Sera begged, pressing her hands desperately against the gaping, smoking hole in his chest, completely ignoring the searing heat of the plasma burn blistering her palms. "Don't leave me. You promised. You promised we'd be a family."

Jaxen coughed, blood bubbling past his lips. He reached up with a trembling, impossibly heavy hand, his blood-stained fingers gently brushing a tear from her cheek.

Even as he died, there was no fear in his eyes. Only a profound, devastating peace.

"I claimed you," Jaxen whispered, his voice a broken, wet rasp that only she could hear over the screaming of the alarms. "My Sera. My mate. I never... regretted it. Not for a single... second."

His hand fell away from her face, hitting the floor with a dull thud. The faint blue light of his cybernetic plates flickered, and then went completely dark. His chest stopped moving.

Jaxen, the Alpha-Prime, was dead.

Sera didn't scream again. She couldn't breathe. The pain was so absolute, so all-consuming, that her mind simply fractured under the weight of it. She sat in the middle of the ruined ballroom, cradling the lifeless body of the man she loved, rocking him back and forth, humming a broken, off-key lullaby she had meant to sing to her children.

She didn't fight when the heavy, armored hands of the Inquisitor’s Guard grabbed her by the hair and dragged her violently away from him. She didn't struggle as they locked her in binders. She just stared at Jaxen’s body as she was pulled into the dark.