That scream drives home to Michael, much more intimately than did the Florentine rain of strider-bits, that the Combine's weapons are organic, or at least started their existences that way — that every one of them is to some poor species from another world what those Overwatch Elites he toasted are to humans.
Curiously, this gives him an almost Buddhist detachment from what he must do next. He looks the gunship right in the eye, heedless of the difference in scale between them that was clear from the moment he first glimpsed Gordon's sketch of that graceful engine.
"I'm sorry," he says, hoping his tone comes through even if his words mean nothing to it. "I wish it could be different, but I can't let what was done to you happen to them. I wish I could set you free some other way, but I don't know how."
While he's been talking, he's been X-ray scanning for the gunship's brain. Once he finds it, he puts a bolt through it. If his aim is as true as he hopes, it should be a clean kill, at least as clean as killing ever is.
no subject
Curiously, this gives him an almost Buddhist detachment from what he must do next. He looks the gunship right in the eye, heedless of the difference in scale between them that was clear from the moment he first glimpsed Gordon's sketch of that graceful engine.
"I'm sorry," he says, hoping his tone comes through even if his words mean nothing to it. "I wish it could be different, but I can't let what was done to you happen to them. I wish I could set you free some other way, but I don't know how."
While he's been talking, he's been X-ray scanning for the gunship's brain. Once he finds it, he puts a bolt through it. If his aim is as true as he hopes, it should be a clean kill, at least as clean as killing ever is.