OA can't fault that feeling. The loyalty, the love, the determination. She recognises it, knows it intimately, rejoices in it, fears it. She'd thought before that Sniper was a counterpart, an echo, a sibling of the soul, like Rachel or Scott or Renata. Like Steve. Now she has to wonder if she hadn't misinterpreted, if Sniper isn't something closer to her shadow.
She's tried to kill her shadow before. She's tried to reason with it, to feed it, to beg, cajole, spite, escape. In the end it was the shadow that cut her loose, not the other way around. She can't help but feel the resonance now, the unfurling of something dark: an old loathing, not directed at Sniper but at someone else who is, for a moment, conceptually adjacent.
It was not Sniper atop her as she lay in the dirt on that roadside, pressing a knife to her throat.
"Both," OA says, soft and with certainty. "If we can find a way, both."
A deep breath. She doesn't like this, but she likes the alternatives less. A reminder seems in order before she proceeds, all the same: "I have a mission too."
She squeezes Sniper's hand, signs the contract. "How do we bring them back? When you fade, is there a pattern?"
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She's tried to kill her shadow before. She's tried to reason with it, to feed it, to beg, cajole, spite, escape. In the end it was the shadow that cut her loose, not the other way around. She can't help but feel the resonance now, the unfurling of something dark: an old loathing, not directed at Sniper but at someone else who is, for a moment, conceptually adjacent.
It was not Sniper atop her as she lay in the dirt on that roadside, pressing a knife to her throat.
"Both," OA says, soft and with certainty. "If we can find a way, both."
A deep breath. She doesn't like this, but she likes the alternatives less. A reminder seems in order before she proceeds, all the same: "I have a mission too."
She squeezes Sniper's hand, signs the contract. "How do we bring them back? When you fade, is there a pattern?"