The voice modulator is insufficient (Ending #4: Au Revoir, Ciao)

Even if you could wrap the sleeping powder vial with your fingers, there was no way you were going to be able to lift your arms to knock Au Revoir out with it. For now, you'd need to use your other tool.

If Au Revoir had been affected by some control agent like Bound Blood in the past, there was a good chance that she was susceptible to commands from the coded voices, the same way you'd been. In tremendous pain, you felt in your pocket until you found the remote voice modulator, then gripped your thumb atop the control device. You'd managed to get a number of pre-recorded messages into it using the voices of some Adder's senior agents, such as the captured Adder Adjutant and the now-deceased Serpentine Sportsman. From those, you'd assembled several useful phrases, such as "Stop," "Kill Yourself," and others.

You didn't exactly have the luxury of inspecting the mechanism to release the perfect call-phrase, so you began to hammer the button randomly. The word "stop" emanated from your pocket in a recognizable voice a few times as you clicked the button in like the backwards tip of a ballpoint pen.

"It is time that I stop... huh?" Au Revoir questioned, sounding some mixture of thoughtful and mystified. You couldn't see her face, but you could feel her breath on her neck as her arms tightly wrapped your chest; they hadn't given up their grip yet.

You nodded, then spoke over your shoulder to her, telling her that she was being manipulated. She needed to back down to think about this logically. The two of you were fellow agents, comrades against the terrorist forces of Adder. You'd been on many missions together now, always allied in your objective. There was no way she wanted to kill you.

"What I want..." Au Revoir repeated after you, seeming perplexed. Her body had become like a statue built around you, offering little further aggression, but still too heavy to move. "I don't know what I want. I thought I did, but it is as though I am drunk. Au Revoir remembers wanting to be the strongest in the world... Python remembers being proud to work in the greatest counter-terrorism force. Au Revoir came here to stop the terrorist threat and Python came here to destroy CEDIT's hidden research into genetic mind control drugs. Au Revoir and Python both want to destroy that research. You tried to stop me-- us-- from doing that and so..."

You didn't like where this train of thought was going. If Au Revoir had learned that CEDIT was trialing technology such as the Adder methods that had turned her into a brain-scrambled super soldier, it made perfect sense she'd want to destroy that research. The other side of her-- Python-- probably didn't need anything more than a command to carry that out. Whoever her commandant was, it didn't seem like it was one of the people you'd pre-recorded on your device, to your chagrin. You begged her to reason it out-- you were only stopping her from making a terrible mistake, as a fellow agent of CEDIT.

"CEDIT are the ones who made the mistake. Anyone who is on my wrong side has made that mistake!" Au Revoir hissed back, tightening her clutch around your body until you could feel your own body twisting. Her hot gauntlets began to burn into both her own arms and your flesh. "I'll destroy CEDIT. I'll destroy Adder. I'm going to destroy everyone who's ever used me... That's right! I love to destroy. Maybe if I just destroy everything then I won't be so confused. I'll kill everyone!" You could picture a crazed grin spread across her face beneath that half-mask she wore with her Adder uniform. It sounded like her mind was seriously broken, after years of manipulation from the side she'd worked to destroy.

The time to puzzle it out was over; your body was failing. Desperately, you reminded her: you were her friend and a fellow agent! Whatever she thought you'd come here to do, you recognized a loyalty to your team first. She had to trust you!

"Trust? I can't trust anyone... Loyalty... I can't be loyal to anyone or anything..." Au Revoir giggled crazily, then slowly lifted one arm. You took the opportunity to try to break free, but only accomplished nearly twisting your one arm she was still holding out of its socket. As you howled with pain, you saw her face, a horrible mask of confused emotions, both grinning and crying simultaneously. As tears traced from her high cheekbones to the strong outline of her jaw, the woman placed one hand upon your head and began to stroke your hair. Again, you struggled to escape, knowing what would happen next. The same hand that had lightly brushed your hair became a claw, clenching your head in place as her glove began to glow hot. The terrible, searing pain of her hand melting your cranium was only matched by the smell of your own burnt hair-- the smell of your own death. "Ooooh... Oh no... Ciao... No no no no no..." The woman babbled, still grinning as droplets of tears fell from her jaw to the shelf of her breasts. "Noooo... Don't... Don't die, Ciao. Don't die!"

Her words didn't match her actions. Even as she begged you to continue living through shuddering, clenched teeth, she applied the hold on your head harder and harder. You began to feel your consciousness finally, blessedly fading.

An optimistic part of you wanted to believe that maybe seeing what she'd done to you would be the trigger that finally snapped her out of it, but based on past evidence, it would only warp her psyche further. Au Revoir had always struggled, a mind torn between herself and a puppet terrorist named Python. What you'd seen on her face just now was that of a woman to whom choice and free will no longer applied. It could be most aptly said that she was now neither of those people. It was likely she'd been broken so thoroughly now that even Adder would have no use for her. Then, she might be disposed of... or would she? She'd lived through so much already, maybe she'd find a way to bounce back even from this.

From the corner of your eye, you saw the other scientists fleeing the room; you could hardly blame them for not helping you. It was no longer a matter of last words or intentions to help Au Revoir. You'd failed, but hopefully, the same strength that allowed Au Revoir to bounce back from past evils and become the force of good she had been would prevail one more time. You wanted her to escape whoever was coming to burn her after this mission finished, to recover herself, and to live on. Even with all of the atrocities she'd committed, you wanted to believe there was still redemption for her. She was the strongest woman alive, after all.

The physical component of that strength was proven painfully, as the force of her fist gripping onto your head caused your world to go black.