by Lisa Beeson
“They’re going to be fine,” Ellie affirmed with a shaky nod. She couldn’t allow herself to think otherwise. “Come on.” She put her hand on the doorknob and forced herself to turn it. Slowly opening the door, she saw that the lights were on in the open space of their living room, but she didn’t see her parents. “Mom...? Dad…?” she called out into the silence.
There was no answer.
Finding his courage, or unable to handle the tension any longer, Taika pushed past her into the apartment. Wildly searching, he turned towards the kitchen and gasped. He started shaking and making a keening sound in the back of his throat.
Oh God, what?
Not wanting to look, but needing to, she stumbled forward into the apartment on tingling legs.
Their parents were slumped over their kitchen table. Between them, a pool of dark red liquid was slowly dripping over the edge onto the floor. Just as she was about to scream, she noticed the overturned wine glasses, and something weird sticking out of her dad’s neck. Running over, she carefully plucked it out. It looked like some kind of small dart. She gently moved her mom’s hair aside and noticed that there was a dart in her neck as well. Grabbing her Mom and Dad’s wrists, she checked for their pulses. When she felt the steady cadence, she nearly cried with relief. Oh thank God.
The power cut out.
Ellie’s shriek rang through the darkness.
This wasn’t supposed to ever happen. Joshua had told her that Scion’s Keep was on its own power grid with all kinds of backups, fail-safes, and technical jargon she didn’t understand or care about.
Once her eyes adjusted, milky beams of moonlight speared through the living room windows, and her heart rate calmed a bit.
Focusing, she made a bright spark of light in her hands, then quickly went over to her terrified little brother. His eyes were staring straight ahead, unfocused.
Oh crap, is he going into shock?
“Taika,” she said, moving right in front of him. “Taika look at me.”
His eyes slowly focused on hers, but his chest was still hitching with quick shallow breaths.
“Mom and Dad aren’t dead. They are just sedated. And the red stuff is wine, not blood. It’s just wine, okay?”
“Not dead…just wine…” he puffed out between breaths.
“That’s right, they’re just sleeping.” She made another spark and gave it to him to hold, then walked back over to the table and gently took the dart out of their mom’s neck. She held it close to her spark so he could see it. “They must have been having some wine when Marin shot them with tranquilizer darts.” The evil witch…
Taika’s breathing slowed, but then they heard and felt the rapid pulsating whumps of a helicopter. It sounded as though it was flying over the building, then it was coming from almost right outside their apartment.
Running over to the living room windows, they saw by the light of the full moon, a huge black helicopter land on the far side of the large front lawn.
The transport...
“That looks like a Chinook. I thought only the military had those,” Taika said, somehow sounding both amazed and terrified at the same time.
As soon as it touched down on the ground, the back end opened up and six men in black-ops gear ran out, holding guns. They were running straight for the building.
“That’s Anaximander’s men! They’re coming to get us!” Taika squealed in terror. “Ellie…What do we do?”
Ellie’s whole body was tingling with a rush of panic. What do we do...What do we do? “Umm…okay.” Ellie forced herself to breathe normally and get a hold of her nerves. Her family was counting on her. “…The message said to take evasive action.” She grabbed Taika by the arm. “You’re the one that plays all those video games…how should we take evasive action?”
“Video games… Oh yeah, okay,” he said, gathering his thoughts. “All right, first, you get rid of the sparks and I’ll go lock the door.”
Ellie concentrated on dissipating the sparks of light and they both winked out.
Taika ran over and turned the deadbolt on the apartment door, then turned back towards the apartment, thinking. He pointed to the leather couch in the living room. “Help me move that in front of the door!”
They both ran over to the couch and used their combined strength to shove the heavy piece of furniture towards the door. Grunting and panting the entire way, they finally made it. Once Taika was satisfied that it blocked the door sufficiently, he went back towards the table where their parents were still slumped over, unconscious. “We need to hide them,” he instructed.
“Right. We can uh…put them in my room,” Ellie said, as she went over and grabbed their mother under her arms. “Get her legs, Tai, hurry.”
Taika grabbed their mother under her knees, and they quickly hobbled their way across the apartment and carried her into Ellie’s room.
“Let’s put her on the other side of your bed out of sight,” Taika suggested.
Ellie nodded, then started maneuvering around her bed. “Good thing she’s so tiny. I don’t know how we’re going to do this with Dad. He’s enormous.”
“I wish I got Mom’s super strength instead of my wimpy ability,” Taika lamented.
“Me too,” Ellie said. Even with all the adrenaline, this was the most exercise she’d had in a while, and she was almost spent.
They put their mother down and placed a bunch of Ellie’s throw pillows on top of her.
“That’ll have to do,” Ellie said with a shrug. “Come on, let’s get Dad.”
Taika gave a quick nod then swiped Ellie’s down comforter from off her bed.
“What are you doing?” Ellie asked.
“We can get Dad onto the blanket and try to drag him that way. Kinda like how they move people in hospitals,” Taika answered as he ran back towards the table, trailing her clean, white comforter across the floor.
“What kind of messed up hospitals are you thinking of?” Ellie asked, not bothering to hide her skepticism, but she didn’t have any better ideas. “But it’s worth a try, I guess.”
As she stepped out of her room, the handle on the apartment door jiggled. A couple seconds later, it exploded in a small blast.
Ellie reflexively cringed and cowered in terror on the ground – unable to do anything else. They were too late. Anaximander’s men had found them.
Someone tried to open the door, but the couch prevented it. “Open the door,” a man’s voice commanded.
“Ellie…” Taika whispered from under the table, beckoning her to come and hide under it with him.
Just as she was about to move, the man began violently bashing his shoulder against the door, moving the substantial couch a couple inches at a time.
“Ellie come on…” Taika squealed, frightened about her vulnerable position.
Ellie began crawling towards the table, but before she was a little more than halfway there, the man managed to open the door wide enough to get through. He had a flashlight clipped to his chest that nearly blinded her. “No more nonsense,” he growled. If he wasn’t mad before, he was definitely pissed off now. “Come with us now or we’ll be forced to use drastic measures.” He stepped forward and pointed a strange looking handgun at Ellie in warning. “Get up.”
As Ellie stood, Taika burst from under the table with a howl of rage, running straight at the man.
Ellie managed to grab him before he ran head-on into the gun now pointing right at him. Taika struggled for a moment, but they both froze when the man disappeared with a rush of air.
Ellie and Taika glanced incredulously at each other then back where the man had been.
“What the–” Taika began, but stopped short when suddenly there was a different man standing in the doorway. He had an unconscious body flung over his massive shoulder like a sack of flour.
Ellie protectively clutched her little brother closer. It was the only thing her body allowed her to do – her feet refused to move. It felt as though her brain was malfunct
ioning again. The only information able to make it through her fear and confusion was that the new man was incredibly tall, built like a body-builder, and intimidating as all get out. Then Ellie recognized the lab coat and the slip on shoes on the unconscious body. Maia?
He opened the door easily, causing the couch to scoot across the floor as if it were made of cardboard. He scanned the apartment from the kitchen to Ellie’s room, as if following something they couldn’t see.
“Inside targets are dispatched, and the assets are secured,” he said in a deep voice with a strange British-y accent. New Zealand? South African maybe?
Then it struck her what he’d actually said: Targets dispatched …assets secured… Oh God, is he one of the terrorists? Are they good or bad?
Before she could wrap her mind around what was happening, the man charged at them an instant before the world whipped around in an impossible blur and there was a bright, concussive blast.
Ellie had no idea what was going on and didn’t even realize that she was screaming until the man stood up and stepped away. She forced herself to stop and it became eerily quiet. Her head was spinning and her stomach felt queasy.
Once she got her bearings, she looked around and saw that she, Taika, and Maia’s unconscious body were on the ground against the back of the leather couch. None of them were harmed, but there was glass and debris all around them.
“What the hell was that?” Taika shouted, as though he couldn’t tell how loud he was being.
Ellie hoped that the blast or her screaming hadn’t permanently damaged his hearing.
“One of my men destroyed the Chinook outside,” the man answered tersely.
They just blew up Anaximander’s helicopter?
“What?” Taika said, wiggling his finger in his ear and opening his jaw wide, trying to get his ears to pop.
Ellie noticed tiny bits of glass shards in the man’s hair and on his shoulders and she realized that he hadn’t been attacking them. He had just shielded them with his own body behind the formidable heft of their leather couch, from the shockwaves and flying glass caused by a massive explosion. She moved him over to the good guy column in her mind.
Now that she wasn’t afraid that he was going to attack them, she was able to see by the light of the full moon that he was actually quite gorgeous in a badass-beefcake sort of way. He looked as if Batman and Thor had somehow combined to make one ridiculously hot, bearded, broody, god-like person. His massive muscles rippled under his shirt in the most alluring way when he moved. Can I keep you?
Once her mind caught up with her hormones, she gasped in panic. Mom and Dad!
She turned to the table and saw that her comforter was covering most of her Dad. There were a few minor cuts on his arms, but he’d been protected from the worst of the blast by distance and the puffiness of her down comforter. Taika must have tossed it over him before he had crawled under the table earlier. Ellie almost laughed at the futility of trying to hide their dad’s big bulk under a blanket, but Taika’s panicked reaction may have just saved his life.
With her dad safe, Ellie ran to her room to check on their mom. The room’s windows were cracked, but since they weren’t facing the front lawn they hadn’t broken, and her mom had been protected from the brunt of the blast.
Catching on to what she was doing, Taika ran to Ellie’s doorway, looking at her in alarm.
“Mom’s okay,” she assured him.
The power came back on with the beeps and clicks of all their electronics and appliances turning on, and the kitchen and the living room were bathed in light once more.
Taika turned back towards the big man who was checking on their dad. “What’s going on? Who are you?”
“You can call me Kael,” he said as he continued to check their dad for injuries besides the cuts on his arms. “My men and I are here to extract and relocate you to a safe location.”
“Where’s that?” Ellie asked, unable to keep the nervous tremor out of her voice.
He turned to look at them in the doorway, assessing them in a cold clinical way. “There’s no time to explain. I need you two to get the hospital beds from the infirmary. Can you do that?”
Ellie and Taika looked to each other, then back towards Kael and nodded. The task gave them something to do besides panic.
“Then go, now,” he ordered. “As fast as you can.”
Ellie and Taika ran out of the apartment, racing each other to the infirmary.
*****
9:47pm
Skylar peered out from her hiding place under Enzo’s house behind the old train car wheels. Lying on her belly in the soft grass, barefoot and still in her pajamas, she watched as Gordon strode past the fishpond towards her tent. He peered inside and when he didn’t see her he tried picking it up from the top. When the little red pop tent easily lifted off the ground, he knew immediately that she wasn’t hiding in there. He tossed the tent aside, causing the contents that had been inside to spread haphazardly over the grass.
The intensity of Gordon’s anger scared Skylar. The strength of it was affecting her even all the way in her hiding place. She was glad Enzo had told her to disappear before Gordon had gotten up there.
“Where is she?” he growled, striding over to where Enzo sat in his chair smoking his stinky pipe and staring at the flames in the fire pit.
Enzo wasn’t bothered by Gordon’s anger though, he only shrugged his shoulders in response to his question. “I honestly don’t know where the little sprite is,” he said unconcerned, finally looking up at him. “She could be anywhere…”
“I saw the bee leave my office, Enzo. I know you overheard.”
“You are all fools,” Enzo said in a hard voice with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Blind, misguided fools.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Gordon said. “Our men are already on their way. This experiment is over. The Cause must move on.”
Enzo blew out a long skein of smoke into the space between them, as though he could not care less.
“Father insisted that we bring you here,” Gordon said, with a frustrated shake of his head. “He said that you were an asset to the Cause. But you’ve been nothing but a hindrance, haven’t you?”
“Not at first, but I managed to put the pieces together. The funeral was just a sham to bring me out of hiding, I gather. And in turn, I brought my son and grandson to you all as well. Very clever.” He puffed at his pipe in thought. “Criminy, Markus must be at least a hundred and fifteen now. Asa’s somehow keeping him alive then?” He took Gordon’s silence as a yes, and chuckled while shaking his head. “But with everything those ‘terrorists’ have done to your ‘Cause’, it’ll never work without the girl now, you know that don’t you?” Enzo pointed at him with the mouthpiece of his pipe. “And you lost her and half the people here. Markus must be very disappointed with you. He always did have a nasty temper when he didn’t get his way.”
Gordon clenched his hands into fists and scowled. “Shut up!”
“Like father like son, I see.” Enzo blew out another skein of smoke and smirked. “Once the others are wise to what was really going on here you might just have a rebellion on your hands.”
“I doubt it. We can fix this. Not that you’ll be around to find out,” Gordon growled. “You have worn out your welcome, old man.” He took something from off of his belt, and with a quick flick of his wrist, it extended out like a telescope. It looked to Skylar like some kind of black wand with a two-pronged fork at the end. He pointed it right at Enzo’s heart. Skylar’s chest squeezed in fear when she saw the end start to spark with crackling blue arcs of electricity. His intent was clear.
He’s gonna kill Enzo…
Skylar couldn’t let that happen. Enzo was her friend. He wasn’t going to be taken from her, too. Her own feelings of anger began to eclipse Gordon’s and gave her courage.
Just as she was about to make her move, a screeching alarm started blaring from Gordon’s clear plastic S.K.I.N. cuff on his ar
m and from Skylar and Soren’s cuffs inside Enzo’s house.
Skylar put her hands over her ears to block out the incredibly shrill sound that seemed to go on for forever. She saw Gordon glare down at his cuff with a look of indignant shock on his face.
While he was distracted, Skylar darted out from under the house towards the men. She was still making herself invisible, so she caught Gordon off guard when she took the sparking stick from his hand. As soon as the stick was away from his grasp it stopped sparking, so she hugged it to herself and made it disappear as well.
Gordon howled out something unintelligible and started madly scrabbling around, crouching and grasping at the air in hopes of catching her. But she was already too far away for him to grab her.
“Skylar!” he screamed in outrage when he couldn’t find her.
Without an immediate plan of action, she ran towards the cover of the trees around the perimeter. Thankfully, the screeching finally stopped, and when she looked back to see where Gordon was, she tripped over a fern. Hitting the ground hard, the air was knocked from her lungs, making her lose her grip on the wand.
Gordon turned towards the sound and glimpsed her while she was still gasping for air, right before she regained her concentration and made herself disappear again.
“Run!” Enzo shouted, grasping onto the armrests of his chair as if he wanted to get up and save her, but he knew his old legs wouldn’t be fast enough.
Skylar quickly snatched up the black wand again when she saw Gordon run in the direction where he had seen her. She ran as fast as she could towards Enzo’s house. When she saw the door on the other side of dome, a scheme instantly came to her as if from a bolt of lightning.
Pushing herself even harder, she made a mad dash towards the door. It slid open just as she reached it and she continued through towards the elevator between the dome and George’s greenhouse; the space lit by the orange-ish glow of sodium lights overhead. She heard Gordon scream out, “Skylar, stop,” right before the dome door slid closed.