Drew made it to the gate. He’d just put his hand on the top rail when a boom and a gush of wind threw him on his back, his head slamming into the dry, hard grass a millisecond later. He gasped and brought his hands to the back of his head, wondering which body part had sliced off of him.
He wiggled his toes and fingers.
Good. All body parts still intact.
He glanced up. What the hell just hit him? Megan was on the ground but Mya was on her feet, staring up at the sky. An Agadon craft was rising up from the city and above the buildings. It hovered for a moment, then zipped away quickly, heading south, sending a wave of energy, punching Drew and pressing a ridiculous amount of pressure against him.
The pressure letup and he went to get up. Another booming-sound reverberated over him and smashed him into the ground an instant later. It was a ship. He watched it blast forward, quickly fading in the smoky sky.
“Are they leaving?” asked Megan, standing and rubbing her bum.
Mya nodded, then paused. Her eyes went wide and her mouth gaped open. “Jaxx is in trouble.” She motioned for Drew and Megan to follow her, then vanished around a building.
Drew leaped to his feet and over the gate. He ran, hastily making it to Megan’s side. “Come on.” He passed her, turned a corner, and quickly halted.
Mya was sitting on the sidewalk, her eyes shut, her chin against her chest, and her arms out to the side. Was she acting like she was an airplane or something? She wasn’t humming, exactly, but there was a vibration coming off her that told him this was not child’s play. She was into some serious energetic shit.
She opened her eyes. “Jaxx is in there.” She pointed to the apartment complex in front of her.
Drew hurried to Mya, slightly out of breath. “He’s in this building?”
“Must be,” said Megan, making her way up the outside steps to the front door. She opened it.
Panic struck Mya again. “Someone’s trying to hurt him.” She jumped to her feet and ran through the entrance and up a staircase. “Hurry.”
Drew nodded and rushed after her, following Mya up the steps and through a door leading to a second floor corridor. He looked over his shoulder. Megan was behind them.
The hallway stunk of stale cigarette smoke and moth balls. This place was old.
Mya went from door to door, stopping, shaking her head, saying, “No. Not this one. No, not that one.” Her hands moved frantically back and forth. She rubbed her legs and her eyebrows rose higher and higher at every no. “He’s dealing with someone who’s heart is hurting. The person doesn’t care who he hurts. We have to —”
She stopped in front of a door and pointed like she was a dog sniffing out a duck.
“He’s in there?” asked Megan.
Drew didn’t wait for a response. He reached for the door, curling his fingers around the door knob.
“Not yet.” Mya lunged for him as Drew turned the knob, but it was too late. Drew swung the door open.
Phhtah!
A middle-aged man, his eyes narrowed, his face gnarled in anger, held a gun outward. He wore a green robe. It was stained in fresh, splattered blood. Who’s blood? Why the blood? It wasn’t Drew’s, was it?
Smoke rose from the gun’s muzzle and a burning sensation filled Drew’s stomach. He placed his palms against his abdomen and walked backwards into a wall, stammered, and slid down, his stomach aching like he hadn’t had food in days.
Megan’s hands flew to her mouth.
Drew blinked, cringing in pain. He’d been shot…by a human.
3
South of Whitefish, Montana
Jaxx jerked back. Was that Drew? He told them to stay back on the hill, to wait for him. It couldn’t be Drew. It shouldn’t be Drew. But it was.
Jaxx’s favorite nephew was on his butt, holding his stomach, blood all over his hands.
Jaxx had already thrown the man’s gun out of the window and didn’t have time to ask any questions. He rushed forward, slamming his shoulder into the shooter’s back. The guy toppled forward, crashing onto the apartment floor. Jaxx pressed his knee on the guy’s upper back, keeping him down.
“Let me go,” screamed the man. “You killed my family.” He kicked and punched, grabbing at air, doing his best to find something to hurt Jaxx with.
Jaxx reared his arm back, brought his hand into a fist, and punched the guy in the back of the head, knocking him out.
Jaxx stood and hastily paced into the hallway. The madman’s gun was small, so perhaps the bullet wouldn’t do too much damage. He cleared his throat and rubbed his face in concern. The wound didn’t just ooze, it gushed. He sure as shit knew his nephew probably wouldn’t survive unless they staunched the flow and got him to a doctor.
Megan was on one side of Drew, her hands over Drew’s hands, blood running down her fingers.
Drew took an uneasy breath and leaned his head back against the wall. “Shit, this hurts.” He winced in pain.
Mya briskly walked toward them, her face twisted in worry. “I’m sorry, Drew. I’m sorry. It was my fault.” She bent down and put her hands over both Megan’s and Drew’s. She took in a deep breath, her eyelids shutting, her eyes moving back and forth like she was searching for something. “I can help you, but we are supposed to take the bullet out. I can’t do it. It’s too deep. My small hands won’t be able to get to it. We have to find a doctor.” Mya’s hands started vibrating. “Megan and Drew, move your hands away.”
Drew shook his head. “No, no. It feels better if I don’t.”
Mya’s eyes brightened and a calm glow emanated from her. “I can make it stop hurting for a little bit.”
Drew swallowed, nodding his head up and down in short spurts. “Okay.” He was trembling, his hands shaking as he moved them away from his stomach. His body tensed up. “Ow, ow.”
Mya slid her hands directly over the bullet’s entry point. She sniffed loudly, then exhaled. She took in another inhale and her face reddened and began to perspire.
She lifted her hands. The blood was coagulating and the wound started closing up, stopping the blood flow.
“I helped it. It won’t last long. It’s temporary,” said Mya, her eyes flashing to Jaxx’s.
The apartment rumbled and Jaxx twisted around. Out of the kitchen window, he could see a craft flying away from the city. “That’s another one. They’re leaving the city.” Jaxx wanted to ask why, but neither he nor anyone in his rag-tag group would know the answer. Most importantly, though, Drew needed medical attention. “Let me pick Drew up. There’s bound to be a hospital or a doctor’s office around here.”
Jaxx bent down and lifted Drew, holding him like he’d hold a bride.
“Agh,” wailed Drew, his eyes rolling back. “Frickin’ hurts…bad. I just want to sleep.”
“Don’t,” said Jaxx. He walked down the corridor, holding Drew in his arms. He made it to the stairs and down them, being as cautious and careful as he could.
“We’re almost out of the apartment,” said Jaxx, taking his first step outside the apartment complex.
Mya stopped near Jaxx. “There are only a few Agadon left in the city and —” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. They’ve taken the boy.”
“Mya, I’ll find a doctor and you go get the —” He stopped himself. Although Agadon weren’t in sight, telling Mya to find the boy while he looked for a doctor wasn’t going to fly. Mya was a mere child and needed to be far away from this blowing-things-up business as possible. “Alright. Doctor first. Then boy second.”
Drew coughed. He turned his head, resting it against Jaxx’s shoulder. “Trust Mya. She can find the boy without us.”
Jaxx shook his head. “Megan, grab Mya, please. Make sure she stays in sight.”
Megan took Mya by the hand. “Let’s go find a doctor.”
Mya glanced at her feet. “That’s not wise, Jaxx. You find a doctor and I’ll find the boy.” She smiled as if this was the perfect plan and everyone would go for it now.
&nb
sp; “Please, Mya. I know you want me to trust you, but you are going to have to trust me, as well,” responded Jaxx.
Mya softly nodded, her eyes meeting Jaxx’s. “Okay.”
Jaxx followed them in their quickened pace, holding Drew in his arms. They past a building, then rushed through a crosswalk ridden with holes in the asphalt and chunks of fallen buildings strewn everywhere.
Megan motioned toward a building with an emergency sign. It was a small, quaint hospital, probably roomy enough for a handful of patients at a time. For this small town, it was probably big enough.
Jaxx kicked aside a piece of broken concrete and turned toward the hospital. The hospital front glass doors opened automatically.
Inside, the lights flickered on and off, papers were scattered over the registration desks, lamps and chairs were tipped over, and a wall was blown to shreds.
Jaxx waltzed through a gigantic hole in the wall and to the back, where he assumed the emergency rooms were. He stopped in mid-stride and looked away. Dozens of people were lying face down, pools of blood surrounding them. He bit his lip, holding in a yell.
Megan screamed and Jaxx spun on his heels, startled.
Megan was standing and eyeing a room Jaxx walked by, her fingers splayed against her chest. She slowly shook her head, her eyes welling up. “Oh my God.” She pushed Mya back so she couldn’t get a look.
Jaxx made his way over to Megan and peered into the room. Doctors and nurses were on the floor, ankles bound and hands tied behind their backs. They all had been shot execution style.
Jaxx kicked the door closed. “Those…” He wanted to scream every name in the book, but squeezed his jaw instead. He’d seen enough of this shit to last him twenty lifetimes, and the pains of war were numbing him — though subtly — more and more, taking away his humanity. He didn’t like that as much as he didn’t like innocent people dying around him, though. “Let’s go.”
“What…was it?” asked Drew, his eyes closed, his breaths coming soft and short.
Jaxx found a surgery room and put Drew down on a doctor’s table. He slapped Drew’s cheeks. “Stay awake, buddy.” He waived Mya inside. “What do we do? How do we heal him, Mya?”
“Find a doctor to take the bullet out,” she replied, her eyes wide. “That’s all we can do right now.”
Jaxx threw his hands to the side. “There’s no doctor.” Jaxx closed his eyes, scanning the area for human signatures. He didn’t know what a doctor’s human signature looked like, but hell, maybe he’d find out. He let out a exasperated breath and opened his eyes. “I can’t locate any alive humans in the vicinity…at all,” complained Jaxx.
Mya took surgical pliers off of a tray next to the doctor’s table; the sound of metal against metal filled the room. “Can you get the bullet out, Jaxx?”
It didn’t matter that Jaxx had never attempted anything of the sort, but he had to try. It may just save Drew’s life.
He pushed Drew’s blood stained shirt above Drew’s belly button, seeing where a hole once was but was now a wound that was strangely healing itself and quickly. “I’ll have to cut the wound back open again to get in there.” He glanced around. “Find a knife.”
A ship powered up in the distance. He gave Mya an ominous stare.
She nodded her head, acknowledging she knew what he was thinking. The kid was on that ship and the Agadon were preparing to punch out of the city with that little boy. The Agadon obviously knew that this boy had something special inside of him, something that could end humanity’s miserable existence on Earth once and for all. “Megan, can you attempt to get the bullet out of Drew?”
“Yes,” she motioned for Jaxx to leave. “Go, go. Get the boy.”
Jaxx dipped his head and rushed out of the room, down the hallway, and into the lobby. The Agadon craft’s boosters lit up, booming across the city. The good news, it gave away their location. The bad news, it meant they were leaving any minute.
The hospital’s glass doors opened and Jaxx ran outside and down the sidewalk. He turned a corner and paused. The back of a ship faced him, the ramp still open.
An Agadon held a young boy who was scratching and clawing, doing everything that his small body could do to break from the alien’s hold.
Jaxx brought more Chi to his legs, a process that was becoming simple, almost automatic. He took off, pounding his feet across the blacktop, jumping off the sidewalk, and hopping over debris and dead humans.
“Hey,” he shouted. “Put that boy down.”
The Agadon took several paces into the ship and turned, his face as expressionless as a rock. He set the thrashing kid on a chair and strapped the little guy in.
Jaxx came closer, his steps speeding faster at every footfall. The alien reached for something and the sound of a chainsaw pierced the air — the Agadon’s laughter. The gray-lipped beast pulled out an ion cannon and rested the heavy sucker on his hip, then pointed it at Jaxx. The Agadon pulled the trigger, the heavy cannon bouncing back into the alien’s hip, smoke drawing out of the corners of the thick, round muzzle.
Wapoom!
A blue blast screamed toward Jaxx.
Jaxx sidestepped, missing the incoming fire, only to hear more cannon fire coming his way. But Jaxx was closing in. Just another step and he dove into the ship.
Wapoom!
A shot singed his thigh, searing a burning pain across his upper leg. It threw Jaxx off his trajectory, and he landed with a loud thud against the craft’s inner side wall next to a rack of rifles. The impact shook the Agadon weapons off the rack and to the floor.
In one swift motion, Jaxx twisted, slamming his knee into the Agadon’s side. The Agadon bent over for an instant, then straightened, his face like a blank wall of nothing. Other than Taz, Jaxx had never seen an Agadon express any emotion whatsoever — not even pain.
“You are Jaxx?” asked the Agadon, calculating something in his head. “Yes, you are. I see you in the Aga-base.” He tapped his temple a few times, indicating that’s where Jaxx’s information popped up. The thing’s brain was probably a mechanical, biological, and digital algorithm-spitting computer.
Jaxx pulled Chi up from his solar plexus and into his hands. He thrust a fist at the Agadon’s cannon, knocking it away, then jumped and twisted in the air, wrapping his legs around the Agadon’s neck, and twisted again.
A metallic crack filled the ship’s cabin and the Agadon went limp, falling to the floor. Its legs twitched and its arms slithered like a snake. A hiss, then sparks jumped from the Agadon’s neck. The alien’s body relaxed, turning off, and it lay motionless.
Jaxx went to unstrap the boy, lunging forward to get the kid out of the seat and back to the hospital. If this kid was like Mya, as he suspected, then maybe he could help Mya fix Drew. Two people were sometimes better than one.
Jaxx hesitated. “Where did the punk go?” The chair was empty, the straps broken and sliced to shreds. The boy was gone.
4
South of Whitefish, Montana
“Your name is Jaxx, right?”
Jaxx straightened in a start and looked over his shoulder toward the cockpit. The boy, maybe eight years old, was sitting on the cockpit chair, moving the control stick around and making, “Pew, pew,” laser-like sounds as if he was playing a video game.
Jaxx took a gander at the seat belt and then back at the kid — an African-American boy with short-cut hair, beautiful brown skin that glowed, and a violet aura with rainbow specks. This had to be the young man Mya was looking for.
Jaxx made his way to him, ready to snatch him up and take him out of the ship.
The kid held up a knife. “My names Damion. You’re not taking me anywhere. We’re using this ship.”
Jaxx furrowed his brows. “Why?”
For a kid to be this confident, this blunt, he had to know something important. Jaxx eyed the ramp and outside, making sure an Agadon wasn’t sneaking up on them.
“You’ll see,” he flashed Jaxx a smile, then went back to playing whatev
er game he was playing with the control stick.
Jaxx blinked a few times. Was this kid for real? “I need —”
“Jaxx,” screamed Megan.
Jaxx ran to the edge of the ramp, placing his hand on a side wall. Megan was coming around a corner, pushing an unconscious Drew in a hospital-issue wheelchair. Mya was running behind her.
Drew was pale. Death was closer than Jaxx originally thought.
Jaxx frowned and his heart palpitated. Why didn’t Drew listen? Why did Mya come into the city when he explicitly told her not to? He had to get this kid, Damion, and Mya away from danger and to safety as soon as possible. Hell, that had to be Jaxx’s next step.
Megan wheeled Drew up to the ramp and into the ship’s cabin.
“He doesn’t look good, at all.” Jaxx wondered if his shocked face was as white as Drew’s. “You couldn’t take out the bullet?”
“No, and I think I made him worse,” replied Megan, shaking her hands and slightly bouncing up and down in a panic. “He started to bleed massively, but Mya used her energy to patch him back up.”
“It won’t last long,” Mya chimed in. “We have to find someone to help him. I can’t heal anyone with a bullet. It’s not an energy weapon. I can’t make a bullet wound disappear like I can with energy.”
“Yes you can,” said Damion, swiveling his chair around, playing with his fingers. “We just have to learn. That’s pretty advanced stuff.”
“Who is that?” asked Megan.
“That’s one of the gifted,” responded Mya, walking over to Damion. “Do you think we could help him together? Maybe we could link up?”
Damion shook his nose at her. “Nope. Not yet. We need a third child, but depending on which one we get, I don’t know if that one would know how to make a bullet vanish.”
Jaxx gently shook Drew. “Wake up, buddy.” He gulped down a big swallow, more or less a big cry. Drew was all the family he had, and strangely, he always loved the little tike — not so little anymore. “I need you.”
The Complete Atlantis Series, Books 1 - 5: Ascendant Saga Page 93