“In my experience, ja, they really do drop dead. Especially of late, hey.”
She had to admit it, he was right. “Maybe we should go and see Samuel. This isn’t right.”
“He’s still alive then?”
“As far as I know.”
“Damn, hoped that idiot went with the rest of them.”
“Well why are we still here?”
“Vipers are tough to kill,” he winked at her.
“Catlin,” a raspy voice sounded in the room.
They both turned where they knelt on the ground to look back at the bed which the patient was on. Neither had thought to check, but the patient was alive.
“Who’s that?” Sousa leaned over.
The patient had now removed the large tube and mask that covered the face, but blood still obscured the view.
“Come here,” the voice called, barely a whisper.
Catlin stood, but was a little hesitant in approaching. Sousa though, bore no objections and promptly walked right up to the bed.
“Stinkin’ bloody mess!” He covered his mouth, searching for something to cover it.
“Who is it?’
“Come here child … we don’t have long.” A hand stretched out towards Catlin.
But Catlin had frozen in her stance and was looking, wide – eyed at Sousa.
“Bloody alright then.” He spat, grabbing the bed covers and wiping away at the face, trying to clear the blood.
“Ah gross, it’s her.” He stood back repulsively, as he cleared away enough blood to recognise the face.
“Who?”
“The dyke of Destiny … Ma’am herself.”
“The hell …” Catlin came forward. “What the hell is she doing …”
“Shhh …” Lucinda interrupted her. “Not long ... must listen …”
“No I don’t!” Catlin raged suddenly. “You’re an evil bitch, do you know the things that you’ve done, the things that ...”
“Urghhh …” she coughed, splotches of crimson spraying everywhere. “Not ... long …”
“Long for what?” Catlin asked.
“Question ...” She coughed, another spurt of blood coming to her lips. “Question, everything ...” she coughed again, unable to finish the sentence. She attempted a few more times to speak but struggled getting any air into her lungs.
“What question?”
“Why ... why … come ...”
“You mean why I came here?” Catlin engaged.
She nodded slowly, her eyes unable to fixate.
“Why am I here?” She almost shouted. “What?” The question had been driving her since she had first arrived.
“Ma … Fa …”
Lucinda was struggling to breathe let alone talk, blood was coming thickly from her mouth, spraying everywhere when she coughed and making it difficult for her to speak clearly.
“What?” Catlin grabbed her by the arms. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Her eyes widened and she made as if to sit up, but her paralysed body prevented her. She coughed again, spluttering blood from her mouth and spraying it outwards. A fleck of it hit Sousa on the face, but he didn’t flinch.
Instead he swatted at it with his tongue, capturing it and savouring the taste of it momentarily before spitting it back out.
“What is it?” Catlin was now screaming, grabbing Lucinda’s arms and shaking her. “What! Tell me!”
But Lucinda was drifting, her consciousness fading. Catlin shook her violently back into consciousness and asked her again. With her back to Sousa, she’d lost sight of what he was doing and consequently didn’t notice him pull a revolver from his hip, still licking his lips.
Lucinda’s eyes flashed wide, her consciousness temporarily back she quickly spoke. “Special child … special parents …”
“Please … just tell me what’s going on.” Catlin was now begging; this woman clearly knew something about her. Something that even though she hadn’t said a word had resonated with Catlin, she knew she was different, she knew she was special and this woman knew why.
“Father …”
But before any more words could be uttered, Sousa had stepped forward, pistol in hand. He took a moment, enough to get Lucinda’s eye to fixate on him. When she saw him standing there, gun raised and pointed at her, fear flashed in her eyes for a moment.
But the fear only lasted for a moment, because as soon as Lucinda looked at him, Sousa saw it. He sniggered and pulled the trigger in the same moment.
- -
Samuel
“Time is of the essence, come Samuel.” Fahwad spoke as he descended the stairway.
“Why did everyone just drop dead?” Samuel asked as he hurriedly led Fahwad back down the hallway, in the direction of the staff quarters.
“Two threads were just restored.”
“I thought the people who worked here were exempt from that?” Samuel asked, before he realised Fahwad had stopped following him. “Fahwad?”
And then a single gunshot rang out inside the hallway.
Samuel turned at the loud, deafening crack to see Fahwad had stopped at the door to the medical bay room. Inside, he noticed, the girl was on the floor and Sousa was standing with a revolver in his hand.
Samuel was about to ask him what he was doing when Sousa spoke up first.
“Hey!” he called out casually, shoving the revolver back into his pants. “What the hell is going on ja? These bloody doctors just dropped dead man, same as out there?”
“Somebody has restored threads, one of them here, I felt her. This means we don’t have much time before she wakes up.” Fahwad spoke, looking rather strangely at the body on the bed and then Catlin on the ground. Despite the odd site, he didn’t say anything.
“Who?” Sousa asked.
“Sera. One of my kind.”
“What?”
“There is another thread here and it’s just been restored,” Fahwad snapped.
“Then why are we still here then? Why am I here, shouldn’t I be on the floor?”
“You and Samuel are a part of me,” he replied impatiently.
“What about her?” Sousa turned and nodded towards Catlin, who was seated on the floor with a blank look on her face.
“We need to move,” Fahwad ignored the question. “Come Sousa, we must find it, now!”
“Oh ja, how long we have?” Sousa asked, remembering that any new threads meant potential for him to get more power.
“I don’t know how long it takes for the energy transfer, but if we’re quick maybe we can get to it before she wakes up, stop it from happening.”
“There’s a tunnel.” Samuel led the three of them on, leaving Catlin where she sat. “That has to be where it is.”
“So, another thread?” Sousa asked.
“Yes.” Fahwad responded.
“And that’s why all these people are dead?”
“There were two, one is here and the other somewhere else.” Fahwad said with a growing irritation as they paced towards the staff quarters.
“Oh, right, of course,” Sousa responded sarcastically.
“Got something to say!” Fahwad stopped and challenged him, pointing his finger into Sousa’s chest.
Samuel reacted quickly, getting between them. “Hey. Easy. We got work to do here.”
“You are here to do my bidding Sousa, don’t forget that.”
“Yeah, and don’t you forget our deal.”
“You failed your end Sousa, there is no deal.”
“Ja bullshit hey! I caught the damn pretty boy, tied him up and everything. Then you and some other idiot turn up and ruin it for me. Plus, I got that black fella locked up all nice for ya. So I consider my part of the bargain upheld.”
“I don’t have time for this ar
guing,” Fahwad turned hastily. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“I want the girl.” Sousa stood still, chin raised upwards.
“What?”
“I said I want the girl.”
“Fine, all yours,” Fahwad responded, clearly not caring about Catlin’s fate. “Just come along.”
Satisfied with his victory, Sousa licked his lips and they moved on, swiftly making their way through the staff quarters to the sealed entrance of the small tunnel. None were surprised when they arrived to find three dead soldiers fallen on the floor in front of it.
“Sousa,” Fahwad pointed.
“Got it.” He moved quickly, dragging the bodies out of the way.
As Sousa cleared the inert bodies, Fahwad stepped right up to the door, gripping the metal plate in his hands tightly.
Considering it momentarily and changing his mind, he stepped back, taking a second to dab at his forehead with a handkerchief before saying, “Sousa, remove the door. I do not wish to exert myself.”
“Ja, whatever,” he complied, giving Fahwad a strange look as he brushed past him, muttering words to himself about the foul smell in the room.
It didn’t take Sousa long. With the strength that Fahwad had given him, he pulled the small metal door clean off its hinges and threw it to the ground. All three men bent themselves over and looked down the small length of the opening it created to see what was beyond.
Sousa pulled a flashlight from his pocket, shining it down the length of the tunnel.
“Another door at the end … I’ll go in first,” Sousa volunteered, ducking into the small passage and making his way to the other end.
At the second door Sousa again made light work of removing it, using his strength to force the door off its hinges. He called again to the other two once finished. “All clear, come on through.”
Samuel and Fahwad quickly made their way behind Sousa and joined him in the small, poorly lit cave, where he stood over a body.
“Not very bright in here hey, but that woman, I recognise her ja.”
“Marion.” Samuel said, kneeling in front of the unconscious body. Marion lay before him on the cave floor, a series of wires attached to her. He noted her head had a slightly more elongated look to it.
“She must have made the transfer to herself,” Fahwad mused as he inspected the area where the thread was, following wires from it to a black box, which were attached to a laptop. Cables from it were attached onto Marion, it didn’t take a genius to work out what’d happened.
“She restored Sera into herself,” Samuel confirmed.
“You can do that?” Sousa asked.
“Looks like she did,” he replied, not noticing the curious look on Sousa’s face.
Fahwad wasted no time in deliberation, he quickly got the wires that’d been attached to the thread and connected them to himself. “Quickly.” He looked at Samuel, who was already moving.
“What you doing hey?” Sousa asked him.
“Listen Sousa, if she wakes up, smack her in the head till she stops moving.”
“Huh, why?”
“Just do it!”
“Ok, ja, ja.”
“When this is done, take me to the coffin, understand?”
“Yeah, but hey what …”
Smack!
Sousa’s face screwed up at the sting of another slap from Fahwad, the pain was intense and had him seeing stars in his vision. Fahwad was clearly not messing about.
“Don’t question me! Take me to the coffin once it is done, understood?”
“I understand you got some bloody anger issues man! Fine! I’ll take you to your bloody coffin hey.”
“Samuel?”
“Yes Fahwad.”
“The laptop, pass it to me, I want to show you how to do this.”
“I know how to do it,” he rebutted, holding onto the laptop.
“You better.”
“It’s easy.”
“Right then, are we ready?” Fahwad asked, sitting on the dirt floor of the cave.
“Ready for what?” Sousa asked, still slightly confused as to what was going on. He shuffled over to Samuel to watch what he was doing on the laptop, more than an interested look on his face.
“I am ready, make this quick Samuel.”
Sousa watched the unconscious woman carefully, but she didn’t bat an eyelid or show any signs of waking up. He wondered how in the hell she’d absorbed the power, she was a human, just like him.
Samuel began typing commands into the laptop as Sousa stood by, watching carefully every precise move he made.
“What’s that hey?”
“Transfer section, were moving this to Fahwad.” Samuel showed him on the screen.
“And it’s as simple as that?”
“Well, no. It took thirty years for me to figure this out so I would say that it is decidedly not simple.”
“Ja, whatever man, does it work?”
“It worked for Fahwad, but he has the coffin. This woman, it looks like it worked for her too but …”
“But what?” Sousa asked.
“Shut up both of you!” Fahwad intervened. “Get on with it!”
“Sorry,” Samuel apologised, tapping the return key on the laptop in a gesture that suggested it was the final command.
Almost straight away Samuel and Sousa could see that whatever it was they were doing had worked, Fahwad’s body spasming almost immediately.
He lurched forward suddenly, his head nearly touching his knees and then he swung back in the opposite direction, causing his head to slam into the rock wall behind him.
“Shit, we gotta stop that!” Samuel blurted out, nearly dropping the computer from his lap.
Sousa reacted swiftly, grabbing both of Fahwad’s legs and pulling him forward, sliding him along the dirt floor and away from the cave wall. The spasms didn’t stop, but at least he’d prevented him from smashing his head against the rock wall.
Jumping on top of him, he held him tightly down by the shoulders but was unable to stop the violent movements from happening. Fahwad’s legs flopped wildly despite Sousa atop him. “Samuel, come help.”
Samuel quickly grabbed a hold of Fahwad’s feet, sitting on them to try and stop the movements. But the spasms only lasted a few moments, the body soon going still underneath them both. Samuel quickly stood himself back up, but Sousa remained where he was, uncertain of what was going to happen next.
“What was that?” he asked Samuel.
“We just transferred all the energy from one, to another.”
“Shit. And that woman, she was a thread?”
“No. She was normal, like us. But she …” Samuel tried to find the words. “There was another light down here, a thread. She took its power and absorbed it all into herself.”
“She took the power? Normal people can do that?”
“Looks like it. The thread must have been over there,” he said pointing. “And she tried to bring the thread back to life.”
“Is she dead?”
Samuel went over to check Marion’s body and was kneeling down next to her. “She’s as cold as ice. Which I think means she’s dead.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that she must’ve tried to absorb the power and did so successfully. Then Fahwad just made me take it from her and put it into him.”
“Whoa man, this is crazy! Just moving millions of lives between people is as simple as that? And Fahwad? What happens to him now?”
“Well think of it more like an aural energy, that eventually became life. Anyway Sousa, now Fahwad will become more powerful, now he will begin to show you what he can really do. His power, it will grow even more, he will become even greater than before. You’ve already seen the power he wields, now you will truly see a spectacle.”
&nb
sp; “Ja, whatever hey.” Sousa dismissed him with a wave of his hand, “Why don’t we share the power for ourselves hey? Screw this stinky prick.”
“Sousa!”
“Hey. He owes me anyway, we had a deal. I would only be taking what is mine.”
“No, he would be very angry if that happened.”
“Ja, he’s always bloody angry. What did he promise you Samuel?”
“What?”
“What did he do to make you such a pussy and cower to his demands?”
“He didn’t need to.”
“Say what now?”
“I serve my master, he is the great one and not me.”
“Batshit crazy is all I heard coming from your mouth hey.” He rolled his eyes.
“You wait and see, Fahwad, he is going to become more powerful than anything either of us could have imagined. He has the power of two threads now, he is a God. Think of that Sousa, he has all that energy inside him now, twice the power of before.”
Sousa couldn’t help his mind to wander on what possibilities that presented to him. He’d already gotten a small taste from Fahwad about what this power was like. Fahwad had given him the strength of ten men and it made Sousa feel like a God, he could only imagine what it would be like to absorb a quantity greater than that.
Especially considering what he’d overheard in the past few days about millions of lives being transferred. He closed his eyes, feeling the power of ten inside him. And then imagined what it would be like to have something millions of times more powerful than that.
Despite himself he couldn’t help it, he’d been so focused on the power he could achieve he didn’t notice that his body was responding physically to his desires, that his loins had tightened and his manhood was growing beneath his pants.
Once he realised the effect it had on him he jumped off Fahwad’s chest, embarrassed that he’d just been cradling him, with a hard on. Looking up, he checked to see if Samuel had noticed, but his back was turned and he was busy collecting the laptop and wires.
Sousa looked back down at his trousers, desire flowing throughout his body.
A thought occurred to him.
He got up and left the tunnel, in haste.
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