His retaliation weakened. His Z-energy reserves further depleted. The hostile attack overtook him, knocking the steaming helmet away as he flew next to the broken capsule. No rush to get up, Neight laid there checking for injuries outside of a bruised ego. A head to head battle was not the best move. “Allister.”
“Great minds, Neight Caster, great minds. Mr. Adams, it is time for us to use those artifacts you have,” Dylurshin said, and caught the fallen king’s eyes as it finished its sentence, “Your savior is here. How does it feel that he cannot save you?”
Allister Adams
Tortured screams hammered Allister’s ears, but his head, forbidden to look their way, stayed straight and narrow. Posture deflated, Allister heard himself talking in a layered demonic voice, saw himself straggling on two feet, while his consciousness had been submerged in mental limbo and drowned in an abyss inside his own awareness. He neared Neight’s defeated figure.
“I believe my comprehension of the Transporter gems can make them more useful.” Dylurshin turned to him. “Begin.”
Mist soared in his neural pathways. His legs planted shoulder width apart. His arms stretched to full wingspan, fists twitching with anger that didn’t belong to him. Dylurshin steered the ship and wasn’t willing to turn around. Though screaming “no” in his head, a temporal energy sphere somersaulted around him and its tendrils lashed Neight, who’d risen and firmly grasped his shoulder.
The alien’s glossy, shoulder length hair, his skin grey or lilac depending on the how the light hit, and strange, yet handsome widened nose and inflexible jaw, flickered, whitening from the effects of molecules breaking down for transportation.
Neight had mentored him through the hellish Andromeda Project experience, offering guidance, wisdom and at times his own reality altering powers, to guarantee Allister’s success. Continuous personal sacrifices required the alien refugee’s resolute faith that he, Allister Adams, a Uragonian descendent, was the right choice. The right choice for the Z-energy, the right choice to wield the Transporter gems, and the right choice to advance humanity.
“You must wake up,” Neight whispered. “Time is of the essence.”
Allister searched the disappearing face for distress and found the same peculiar devotion to him. Neight’s obsidian eyes, wrapped in a golden iris, reflected the permanence of space. No planets, no stars, just the swallowing blackness of antimatter and negative mass between galaxies.
Propelled through the subconscious void, he swam like an Olympic medalist. I-I’m sorry Neight, I’m so sorry, he thought, prohibited from speaking his own words. Their reinforced connection and his regenerative powers hacked at Dylurshin’s dominion, dead-set on crafting an antidote for the influence that bordered control.
“What you seek, the gems will find. If you can come to free your mind. If I have learned one lesson in five centuries, forgiveness does not require love, but love does require forgiveness. Goodbye, Allister.”
Shrouded in temporal energy, overpowered by gravitational force, Neight was sucked into a singularity. Sentenced to nothingness.
Allister’s spirit touched the edge of awareness, reconnecting to his body, jolting him awake. Crunched in a standing ball, he lurched, blinking as the tumultuous environment went from fuzzy to clear. His eyes followed his ears, and where he looked, he saw Zosma. Her hands, torso, and one leg were energy, everything else, waning flesh, soon to suffer the same fate. Fury surged in his gut—verve through his bloodstream.
“Alert—” The CPU’s screen glitched, flashing red text and fuzzy maps “—Nineteen remaining generators are in place. Initiating energy transfer.”
Sans minions, Dylurshin became engrossed in the details and Allister limped to the shining box containing Zosma.
“Zosma, are you listening?” he whispered, hands groping the prison for a way in.
“Yes,” Zosma said. Like the sun’s corona during a lunar eclipse, blue light burned around the yellow in her eyes. “Whatever happens, Dylurshin cannot find the Z-bands of unlimited energy.”
“Ninety-percent energy access transferred,” the CPU’s monotone voice announced.
Allister restrained sniffles. “It won’t. I promise, it won’t. They’re not here. They’re out there in the universe somewhere. You’ll be fine as long as we shut down these generators.”
Zosma shook her head against his assumptions. “They are here. I brought the artifacts with me. If Dylurshin finds them, it means a desolate future for the human race and, Allister, that creature threatens more than you or I could fight to save.”
Her agonizing yell correlated to a chunk of energy whirling around the hole in her.
“Ninety-five-percent access energy transferred.”
He waited for her to quiet, to talk through his asinine idea, “There’s a device here. Somewhere in Antarctica, I think. It can hold Dylurshin, it’s-it’s held Dylurshin. But what if... I-I can’t save you.”
She dry-heaved her initial answer, and willing her to breathe, he gripped the box’s hard edges until he lost the feeling in his palms.
“Then don’t,” Zosma choked out and sank back.
Emotional restraint notwithstanding, tears and snot soaked his chin, knuckles and the rectangular prism preventing her escape. His single wish to reassure her resilience with a gentle stroke through her hair would not be granted.
Energy siphoned into the growing whirlpool. Sirens warned them the chemical reactions had reached their peak. Fiery propulsion blew him backward.
He recovered in shirt scraps, ignoring the micro cuts, the abrasions, the bruises. Zosma, fighting the energy’s chaotic eruptions, assumed a humanoid shape and levitated—skull half intact.
Hot tears trickled down his cheeks. Allister pushed off from the cracked floor and returned to the worthiest stance he could muster under the circumstances. He had to be the rock. He had to be the anchor. The reason for her to keep fighting. Shrinking the distance between them, he said, “Zosma, I would do anything to give you the happiness you deserve. No matter how complicated this got, I wanted us to be together.”
She planted a cool, pure energy kiss on his quivering lips.
“If our mutual adoration is written in destiny, it will be.”
The heat of a dying star emanated from her body. Her tender lips dissolved, joining her radiant silhouette.
“You will submit to me!” Dylurshin howled. Its particles froze midway through separation, as it rushed up to attack.
“That which we fear most, we do not keep far from sight,” she said earnestly. Her flailing hair fizzled into energy and, by telekinesis, she dispersed their enemy’s body to the distorted space’s opposing corners. “Hurry, Allister, find it. Let my death not be in vain.”
Bazzo Sparks
Their long, slow strides had become bursts, and rubber snow-boots kissed a surface of frosted glass promising to keep their bodies upright by adhesion and carry them into battle with lightweight. Electric fury had whizzed from Bazzo’s eye sockets, shoulders, arms, and hands. Florence’s psionic energy had added sharpness to her sword’s slice. They fought their way inside, dodging firepower while swiping, electrocuting, disabling and dismembering C20’s defenses. His victims lay injured. Hers lay dead.
“These agents are oblivious,” he said, stepping over bodies to the entrance. “Show ‘em some mercy.”
They all had names, he supposed, and families, loved ones.
“Keep that in mind when they’re shooting at you,” she replied.
“I do.” Ignoring his hand’s phantom pangs, the light headedness and tipsiness creeping in, he took another shot and slung the bottle.
“You should’ve left the rod in there.”
“Electromagnetism ey Dr. B, took it right out.” He shuddered at how the flesh had squished, and bones had crunched during the metal rods’ passage in and out of his hand. “Thought I was a goner for sure.”
Giovanni Belladonna’s Cynque accessed the central glass elevator like Townsend Black had prom
ised. Ground tremors plagued their mile-long journey to the prison floor, so Bazzo and Florence squeezed the handrails in uncertainty, nervous pupils fixed on the ceiling.
“Message received from Mum. Would you like me to open?” his Cynque asked.
He smiled. “Yes.” A picture of Bridget as a scraggly teen shimmered above the watch. “They miss her. Will be good to get her back to Oz.”
“You know she was on death row for murder before she joined the Andromeda Project?” Florence asked.
The image retracted. “So?” His face scrunched. “She killed a scumbag in self-defense. I know the story, they tricked her into signin’ them papers.”
“Ms. Sparks has bi-polar disorder and a long—”
“Don’t Ms. Sparks me,” he said over her. “My sister is brilliant—”
“With a history of violence that borders sociopathic,” she finished.
“Yeah?” Bazzo raised his voice. “Ya know I worked for a person like that. He made off just fine.”
“He was rich,” she snapped. Florence opened her mouth, tilted her head. “I don’t know if they’ll let her go home with you.”
Imagination left his eyes vacant, and he went monotone. “I reckon you can pull some strings. If you want to.”
They reached the underground prison area in silence. C20 agents blasted an ice construct spanning the hallway. Heated plasma sent cracks throughout the wall, inspiring its reversal to liquid. Bazzo peered at the cavernous melted hole near the top, behind which, Bridget fretted over an unconscious body.
Ding. The doors opened.
“Bridg,” he said in disbelief, walking. “Bridg, I’m here!”
The agents turned from the ice wall. Florence yanked him by the hood and dragged him to a hollowed opening. Titanium reinforcement, jagged ice, and the foundation’s concrete exploded at them.
“Have you, lost it?” she shouted. “You’re going to get us both killed!”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” Bazzo asked, face red as a brick. He, the irresponsible older brother assumed his baby sister would care for herself, not get into trouble. In a whirlwind of priorities and efforts to hide his farmhand upbringing, he disconnected from the psychotic young girl he’d taught everything from how to walk to how to drive. Glower deepening, he said, “Screw this. I’ve been patient enough.”
“Wait, what are you doing?”
The soldiers halted their attack, shuffled their feet as they switched positions. He listened to the weapons recharging; a rare and convenient pause, during which he exited their hiding spot and tried to fire. Anger helped fight his mind’s fatigue and gave electricity the courage to spark. But the hissing currents scurried off as fast as they had arrived.
I’m outta juice, he thought.
Reactive plasma cores whirled to life, and excited atoms for a fatal blast were quieted by his verbal white flag.
“I surrender,” he said again, “long as she goes free.”
The lead agent took him by his parka’s fabric and punched him in the stomach, then kneed him in the face, smashing his nose. Bazzo rolled along the ground, wheezing, and stopped face up. Bewildered, he dabbed the bloody stream with his coat sleeve. A crippling grip closed around his neck. The agent lifted him up and hit him in the stomach again. He whimpered.
“We don’t take prisoners,” the C20 agent said. Fur topped, construction boots crunched against debris and ice shingles, towing Bazzo deeper into the underground cavern by his golden locks. “Come on out, Ms. Sparks.”
The agent tossed him on his stomach. He let the frozen metal paneling treat his nose’s swelling. Shivering. Nausea. The rum was no good to him, churning in his anxious belly. Intoxicated blood had been pumped to his brain and liver. It did not bring warmth.
His chin rose to heeled footsteps. Bridget climbed through the ice creation, heat-deprived flesh coated in miniature crystals, and he realized it wasn’t an ice creation, it was her ice creation. You gonna hang out back there? he thought at Florence.
“Late as usual, Baz,” she said, low and casual. “What took ya so long?”
“Ah, c’mon, Bridg. This’s record timing.” He waited for Florence’s answer, or another blow to the body. Neither happened.
The agent snatched his head back and saddled the weapon against his temple. “I’ll take those as your dying words.”
“No!” Bridget yelled.
The plasma blast didn’t echo in the corridor, Bazzo’s (would be) sizzling brains didn’t splatter the immaculate ice walls. Instead, her emotional outburst had hardened all 60 percent of the water in the agent’s blood, organs, muscles, and brain, rendering him immobile. Drifting condensation spread, inviting icicles to form pointed homes on his chin, fingers and gun barrel. Bazzo fell away from the sculpture, which was polished off with a preserved misshapen scowl. Searing orange energy reduced the statue to shards.
“Less talk!” Florence yelled, diving under open fire. She sprung off her hands to her feet, rotated the sword and executed a whirling backspin, slashing an agent across the chest. His weapon clattered on the ice and she roundhouse kicked him into slumber.
The whiff of a smoking gun sailed above his upper lip’s stubble, and a click whipped his neck to attention. Staring down the barrel, he gulped as the gloved finger moved the trigger.
“Ack!” the agent squealed. Florence’s legs wrapped around his neck in a vice grip. Yelling, she twisted her body, flipping him over her. Thud. The agent hit the ground. She turned and hurled her sword edge-first like an all-star pitcher, impaling the agent zeroed in on Bridget.
“Hmph, mercy.” She strode to the squirming body and wrenched her weapon from his lungs by its hilt.
Bazzo watched her, gawking. Merciless. Like Giovanni.
The entire base shook. Blocks of ceiling buckled, dislodged and fell. Bridget’s icicle nails clenched his collar and ripped him from danger. Concrete smashed where he’d been laying as his coat yielded to her semi-instant freezing ability. With her help he tore it off, watching it become solid ice and join the mess on the floor as fractured shingles.
“Christ,” Bazzo said, nose too tender to wipe, voice too nasal to take seriously. “I was worried about ya, but I must say baby sis, ya look tiptop.” He smiled, tottering to a blood drenched agent. Bazzo undressed him, stole his parka, and shook as he zipped it to trap what body heat he had left.
“I don’t think Russell’s gonna make it,” Bridget said.
They found the engineer, taking up as little surface area as possible, any effort to keep warm. Florence knelt down.
“Weak pulse,” she said.
There wasn’t time for hesitation, yet Bazzo did, wondering whether he could play a supporting role in rescuing Allister. Half in the bag. Nostrils bleeding. Hand pulsing with agony. And not an electric current in sight. He’d be comic relief for sure, but no help. And as powerful as Florence and Bridget were, they had limitations, and getting in the middle of a brawl with two (or three) cosmic beings was absolute suicide.
“I vote we get him topside first, and sort it there.”
“We risked our lives to come down here and stop Dylurshin.”
“So, what, you want to leave him to die?”
“I need to get to Allister or this was a waste.”
On her knees, Bridget traced the air about Russell’s motionless face. “I got an idea,” she said, marveling at the ice clinging to her skin. “I’m gonna bring down the house. Make ‘em all come running to you. Take him.”
“Come off the grass,” Bazzo scoffed. “Didn’t ya learn ya lesson the last time. You’re comin’ with us.” He scooped Russell into one arm and fell over from the unforeseen weight. “Ya gotta be kiddin’ me.” An additional attempt ended them both on the floor. He moaned. “Sorry, I’m more banged up than I thought.” He laid there, staring up in Bridget’s wet, twinkling eyes, looking for the electric blue color from their childhood. Frozen irises stared back.
Bazzo got up, determined, and called to Florence
for help.
“We don’t have time for this,” she whispered.
“Less talk. Just lift.”
Their shoulders sharing support, they succeeded in dragging Russell’s deadweight a few feet, then were thwarted by wreckage. They lifted him again, cleared the obstacle, and collapsed after a handful of imbalanced missteps.
“He can stay with me,” his sister said to their backs, “he’d want it this way.”
So did Florence. Bazzo turned to look at Bridget.
“Finally embracing who I am, the good, the bad, and the beautiful, and it’ll be the last thing I do.” She swallowed. “I was a bloody mess. Tell Mum I’m sorry, and Dad too. I got lost there for a bit.” She swallowed again and took a breath. “But I’ve had a lotta time down here to think. I have to do this.”
“Ya don’t have to do anything Bridg, except come with us.”
Flowing tears froze on her wintry cheeks. “Go home Baz, it’s time.”
“It’s a done deal, let’s go,” Florence said and tugged him toward the elevator.
Ice prowled up the towering infrastructure, aiming to turn the base into a crumbling memory. Bridget commanded the sub zero cold of a continen, causing breaks in the sound crystalline walls. Cracking, splitting, they caved in a rumbling avalanche. Bazzo punished himself by watching, for watching, and flinched, each time a monstrous icicle crashed inches from her. Even as the glass elevator swept them to a sturdier level, he knew that in moments, she’d be lost amidst glacial salvation.
Unable to bear it, he hid from her sacrifice. Seeing it made it true. Made it final and real and heartbreaking. And for those seconds he preferred the quiet darkness in his head, at least then he could imagine Bridget dying in peace, beautiful and un-maimed.
Taking a last remorseful look, let’s just say for closure, Bazzo saw the spot where she’d been kneeling, empty.
Allister Adams
C20’s base. The Andromeda Project’s laboratory. They had commonalities. Homes to the Containment Center and research breakthroughs in genetics and technology. Pristine. Organized. Sacred to the “man” who’d introduced himself to Allister as a scientist devoted to preserving and advancing humanity.
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