Beside the large metal door stood Frank eyeballing it as if he was sizing it up to determine the best way of breaking it up. He definitely heard me walk over to him from behind, but he didn’t look back. I guessed he had already sensed that I was in the facility and through his magical power knew it was just me behind him and not some facility guard he had missed and hadn’t slain. I stood by his side. He didn’t look over at me.
“I ain’t tardy, am I?” I posed the question.
“No, you aren’t,” Frank replied still observing the metal door before us. “I just couldn’t sit on my ass so close to this fucking place, knowing Mother someplace inside it but doing nothing to help her out. So I decided it wouldn’t hurt to set about clearing this place of garbage so that they couldn’t interfere with our plans to free Mother.”
I guessed Frank referred to the facility scientists and guards as “garbage” and by using the word “clearing” he meant “killing”.
Frank gestured toward the door with his hand, “She’s in there. Right on the other side of this door. Them dickheads have been engaging some gizmos to keep Mother’s magic in check. But now that I’ve got every last one of them whacked nobody’s gonna use them gizmos to suppress Mother’s magic. However, she’s still weak and can’t get outta there on her own, so we gotta lend her a hand and tear this fucking door off the wall.”
“Yesterday, when you just got me out of that building, you wanted to know how a squad of mere goons managed to track me down and seize me, remember?” I asked looking Frank intently in the eye.
He finally tore his gaze from the huge door, glanced at me, and grunted, “So what?”
“I know the answer now.”
He fell silent for a few seconds. Then he asked, rather grumpily, “Which is?”
“I first thought they had some sort of device they can track us down with. Then I changed my mind about that. There was someone who tipped them off about me and where they could find me.”
“And who was that person?” Frank asked with an air of genuine surprise, but his eyes belied his ignorance, completely selling him out. He already knew what I was going to tell him.
“It was you,” I replied. “You tipped them off about my whereabouts. Then you, I guess, disguised himself as a facility guard, dressed up as one or something, so that I couldn’t recognize you, and helped them to fight and seize me. Something was suppressing my magical power back then and because of that I couldn’t fight at full strength and with all my might. Now I know what it was that was suppressing my magic power. It was you.”
For a brief moment, Frank looked like he was going to deny everything I had just said, but then a small, unobtrusive smile crookedly curved his thin lips and he nodded approvingly.
“You’ve always been a smart guy,” he said.
“So I wound up as a would-be patient in that crooked place because of you,” I concluded. “Would you mind if I ask a question? Why would you do that? Could you tell me the reason why you did that?”
Frank made to answer the question but thought better of it. He smiled lopsidedly once more and said, “You’ve got a keen mind, dude. I imagine you can comprehend the meaning of my intentions by yourself.”
It didn’t take me long to get my mind around it.
“You thought it would change my frame of mind. You thought I would go against my beliefs. With all those disorientating drugs they administered to me, you conjectured that by the time you would finally come to rescue me I would have already become a different person.”
“And that worked, didn’t it?” Frank asked nodding at the huge door before us. “You came here to help me free Mother.”
“Actually, I came here to stop you.”
Frank regarded me for a few moments, anger clearly registered on his grim face.
“Why can’t you be like us?” He finally spoke. “Why are you so different from us? Why are you so unlike us?”
I didn’t bother to answer him. He wouldn’t have appreciated an enormous chasm between our personalities, ways of thinking, and attitudes toward the world and people in general anyway.
“We’re gonna obliterate this world whether you like it or not. We’re then gonna find Mother’s native world and devastate it as well. If you get in our way–– Well, you better not.”
Having said that, Frank returned his full attention back to the huge metal door before him. He stretched out his arms toward it, clenched his hands into fists, and strained, exerting his muscles to the utmost, doing his best trying to accomplish something. Seemed like Frank was pulling at something invisible but terribly heavy. It wasn’t long before I realized what he was struggling with. The metal door creaked as it began slowly budging outward. Big cracks starting from the metal door were running along the wall in every which way as plaster and concrete crumbled, shards of plaster dropping to the floor and diminutive particles of dust drifted through the air. It wouldn’t take all that long for Frank to tear the door out of the wall.
I wasn’t all that fond of what I was about to do, but I had to cut Frank short before he succeeded. The ends would justify the means in the end. I extended my right arm toward my brother. A fireball began to rise in front of the palm of my right hand. After half a second, the fiery projectile was the size of a clenched fist. I lined up a shot on Frank and ejected the fireball. It leaped forward toward him at exceptionally high speed.
Yet it didn’t hit the target. When it was shy of a meter from Frank, he just disappeared. The fireball dashed through the empty space he had occupied a moment ago and crashed into the wall. The impact caused a small explosion that cut out a bulky chunk of concrete from the wall, leaving a deep depression in the wall.
Frank reappeared in the middle of the room, looked back over his shoulder at the rugged indentation in the wall, and then looked at me.
“You haven’t expected it to be that easy, have you, brother?”
Frank didn’t wait for the answer. He extended his arms at full length and began emitting fireballs the size of a clenched fist from the palms of his hands. I leaped to the side to avoid the projectiles. The fiery missiles dashed past and crashed into the wall behind me. The following terrible blasts ripped big chunks of concrete out of the wall and scattered bits of plaster across the floor. While I watched the last explosion go off Frank got off yet another rounded lump of fire. I caught a glimpse of the glob of fire and jumped sideways a second before the position I previously held was obliterated. I burst into a run and popped off a fireball in reply. Frank disappeared before it could hit him. In a split second, he reappeared some way from the place he previously occupied. He immediately resumed his assault.
Such was the beginning of our fight. Running around the big room, we pelted fireballs at each other, trying to hit each other and dodge the enemy’s fiery missiles, dodging our heads. There were bodies of dead guards Frank had wasted here and there around the room and their weapons beside them, lying on the floor. Yet neither Frank nor I picked the guns up. We just didn’t need them, considering our fireballs were far more deadly than any weapons around here.
So far none of us was injured. However, after a little while, I realized Frank was way stronger than I was. His fireballs impacting the room’s walls caused much more powerful explosions than mine did. On one such occasion, Frank created such a strong fireball that it blasted a huge hole through the wall, and rugged fragments of concrete and long pieces of rebar scattered across the floor.
As our battle continued unfolding, it occurred to me that I was getting weaker by a minute. Seemed like my magic was fading away. My fireballs weren’t so powerful as a few minutes before. It wasn’t long before Frank noticed what was happening to me.
“You’re way weaker than me, brother,” he said as he ducked his head to avoid my fireball, which lacked the velocity and power. “Guess this is because you’ve gotten more of our father’s genes who’s been just a human than you’ve gotten Mother’s. This is the reason as to why your
magic so weak and why you care about other people from this world and this world itself.”
Having no time to reply I didn’t bother to answer. Not only did I feel physically spent but also my magic was rapidly diminishing. As my fatigue was growing, my magic charges were getting weaker. I could get off fireballs at a rate of one a second now and this fire rate was only getting worse and worse. As for Frank, he was as strong and his magic was as unyielding as at the beginning of our fight.
All the while, we were fighting Mother tried to break out from the chamber she was locked in. She used her magic to break the huge door. There were dull metal thuds as if some enormous sledgehammer constantly pounded on the inside of the door and with each bang, a new convex bulge appeared on the outside surface of the door. Mother seemed to be enraged as though she was really angry, livid even, because of her two sons having a fracas and fighting each other instead of making up and freeing her.
Eventually, Frank hit me with a fireball. Although I caught a glimpse of it racing toward me through the air, I was too damn tired by that time to get out of the fireball’s way in time. It hit me hard smack-dab in the middle of my chest. Fortunately, I managed to use my magic to create an energy shield that took most of the force of the impact. Yet the explosion was so powerful I was thrown through the air all the way across the room to slam head-first into the rear wall. I collapsed to the floor and just lay there in a heap for a few moments. Nasty pain shot throughout the whole of my body. For some reason, Frank didn’t grasp this opportunity to finish me off. Not that I complained about that.
Having raised myself to my elbows, I saw Frank slowly walking over to me. Knowing I wasn’t able to flee or fight back now, he was in no hurry to get to me. He strolled leisurely my way, his hands outstretched in front of him. I tried to use my magic, but nothing happened. Seemed like my magic power completely depleted.
I had to do something before he fired another burst of fireballs, which would surely off me. I set about crawling away from approaching Frank, and as I did so, my gaze was sweeping rapidly around the room. The nearest dead guard had an assault rifle lying beside his corpse. I was well aware that it was too far for me to get to it before Frank unleashed a barrage of fireballs. Yet that was all I could think of to defend myself at the moment, so I rose to my knees and began crawling toward the weapon on all fours, wanting to get to the rifle as close as possible before Frank foiled my attempt to do so.
Sure enough, Frank was no fool and quickly realized what I was trying to accomplish. He walked over to me and gave the assault rifle a kick, sending it skidding across the floor toward the opposite wall. After that, he did something unexpected. He pulled me gingerly up to my feet and gave me a warm, tender hug. I had never seen it coming. Making sure I could stand by my lonesome, he drew away from me and smiled.
“Don’t worry, Jack,” he said. “I ain’t gonna whack you. You’re weak and you think in a totally different way than I do. We’re completely unlike. But you’re still my brother. Whether you like it or not, but you’re my kin and there’s Mother’s blood in your veins just like it’s in mine.”
He went silent and just regarded me as if he wanted to find out if his words had any impact on me. I said nothing. I still felt groggy and weak. My legs could barely hold the weight of my body. All of a sudden my knees buckled under me and I would’ve crumpled down onto the floor had Frank not rushed forward and come to my aid. He eased me onto the floor into a sitting position, my back rested against the wall.
Frank took a step backward, and looking down at me he said, “You’ve tried to bring me down, but you’ve lost the battle. You’re weaker than me and just can’t defeat me. It’s about time for you to reconcile yourself to it.”
Having made sure I wasn’t able to continue with the fight, Frank walked over to the middle of the room and looked at the huge door, which was ceaselessly pounded on by Mother from the inside. He stretched his hands out toward the door and resumed his magical pulling. Between their combining efforts, it was obvious that the door wasn’t going to last long. It was creaking and bulging outward as the wall it was built in was cracking and crumbling. I had to do something before Mother was at large. If she broke out from her cell, I could do absolutely nothing to prevent her from devastating the Earth.
I felt the magic power slowly gather inside me. Physically, I was recovering as well and pain in my body was going away. Still, I was too weak to engage Frank once again in full force. Fair fighting with Frank wasn’t an option. I had to act on the sly to bring him down.
While still sitting on the floor, I looked around. A few feet away from me, I noticed several pieces of rebar scattered across the floor. Those would do. Mustering all my magical power, I picked up several rebar pieces without even touching it, lifting them a few feet into the air. Yielding to my will, several rebar pieces easily took off from the floor and then slightly drifted sideways to take aim at my brother. Frank seemed to be unaware of the impending danger that was about to happen to him.
I wasn’t all that sentimental; probably my mindset was pretty close to the opposite end of the range. Still, I felt bad about what I had to do. Our dissimilarity notwithstanding, Frank was still my brother and he didn’t really want to be my enemy.
I shook off all the doubts from my mind and steeled myself. Staring at the long pieces of rebar silently soaring in the air a few feet above the floor, I, without so much as a second’s hesitation this time, gave them a hard shove, sending them racing through the air toward Frank.
Frank happened to notice the pieces of rebar quickly approaching him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the movement on his right. He was struck dumbfounded by the sight of the approaching danger. Maybe he could have saved himself if he had had more time to react. Maybe he could have avoided the approaching pieces of rebar if he had immediately employed his teleportation magic instead of turning his head to the right to find out what the hell was going down.
But he didn’t. It was like he never saw it coming.
“Sorry, Frank,” I mumbled under my breath.
The first piece of rebar dashed past Frank, missing his head by mere inches, but the others hit him hard penetrating his chest through and clanging onto the floor, spraying it with splashes of blood. The last piece of rebar perforated Frank but didn’t pass completely through his body like the others. It stuck in his flesh, one end of it bursting from his back in a shower of gore, the other protruding from his rib cage. Frank clutched at the piece of rebar sticking from his chest and looked over at me. Surprisingly, no hate registered on his face. He stared at me in a disappointed way and looked offended like I had betrayed him.
Frank remained on his feet one second longer, and then his eyes went blank and he collapsed to the floor, dead. Suddenly it was all quiet. Even Mother cut short her smiting the door as if she had sensed what had happened on the other side of the door.
It was all over. However, before I could relax, the air was rent by a tremendous bang and the pooched-out metal door was ripped out from the wall and thrown into the room. It dashed through the air all the way to the opposite end of the room before crashing into the wall and tumbling down onto the floor with a clang.
I turned my head and looked over at the huge breach in the wall where the door had been a second ago. The rugged edges and pieces of rebar stuck out of the concrete. I just gazed at the enormous opening, aware all too well that now I could do absolutely nothing to prevent Mother from exiting her cell. I struggled to my feet, still feeling groggy and drawn.
Out of the blue, Mother appeared in the ruined doorway. She didn’t just walk or run through the opening but dashed exceptionally swiftly through it, making it seemed as if she was not running but hovering over the floor, heading to where Frank’s dead body lay, her long dark jet-black hair flowing behind her. Once she got there, she stopped short and leaned slightly over Frank’s body. Staring at her, I was turning over possible ways of bringing her down in my mind b
ut found nothing of service to me yet.
Suddenly, Mother gave out a high-pitched cry and turned toward me. Before I could do anything, I felt myself being lifted off the floor and then I was flung through the air. On slamming into the concrete wall, I heard something crack inside me and the sharp pain speared through my body. Before I could get a chance to recover from the injury, Mother picked me up with her magic once more and smacked me hard against the opposite unyielding wall. This time three more bones fractured in my rib cage. I couldn’t help but cry out in pain. Yet Mother wasn’t done yet. She set about tossing me around the room like a rag doll, smashing me against the walls. Every time I hit a solid, hard wall, I felt a twinge of yet another bone of mine being broken.
I collapsed onto the floor once again after hitting a wall and just lay there in a crumpled heap. I felt harrowing pain all over my body. I didn’t move. I just couldn’t. Writhing slightly in pain and overcome with failure, I only waited for Mother to finish me off and put me out of my misery.
But something altogether different happened.
Mother emitted a loud wail and raced over to me. Dropping to her knees, she leaned forward to give me a tender hug. Sobbing, she gently wrapped her hands around my shoulders. Her long bangs dropped down on my face, tickling my skin. I felt Mother’s slender body shudder against mine with great anguish. Pangs of mental pain racked her entire body as she embraced me. She was the epitome of sympathy for my suffering now.
Then all of a sudden, it occurred to me that I was no longer feeling pain. Somehow my body had fully recovered from all the injuries. I realized that it was Mother who had just healed me. Either she did this on purpose or she fixed me unconsciously, namely without even being aware of it. Either way, in spite of her being a wicked witch, she possessed some kind of healing magic. She healed me up in nearly no time. Yet she was still sobbing over me, mental pain still racking her whole body. In retrospect, I figured the thought that she might have iced her now the only son was still frightening her.
Outbreak (The Outbreak Series Book 1) Page 7