by Matt Ryan
Poly looked hurt and misty eyed. “I’m ready to do whatever it takes to protect her, aren’t you?”
Joey didn’t need to answer and stared at the shack. The man who had caused all their pain, ruined numerous planets, had Earth by its collective throat, killed their parents, and wanted to take his daughter away, sat in the house in front of them. He gripped the hilt of his gun tight, and squeezed the grip.
Addressing Edith, he picked up Evelyn to give her a quick hug. “If we don’t come out in fifteen minutes, get her out of here. Find Harris or Travis and just make sure to give her the life she deserves.”
“As if she was my own.”
Joey didn’t know how to thank Edith enough, but he settled with a hug, whispering his thanks into her ear. It felt like a goodbye. He knew going against Marcus in any circumstance would be difficult, but now they were going into the lion’s den.
Poly said her goodbyes and they each hugged Evelyn, kissing her and hugging her tiny body.
“We ready?” Joey asked Julie.
“Yes, the outside sensors are off,” she replied.
They jogged down the bank and toward the house. Joey glanced back at Edith, barely visible at the top of the hill, Evelyn’s smile beaming at them.
“We should take her,” Poly said to him. “I can’t stand leaving her out here.”
“We all have a role, we have to stick with it. If stage five comes, we’ll deal with it.”
“If stage five comes, I’m killing you,” Poly said.
They opened the door to the shack and saw the various bits of furniture tossed around the place as if someone had thrown a fit of rage. It gave Joey some joy to think Marcus had been living in such a hole for years.
“The stairs are over here,” Julie said, walking and looking at her Panavice. A set of hidden stairs led down under the house.
They followed Julie down the stairs, until they reached a steel door standing open to a dark room beyond. The lights turned on and displayed the room with high-end furniture and decorations scattered around the wall space. It felt like a home. Not like his old sterile mansion on the cliffside. Joey held out his gun and entered the house, looking to Julie for guidance.
“The room is in the back.” Julie pointed.
Joey rushed ahead and heard the footsteps behind him.
“Last room on the right,” Julie whispered.
The door stood open and he spotted his dad, standing half in the door and half out. Minter glanced back at the group of people running toward him but didn’t give notice and looked back into the room.
Joey slowed as he approached. Minter continued to ignore his presence and that was when he heard Marcus’s voice.
“He’s in the hall, they all are, aren’t they?” Marcus said. “It’s not like I can’t hear a herd of footsteps.”
Joey gritted his teeth and held both guns in his hands. He knew what he had to do, no matter the consequence. He couldn’t let this get to stage five, it had to end now. He felt the chill going down the back of his neck and the sounds of the world fell to a low hum. He glanced back at Poly, she stared at him with her frozen expression of concern. She must have known what he was about to do.
Stepping past his dad, he made it into the bedroom. Hank and Gladius stood facing Marcus, Gladius had a dagger in her hand. Joey looked down at his two guns. They were filled especially for this moment, each made of a different material, each bullet built by hand. All it would take is one to make it through his shield.
His hand shook as he took aim. He didn’t want to miss and stepped closer to Marcus, aiming for his head.
A bolt of lightning shot out of Marcus and struck Joey in the hands. He dropped both guns and fell back to the carpeted floor. Blood soaked into his shirt and the still eyes of a woman stared back at him. He knew her . . . Gingy, from Emmett’s house. The world’s sounds crashed around him as he looked into her vacant eyes.
“Joey!” Poly ran into the room and slid next to him. She didn’t stop to comfort him but threw several knives at Marcus. One of Lucas’s arrows flew by. Joey struggled to get up, to do his part, but his body wouldn’t respond.
Another arrow flew by and more knives from Poly. The loud crack sound of Minter’s gun filled the room. Sparks flew from Marcus as each item deflected off his shield. The gunfire stopped and Marcus stood with an arrow jutting out of his shoulder. He looked at it, confused, and then broke the arrow off in his chest.
He smiled, inspecting it. “Silk steel? Inventive,” he said, pushing on his bleeding wound.
“Hank,” Joey whispered, gesturing to his guns on the floor.
Marcus had a square gun out in an instant. “Uh-uh, big boy. Touch those and I’ll put a projectile through her head.” He motioned to Gladius and Hank backed away. “This is unbelievable!” He laughed. “You all have been chasing me for a long time, and here we stand.”
Joey stared at the guns on the ground. He knew he had some silk steel bullets in there. He squeezed his eyes and tried to feel the tingling down his neck, but it wouldn’t come.
“We will kill you,” Poly said.
“I have no doubt you will try, but to kill me would be as good as killing this entire planet, and I think your little genius back there knows it.” He pointed to Julie who stood behind Minter at the door. “You know what the stupid thing is?”
“Shut up!” Poly screamed and leaped for the guns on the floor.
In an instant, Marcus had a second gun in his hand and fired it, hitting Poly.
Joey screamed and grabbed her. The electrical charge went through him and he and Poly convulsed on the ground. The room went blurry and the yells from Hank and Lucas felt distant. When the shock stopped, he and Poly lay motionless on the carpeted floor.
They were losing and it killed Joey to admit it, but everything they planned on doing was unraveling. The most aggravating part was the killing blow was sitting in his gun, only a few feet away.
“Here’s the stupid thing,” Marcus said, agitated. “I haven’t hurt any one of you or your families. Any harm done to you was the sole act of rogue agents. I had no idea what Isaac had done to your parents until after we found you. Then there was Simon, who was ordered not to kill anyone but took it on his own to kill Almadon. Or Max, he again stepped over the line and killed Compry and Nathen. Not to mention how Emmett decided not to finish our safe haven at the Ryjack bunker. Your children could have lived there in peace, but Emmett decided not to finish the base properly and nearly killed you all.”
“And what about Samantha? You not only had her killed, you set it up for her lover to kill her. It’s the sickest thing I’ve ever seen,” Gladius said.
“It wasn’t supposed to go down like that. If you hadn’t killed Zach, I would have.”
Joey would throw up if he had to keep listening to Marcus, but his hands had curled up and he couldn’t even make his fingers straighten out. There would be no chance he could grab the gun and get a headshot.
“I’m not trying to win you over, but I want to tell you that there are other people in these worlds, people who see us and our planets as mere commodities to exploit. I’ve seen them.”
Joey had seen one as well, but all that mattered at this point was getting his fingers straight. He could get to his gun but needed at least some dexterity to grasp the handle and sink a silk bullet into Marcus’s head.
He tried to plunge into slow-mo again and the chills hit the back of his neck before it stopped. He choked and tried to gasp for breath as his whole body seized, pulling down from the top of his head, like a muscle spasm that wouldn’t loosen. He stared at Marcus, unable to blink or move.
“And your daughter . . . I take it she’s not here?”
“Go to Hell,” Poly said.
“Thought not. Well, she is something very special, but I’m guessing you already know that. She is perfect in almost every way and you are being very cruel to her.”
Joey made eye contact with Marcus and felt some of his motor skills retur
ning as the spasm in his brain lessened.
“You’re keeping her trapped in that infant body while her mind surpasses us all, including myself. You may not be aware, but you are torturing her. I can help though. I can help her see her true potential and when the time comes, she will save us all.”
Hank jumped toward Marcus with his hands high. A gunshot fired and Hank fell to the ground. In that time, Gladius had grabbed the guns off the floor and pointed them at Marcus, screaming as Hank fell. “Hank!”
Marcus’s eyes widened and he turned to run down the passage way. Gladius stood firm and aimed. She fired the guns and the sparks flew off Marcus’s back as he ran down the hall. Joey didn’t know where the silk steel bullet was in the lineup but watched as she rapidly fired the gun. A bullet made contact and sent Marcus stumbling to the ground. He recovered and kept running, turning a corner and disappearing.
Gladius ran down the hall after him, Minter and Lucas on her heels. Poly got to her feet and staggered toward the hall, falling down near Hank. Joey wanted to scream. He cursed his foul body and willed himself to his feet.
“His shield should have worked,” Julie said, staring at Hank.
“Come on, we got to help,” Joey said, staggering his way past Hank, and making it down the hall. Poly darted by him down the corridor. He limped as fast as his body would allow, but each step was costly. The only things keeping him moving were his wife and daughter. Lucas yelled and Joey got to the large circular room they were all standing in, searching around the room for Marcus.
“Where’d he go?” Lucas asked Julie.
“I don’t know.” Her shaky hand slid across the screen. “I think he got out.” She looked at the ceiling to a small hole near the top.
“Evelyn’s out there!” Poly said in hysterics.
Joey’s eyes welled with tears, a bowling ball size lump developing in his throat.
“Awaiting orders from Marcus,” Alice said over the speakers.
“We need to get Hank,” Lucas said, and Gladius followed him out of the room.
“Find a way, Julie!” Poly screamed again.
“Give me a second.”
“We don’t have a second!”
Tears flowed from Julie’s eyes and she moved her hand around the screen.
Lucas and Gladius flanked Hank as he struggled with each step. He looked up and gave Joey a weak smile as they entered the circular room. He was still alive.
“Marcus no longer needs you, but regrets the loss of Julie,” Alice said.
The door in the room closed and the clanking sound of locks made Joey realize they were in serious trouble if Julie couldn’t get it together. “Get us out of here, Julie,” he said.
A cloud of white gas entered the room.
“Put on your air shields!” Julie screamed.
Joey fumbled with his Pana and pressed the button marked Air Shield with a stiff finger. The room got quieter and he watched each of his friends get their shield on as well, Gladius helping Hank with his. They had five minutes of clean air.
The white cloud spread around the room.
“I got it,” Julie said.
A beam of light shone from above and a steel ladder descended from the hole in the ceiling. Joey’s heart sank, knowing Hank wasn’t going to make it up that ladder. Hell, he might not be able to make it out either. “Go, Poly! Edith might still be up there.”
Poly shot up the ladder, followed by Minter and Julie.
“Hank, I can’t get your big ass up this ladder without you doing most of the work,” Lucas said.
Hank let go of Lucas and grasped the first rung of the ladder. He pulled himself up, then fell backward, hard on the ground.
“Hank,” Gladius kneeled next to him. “Get up, sweetie. You can do this.” She sobbed.
“Go, get out of here,” Hank said.
“We’re not leaving you, Hank,” Lucas said.
Joey looked up at the bright hole in the ceiling. His wife was up there, possibly facing the worst person in existence without him, and he was about as confident as Hank in his ability to get his shaky hands around those small rungs to climb the ladder.
“Hank, you’ve got to try,” Gladius said. “We didn’t come all this way to die in a hole.” She cried, grasping his shirt in her fists. “I love you, Hank. Don’t do this. Please, don’t do this to me!”
Hank didn’t respond and Joey’s heart stopped.
Gladius cried into his chest and then sat up. Determined, she rummaged through her pockets and pulled out a small syringe. Stabbing it into his chest, she plunged the liquid into Hank.
He shot right up, knocking Gladius back.
“Get up the ladder, hurry!” she said.
Hank bounced to his feet and felt his chest. He grasped the ladder and climbed.
“We need to get him to a stone. That boost I gave him won’t last long and without a medical team to be there for the crash, he’ll die.”
Gladius and Lucas bolted up the ladder behind him.
Joey sucked in for air, but the little he had left in his shield had run out. He felt lightheaded and knew he only had seconds to get outside and into fresh air. He grasped the first rung with his pointer finger and pulled. He took each rung as a personal mission to complete.
Reaching the top, he felt hands pulling him from the hole and laying him on the dirt. The whole world went black and the last thing he heard was Poly screaming.
“He got her!”
POLY WANTED TO RUN, SHE wanted to kill. They told her about stage five, but she never thought they would allow it to get to that point. “Wake up!” She slapped Joey in the face and had trouble not blaming him for their failure. If he hadn’t gone into his slow-mo crap, maybe they could have stuck to the plan better, placing that bullet in Marcus’s head. “Wake up.” She shook him and his head bounced off the dirt.
Crying, she fell onto his chest. She couldn’t lose Joey. If he ever got up from this, she was going to get those bracelets back and chain them to his wrists. The fool!
“I need to get Hank back to Vanar,” Gladius said.
“I feel fine. Great, really,” Hank said touching the wound on his chest. “Doesn’t even hurt.”
Gladius sighed. “You’ll be dead in under an hour if I don’t get you to Sanct.”
Poly jerked at this information, looking to Gladius. “Minter’s getting the van.”
As the van drove up to the house, dust settled around Joey, making Poly sob again. It only served to remind her of the dust grave they gave Compry and Nathen on the roof tops of Vanar.
How much could she keep giving before she broke? She shook Joey again. “You better not die on me. If you leave me, I’ll hunt you to the ends of existence. I need you.” She held his hand to her lips and kissed it.
Someone touched her shoulder and she glanced up to find Minter. He glanced at her and then to Joey. “He’s tough,” his voice cracked. “Help me get him to the van.”
Once they were all situated, Minter slid the side door closed and hopped into the driver’s seat.
“Where is she now?” Poly asked Julie.
“Edith and Evelyn are both nearing the stone. I think they must have had a helicopter.”
“We left Emmett back there,” Gladius said. “I told you we should have killed him on the spot.”
“We aren’t like that,” Hank said and shot a look at Minter.
Minter shook his head. “He’s with Marcus. I think he’s the one who took her while we were messing around inside. I think this whole thing was a distraction and set up from the beginning.”
“Was my bullet in his back a distraction?” Gladius said.
“We should have poisoned the bullets,” Poly added. “Can you drive faster?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Minter said and pushed on the pedal.
The van bounced hard and Poly kept her hands on Joey, keeping him from falling to the floor.
In thirty-two minutes, they arrived at the gates of Zach’s burnt down home. Maybe in year
s past—before the Cough—the house would have been immediately demolished. But the world no longer cared if a house sat in a pile of blackened sticks. It cared about getting food out to the masses and making sure they were prepared for the next epidemic. And who was the person to supply the world with the technology to facilitate these needs? Marcus Malliden, of course.
“How long has it been since they jumped?” Poly asked.
“Eighteen minutes,” Julie said, giving the time since Marcus left earth with her daughter.
Poly hated hearing the number. Her daughter was on another planet with Marcus, and she could only hope Edith was handling her. The idea of Marcus touching her was more than she could bear. But deep down she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. In fact, he claimed they were the ones hurting her, by confining her to an infant body. What had he meant by that?
Joey slumped forward in his seat as the van came to a stop. He still hadn’t woken and Poly combed back his hair. “We’re almost there. Wake up.” He didn’t and she held back the tears. Losing Joey at this moment . . . no, she didn’t want to think of it. They’d get him the help he needed.
Julie left the van quickly, leaving the side door open and giving Poly a view of Zach’s burnt down house. It summoned all kinds of terrible memories and she hated being there. Gladius was right, out of all the horrid things Marcus did, what he did to Samantha was beyond cruel. It showed her everything she needed to know about Marcus.
“We got the video feed,” Julie said, kneeling next to a jumble of weeds near the front door.
Lucas bent over and watched the playback on her Panavice. They discussed angles and kept replaying the video. “You’re right, Minter. Emmett’s with him. Evelyn and Edith look fine though.”
Poly sighed with a little relief and Minter didn’t say anything as he grabbed Joey from the shoulders, pulling him out of the van. “Get his feet?” he asked Poly.
“House is clear. They left a while ago,” Rick called from the front door. “Took everything I had to not try and send an arrow through them. You guys sure this phase five is the best of ideas?”