by Ian Williams
“What else can you change?” Alex asked. She evidently had the same thought, but her sights were set much lower than Graham’s. “What about the walls, can you make them look different too?”
There was something else entirely Graham wanted to try. Something had clicked into place finally. The first time he succeeded in altering his surroundings he had felt awash with energy, like he tapped a new source of power within himself. But as with any new skill, he needed more practice. Except he was not interested in taking it slowly now, he found the process satisfyingly easy after he put his mind to it. There was no point in wasting it on the décor of the room. He wanted to do something about the intruding enemy instead.
He stepped forward, to one of the glowing fireballs. The heat coming off of it made his skin tingle. He expected it would set him alight if he touched it, or vaporise his body in a flash. It did not matter to him as he approached. There was nothing to his plan, just a gut feeling. Something was coming through and he had to stop it. While the Sentients next to him stared disbelievingly at the idiot human about to get himself killed, he held out his hand and repeated the same process as before.
The room was somehow wrong. It lacked a human’s more logical touch, he decided. First of which was some kind of a lock on the door.
“Wait, Graham, stop,” Stephen said, racing over to them.
Alex soon stopped him in his tracks.
“Graham and I are certain we can help. You must let him try,” she said, not sounding at all like a child anymore.
Hearing this gave Graham even more confidence that what he was about to try could succeed. For some strange reason it all felt exactly as he wanted it to. If Alex was helping, then how much of what he was doing was down to him was anyone’s guess. In that moment he hardly cared. His inner strength flowed freely now, after the room had opened out for him. No-one could stop it.
Nothing appeared to change at first, despite what he felt. Around him the others had continued to shoot their light straight into the fire to keep it at bay. The fight was not going in their favour and slowly the shape was still growing. The same went for the other group, which had now lost two of its members. Was he just getting in their way? He, at least, felt that was not the case.
“What are you doing, Human?” One of the Sentients next to him said.
He ignored it and focused harder on the bright shape in front of him. Why was nothing happening? He was sure he could do something after his success in reshaping the room. Trying again, he closed his eyes and set a new plan in motion. If he could not stop the enemy getting in, then maybe he could change what they entered into.
Floating just a foot or two away, the shape let out another loud boom that forced him back. It felt much stronger than the others. He became sure that it had been in reaction to the Sentients’ weakening fight. It had to be a sign of their impending danger. This was proven only a second later when the orb exploded outward to the size of a two metre high doorway, the flash blinding him for a split second.
The enemy had broken through before he had the chance to try anything.
All of the Sentients nearest to him fell to the ground and stayed there for a moment as the outside world streamed in. Graham held his place, watching in horror as one of the creatures approached the hole. Once inside it would tear them all limb from limb. Thankfully the Sentients had not given up yet. A small group burst out through the gap and launched into one of the swirling death clouds in a desperate attempt to hold it back.
It was not long before each were pulled apart in a seamless show of strength from only one of the enemy. The Sentients did not turn to ash like before, but appeared to simply shatter as though made from a brittle substance. They were hardly a match for it at all. Immediately after dealing with them it decided it would enter their hidden realm and finish the job once and for all.
Graham was suddenly left facing the violent and highly threatening presence of the enemy, its collection of contorting spikes and sharp limbs all glowing in the darkness. He had nowhere to go but back, step by step. Alex was behind him, penned in by his backward reaching arms; exactly where he wanted her for now. All of the self-assuredness he felt before, all of his strength, now rolled across the dusty ground along with the remains of the Sentients killed right in front of him. All he wanted was to keep his daughter safe from the monster.
“Get away from it, Graham,” Stephen called to him as the creature glided in through the gap, its powerful humming sounds shaking the floor beneath him.
He was all that stood in its way, yet it did not attack. The thing had obviously never encountered a human before, and that had it curious. It followed him with its two deep recesses in the centre, like eyes hiding in the fog. It was trying to understand him, to work him out. He did the same in return.
His enemy appeared a soulless entity in this form, a being brought forth from the deepest depths of hell. It worked for Isaac alright, and carried his disregard for human and sentient life just as strongly.
“Graham!” Stephen shouted out again.
It’d had enough of a look to gauge his uselessness, and now he was an obstacle to push past. The largest of its spikes stretched out high above it like an axe readying for a downward swing. Graham watched it reach up high above them. He began to move Alex away in anticipation of the strike.
“Go, Alex,” he yelled, quickly shoving her aside and falling to his knees in readiness.
An energy burst from the side pushed against him; another of the doorways had opened. It was a hopeless fight and one Graham was about to be completely removed from. He clamped his hands over his ears and boomed out his last call of anger.
The creature attacked with all the ferocity of a starved lion. Its sharp teeth were showing proudly as it swung its spikes forward, ready to impale and dismember the unfortunate victim. Dropping the sharp edge down toward him, it went for a swift and decisive kill.
Only what came next was not quite what he envisioned.
Something exploded high above, sending large pieces of dark rock down around him. The creature was caught by one of them and landed in a pile beneath it, the blade crushed before it had finished its swing. Where had it all come from? Had the ceiling collapsed? It continued until one last enormous crash followed, drowning out all the others. The world had imploded by the sound of the ensuing cave-in.
Graham closed his eyes and waited, not knowing which was to be his undoing, one of the other invading creatures or a loose boulder. All he was sure of was that he had been the one to cause it to happen.
Then, nothing. No death blow, no sudden pain from the top of the skull, just silence. All of the fighting, all of the terror and fear had gone. In its place was a calmness that made him just as scared as before. He kept his eyes closed tight. For all he knew death had taken him as swiftly as the creature had intended; one last gift to be thankful for. Opening them would only force him to see which.
If not for a strange noise directly in front of him, he would have stayed that way for much longer. Something nearby had begun to move, and it was close. He cracked open one eye and was at first shocked by the darkness that surrounded him. Only one small hole let in the outside light. A thin strip of red expanded out from this to bring an odd hue to the rocks layered over the top of him.
He began to worry that the creature had survived being squashed beneath the large rock. There was nothing he could do if that was the case, his back had already reached the farthest wall after he shuffled back on his arse. Whatever was coming, he would have to attack it first if he was to get out. In the middle of the front wall something was trying to break through that he could only wait to face.
It was then that he realised he held something in his tight grip, something metallic. He squinted in the dull light to see what it was. A gun? Along with these large pieces of debris, he had brought forth a weapon, and one that felt worryingly familiar to him. The sensation of its ridges and cold grip in his hand had encouraged something to come forward from t
he murkiest depths of his own memory.
He had held this exact gun once before.
As he looked it over, he found an irresistible urge to raise it to his temple and feel it resting against his skull. Why did it feel so right? He could imagine himself in the exact same position and pulling the trigger. Had it happened already, like the other places he had visited while trapped inside the puzzle maze? This time he had a present to compare it with. He knew he did not have to do what the voice in his head told him he needed to do. It still did not make it any easier to resist. The past wanted to play out in the same way again.
His finger slipped neatly into place, seated gently against the trigger. Closing his eyes once again, he waited to see exactly how it was to play out. The memory had started to form in his mind. He could remember something new. A call from behind him. He heard it again the moment he recalled it happening. It was a woman’s voice, but she was not calling to him. She was ordering someone to hurry up while a distant thumping sound vibrated through the surrounding rocks.
The question he faced almost halted his heart from beating, as it hit him in that moment; had he pulled the trigger before? Everything else had fallen into place. This was from the day the real Sanctuary had been lost. Phoenix and Stephen were escaping while he remained trapped, his leg crushed beneath a rock. He looked about and saw the place where he had laid during that time. What followed was his last memory as a human, in a human body.
Again, the sound of something moving disturbed his re-enactment of the past. Pushed aside and sent tumbling to the floor, a handful of small rocks began to pile up by his feet. The noise was from something trying to get in to his little hiding place. For now the urge to blow his own brains out had subsided, replaced instead by a desire to see what had begun to dig through to him. As with the gun in his hand, this still felt correct. Everything was happening as he wanted it to, as if by his own design.
What eventually got in was not what he had started to suspect. It was not a Sentient come to dig him out, but a human hand. It pulled at the pile of rocks and removed one at a time. He watched in quiet as more of the rocks were removed. Slowly more light invaded and became an even deeper red. It looked to him to be some form of emergency lighting. Did the Sentients have such a thing in their realm?
He leaned in and peered through the hole. Whoever was trying to get through, they were choosing to remain silent. If it were Alex or Stephen, he would have heard them calling out to him. No-one was. The person continued to quietly dig. There was no-one left to do this at the time, he could remember that much. So who was it?
Once the gap opened out to the size of a fist, he ducked beside it and called out.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
Silence.
“Alex, Stephen, are you there?”
His only answer came in the form of another hand slowly reaching in and offering an open palm to him. Whoever it was they were there to help. He could not tell if it was happening now or as part of his memory of the time. Was this person saving him from his own trap, or the chaos that followed the fall of Sanctuary?
After a second of nerves, Graham took the hand and held it tight. It was cold, much more so than he thought healthy for a human, and far more solid too. Strangely the heat from his own hand was not heating it up either. But it did not let go. It held him with an unnatural strength as it became slippery like glass.
He chose not to struggle back. Instead he sat holding it as the coldness began to spread throughout his flesh, each cell seeming to freeze upon contact with whatever had started to course through his veins. Muscles became solid and immobilised by this one touch. The rest of him followed, until he could eventually see the resulting glassy sheen covering the outside of his body, like an icy shell had formed to protect him.
When the freezing sensation hit his lungs, he gasped for air. The last breath he could manage was forced out again as his chest solidified. This had been how it ended on that day. He knew that for sure now. Someone had stepped in before he was able to end it himself. A protector had seen to it that he stay preserved and alive. This person must have been the one to place his mind in the Sentient world too. There was only one being he knew of that could – and would even want to – do such a thing; Luke had to have done it.
He could not move while his face froze, his eyes locked in position and staring ahead. The hand had vanished and only a thin, sparkling crystal structure remained in place. It had dug through the solid rock to reach him, where it then froze in place.
His body had to be there still, somewhere near the remains of Sanctuary. Realising this caused his mind to spin. If not for the solid crystal structure surrounding his lungs, he would have cheered at the top of his voice. He knew where his body resided and was sure he could find a way to reach it. He had to get back to his Sentient friends and tell them what he now knew about his last day as a human. That and the fact he had killed an enemy in the process.
Although he expected the latter would interest them more.
Of course to do that the freezing process would have to stop first. Surely it would end before he lost consciousness? Was this re-creation so realistic that it would result in him trapped like before? He began to worry that it was.
One last attempt at a breath and then he was done. Wherever he had transported himself to within the Sentient world, he only hoped it was close enough for either Alex, Stephen or Kindness to find him. If they did not soon, he would be stuck there inside another prison, for what could be a very long time. Especially if the Sentients had lost their fight with the remaining enemies.
Chapter 18
Behind enemy lines
7pm, Friday: 5 hours until Switchover
With his chair beneath his feet and wedged up against the wall, Conrad clawed at the edge of the wooden board that blocked out the window of his prison. However much he tried he just could not get a nail in between to prise it free. He had been trying for a while, alone and waiting for his fellow prisoner to return again. Over the course of a few hours his kidnappers had taken the Mayor away repeatedly, then brought him back in a worse state than before. They were questioning him, but not Conrad.
Before he could break another nail or splinter his hand again, he stepped down from the chair and slumped into it. It was nothing more than a wooden kitchen chair, and it received his weight accordingly; with a creak and a thud. He was back exactly where he had been moments before having the urge to try the window again. So far he had had absolutely no success at all.
He stared at the door, focusing once again on the mechanical lock that kept it sealed. From the look of the place it had not been thrown together in a hurry. No, this had been in planning for a while. So much so that those responsible had found a place which suited their needs rather than having gone through the trouble of setting one up. He had seen locks like these on doors before, in his own place of work.
Using one of the abandoned police stations, are we? Conrad asked the question with the full knowledge that it did not really help him. There were old and unused stations all over the city, at least three of which resided within the rough distance he had been taken. Even blindfolded he could judge such a thing. They had not walked far before boarding a Mag-Lev car, then a few minutes later they had exited it. That amounted to little more than a mile or two.
The lock of the door clanked open a moment later, spurring Conrad to his feet. As with each other time when the Mayor had been brought back, he expected to have to help. They had done a number on him the last time and handed him back with a fresh collection of bruises and cuts. When the door swung open he stood firm and opened his arms, ready to receive his prison companion.
“Ten minutes, then we start again,” the masked guard said as he tossed the weakened Mayor Crawley into the room. He slammed the door shut soon after, the lock falling back into place with a hard thump behind him.
Conrad did his best to keep the Mayor upright, but only managed for a short while. “Take it easy,” he said,
lowering them both to the cold concrete floor. The Mayor lay on his side and curled up into a small ball, where he shuddered and shook. Shock had stolen most of his strength. “What did they do to you?”
“I couldn’t answer their questions,” Mayor Crawley said, his words almost blocked out by his hands. His voice seeped through the gaps in his fingers.
“What did they want to know?”
“I told them I didn’t know anything, just like last time.”
What had become clear the very instant they had arrived, was that their kidnappers were uninterested in killing them straight away. There appeared to be something that they wanted from them first. Something he had no intention of giving them once he found out himself what it could be. He expected the moment they got what they wanted, he and his Mayor would find themselves facing the same grotesque mutilation as that of the other victims.
He was going to do his best to avoid that, but first he needed answers.
“Can you sit up?” he asked.
Mayor Crawley nodded and slowly obliged. Although unsteady, the white-haired figure of authority Conrad had seen on the stage earlier found the energy to support himself again. He had been put through far worse this time, it was clear from his bloodied face. His nose still wept a fresh sliver of blood down and around his mouth. But it was his hand that had sustained the most damage.
As Conrad checked his Mayor over, he spotted the snapped finger jutting out at an odd angle. “Oh shit,” he said, unsure whether to try and reset it or just leave it be.
“Look on the bright side, Conrad, at least they haven’t killed us yet.”
The perverted smile on the Mayor’s face made Conrad pause for a second. During their time together he had found it difficult to gauge the man beneath the title.
“But what are they trying to get out of us in the meantime? Didn’t they mention anything?” he said.
Mayor Crawley coughed up a lump and projected it across the room to the side wall before speaking. “They’ve only asked what I know about them, then they’ve beaten me. I suspect you’ll be next. Just tell them what you know.”