“And the dead?”
“Couldn’t be helped.”
“Marshall? Bull? Doc? Jesus? Link? They were your friends, for Christ’s sake!”
“Every story needs a few tears along the way, and don’t think that I didn’t shed any because I did… plenty.”
“The... the dampeners. What about those? Was that real or were you just faking?”
“Oh very real. I wanted a sense of… jeopardy, if you will.”
“So you had the dampener all along?”
“Oh yes. Obviously I couldn’t afford not to be in control of it, Jamie-Lyn. I’m not a fool.”
“And the knife? You made some kind of special weapon?”
“Oh no. That was just an ordinary blade. Any would have had the same effect. The dampener weakened my form just enough to allow it to penetrate.”
“I mourned you when I thought you were dead; we all did.”
“Well if it’s any consolation, I very nearly was. My calculations were a little off, and I did weaken myself a little too much, but hey-ho, it did all add to the drama.”
“And what now exactly? What’s your great plan going forwards?”
“I shall rebuild the Queen’ Guard, bigger and better than ever. I can start again, a new team for a new age, for a new generation, only this time, I won’t let them take it away from me again.”
“And who are you going to fight? You've given them Gustafson as a villain, but that’s you.”
“There will always be a new challenge that comes along.”
“And if not, you’ll make one, right?”
“Exactly!” he exclaimed, turning back around excitedly as though he believed that she was actually on board while Link’s body was cooling beside them in the control room.
“You’re insane.”
“Oh don’t say that. You’re better than that, Jamie-Lyn. I know that your mind is capable of far more than that kind of limited thinking.”
“You’re a guy from Stockholm who made the world think that he was an alien superhero, and when they stopped loving you, how did you respond? By killing a bunch of people to win them back. That about cover it?”
“You should choose your words a little more carefully,” he warned.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Were you not going to kill me too? I mean, I’m the only left now that Crimson’s gone, or is he next too? Yeah, of course he is. No loose ends, right?”
“I wanted you with me. I wanted all of you with me.”
“If you think that I’d ever join you now, then you’re crazier than I thought!”
“Well, that really is a shame,” he said sadly. “I had so hoped that we could work together again, Jamie-Lyn. To be completely honest with you, I do believe that you are the closest thing to a friend that I’ve had. Are you sure that you won’t reconsider? There are still so many things that we could accomplish. There are also things that I could offer you. Enhancements, improvements. Wouldn’t you like to live as long as I have? As I will?”
All the while that he was speaking, she was moving, inch by inch, manoeuvring herself towards the door.
There was a bunch of work gear that had been left behind ready for the next day by the installers. While there were plenty of sharp, bladed instruments, she knew that all of them would be useless against him.
Of all the items left behind, she was most interested in two, one of which was a large bottle of water left on the desk, presumably forgotten by one of the workmen who’d been in here earlier.
A thought had gone through her mind about his reaction to the liquid. Whatever genetic alterations the man had made to himself, he was now possibly tied into his new boundaries. If water had the same effect as alcohol on his internal system, what other effects might it have?
Her hand touched against the bottle now and she worked her fingers up the neck until she was able to gently flip the top to unscrew it.
“Well?” he asked earnestly. “What do you say?”
She answered by firstly snatching up the water bottle and squeezing it hard enough to squirt the contents all over his front.
He spent a long moment looking down at his splattered chest in confusion, but he didn’t move. It was as though he was trying to figure out what exactly she had been thinking; she hoped that he took a long enough pause.
“Really?” he asked quizzically. “If I covered you in vodka, would you find that disabling? Unless I squirted it in your eyes, of course. And may I say that if that was your intention, then your aim is truly terrible,” he said, wiping his shirt. “Did you think that this would harm me somehow? Have I given you too much credit? I did think that you were at least halfway smart, Jamie-Lyn, but this? This is something that a child would do.”
“Maybe, but what if someone did this?”
The second item on the table that had caught her eye had been a small gas lighter which she now lit and threw at him, praying that her theory was right and that the effect of water once it had come into contact with his skin would be altered.
While she didn’t understand the science of it, she hoped that she wouldn’t have to,
The lighter hit him, and for a moment, it simply sizzled, but then it ignited the water on his arm as the liquid dried there and became altered by his DNA.
The alien she’d known for 30 years as CJ, the hero that she’d named, the person she’d once thought of as her closest friend, the insane man that she now knew to be actually Olaf Gustafson, was suddenly engulfed in flames. He started to scream in pain as Jamie-Lyn turned and bolted out of the door, running for her life.
She didn’t risk turning around to see how much, or even if, he was damaged; she knew that she wasn’t all that lucky.
Slamming the door behind her as she ran was not much of a barrier between them, but it was the only one she had to hand.
She fought hard not to allow her mind to overwhelm her with its panic. Link had just been murdered in front of her eyes with a cold calculation that had rocked her to her very core. Seeing CJ, or should that be Gustafson, kill an unarmed man in cold blood without thinking twice would have seemed absolutely unbelievable to her only 20 minutes ago, but she had just seen it with her own eyes.
It was hard to fathom just how she had been hoodwinked by that monster back there.
They had shared many long evenings that became nights and then morning dawns when he’d first arrived, or should that now be when he’d first announced himself to the country.
They had sat around talking endlessly about everything trivial, vital and everything else in between, her with a bottle of booze, him with his water. God, she was such an idiot.
How had he fooled her for so long? How had she been so easily taken in by all his lies? She had thought herself so magnanimous by welcoming him and standing by him despite the early fear and suspicion amongst the people. And all the while, he must have been laughing himself silly at her gullibility.
It didn’t matter to her now what was real and what wasn’t. He’d said that the SOUL war had been real, that he’d only sought to inspire a terrorist like Cynthia Arrow and that the government of the day had exploited her fanaticism for their own gain. He’d said a lot, but she couldn’t believe a word coming out of his mouth now, not ever again.
Listening to him preach about his motivations was like listening to Cynthia all over again, two equal lunatics just of different persuasions.
She was sprinting down the corridor now that led from the new control room, briefly checking every door and looking for a way out.
The new base was just that, and although she’d had the benefit of being sequestered here for the past few weeks, she and Link had been kept separate from the majority of the facility and its workers. All she’d seen was the common room, kitchen and their temporary sleeping quarters on the other side of the base.
Most of the doors were locked, and the ones that weren’t offered her no assistance.
Dimly, she heard the control room door explode outwards and she knew that he was
coming. She also knew that he would be done talking regardless of their past.
She suddenly realised that she was running in the opposite direction from the control room and nothing here looked familiar. She may be out in front, but she was running scared and running blind.
Part of her thought about hiding. There were, after all, plenty of places to wedge herself into, plenty of dark unfinished corners to conceal herself, but those were the thoughts of a child: pulling the covers over your head when the thunder and lightning struck didn’t do much to avert the coming storm.
The wider picture of even what to do next had to wait. Even if she got out of here alive, whom would she tell? Who the hell would even believe her now? Gustafson had done such a masterful job of making himself the martyr, the victim, the framed, that no one would want to make the same mistake twice. She also knew that he had to kill her. He simply couldn’t allow her to live, not now that she knew his great secret.
The air along the narrow corridor started to hum and crackle as the metallic walls acted as a conduit, transmitting his sounds like an echo chamber. There were several electrical pops as he searched the base using his teleporting ability while she was stuck running on her own two legs.
The corridor opened up into a parking bay, and there were large corrugated doors that must open to the outside, but should she risk the loud sound that they would make if she opened them?
The choice was taken from her when she checked the switches and found that they were without power; either they weren’t operational or the power was off.
She ran quickly across the painted bays marked out for a variety of vehicles, sticking to the shadows and the edges of the area, heading for a door back into the other side of the base.
She had started to think that he couldn’t find her until a loud blast of purple energy shot past her and blew a hole straight through the concrete wall next to her.
The rush of charged air carried enough of an impact that it threw her violently sideways when it missed and sent her flying hard into a rack of metal shelving.
“JAMIE-LYN?” his voice rang out in a sing-song manner, but she wasn’t stupid enough to answer.
“OH, JAMIE-LYN? ARE YOU OKAY?” he sang out again.
She dragged herself up via the shelving which was still securely fastened to the wall but he must have heard the sound and fired again towards it.
The shelving exploded as she dived out of the way to the side but something heavy landed on her leg as scattered equipment was sent spinning through the air before crashing down around and on top of her.
“JAMIE-LYN?” he called out again.
She crawled out of sight as she heard him approaching. She picked up a wrench nearby and threw it as hard and as far across the bay as she could, hearing it clang against the far wall, and he fired towards the noise, briefly illuminating the bay with his purple energy blast.
Getting a brief look at him, she could see that he was damaged from the fire as the skin on his arm and part of his face were blackened. She felt a savage stab of triumph at the sight and she hoped it hurt like hell.
He roared, this time incoherently, and fired multiple shots seemingly blindly in all directions. This time, one hit the exit door that she was edging towards.
The wood exploded, sending broken shards ricocheting around her and one penetrated her side like a spear. She jammed a hand across her mouth to stifle the scream of pain and bit down hard enough to draw blood.
“WHERE ARE YOU?” he screamed out and she realised that this was the first time that she’d ever really heard him properly angry – the first time that she’d ever heard him sound human.
She crawled back to a crouching position and crawled along the wall to a door and gently eased it open. Her side ached and it hurt to take a breath. The shard of wood was still sticking out of her and she pulled it free with a wet slither, all the while fighting the urge to cry out.
With the door obliterated, she could see that there was no lighting on in the hallway beyond to give her position away, so she pulled it open just enough to crawl through as multiple blasts rocked the bay again and again as he fired blindly.
Once through, she used the wall to haul herself back to her feet and continued on her now staggering way.
She recognised this part of the facility as she had circled around back to the part of the base that was familiar to her again.
Staggering along the hallway, she was leaving a slippery blood trail on the wall with the hand that had pulled the bloody shard out of her side, but she couldn’t walk upright without leaning against something for support.
She edged around the outside of the control room and something moved in the shadows.
Her first thought was that he’d found her, but given the amount of noise he was making in the parking bay, he was all done being subtle as blast after blast rang out along with his incoherent screams of rage as she evaded him.
The movement was gone as quickly as she had seen it, or maybe she hadn’t seen anything at all; maybe she was quite literally jumping at shadows now.
She stood still for a brief moment and a thought occurred to her. A shadow that moved? Perhaps there was finally just a little hope after all.
----------
Gustafson roared in impotent rage as he fired again and again, now well past caring about the amount of noise he was making.
Expensive equipment was shattered apart as he lashed out, rocked by the very concept that he wasn’t in total control of the situation.
He cursed himself inwardly for failing to take into account the new man. He knew all of the others inside and out: how they moved, how they thought, what they would do.
He had known that Marshall had always been the most valuable member of his team, and while the man had grown old and tired, he had still been useful.
Knowing that he required a jumping-off point to get the ball rolling, he knew that it couldn’t just be anyone that fell; it had to be Marshall. Once he went down, the others would come back and the game could begin.
In spite of everything that had happened, everything that he had done, the lies, the deaths, the pain, he still firmly believed that he was the good guy here. He was the only one willing to pay the price, to make the hard choices, to do what needed to be done, and in the end, they would all thank him for it.
He took a deep breath and started to flex his fists, opening and closing them over and over again until he regained his calm.
The skin on his arms was blistered and scorched by the fire and he made a mental note to study that further. While water had an alcoholic effect on him, it hadn’t occurred to him that it would make him flammable.
He had genuinely thought that if anyone could appreciate what he had done, what he was doing, then it would have been Jamie-Lyn.
She had been the closest thing to a friend that he’d ever known – he hadn’t lied about that. But now she had shown her true colours, those of a coward, those of someone too weak to hold the line and be what it took to make a true hero. She had been his confidante, his ally, his friend, and for that he would make sure that she didn’t suffer; he would kill her quick.
The facility was locked down, and he knew that the sensors were not yet operational so there would have been no alarms triggered. No one was coming.
He would find Jamie-Lyn and end this. That would only leave Crimson, and he was an old man now, a far cry from his former dangerous self. Once the two of them were done, he would be clear to start his dream all over again and this time build it right.
Those thoughts calmed him and he felt himself return to a serene state once more. Now the blackened walls of the parking bay and destroyed equipment embarrassed him. This was not how he acted; this was not becoming of the hero he was.
He walked quickly across the bay and found the blown apart exit door and then the blood trail on the wall. She was injured and he did genuinely hope that she was not suffering, although his feelings towards her were diminishing exponentially.
The trail led him along the corridor, around the outside of the control room and then into the training bay area.
He was prepared for a cat and mouse game through the facility: she would be running and hiding, and he would be tracking her movements through the darkness. She would sit breathlessly in some hidden corner listening for his footsteps; he’d call out, hoping to make her give her position away. If he was perfectly honest, the whole thing simply sounded exhausting, which was why he was surprised to find her sitting in the middle of the training room, seemingly waiting for him.
“What is this”? he asked as he walked towards her. “Some kind of trick?”
But when he reached her, she seemed broken. One of her hands was wrapped around her side, and he could tell that it was hurting her to breathe as blood seeped out between her fingers.
“You’re injured,” he said as he moved in close. “Why don’t you let me take a look at that?”
“Get away from me,” she wheezed as she fought to stand up.
“Fair enough.” He smiled back pleasantly; he couldn’t blame her, after all.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” he offered sadly. “This really isn’t how I hoped things would play out. I do hope that you know that.”
“Yeah, you just keep on telling yourself that.”
“I am the good guy here, Jamie-Lyn. I always have been. There are just tough decisions to make, but who else is there to make them? Do you honestly think that the politicians are the ones to keep you safe?”
“You know, you sound as crazy as she was.”
“That’s not very nice,” he bristled.
“I don’t give a shit. I want you to know something, CJ… Gustafson… whoever the hell you think you are. You’re not the hero of your story, okay? You’re not the good guy; you’re not here to save us. You’re not here to protect us, okay? We don’t need you to protect us, we need protection from you!”
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