The Atlantis Guard

by S. A. Beck

  Without exposing herself, she tossed the side table at them. She could barely hear it crash over the ringing in her ears.

  She peeked around the corner and had to duck back the next instant to avoid getting her head blown off. She’d missed again.

  Then she heard a scream and a pair of loud thuds.

  “What the—” Vivian shouted and cut off.

  Jaxon looked around the corner again and couldn’t believe her eyes.

  Brett, her old friend from Los Angeles, stood in the far doorway, holding the crumpled forms of the two Russians, one in each fist. He looked blankly around the room. Vivian was crouched behind the table, her gun visible and pointing at him, but Brett didn’t seem to notice her. In fact, he didn’t seem to notice much of anything.

  Jaxon blinked. That couldn’t be Brett. He’d been killed by that gang back when they had been out hunting criminals. Brett was dead.

  And yet there he stood.

  “Brett!” she called.

  “You know that kid?” Vivian asked.

  Jaxon didn’t get to answer, because at the sound of Jaxon’s voice, Brett whipped around, saw her, and ran straight for her.

  “How is this possible? How did you get here?” she asked, opening her arms to embrace him.

  Instead of a hug, she got a punch in the stomach that sent her ten feet down the hall to land hard on her backside.

  Jaxon’s head reeled. How could he have hit her so hard? And why had he hit her? For abandoning him to those thugs? She hadn’t meant to!

  “Brett, wait, I—”

  Brett picked her up by the collar with one hand and punched her with the other. Her vision exploded in a supernova of light, and she almost passed out. Dimly she saw his fist pull back for another punch. She whipped both hands out and grasped it.

  Her friend struggled to free himself and almost succeeded. How could he have grown so strong? He looked the same.

  No, now that her vision was clearing, she could see that he didn’t look the same. Where once he had had a confident, sly look and kind of a dumb optimism, now his face was almost blank. It was like he was drugged or sleepwalking or something. He looked completely out of it.

  Not so out of it that he couldn’t fight. He let go of her, wrenched his hand free, and tried to strangle her. Jaxon batted his grasping hands away and backed off.

  “What’s wrong with you? Brett, it’s me!”

  Gunfire was going off in the other room again, but she didn’t have time to pay it any attention. Brett lunged for her again.

  Too fast. He shot in like lightning, and Jaxon, not expecting such a quick attack, found herself getting picked up and thrown against a wall. She slammed into the bare concrete and landed with a loud thud on the floor.

  It would have broken the bones of a normal person, but Jaxon was no normal person.

  Neither was Brett. Not anymore.

  Jaxon rolled away just before Brett stomped on her head.

  She leapt to her feet and ran back a few steps, trying to get some distance between her and the maniac that had once been her friend.

  Brett didn’t give her that chance. He came right after her.

  He swung at her with a fist that she now knew could hurt her. She blocked it at the last moment and then had to back off and block the next attack.

  And again. And again. He came at her with relentless determination and inhuman speed and strength. Jaxon didn’t have time to wonder how this was all possible. It was all she could do to stay alive. Terror gripped her heart to see that soulless look in his eyes. She would have preferred anything else. Even murderous rage would have been better, but he tried to take her life with the blank, thoughtless gaze of a shark.

  Jaxon finally saw an opening and struck out with a right hook that caught Brett in the ribs. It should have broken them and put him on the floor for the next ten minutes, but instead he merely grunted and lashed out at her again as the gunfire in the other room rose to a crescendo.

  She blocked it with an inch to spare and took another step back. Okay, this couldn’t be Brett, and yet it was. It looked just like him. But how could he be here in Timbuktu, and how could he be fighting like this?

  Jaxon barely had time for the thought in between dodging, blocking, and ducking his attacks. Brett had always bragged about his martial arts training, and he had actually been pretty good, but now he was ten times as fast and twenty times as strong as before.

  Another punch got through, sending Jaxon staggering back several feet. Brett dove in for the kill, and she landed a front kick in the dead center of his chest. This time she didn’t hold back on her strength. Instinct didn’t let her. She kicked with enough force to shatter the sternum and drive its splinters into his heart. For a second, her own heart did a flip-flop at the realization of what she had done.

  A moment later, her heart turned to ice. What should have been a fatal blow only stopped him in his tracks. The next instant, she was lifted off her feet, flipped over Brett’s shoulder, and thrown back toward the room from which he had come.

  She landed hard on the floor and rolled a couple of yards, ending up at Grunt and Vivian’s feet.

  Grunt? How did he get here?

  He looked pale and was covered in bloody bandages, and yet he gripped an AK-47 with the same determination as his old comrade-in-arms.

  Grunt and Vivian opened fire on Brett.

  Jaxon screamed. Both let loose with their assault rifles on full auto, hitting Brett with a hailstorm of bullets. Her old friend staggered backward, his chest tearing apart, his shirt and pants instantly turning red, and then he stopped, held his ground, and, as Jaxon looked on in terror, actually stomped forward against the fusillade of bullets like a man leaning against a hard wind.

  He made it three whole steps before he crumpled and fell.

  Chapter 15

  AUGUST 15, 2016, TIMBUKTU

  4:30 P.M.

  * * *

  Otto sat in the back of the Land Rover as it sped through the last of the dusty lanes on the edge of town and onto a flat open track shooting straight out into the desert. Vivian was at the wheel, and she slammed on the gas, picking up speed. Grunt lay sprawled in the passenger’s seat, looking half dead, while Otto, Yuhle, and Jaxon were stuffed into the back seat. Dr. Yamazaki was with the other Land Rover somewhere and had called to set up a rendezvous.

  Otto wasn’t sure where or when they’d meet, and he couldn’t worry about that now. At the moment, Jaxon lay curled up on his lap sobbing.

  “What happened? What happened?” she kept crying out.

  “I have no idea, honey,” Vivian said. “Who was that kid?”

  “Brett,” Jaxon said between sobs.

  Brett. Now Otto remembered. She had mentioned him. Some kid at her school when she had been adopted by Isadore Grant. Isadore had been at the house too, showing up out of nowhere with Brett before Grunt appeared a minute later, grabbed an AK-47 off a body, and started firing at her. By then, all the Russians were down except Dimitri and Nadya, who had disappeared, but the fight got even nastier than before. Otto couldn’t believe he had gotten out of there in one piece. It was like an international convention of badasses.

  Isadore had gotten away in one piece too, right after Brett got killed.

  “Brett!” Jaxon wailed.

  Otto stroked her shoulder, feeling at a loss. Why would an old schoolmate mean so much to her? And why in the world would he show up here? Then a third question came to his mind. It bubbled up his throat and came out before he could stop it.

  “Was Brett spying on you all along for Isadore? Is that why they were together?”

  “No!” Jaxon wailed. “He got killed by a gang in LA.”

  “Obviously not,” Grunt said from the front seat. His voice sounded weak. Otto looked at him nervously.

  “He couldn’t have been in on it,” Jaxon whispered.

  Vivian looked at her in the rearview mirror. “He was beating you. I saw. How?”

  Jaxon shook her head
, getting Otto’s jeans wet with her tears.

  “He had all the characteristics of an Atlantean,” Dr. Yuhle said, squinting at them. His glasses had been broken in the fight.

  “He didn’t look like an Atlantean,” Otto said.

  “No,” Yuhle replied. “But he sure moved like one.”

  “He wasn’t that fast and strong before, was he?” Otto asked. It seemed like a stupid question, but he had to ask.

  Jaxon shook her head again, convulsing with sobs. Her grief had taken her beyond speech. Otto felt a spike of jealousy. Just who was this guy to her?

  He tried to ignore the emotion. It wasn’t worthy of him. The guy had just been killed, after all. But still—just who was this guy to her?

  “Are we almost at the rendezvous?” Grunt asked faintly. Otto could barely hear him.

  “Hang in there, buddy,” Vivian said. She held up her hand for a high five. Grunt didn’t respond. After a moment’s hesitation, she let her hand fall.

  “Just what happened to you, anyway?” Otto asked.

  “Met some trouble up in Marrakech in the shape of identical twins swinging straight razors. That trouble’s coming this way.”

  Great, Otto thought. Just what we need—more trouble.

  “Are you okay?” Otto asked. Another stupid question.

  Grunt turned in his seat, his head lolling to the side.

  “You’re a good kid, Otto. Don’t forget that,” the mercenary said.

  Otto glanced at Yuhle and found the geneticist looking right at him. Or at least trying to. He squinted too much to make eye contact, but his expression was unmistakable.

  To avoid that expression, Otto turned back to Grunt.

  “This is no time for dramatic dying speeches,” he told the mercenary.

  “But I am dying, pyro.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Vivian said, gripping the wheel. “We’re almost to Yamazaki.”

  Jaxon jerked up in the seat. Otto pulled back, startled.

  “Does she have the water? We could go back and heal Brett!” she shouted.

  Vivian turned and looked her right in the eye. Somehow she kept the Land Rover moving on a straight track. Not that it mattered out here. The land was so barren that there was nothing to hit.

  “Now listen here, honey. I know you’re all torn up about your friend, but Brett’s dead. Grunt is only dying. The water can help Grunt but not your friend.”

  “You don’t know that!” Jaxon cried. “We’ve never tried it on a dead person before.”

  “Nothing can raise the dead, honey,” Vivian said.

  Yuhle pressed his fingertip against the bridge of his nose as if to adjust a set of glasses he no longer wore and said, “Well, theoretically—”

  “Shut up, pencil neck,” Vivian snapped.

  Yuhle shut up.

  “We should try!” Jaxon said.

  “And let Grunt die?” Vivian said, finally looking back at the road.

  Silence. Finally, Jaxon spoke again.

  “Maybe there’s enough to heal both of them,” she said. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  The other Land Rover appeared in the distance, coming toward them at an angle along a different dirt track. Within a minute, the two vehicles screeched to a halt in front of each other. Vivian leapt out and sprinted over to Dr. Yamazaki, who stepped out holding the plastic bottle containing the last of the healing water.

  Jaxon got out of the Land Rover and ran toward them.

  “No, wait! We need to save it for Brett!”

  “Who?” Dr. Yamazaki asked.

  Otto caught up to his girlfriend and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Grunt needs it. He’ll die!”

  Jaxon shook him off with enough strength that Otto almost fell.

  “Go away. We need to go back and help him.”

  “Listen,” Otto said. “We don’t know the water will help a dead person.” Jaxon sobbed when he said this, but he went on. She had to see reason. “Besides, if we go back there, we’ll run into the Russians or Isadore or the cops, maybe all three. We can’t risk another firefight. What if another of us gets hurt? We don’t have any way to heal them.”

  Jaxon paused. Otto could see her hope for Brett and the cold, hard facts of his words struggling for dominance in her mind. Vivian took the water bottle and hurried back to Grunt. Jaxon watched her go and then sank slowly to the ground, her body convulsed with sobs. Otto moved to comfort her.

  Vivian opened the plastic bottle and carefully tipped back Grunt’s head. He was barely conscious now, and Vivian had to feed him like a baby. Otto watched in fascination as the color began to come back to the mercenary’s face. His eyes opened, and he sat up straighter in his seat. He hadn’t even finished the bottle yet. By the time he drained it a few seconds later, he was smiling.

  Forgetting Jaxon for a moment, Otto hurried over to his friend.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Grunt grinned at him. “You can’t keep a bad man down.”

  “Since when have you been bad?” Otto asked with a laugh.

  “I do my best, pyro,” Grunt said. Otto flushed with delight to hear him sound so healthy, even if he was calling him “pyro.”

  Grunt gave Vivian a high five and stepped out of the Land Rover. For some reason he lifted his face to the sun a moment and smiled. Then he took his shirt off. He peeled off his bandages one by one, only to find his cuts had healed.

  “Two crazies slashed me with straight razors,” he muttered. “Hey, look at this.”

  He held up one of the bandages. Stuck on the inside were a bunch of bits of thread.

  Dr. Yuhle leaned in close to them, squinting. “Interesting. Your skin pushed out the stitches as it healed.”

  Grunt pointed to the last bandage, one on his lower left side.

  “One of the guys cut me deep in the gut. Caused lots of internal bleeding. That’s what almost killed me. A contact got me a black-market surgeon to patch me up, but I sprang a leak coming down here. You think the water healed that too?”

  “It healed my severed spine,” Dr. Yuhle said. “That’s a far more serious injury.”

  Grunt shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

  “Careful,” Vivian said.

  Slowly Grunt peeled off the last bandage. Otto realized he was holding his breath.

  Beneath the bandage, his skin didn’t even bear a mark.

  “Thank God!” Otto cried and threw his arms around him. Suddenly he found he was crying. He tried to stop but couldn’t.

  “Whoa, hey! Easy there, pyro.” Grunt stood there stiffly, obviously not knowing what to do. Eventually he returned the hug. “It’s all right now, buddy.”

  After a minute, Otto detached himself and wiped his eyes, somewhat embarrassed by his outburst.

  “So how did the Russians get the two of you, anyway?” Grunt asked.

  Otto looked at Yuhle. The scientist paused a moment and then said, “Jumped us in our rooms. There was nothing we could do.”

  “Well, we’re all together now, and we’re not splitting up again,” Grunt said. “We left Edward behind, and he ended up getting killed by Isadore.”

  Everyone bowed their heads to hear the news they had been dreading.

  “And you two almost got killed when we split up the next time,” Grunt went on, “not to mention yours truly.”

  “We won’t make the same mistake again,” Vivian said.

  Otto saw Jaxon still sniffling and sitting on the ground. He moved back to her. Guilt over Nadya and jealousy about Brett mingled in his mind. Sitting down next to her, he rubbed her back and tried to think of something to say but couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound stupid. He had never had to deal with much death before, just old people. Brett looked like he had been their age.

  “Oh, I almost forgot!” Yuhle said, and handed a vial of red liquid to Dr. Yamazaki. “We need to get this into the cooler for later analysis.”

  Jaxon perked up. “What
is that?”

  The two scientists moved to Yamazaki’s Land Rover, where they had a small electric-powered cooler as part of their mobile lab.

  “What is that?” Jaxon asked again, standing up.

  Yuhle looked embarrassed. “It’s, um, a blood sample.”

  “From Brett?” Jaxon demanded.

  “Yes, sorry, but we have to know how he got such strength and speed.”

  Jaxon stormed over to him. “You drained his blood right after he was shot? What are you, a vampire?”

  Yuhle quickly put the sample in the cooler. Jaxon pushed him and Yamazaki to one side.

  “Let me have that!” she shouted.

  Otto rushed over to her. “Easy there!”

  “I’m going to give it a decent burial,” she growled.

  Otto hesitated. His girlfriend, if she still was his girlfriend, could break him in half, and she wasn’t exactly in a good mood right now.

  Jaxon opened the cooler and pulled out the vial. Otto raised his hands in a calming gesture.

  “Look, I know you’re all torn up about your friend.” Or boyfriend, Otto added silently. “But you saw how he fought. Isadore or General Meade did something to him. We have to find out what.”

  “Honey, I’ve never seen someone take that many bullets before falling,” Vivian said. “It wasn’t natural.”

  “I probably could,” Jaxon said, staring at the vial.

  Otto blinked. Yeah, she probably could. “Do you think maybe they injected him with Atlantean blood or something?”

  “Theoretically that’s possible,” Dr. Yuhle said. “Although the actual process would probably not be so straightforward. Meade may be trying to replicate Atlantean powers in regular people. That’s why we need to analyze that sample.”

  Jaxon kept staring at the vial. After a minute, she wiped away her tears, put the vial back in the cooler, and walked off into the desert.

  “We need to get out of here, get farther away from town,” Grunt said.

  “Give her some time,” Otto whispered.

  “The cops will be looking for us,” Grunt said.

  “Give her some time,” Otto repeated, watching Jaxon’s distant figure recede into the glaring wasteland of the Sahara.