Artificial Light (Evolution of Angels Book 3)

by Wall, Nathan

  They released him. He rolled along the ground, avoiding a bash of the rod. The blunt weapon rattled in its wielder’s hands. Austin struck the man in the gut, pulled the rod from his grasp, and knocked it across the foe’s facemask, crushing the plastic headgear. He turned to face the second enemy when a body soared through the air and collided with the adversary, crashing them both into the wall. Athena tapped her wrist as if they were late for dinner.

  “Now you’re just showing off,” Austin huffed. Athena nodded in reply.

  A large, armored vehicle crushed through the wall along the street front. Each side of the vehicle had three tires twice as wide as Austin’s torso. Attached to the front was a battering ram which resembled a snow plow. Above it were two turret guns.

  Bullets three fingers in width tore through the air. Austin ran for cover, but Athena was taken off-guard. The rounds swung at her chin like a heavyweight boxer. She skidded across the ground unable to balance or manifest a shield. The sheet rock collapsed around her as she lay motionless.

  “Athena!” Austin could barely hear his own scream above the turret fire.

  The colossal vehicle rolled forward, breaking through walls. Austin lowered his shoulder and burst through dry wall, tearing through studs and plumbing to clear a path. The rounds ripped after him. He barely outpaced their chase.

  Austin circled around, trying to sneak up on the tank-like vehicle he dubbed ‘the crusher.’ He leapt through a window and rolled into the street. Several laser lights locked on to his chest. Snipers were everywhere with helicopters above them.

  A streak of lightning belted through the black clouds. Its light shimmered, as if being refracted through a prism. The arrowhead appeared once more. Green balls of plasma fire eradicated several of the snipers. The crusher rolled out into the street, firing a missile. The arrowhead turned sideways on its axis without losing any altitude. The missile destroyed a helicopter that was lowering in for a strike. The arrowhead spit plasma once again. It melted through the crusher, slicing it in half. The two sides of the severed crusher fell open like an old book.

  The remaining helicopters sped away but the arrowhead chased after them. They didn’t get far. The rumble from the explosions and crashes shook the remaining shattered windowpanes from their perches.

  Austin returned to Athena. She slowly stumbled out of the building and collapsed to her knees next to the wrecked crusher. A survivor crawled out of the vehicle with a leg singed off below the thigh. The wound seemed to have been cauterized by the blast. Athena twirled a sword around her hand and shoved it through the back of the man’s head, pinning him to the ground.

  “I like you not,” she grunted.

  The arrowhead hovered behind Athena. It stayed in place for what seemed like an eternity. A search light shone over the two, blinding them. They raised their hands in a show of surrender. Could this be the Assassins come to kill them?

  Suddenly, the arrowhead craft spun out of control. The searchlight was punctured, and Austin could see the reason for the commotion. Jarrod, dressed in aurascales, had landed on the aircraft and begun tearing it apart. He punched through the bow of the craft and it took a steep nose dive toward Austin and Athena.

  The two ducked into the building as the craft skidded along the street to a stop. Jarrod landed with a thud, digging his left knee and right fist into the concrete. He looked at Austin. The blue eyes of his ghoulish helmet were piercing. Austin didn’t know who to be more afraid of at that moment: the unknown visitor from the sky, or his best friend.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lian V

  She needed to run faster. It was difficult. This Paula girl was so out of shape that it was all Lian could do to not choke on air. Her feet were clumsy. She stumbled forward and slid across the roof, tearing the skin on her forearms away. Lian rolled side-to-side and was finally able to move to her feet.

  While her body struggled to crawl down the slippery ladder, her mind fixed on Austin. She tried to read his thoughts, but her power and focus was spent controlling Paula’s motor functions.

  How far can I really get in this body? Lian couldn’t make it more than twelve steps without sucking in air. Two hummers sped her way.

  Ahead was an alleyway. Grabbing her chest to hold the stabbing pains at bay, she labored forward. Several tin trashcans, piled high with slop, toppled over in her wake. It wouldn’t take a hound dog to track her down.

  The hummers screeched to a halt and several soldiers pursued her on foot. Lian hobbled on, able to see a river ahead. Maybe she could get Paula to a boat and somehow row across to the heavily wooded park on the other side. Who was she kidding? If this body didn’t suffer a heart attack mid-row then she would probably fall off balance, turn the boat on its head, and then drown.

  “Got you.” A soldier grabbed her, struggling to lift her off the ground. He grunted, “Got. The. Second. Target.” It sounded like he was about to have an aneurism.

  Lian elbowed him in the nose and waddled a few more steps before her feet gave out and her face plopped into the mud. She rolled to her back and held her hand up, trying to will the soldiers with her mind. Nothing happened. They smirked at her.

  “That’s right,” she said, heaving. “One mind… at a time.”

  “I think that fat little cunt broke my nose.” Blood seeped from between the soldier’s fingers as he pressed his hand against his face. He unholstered his pistol and aimed it between her eyes. “I’m gonna smear her brains along the asphalt.”

  Two of the other four soldiers restrained him. “Stay your weapon, grunt,” the leader said. Lian looked him over. He was pretty buff and in shape, at the level Austin was before his animalistic augmentation. “Boss wants ’em whole, remember?”

  “Where are you taking me?” Lian asked. Two of the men labored to help her to her feet. “I have a right to know.” They weren’t going to answer, and she was incapable of prying into their minds while inside Paula’s. She briefly thought about trying to run again, but knew she wasn’t getting anywhere with those legs. Then she had an idea.

  She grabbed the C/O’s arm and transferred her consciousness from Paula into him. When her eyes rolled forward, she was staring back at Paula who was shaking and nearly on the verge of peeing herself.

  “Let me go,” Paula cried, biting one of the men.

  The soldier raised the blunt end of his rifle in order to strike the back of her head, but Lian pushed him back. “We can get more cooperation with kindness,” she said.

  “Since when is that your M.O., sir?”

  “Since now, maggot.” She slapped him in the back of the head. OK, maybe that last part was a bit much. A little less Full-Metal and a little more like the real deal. Lian knelt and took Paula’s hand. “Listen girl, you need to relax and come with me.” She winked at the teenager and received a knowing nod in reply. Lian looked at the man who she now knew to be the Sergeant. “Lead the way and inform central command we have the target and that we can back off from the others.”

  “Don’t you remember, sir?” the Sergeant asked. “The mission was to bring them all back, dead or alive, for testing. The reserve units are pulling in as we speak now that we’ve acquired the primary target.”

  “Right.” Lian nodded. She searched the Lieutenant’s memories to find out what that meant. She found it, and it wasn’t good. Whatever she was going to learn about this operation, and the people who wanted Paula, it had to happen fast so she could return to her body and warn the others. “We need to get a move on.”

  They loaded up the hummers and took off. Was this the right play? Her friends were more than capable of handling themselves, but they really needed to know who they were dealing with. If Ra wasn’t doing his own dirty work, then the information she’d garner undercover would help her friends out a lot more than alerting them to something they could fend off.

  Paula fidgeted with her thumbs. Lian laid a hand over Paula’s and nodded reassuringly. The teen breathed a heavy sigh and nodded. The
hummer stopped. A CH-47D waited for them with open arms. Lian recognized the model from her time working under Sanderson. The soldiers hunting Lian’s kind were, in fact, under the agency’s command, but how did they go from mimicking angels to human trafficking at the behest of renegade Architects?

  Lian saw Hershiser. He was coordinating the entire effort. On one hand she felt relieved to see him, knowing from her time with the agency he was a smart and sensible person. Yet with the bodies piling up in the wake of Moscow, was he Elliot’s new number one lackey? She had to find out.

  “Hershiser, sir,” she called out and approached the soldier she’d often mind-melded with for the most sensitive covert missions. There was something off about him. A bulge on the right side of his neck was disturbing to look at. She tried not to stare.

  He looked her way. “What is it, Lieutenant Kennison?” he asked.

  Lian wanted to get close enough to touch him since she couldn’t make the leap from her current body to Hershiser’s. “We found the primary target…”

  “I know, and?”

  “I caught a glimpse of the other ones, sir. I fear our forces would be wasted.” Lian made it to the stack of crates Hershiser was leaning against but he moved. She followed like a lap dog. This Kennison fellow didn’t know much about Paula’s purpose. The answers were in Hershiser’s head. She knew it. “If we withdraw now we can prevent casualties.”

  “Really, you saw them?” There was an arrogant flare to his tone that didn’t belong there from what she recalled. Of course, people could change a lot over the course of two years. He seemed more like Elliot Foster than Shawn Hershiser. She assumed a close bond had formed between the two.

  Never mind that. Touch him and call everything off.

  Hershiser stepped out of her path. “So you know that we can’t very well fly away without bringing down the men responsible for Moscow?” They knew it was Jarrod and Austin. Her friends were in more danger than she thought.

  Touch Hershiser and end it.

  He snatched her wrist. “Trying to give me a pat on the back?” He laughed. “What do you expect, Lian?”

  “How did you know?” She tried to tug away but his grip was strong—too strong for a human. His eyes went black and they shared consciousness.

  Pain. Burning. Eons of lies. Lian had experienced this tone of voice before. The entity possessing Hershiser was the same as was previously inside Elliot. He’d switched one body for the other. Hershiser was dead. The pain of his neck snapping surged down her spine.

  She saw Paula and others being shipped off. A man with charred flesh took them. In turn he gave to Hershiser a rejuvenated starstone: the one Maya had, the one that destroyed Jarrod’s hometown and killed Sanderson. Ra would reignite the starstone for Elliot, for Hershiser—no, for Beelzebub—just as he’d done with Zeus’ starstone. From there, Beelzebub would resume the Double-Helix with a different catalyst.

  “Azrael,” she screeched. The name burned through her. Another plan raped her mind. The word ‘sundown’ was stuck. Every thought zoomed through her mind at once. She couldn’t return to her own body. Beelzebub had her trapped. He let go and she hit the ground.

  “Arrest Lieutenant Kennison,” Hershiser—no, Beelzebub—ordered.

  When the men grabbed her, she leapt from one body to the next. Beelzebub’s eyes remained fixed on her. Her consciousness took up residence in the soldier behind Paula. She removed her sidearm and put it to Paula’s head.

  “Don’t make me pull the trigger.”

  Beelzebub shrugged. “There’s more where she came from.”

  Paula peed herself. “P–please don’t kill me.”

  There was no way for Lian to rescue Paula. Having seen Beelzebub’s intentions, she couldn’t very well let him have her, either. The choices shredded her heart and Beelzebub knew it. That cocky, shit-eating gleam in Elliot’s eyes was present in Hershiser’s gaze. He didn’t think she had the guts. She needed to prove him wrong. Lian pulled back on the trigger and smeared Paula’s brains all over the helicopter. The other soldiers advanced but Beelzebub called them off.

  He plodded toward her. “I always knew there was a ruthless fighter in you, Lian.” He smiled, pulling his hands from his pockets. “You were the most special of them all. Sanderson knew it. Your father knew it. Ra knows it.”

  “Don’t move any further.” She aimed at him but that didn’t sway him. “I mean it.”

  “That won’t do a thing to me.” He unsnapped his shirt and displayed several bullet wounds in the chest. “I run on a different motor.” He raised a hand, fingers curled, and the gun flew from her grip and into his. “You see, I’m a demon inside. One of the first. My power is much greater than others’.” Beelzebub squinted and Lian froze. The bones inside the soldier’s body rattled and snapped. He made a fist and she could feel the internal organs rupture, yet her mind remained trapped, feeling everything. “I can contort you all night but I have other places to be.” He lifted his hand and she levitated. “Until next time, old friend.” Beelzebub’s fingers spread like an exploding star and the body tore apart, flying in several directions.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Jarrod V

  Jarrod battled relentlessly with the unforgiving power of a riptide. His vision had blurred until all he could see was the adversary in front of him. The primal instinct for destruction, emphasized by the foreign voice in his mind, was a force neither he nor his opposition in green and pink aurascales could match.

  Jarrod sunk a roundhouse into his hawk-faced foe. His fists were a blur. Each strike flowed into the next. His autopilot aurascales dictated the next attack. He dislodged the opponent’s weapon, kicking him through a building and into heavy traffic.

  Commuters of the early morning rush hour swerved to miss the two fighters. Jarrod tackled his rival with a shoulder, shoved him into the ground, and dug a trench in the road. A cargo truck barreled forward, unable to stop. Jarrod leapt backwards in a crescent motion, avoiding the vehicle. His enemy wasn’t so quick. The 18-wheeler compressed like an accordion as it hit the figure. The tail end of the truck lifted and it fell on its side.

  “Have you had enough?” Jarrod howled. “You won’t hurt my friends.”

  Traffic came to a standstill in both directions. Smoke rose from the toppled truck’s engine. The wreckage rattled as the man underneath pushed free.

  It’s time to finish him off, the voice inside Jarrod’s head urged. But why? The fight was all but over. There wasn’t a need. You can’t take that chance.

  “Question him and find out who he is,” Jarrod insisted. The exo-armor retreated from his face and he pulled his hair. His skin had a bluish hue to it, glowing from within his veins. He noticed the shocked, frightened, and hurt people all around him. This wasn’t the place for a fight. The only thing he’d achieved was to draw more attention to him and his friends. “You’ve gotta get outa here. I can’t listen to you anymore.”

  You’re a fool. I’m your savior.

  Jarrod looked up and was viciously cracked in the face with a fist.

  ***

  “We don’t talk much about home anymore,” Claire said, sitting on a chair, staring out the window with her chin resting on the windowsill. Her breath fogged the inside of the glass while the outside continued to weather the brunt of the storm. “Not really where we’re from, since there’s nothing to go back to, but where it’ll be, if that makes sense.” She looked longingly at Jarrod, who lay on a stained and torn sofa. “Everyone wants a home.”

  That was a pretty pointless discussion. Jarrod had already resigned himself to the road. Keeping his mind busy kept other things from influencing him. Don’t go there. Think of something else. He wiped it from his mind.

  “What was the other side like?” she asked, insisting on filling the nervous silence.

  “Other side?” He wasn’t sure of the question.

  “I figured you’re not one for talking about sentimental crap, so we should keep it business.” Claire lean
ed back in the wooden chair and it creaked.

  The rain relented briefly and the moon poked through the clouds. Light washed over her face, illuminating her eyes, reminding him just how beautiful she was. There was a time when she was all that got him through the night, thinking of returning to her, the warm hugs and smooth kisses on the cheek while he rested. She deserved more. More than he could ever give.

  She shrugged with a sigh. “That’s fine.”

  He assumed she was talking about the alternate realm. New Troy, it was called by Charon. It was a desperate place; musky, cold, and devoid of hope. A realm where candlelit homes and water churned mechanics went hand-in-hand with advanced computers and god-like powers. The people were oppressed by a hard-fisted rule, forced to comply by lashing or worse. It was the future of their planet, but it would do no good telling her that. Home, like it or not, would soon be obsolete for everyone.

  “I’d never seen forests so thick.” He stared at the ceiling. There were holes in it, making the cobweb-laden plumbing of the next floor up visible. “I remember looking out over the still waters, feeling the gentle and inviting breeze on my face, and all I could think was: this place isn’t frightening.” He sat up, glancing at Lian’s body while she mind-melded with the girl they were rescuing. “The pine and cedar trees smelled so sweet—I could taste them in the air. It was strange, yet there was comfort in it. Something had to’ve been different with gravity or what not. Up-down-left-right-under-and-over, it all had no definition. And that was alright.”

  Claire sunk back, deep in thought, her foot grinding into the floor pensively. He was sure a steady diet of fingernails would follow.