Instantly, he appears inside the hotel’s seventh-floor room, standing between Sik and Paige. His heart is pumping with rage.
Seeing him, Sik positions himself, preparing for a fight.
Even though Sik’s muscular and solid body is ready to pounce and crush him, he clenches his fists and affirms with a growl, “I’m gonna kick your sorry little arse.”
* * * * * * *
At that same moment in which the longhaired man and Sik glare at each other, Agents Etelson, Agent Stevens, and Detective Kwan flank the SWAT team who cautiously position themselves in front of Room 5538.
Beside the door handle, the lead man raises his hand. For a few short seconds, they are silently frozen, ready with guns and assault rifles drawn.
The lead man slowly lowers his hand. He slides the keycard into the reader.
The LED light flickers from red to green.
In an orchestrated flurry, the SWAT team bursts into the room, flooding every open area.
The lead calls out emphatically, “San Francisco Police Department! Everyone Freeze!”
One man covers the bathroom, another takes the closet, and two rush through the small living space and turn right, into the bedroom. One man guards the living area, and the last one remains outside the door.
Detective Kwan and the two agents are last to dash in.
Without loss of effort, the team immediately canvases and secures the room. But there is no firefight, no struggle.
The room is empty.
Members of the SWAT team begin to call out, “Bathroom clear! Closet clear! Bedroom clear!” They hold their positions.
Hurriedly, the detective and agents search the room for any signs of Sik’s belongings. They find none.
The tension in the room disperses, and they stand down.
Agent Etelson concludes, “Nothing in the drawers, nothing in the closet, nothing in the bathroom. I don’t think anyone’s ever been in this room.”
“Looks like Kessian gave us a pump fake,” comments Stevens.
“What was that?” asks Etelson, with furrowed brows.
“You know. It’s a sports move or technique,” he explains. “Like in football, the quarterback looks at one receiver, pumps his arm, like he’s gonna throw the ball to him. That motion from the quarterback sends the defensive team in the direction of the pump fake. But actually it’s a diversion, and the quarterback ends up throwing the football to another receiver, at the opposite side of the field.”
Etelson concludes from Stevens’ analogy, “So, Kessian sets up this pattern of matching up the order of his kidnappings with building floor numbers. From that, we conclude that his fifth victim should be on the fifth floor. But now, he changes the floor number from five…to something else. And so the established pattern leads us to the wrong conclusion?”
“That’s what I’m sayin’,” Stevens replies. “…in so many words.”
Unknown to them, several days ago, Sik checked in for his room on the fifth floor, numbered 5538, but he never entered it.
Then, the day before Thanksgiving, a slender man wearing jeans and a long sleeved, white shirt walked through the entrance of the Marsters hotel. Over his long blond hair was a black baseball cap, and covering his eyes were sunglasses. He made his way to the registration checkin counter.
The man’s skin was noticeably pristine, and it seemed to almost glisten from the light above the registration desk. He was the same man - the same new customer at Trace Restaurant - who sat back to back with the goateed man. As he listened to the conversation between Katy and the goateed man, he learned that Paige would be going to San Francisco.
The goateed man had unwittingly chosen Paige to be the fifth victim.
After being given a room on the ninth floor, the man turned toward the lobby, in search of a familiar face. As he walked in that direction, his eyes scanned left and right. Within a few steps, he found the person for whom he searched. Then, taking a seat in the lobby next to that person - next to Sik - he began to engage in conversation.
Inside Room 5538, Etelson asks Stevens, “Hmm…so, now where is he? Hotel security says Kessian hasn’t left the building.”
At that moment, a tremendous thud shakes the ceiling and the floor. The reverberations rattle the mirrors and fixtures hanging from the walls of the room. It seems to resonate from the floors above, as if someone slams a large object or heavy furniture down on the floor.
Standing in shock, Etelson and the men feel the shaking continue down through the floors below.
“What the hell!” Detective Kwan finally blurts, as he darts his eyes up to the ceiling.
“Find it!” Etelson immediately commands. Then, she states with confidence, “It’s him. It’s Kessian! Detective, position your men to cover up to five floors above us. No one leaves! We need every available officer to go door-to-door in those floors. Use the master keys to open the doors if necessary. Let’s go!”
* * * * * * *
In the seventh floor, Sik has just slammed the longhaired goateed man down on the floor with a mighty thud.
Slowly, Sik raises himself and stands back to glare at his beaten enemy. The triumphant sound of his rapidly expanding and collapsing lungs begins to fill the air.
Seconds later, the goateed man groans himself back to consciousness and lifts his head. As he leans and props himself up on an elbow, he sees Sik take a step toward Paige, ready to take her away. Quickly, he meekly calls out, “Ok! Ok…you win.” He pauses briefly, and then states with great reluctance in his spirit and anguish in his voice, “Ok…I suck. Ok…hold on. Wait.”
As Agent Etelson comes up the elevator, Agent Stevens rushes up the stairs. Both are with members of the SWAT team.
After taking one deep breath, the goateed man extends his hand and says in an eerily calm tone, “Ok…so, now I gotta cheat.”
Paige opens her groggy eyes and sees Sik’s prominent figure standing a few steps to her left. To her right is the goateed man, on the ground. While trying to focus her weary eyes back on Sik, she sees something strange happen. Paige witnesses Sik’s body as it shudders and shudders again in its stance.
Slowly, Sik pulls his hands up to his face. Then, his expression turns from a steely, unshaken look to a look of surprise and utter horror. His mouth opens agape, and his terrified eyes widen.
Paige isn’t quite sure what she’s seeing, but Sik’s hands seem to be dissolving, starting from the fingertips. Slowly, flesh, muscles, sinew, blood, and bone begin to degrade into particles of sand. They crumble off from the tips of his fingers, and one by one, fall to the floor.
Sik drops to his knees. But he is not moving forward; instead, he is sinking down into the floor. Little by little, his feet and blue jeans also disintegrate. What were once his shoes are now two small piles of dirt and sand on the floor. He teeters, and then starts to gradually, and helplessly fall.
From the corner of her eye, Paige sees the man on the floor jerk himself up and quickly lunge at Sik. He knocks Sik down on his back and straddles over his chest.
Still in shock and terror, Sik is unable to react.
A left fist rises into the air and fiercely pounds Sik on the jaw. The man growls, “That’s for hurting the nice young lady!”
His right fist cocks back then lands on the other side of Sik’s jaw. “That’s for making me chase you all over the country!”
Sik’s brain shudders in his skull. His eyes roll up, as he begins to lose consciousness.
The man rocks back his left arm, and then swings down his fist with all his weight, to pound down his last blow. It is a solid fist-to-jaw connection.
He growls, “And that’s for making me admit I suck!”
Sik is completely knocked out.
With his hair covering his face, the man stays sitting on Sik’s chest and breathes in a few deep gulps of air. After a moment, he staggers to his feet. With a thought, he restores his opponent’s limbs. Then, walking to Paige, he bends to his knees and slowly cradles her h
ead in his hands, and then rests it over his lap.
“Paige?” he quietly says.
Drowsy, Paige struggles to speak and asks in sighing breaths, “How did you know? How did you find me?” Then, she closes her eyes and loses consciousness once again.
Then, suddenly, an ear-shattering sound, like a fast low-flying jet, pierces the air.
Raising his head, he looks at the mirror from across the room and sees the world outside. Terror grips his heart. A metallic flash blazes from west to east, cutting over the center of the Golden Gate Bridge. There is a hooded figure far away, at the very top of the north suspension tower of the bridge, but it’s too far away for him to notice. For a brief moment the figure is there, and then immediately it disappears, escaping what is soon to occur.
In shock and despair, he whispers, “Oh, please no,” but his sentence has little time to complete.
The missile’s exposed warhead bores a precise tunnel through the air. A short distance further inland, the thermonuclear warhead detonates just above the earth. The explosion splits billions of atoms at ground zero, triggering a chain reaction that cascades into uncontrollable atomic destruction. With a blinding flash of light, a tremendous fireball bursts and begins to consume the entire city. At the epicenter, the buildings vaporize.
Thinking as quickly as possible, the longhaired man slows down time. He senses the world outside, and an image begins to form of the city’s utter destruction.
Focusing back into the hotel, he sees an approaching pressure wave crumble the wall and doorframe of the room. The door itself is snapped vertically into two: one half of it ejects to his left, just above Sik, and the other half slams and slices through the wall adjacent to the doorframe. The coffee table in front of him is propelled across the room, with such force, that it crashes clear through the wall next to him.
As the pressure wave nears him, he and Sik are hurled to the left.
Paige is thrown to the right, through a hole in the wall created by the coffee table, and she disappears from sight.
The speed of the destruction is too fast for the longhaired man to think. It happens too quickly for him to harness his powers in order to overcome it.
Immediately behind the high-pressure wave, a solid wall of searing hot plasma rapidly follows. It fills his entire vision, as it consumes the ceiling and the floors above and below, while disintegrating the carpet, furniture, and vaporizing glass.
He is unable to think of any other options; there is simply no time for him to consider anything else. Concentrating on his body, he begins to make his clothes and flesh disappear.
An instant later, the pressure wave finally reaches him and violently jolts his head back. Before being knocked out, all of his body disappears, and he is transported to a safer place.
No longer held back, time resumes its normal, unrelenting, pace.
The blast wave races through at an incomprehensibly swift speed, creating winds of phenomenal velocity. In seconds, the wave expands to tear through all of the San Francisco Bay Area and leaves it in utter devastation.
Far south, he lies unconscious, on a white sand beach. The shock from the pressure wave has left him unconscious.
The sun is in its descent, and the few remaining beach goers, on this fall afternoon, run into the streets, to watch in amazement, the mushroom cloud in the north.
A few steps away from him, the waves on the Santa Cruz beach calmly and patiently lap the shoreline.
Time passes.
As the sun hovers just above the Pacific Ocean’s horizon, his eyes start to open. The peaceful waves against the sand ease his awakening.
Slowly, he sits himself up to face the sun. Gaining his senses, he quickly gasps, “Paige!” But he realizes she is gone, and then in anguish, he tightly shuts his eyes. Tilting his head to the sky, he says the words, “What did I do? Why did I do this?”
A frustration, born out of guilt, begins to build within him, and he feels a growing tightening of his gut.
Trying to ease the tension, he breathes in deep and exhales slowly. But the tension is still there and the tightening continues to build.
Facing the sky, he opens his eyes. He notices something peculiar, and for a moment he stays frozen. Then, finally, he says, “No, this can’t be.”
Still puzzled, he hurriedly questions, “What? Blue sky?” Seconds pass as he ponders on what he sees.
Becoming more puzzled, he repeats in quick succession, “Blue sky, blue sky?”
He jumps to his feet.
Turning around, his eyes scan inland, across its horizon. The breeze from the wind is now cold and the beach is empty. In the north, the mushroom cloud still looms high. Quickly, he spins around to see the ocean. Then, he turns once again to focus inland.
“I’ve been here before. I’ve done this before,” he realizes.
Suddenly, many thoughts come to him and flood his mind. They are flashes of many scenes of him fighting Sik, of him gliding in the air chasing the missile, of him bending down gazing at the gash on Paige’s forehead, of him sitting motionless at the pub in downtown San Diego, with the scarlet-and black-uniformed Global Peace military patrolling.
Perplexed at the revelation of memories streaming through his mind, he presses his hands against his temples and squeezes his head. “I’ve done all these things many times already.”
He sees Allen being beaten by the G.P. on a rooftop, underneath the gray sky. He remembers trying to convince Gul to let him help, while in the shadows of the underground.
Time is repeating.
But he realizes it is not repeating in exactly the same sequence of events. There are cycles of time in which he was faced with the same choices, but made different decisions; and still other cycles in which he was faced with new choices and made new decisions.
He focuses on the beginning of each new cycle. Within them, he sees himself remembering certain events from the previous repetitions of time. They were piecemeal memories, but they continually accumulated. One time after another, he could remember more and more events from the previous cycle.
Now, finally, the sheer number of memories has accumulated to a critical point that allows his mind to break through a threshold, helping him to realize the plight he is trapped within.
“Again? Why is this repeating again? Tens? Hundreds of times? Each time a bit different - ending different, but then beginning again the same way.”
The frustration within him becomes much greater - it is further fueled by a sense of powerlessness over his circumstances.
Turning to face the ocean, he asks, exasperated, “So, how long have I done this? Years? Hundreds of years?!”
His chest and gut tighten even more.
He closes his eyes and thinks again. “No, this can’t be right. I can’t be starting over and over and over!”
His fists clench. “Why am I here again?!” he shouts. “Why am I here?!”
The frustration compounds with a growing anger.
More memories flood his mind. Thousands of times he was unable to save Paige. Thousands of explosions he failed to prevent. Thousands of days he spent drinking his life away. Thousand of moments of guilt. Thousands of moments of regret.
“Why can’t I get out of this? I can’t keep doing this!”
Finally, he explodes. He arches his body backward, flexes his arms straight out, and shouts his anger into the seemingly unnaturally blue sky, with all his might.
The clouds above disperse from his presence, as the cry carries out through great expanse.
At the end of his shout, he falls to the ground and raises his left fist. With all his anger, his fist falls and crashes into the sand. On his knees, he pounds down one blow after another using the same hand. With each word he hits the ground, “Why! Why! Over! And! Over! And! Over!”
Even though his shouts cease, his anger and frustration is relentless and his fist continues to pound down. Each strike drives his fist deeper into the sand, reaching the denser dirt underneath. Th
e skin on his knuckles breaks. Sand lodges into the torn flesh, and blood begins to seep out of the broken tissue. The denser surface below fractures the bones of his fist. But he continues to drive it into the earth.
The repeating sound of muffled pounding and pained grunts can be heard a distance away, eerily contrasting with the sound of lapping waves and a gentle breeze.
Then finally, with both his energy and his emotions spent, he stops. His long hair falls lifeless and covers his face, and his left fist remains sunken into the ground.
He inhales deep and exhales in a protracted breath.
After some moments, he starts to feel the pain throbbing in his hand and he slowly retracts it. With his back hunched, he sits down on the sand and faces the setting sun. Slowly, his right hand rises to cradle the left. The pain increases, and his palm and fingers begin to quiver. Without looking at them, he lowers his hands onto his lap and feels the blood drip from one hand down into the other.
He disregards the thought to heal himself. He wants to feel the pain.
The sun projects its brilliant rays into his now emotionally vacant eyes.
Then, thoughts come. “There’s a reason why I’m here. What have I done? What have I not done?”
Searching for an answer, he shuts his eyes tightly.
The wind stops. The sound of the waves seems to dull, and then completely disappear.
There were things he could conclude that were certain: He was reliving time, starting from his glide in the air, just before his encounter with Sik in the Marsters Hotel.
He rarely noticed, but when he did, there was one thing that always gave him a feeling of uneasiness that something was not quite right. It was the blue sky. It was only now, this time, in which he completely took notice and profoundly questioned it.
As memories flash randomly in his mind, he concentrates and focuses on how each cycle of time ended. But they do not make sense to him.
RB 01 Through Flesh & Bone Page 49