“But I couldn’t...”
“I don’t care. I don’t care that you wanted to be left alone or do whatever it is you do. You could have said something to me Seth. I was worried about you.”
A moment.
He sighs.
“I can’t lie to you anymore. I’ve been hiding part of my life from you Hannah. A big part.”
He pauses.
“I’m The Blink.”
She almost laughs. Almost.
“Don’t joke. Don’t fucking joke! Where the hell have you been Seth?”
“Take my hand.” he says to her.
“No, Seth. Tell me.”
“Just take it.” He holds it out across the table. She hesitates.
She takes it.
He blinks.
Hannah opens her eyes to find herself on top of the tallest building in the city. Taken by surprise, she gasps at the sight.
“I got you.” Seth whispers, holding on to her from behind.
“How did we get here?”
“I got you here. I closed my eyes and brought you up here. In the blink of an eye.”
Hannah takes it all in.
“You really are him...” she says to him, realising that the person she had cared about, worried about, seen and come and talk to her at work for years, the person she was so angry about only a few minutes ago, and The Blink were one and the same.
She tried to hold back the tears. It was a weak effort.
“What’s wrong?” Seth asks her.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for yelling at you. I understand now...”
“No, you were right to be angry at me. I’m a terrible boyfriend.”
A moment.
“You saved me.” she softly mumbles. “You were the one that saved me from that man...”
“I had to do something. I care about you Hannah. A lot.”
She turns and kisses him.
Again. Blink.
Seth told her everything that had happened to him, everything right from the beginning. He felt that he needed to. He had to. The storm, the train. The night he had saved her life. Why he couldn’t tell her. Where he had been all this time...
“There’s a whole world out there Hannah.” he continues, thinking back on what he had learnt, what he saw. “It’s an extraordinary world, a dangerous world. A world just full of unknowns. I don’t think people are ready to hear about this yet.”
“They will be, someday.” she tells him. “It’s going to come out sooner or later.”
She reaches over her hand, taking his into hers. She smiles.
“But not from me.”
They kiss, again.
Sixteen
Salt stewed in her office. The loss of Seth as an asset was a blow to the organisation. Still, they would have to move on. They had another subject to play with, one right here on this rig...
Her phone rang. The new orders came from command. They felt they couldn’t study their captive thoroughly enough where she was. They ordered Salt to prepare to move him.
“Where to?” she asked them.
“The new laboratory.” they told her. “In Port City.” they said.
She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
Salt was concerned about the risk during transport. The ad hoc concrete sarcophagus that kept the entity contained still seemed inadequate to her, despite the engineers’ assessment. Maybe if they had more time, to add another protective layer in case it were to crack...
No, they wanted it now.
Either way, it was too late. There was already a crack, a tiny, miniscule crack. It was enough to weaken it, to let oxygen in. To stoke the fire inside.
And no one knew yet.
Morning coffee in her hand, Agent Salt watched the workmen carefully bring the makeshift sarcophagus into the new lab at the Port City facility.
The move from the rig to the lab had gone surprisingly smoothly and it did allay most of her fears that something might go wrong during the process. She even felt a little bit of excitement at seeing the new lab, secretly built underneath the city’s vast cargo port. The place was shiny and new, hadn’t even been used yet. It was certainly much more inviting than what was back on the rig...
The workmen slung the harness, connected to cables hung from the rails in the roof around the captive entity’s makeshift concrete sarcophagus, lifting it up off the flatbed and towards the special holding chamber. There it would be kept safe, secure. For future study.
The harness strained to hold the sarcophagus. Only halfway there and the cables snapped, bringing the whole thing crashing to the ground.
That was enough.
Before their eyes the concrete shell that had entombed Jahannam burst open from the inside. A figure appeared. He ignited.
Again his rage had caused his skin and flesh to salve off. Again he became a being of burning matter, the embodiment of infernal fire. Again he lived up to the name he gave himself:
Jahannam. Hell.
Still, Salt felt no fear when she raised her gun at him.
She fired immediately, the bullets doing nothing to him as they melted away upon striking his body. She emptied the whole clip. He still stood there.
He screams, his shout propelling an explosive blast that flings her away, tearing the entire place down with it. Shouting again, he rips open a hole in the roof of the laboratory. The sunlight pouring in from above, he grins.
Escape.
Crawling out onto the street, Jahannam looks to the skyline in the distance. He instantly recognises it, its image having burnt into his mind. He couldn’t believe it...
Port City. It was his home. It was that bastard’s home!
He begins laughing. They had brought him here, his final destination...
And it too shall soon be destroyed.
Seth stirs, opening her eyes to find Hannah lightly sleeping next to him. She wakes.
She smiles.
“Hey.” she says
“Hey.”
“I’m glad you took my invitation to come in this time round.”
“Me too.” He smiles. He kisses her, softly.
Hannah leans back and stretches her arms and legs, cooing.
“I think I’ll take the day off work today. Just spend time lying naked in bed. Have pleasant company with me.”
“What about that article you were meant to be working on?” Seth asks her.
“Oh, I’ll give the boss an excuse. Maybe show a little cleavage next time I see him.”
“Serious?”
“No! What do you take me for Seth?”
“Well, I think it’d work...”
She laughs.
Sliding off the bed, Seth makes his way naked to the bathroom. Ignoring his morning erection, he tries to relieve himself efficiently.
He’s mostly successful.
“Seth, come quick.” Hannah calls out from the bedroom. Seth comes out to find her staring out the window.
Stark against the blue sky, the smoke that rose from the centre of the city stood out like a harbinger of doom.
“This is not the excuse I had in mind.”
She switches on the TV. Live coverage of the fire entity, bringing down a police barricade in front of him with a blast of flame. He takes aim at the chopper filming him. Another blast.
To her horror Hannah watches the helicopter fall out of the sky outside her window.
Seth already has his pants on.
“I have to go Hannah.” he tells her as he slipped on the grey hoodie retrieved from the overnight bag. Pulling it over his head and zipping the front up, he slides his glasses on.
Hannah stares at the heroic figure standing in her bedroom, waiting for her to say something. Overwhelmed by the sight, she can only mutter a single word:
“Go.”
He nods.
Seth turns to the TV, watching Jahannam continue his rampage unchallenged. He knows he can’t do this on his own. He know he needs her help. He closes his eyes.
<
br /> Blink.
Alone, three more worlds quietly escape Hannah’s mouth.
“Take care Seth.”
Seth did not recognise this place. It was not the rig, the place he had expected to reappear, where he would find her. Instead, it was someplace else, someplace he didn’t know. Only when did he see the path of destruction that led out of the facility did he realise that he did not have to go far to blink.
The city. The pit in his stomach grew as Seth realised that he was still in the city. Port fucking City.
Those Toy Shop morons, in their infinite wisdom they had brought him here, to his home. Why? Fucking why? As he shuffled his way through the debris of the laboratory, he found the person he was looking for, to give him the answers he needed.
She was in bad shape. The blast had flung Salt hard into the laboratory wall. A steel rod had impaled right through her.
She was still alive.
Taking hold of the rod, Seth slowly pulled it out of her as carefully as he could. Screaming, the agony was still too much for Salt.
Pushing him away, she takes hold of the rod and quickly yanks it the rest of the way out. She throws it aside, as the blood began to flow out of her.
“What happened here?” Seth asks her as he quickly moved to plug the hole in her chest with some cloth torn from her coat.
“He escaped...” she mutters breathlessly. “The Scimitar...”
“Why did you bring him here?”
“It wasn’t my idea...” she mumbles as she suddenly falls into unconsciousness.
“I need help here!” Seth yells, drawing the attention of a pair of medics. He moves aside as they start working on her. It doesn’t look good.
Seth again looks out over the ruined laboratory, at the path of destruction the entity had caused. He was out there now, and he was going to do worse.
More death, more destruction. He needed to be stopped – for good.
Again. Blink.
Seventeen
It was meant to be just another day at work for Penny. Stephen King had a new book out and she was meant to put up an in-store display for it. She had jotted down some ideas; cartoons of axe murderers and scenes of horror, scary things.
She couldn’t have imagined the scenes of horror she would have to see outside her window.
First came the men and women running, on fire. Others slammed on the glass, telling her to get out, to run. It was too late.
The blast tore through the bookshop, bringing down the ceiling and all the floors above right down on top of her. Bracing herself for a hopefully quick and painless death, she closed her eyes just as the light enveloped her and took her away...
Letting herself breathe again, she opened them once more to find herself in the embrace of a man, his face obscured by a hood and a pair of orange tinted glasses. He released her, letting her join the hundreds of other people he had saved from the carnage and brought to this football field miles from the city.
“Thank you.” Penny quietly mumbles as she turned to look at her saviour. She is too late.
He is already long gone.
The screams of terror, of fear from the citizens of this city were now suddenly absent, replaced by a stark, deafening silence. What was once the busy and bustling streets of Chinatown were now completely deserted. It disappointed him.
There will be no witnesses to what he wanted to do to this place.
Still, Jahannam slowly trudged on towards the real centre of town, the central business district where all the tall, gleaming office buildings were, the symbol of this city’s wealth and prestige. It was only a mile or so away up the road; he was close to his destiny, to bring doom to this place, to destroy the heart of where this bastard called home...
Suddenly, a flash. A man appeared before him.
The man in the hood.
“Everyone’s gone.” Seth tells him. “No one else is going to die today.”
“I can live with that.” Jahannam replied. “It is only destruction that I really want!”
With those words he throws out a blast towards Seth. He dodges as it smashes into the office building behind him, the force so violent it immediately brings it crashing to the ground.
Jahannam fires more blasts in a wide arc, Seth dodging every one. He turns the street into rubble as the buildings around him begin to collapse, suffering terminal damage to their structures. Throwing up huge clouds of dust into the air, it quickly becomes hard to see anything.
The entity fires off another blast; once more Seth is lucky, dodging the shot but the apartment block behind him is not so fortunate. Disorientated by the chaos, it almost collapses on top of him, but he blinks just in time.
Seth reappears in an alleyway, a distance away but still close enough from the scenes of destruction. Covered in pulverised concrete and plaster, he beats the particles out of his clothes with his hands.
He can hear another building fall in the distance.
His heart races. His hands are shaking. He tries to take a deep breath, to focus. To calm himself down. He can’t.
The anxiety rises.
“Where are you!?” bellows the villain in the distance. “You run and hide while I destroy your home?” he shouts. “You are a coward!”
“No...” Seth whispers to himself. “No.”
Taking a few more deep breaths, Seth calms down enough, just enough. His heart slows, his hands stop shaking.
He closes his eyes and returns to the fight.
Seth watches Jahannam from behind the cover of a pile of debris. He watches him march onwards. He watches him continue to destroy everything in sight. He watches him because he is unsure how to stop him.
He did stop him before, at the dam. But was that just luck? Was it? Was it?
Again the anxiety rises. He can’t breathe. He can’t even move. A paralysis.
“No. Not now.” he mumbles. “Not now...”
And then there was music.
Music, carried upon the wind. “You got The Touch!” the man sang. “You got the pow-errr!!!”
“What the hell?” Seth mutters to himself as he turns towards the source of noise, a red and blue Mack truck barrelling down the street at fifty miles an hour.
It looks like fucking Optimus Prime.
The truck pulls up next to Seth as a woman in a grey hooded jacket jumps out from the cab, Stan Bush’s cheesy 80’s anthem The Touch pumping through the radio. It doesn’t take long for Seth to recognise her.
“Emma?”
“Hey.” she grins as she slams shut the door behind her.
“It’s not safe here.” Seth tells her. “You have to go. And where did you get that truck?”
“Seth. I can help.” she winks. She hadn’t told him yet. “Trust me.”
Seemingly understanding, Seth nods in acknowledgement. He points to her hoodie.
“So is that one of mine?”
“Sorry, I’ll get something of my own soon.”
Knocking on the truck door, the vehicle speeds off without its driver. It accelerates straight towards Jahannam, smashing head on into the super-powered terrorist as he immediately grabs hold of it and effortlessly flips it over his head like a lightweight card table.
Tumbling in mid-air, the vehicle suddenly transforms, changing shape right before their very eyes into a giant robot as it comes down right behind him. A very familiar robot.
Optimus fucking Prime.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit.” Seth shouts like an excited kid.
“I can make things Seth.” she tells him. “With my mind.”
He can only look to her.
“That’s fucking awesome!”
Seth and Emma watch as Prime wrestles with Jahannam, landing punch after metallic punch on his fiery foe. Alas the villain seems too resilient, blocking and parrying every strike with his burnt and hardened skin and fiercely damaging the robot in return.
“Come on Prime!” Emma shouts, punching the air. “You can do it!”
Alas her word
s come too late, as the villain pushes him back. Charging up a blast, he punches a hole through the robot, before knocking Prime’s head clean off with another strike. Slumping to his knees, the Transformer explodes, the villain left unhurt.
Making his way towards them, he now turns his attention towards the two heroes.
“So what now?” Seth mutters nervously.
She shuts her eyes.
“We fight fire with fire.”
Above them, Emma’s jet black dragon screeches loudly as it flies in, casting a shadow across the street as it begins to circle the villain. From its mouth, it fires its own blast of dragon fire at Jahannam, bathing him in flame.
It does nothing to him.
“It’s not working!” Seth shouts.
“Well, I didn’t know that!”
Grabbing it by the tail as it sweeps low, the villain smashes the dragon into the ground, where it dissolves into a pile of ash. He again turns his attention towards the two heroes.
Raising his hand, Seth and Emma dash for cover as he fires another blast at them. It rips through a line of parked cars behind them, causing a chain reaction of explosions.
“What are you doing, boy and girl?” he shouts at them, his voice deep and guttural. “Sending out your toys to annoy me?”
“Pika pika!”
The little yellow electric mouse appears, bounding towards Jahannam. “Pika pika!” it barks again as it approaches closer, almost right at his feet.
He kicks away, chuckling as he does so.
“A mouse? A mouse!?”
Picking its little wounded self up, the little creature screams as it channels a million volts of electricity right into him.
Jahannam howls as the electric shock paralyses him. Taking advantage of this moment, stepping out from cover Emma looks to the skies as a full-size X-Wing bursts out from the clouds and strafes the villain with a barrage of laser fire. Again, it does little.
“He’s still up!” Seth shouts as Emma wills the starfighter to circle round back, load up its photon torpedos, and line the villain in its sights. She closes her eyes.
Open Your Eyes (Book 2): Blink Page 7