Petrichor

by R J Johnson

  The swirling wind of debris moved faster and faster until there was a huge thunderclap, knocking Lorelei on her back.

  The wind slowed and suddenly the debris ceased raining down around her. She glanced up in confusion and then down at the stone she held in awe.

  There was nothing left of the building. She’d completely destroyed the whole thing with a stray thought.

  She examined her handiwork and nodded slowly. This was what they deserved.

  Lorelei turned and began running down the cobblestone streets. She had to find Johan before it was too late.

  “That was quite the demonstration…” a voice said from the shadows of a nearby alley.

  Lorelei whirled around, extending the stone out as a weapon. The Old Man chuckled and with a twitch of his fingers, Lorelei felt her body go stiff.

  “Now, now,” he said smoothly. “No need for anything like that.”

  “Who are you?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  He smiled sadly and looked at her with a kind expression, “I’m here to help you save the world my dear.”

  Without another word, he stepped forward, touched her hand and they disappeared into the ether.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Kline arose out of the remains of his proudest building enraged. That tiny, puny woman had just destroyed one of his crowning achievements.

  Sirens and screams echoed through the crowded business park. Dozens of businessmen and women were filing quickly out of nearby buildings lest theirs become the next victim of the sudden earthquakes. For the average German, it was unnerving to feel the earth beneath their feet move.

  Kline stood, brushing the rubble off his suit. He looked down in dismay. Bespoke suits were so time-consuming to get done right and this had been one of his favorites.

  He closed his eyes and reached out his perception to try and feel out where the stone had gone. Unfortunately, that feeling of another stone pulling him close was gone. The woman had gotten away.

  He cried out furious and his anger had the effect of rattling some of the larger pieces of rubble. He looked down, shaking his head. All that remained of his building was a few pieces of broken concrete and glass, scattered all over the streets.

  What was she looking for? Kline asked himself. Why was she here? And most importantly, where did she go?

  Kline whirled on his heel and moved quickly, using his Stone of Control to quickly clear a path for him. Reaching the street, he turned to give one last look at what remained of his building.

  There was nothing left. The whole building had collapsed as if every joint, support and screw suddenly disappeared. There would be few survivors.

  A woman slowly wept next to him, while recording the scene on her iPhone. Kline snarled and yanked the phone out of her hand.

  She cried out in protest, and Kline didn’t even look at her when he used the Stone of Control to bat her away. She screamed as her body flew through the air and collided against a nearby wall.

  A few heavyset men who looked like they spent their spare time hauling around beer kegs for fun, saw what Kline had done and began shouting in German. Kline smiled and cricked his neck. He slid the phone back in his pocket. He looked them over and waved them over, inviting them to take their shot.

  The first German to reach him swung what looked like a section of heavy rebar at him. The iron bar slammed up against Kline’s shoulder. Kline looked at the man amused. The German looked back at Kline in shock.

  Kline grabbed the rebar and used his incredible strength to wrest it from the beefy German. The German’s face became red as he struggled to hang onto the piece of metal.

  But it was no use, Kline’s strength was simply too much. Kline took the piece of metal away and threw it casually to the side. The German looked at him in shock.

  “I work out…” Kline said casually. He pushed the huge German in the center of his chest and threw the man across the street. He skittered and bounced until he finally crashed through the window of a nearby coffee shop.

  His friends cried out in protest and rushed the enraged billionaire. Kline smiled and dealt with each one as they came at him. One man grabbed his right arm and he grabbed the man’s forearm back. Kline lifted the man and swung him up and over his head crushing his body down onto the pavement.

  Two more from the crowd rushed Kline, tackling him. Their momentum pushed him down roughly to the asphalt.

  Kline roared in delight, enjoying the challenge.

  A crowd gathered around the fight as a third German jumped on top of Kline attempting to restrain him. Several police officer also jumped into the fray as they too tried to get the rampaging Kline under control.

  Kline tried to lift himself up and throw the men off of him, but he was having trouble pulling his arm out from underneath his back. A bit of bad luck had landed him directly on his arm, pinning it behind him. He had no leverage with which to use his massive strength.

  The click of metal handcuffs sounded and Kline found his left arm being restrained by an eager police officer.

  He sighed. Perhaps it was time to use a second stone. These people needed a lesson in respecting their betters.

  The crowd who piled onto Kline found themselves suddenly wrestling with a man who was no longer there.

  A whistle came from across the street and the people on the ground looked up to see Kline standing there leaning casually against a streetlamp.

  “I’d promised to limit myself to only using the stone that grants me my strength…” he started lazily. He glanced at the handcuff dangling off his wrist and shrugged pulling it off as if it was a piece of string. “But, I figure, what’s the point of collecting all this power if not to have a little fun with it?”

  The crowd shouted and got to their feet, and ran toward Kline.

  Kline only smiled, squared his shoulders and ran through them all, cutting each one down swiftly with one chop of his hand. Seconds after the confrontation had begun, it had ended.

  The billionaire wiped the blood from the bystanders off on his pants. The suit was ruined anyway, what was one more stain? Besides, after losing his chance at another stone and one of the biggest investments of his career, he needed a win.

  The loss of his building and people was a hit, but insurance should cover much of the damage. Besides, the stones were the priority and if this woman held one and was out there, nothing else mattered until he held all twelve. Unfortunately he had no idea where she’d gone with it.

  He needed time to plan out the next few steps. He wouldn’t allow himself to be taken off-guard like that again. That tiny little nothing only held one stone and yet, she’d beaten him like a rented mule. If he was going to take control of her stone, then he needed to do it carefully.

  Kline closed his eyes and disappeared in a flash.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Alex and Scott scaled down the sides of the elevator shaft as quickly as they dared in the enclosed space. It was dark, but Alex was taking care of that by periodically lighting a torch using the Fire stone he clutched. It was slow going, but at least they weren’t in custody.

  “How much further?” Alex asked, wiping the sweat off his brow. The fire stone was heating things up in there.

  “It’s a subbasement, so it might be a few more hundred feet under the building,” Scott called back up to him.

  “Gonna start seeing Morlocks here soon…” Alex grumbled. Scott ignored him and continued scaling down the elevator shaft.

  “Hey Alex?” Scott called out. His voice sounded strange to Alex, but maybe it was the acoustics.

  “Yeah buddy?”

  “You’ve killed people right?”

  Alex paused, and snapped, throwing a slow moving fireball down the shaft to help light their way, “You know I did.”

  “What’s it like?”

  Alex furrowed his brow, “What? Why are you asking me this?”

  “Just…” Scott sounded desperate, “I don’t mean to bring it up if it’s diffic
ult…”

  Alex snorted, shaking his head.

  “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to, I just want to…”

  “You want to know if you can actually kill someone…” Alex finished for his friend.

  Scott stopped climbing for a second. When he spoke, he sounded sad, defeated and angry all at the same time.

  “I’ve thought about getting revenge on JT Halprin for… I don’t know how long. He’s the reason Molly died and the only thing that helped me rest at night was imagining the infinite amount of ways I could kill him. From drawing a bead on his head with a rifle three hundred yards away, to poisoning a meal of his at one of his favorite hoity-toity restaurants, to even running him down in the Hypertruck using the camouflage software.” Scott smiled at that one. “That one seemed especially tempting… but…”

  Scott paused as if uncertain how to phrase what he was thinking.

  “You’re wondering if the time came whether or not you could actually take a life?” Alex asked his friend.

  Scott was silent for a moment. “Yeah, I guess…”

  Alex sighed.

  “So have you… you know…? Killed?” Scott asked.

  “You already know about the man who set us up and the guys at the Sherriff’s station in Joshua Tree. But beyond that? I’ve been directly responsible for the deaths of thirty four people.”

  Scott was silent for a moment. “Wow.”

  Alex coughed. “Yep. Wow.”

  “Were they Iraqis? Or Al Queda?”

  Alex laughed and shook his head, “If I was lucky they were Al Queda. Most of the time they were dirt poor villagers forced into a bad situation, compacting bad choice after bad choice until there was nothing left.”

  “And the rest?”

  Alex didn’t respond at first. He was too busy thinking about what Ash had him do after they’d recovered the money.

  “The rest were just guys like you and me, ‘cept they had the misfortune to have the universe put them in the way of my CO’s goals.”

  It was Scott’s turn to go silent. Alex worried his friend was judging him. Hell, he would.

  “Did you have a choice?”

  “We always have a choice,” Alex said. “I just made a series of shitty ones over and over.”

  “Would you do it all over again?”

  “Some, yes,” Alex replied instantly. “They were trying to kill me and my friends and they needed to be stopped before they hurt anyone else.”

  “And the others?”

  “I’ve found that there’s no use in thinking about it,” Alex said. “A million different lies led to me killing those people. If I’d known then what I know now, then I’d never have come anywhere near Colonel Ash.”

  “That’s the guy who helped you steal the money?”

  “That’s the guy who ruined my life…” Alex said decisively. He looked down at the seemingly bottomless pit below them wondering how much further down the subbasement might be.

  “Can I ask how you ended up with the money then?” Scott asked, his voice hesitant. “I know you were upset before, but it doesn’t add up to me…”

  Alex paused. He’d expected this question the other day when he was explaining why he’d disappeared so many years ago. But Collier had interrupted his story to Scott and Emily. He was grateful that he hadn’t needed to talk about what happened. He wasn’t exactly proud of that time in his life and wasn’t looking forward to telling anyone about it. Even those closest to him wouldn’t be able to do anything but judge him harshly.

  And he wouldn’t blame them.

  Alex drew in a breath to start telling Scott the story when he heard the elevator begin to descend down the shaft.

  “Go!” Alex shouted. “Get down to the basement, quick as you can!”

  The elevator descended toward them quickly, so fast that Alex decided to make a decision. He released his hold on the side of the shaft and let gravity take over.

  He fell, gaining speed as the elevator car came toward them. Scott followed Alex’s lead and released the side of the ladder he’d been holding onto.

  They screamed as they plummeted down into the inky darkness. Alex only hoped that when they landed, it wouldn’t hurt too much.

  He landed hard, feeling (and hearing) more than one bone break. He moaned in pain, as he watched a bird flutter its wings gracefully, landing next to him in the elevator shaft as the elevator came to a stop inches above their heads.

  Alex felt the stone heal his broken bones, groaning painfully as they did. Scott transformed back into his normal form, watching his friend heal.

  “Couldn’t have taken the time to transform me?” Alex gasped. The blue light was flowing over his entire body, healing the broken bones he had suffered after falling. He stretched painfully as his kneebone slid back into place.

  “Seemed prudent to concentrate on myself since I don’t have the healing stone,” Scott pointed out.

  Alex grumbled, but didn’t object to his friend’s logic.

  He looked up and pointed at the elevator car above them. “We might need to shift into something that can get us under the car.”

  “On it…” Scott answered and snapped his fingers. Alex felt himself transform into a small brown rat while Scott turned into a white looking one.

  Above them they could hear the urgent shouting of a half-dozen security personnel, all of whom were wondering where the two infiltrators had gotten to.

  Scott’s rat squeaked and pointed its sharp nose up to the hole in the elevator car Alex had created using his stone. Alex squeaked back in acknowledgement and they climbed up the metal trusses and into the hole of the elevator car.

  Scott reached the top of the hole first, and wiggled his fat little body up and into the deserted elevator car. Alex followed his friend’s lead, scrambling quickly back into the car they’d just evacuated from.

  “Where did they go?” A voice shouted down the corridor. “There’s no other exit, so they have to be down here somewhere.”

  “There’s no indications…” another voice began to protest.

  “Stow it!” The angry voice sounded, echoing through the linoleum corridor. “I don’t want excuses, I want these people found!”

  “Aye sir!” A chorus of voices shouted.

  Alex and Scott peered around the corner of the elevator doors and watched the security team frantically search for them.

  “What’s that?” A voice sounded from behind them.

  “Couple of escaped rats from the BIO habitat I’m betting…”

  Alex turned and saw a pair of security guards toss a large box over him and Alex. Scott started squeaking quickly and Alex saw the glow indicating that he was about to shift back into his normal form. He couldn’t let them get caught up so easily. Not when those guards were hanging onto that stupid PHaSeR rifles.

  He bit Scott’s rear hind leg and the glow faded back into the stone. Scott flailed around in the box and Alex bit him again.

  Knock it off buddy, they catch us now, there’s no hope, Alex was hoping he could will his thoughts telepathically over to his friend.

  Scott somehow got the message and calmed down. Alex felt the box flip over and the lid shut down on them securely.

  “Take them down to the server room for now. I’ll have someone from the biolab come down and fetch them,” the second voice said.

  “Not like we’re actually gonna find anything else down here…” the guard groused.

  “Maybe not, but they don’t pay us to ignore orders…” the voice said sounding irritated. “Now put those rats down in the server room and we’ll sweep the rest of the floor.”

  The guard grumbled and took the plastic box down the hall.

  Alex and Scott sat in the box hardly believing their luck. After everything had seemingly conspired against them, they were now being escorted into the lion’s den.

  Now all they had to do was keep from being eaten.

  Chapter Forty

  Lorelei s
creamed as she and the Old Man rocketed through space. She was surrounded by the empty vacuum of space, but strangely, she still breathed perfectly fine on her own.

  After watching the Earth disappear from view, they traveled through the cosmos at an unimaginable rate of speed. She knew intellectually that there was no possible way for her to be traveling through space faster than the speed of light, let alone without a space ship, but as she floated through space holding the Old Man’s hand, she had no choice but to accept this strange new reality she’d tumbled down into.

  She just hoped the rabbit hole didn’t go down too far.

  Their velocity slowed as they approached a strange looking object. What struck her most of all was just the sheer size of the object they were approaching. From a distance it looked to be a small BB. As they grew close, the object became larger and larger until it filled her whole field of view. By the time they got close enough to land on the strange looking object, it stretched out toward what looked like infinite.

  “What is this?” she asked in wonder.

  The Old Man glanced down at her and smiled. “It is impressive isn’t it?”

  “It’s…” Lorelei felt the words fail her.

  “Otherworldly…” the Old Man finished.

  She nodded, still in awe of the dark metal object they were standing on. She looked around at the spellbinding view of stars and galaxies surrounding them.

  “Want to see what’s on the inside?” the Old Man asked, already knowing the answer.

  “There’s more?” she asked in awe.

  He nodded, smiling at her obvious excitement. The Old Man couldn’t help but feel like a proud father who was watching his child on Christmas morning.

  She nodded quickly and he snapped his fingers. Suddenly they were standing at the edge of a lake, serene mountains dotting an inverted landscape. Instead of a distant line that indicated the horizon, the sky arced up and around them so that the blue sky was dotted with a faint band of never-ending landscape.