Sapience

by bret Wellman

  The physical user paid no attention to my words, she just stared down the barrel of her gun with that blank expression, her white eyes never blinking. As far as I could tell, she couldn’t even hear me.

  We had stayed like this for so long, I knew that at any moment the ten minutes would be up and she would pull the trigger. I had kept myself calm and collected this whole time, thoughts of Brianna helped me drift away to a better place. I wonder what we would be doing right now, had the Kingdom never found us. We would probably still be in the dead lands, curled up on the hood of my car, under the warm sleeping bag, watching the stars. I could almost smell her perfume.

  The dead lands had been such a desolate place, the president had done a good job destroying the land. Yet, with Brianna so close it wasn’t bad at all. For a moment I was no longer tied to a chair, the blood speckled walls and physical user were all gone.

  “Hey.”

  I looked up and Brianna was standing before me. There was nothing else, just her and I in an infinite abyss. The air radiated with blue energy.

  She looked at me, concerned yet confidently. “Don’t give up on me.”

  The energy in the abyss lifted her hair in strands as if there were no gravity. I recognized the sensation that charged the air, it was energy I had once known very well, the source of power for both physical user and mental user, Peleus.

  The user cocked the gun, snapping me back to the real world. My heart began to pound in my chest. I wasn’t ready to die.

  “Goodbye traitor.” She said in that dead voice.

  Instead of the gun going off as I had expected, the mirror on the wall exploded as a chair was thrown through it from the other side. I watched in awe as Brianna leapt through the window frame, tackling the user to the ground. The gun went bouncing to the far side of the room.

  The user elbowed Brianna in the side and flipped her onto her back. Brianna kicked her in the chest, sending her tumbling back words. They both stood up slowly and squared off with each other.

  The physical user flexed her power and summoned a long knife from the assortment of weapons on the torture table, it flew into her hands. Brianna created two ice spears out of thin air.

  Every cell in my body longed to get Brianna away from the user, to make sure she was safe. I struggled, frantically trying to free my hands from behind my back. It was slow and painful work.

  “What did you do to him?” Brianna yelled. “I’m going to kill you!”

  She charged forward, thrusting one of the spears. The user stepped to the side and used her own weapon, missing Brianna by inches. Brianna tried to stab up into her gut, the user turned to the side and brought her elbow down on the spear, breaking it in half. She swiped the knife at Brianna’s throat, Brianna stopped it with the broken spear. She dropped it and created a new one simultaneously.

  Both girls went back and forth in a flurry of attacks that looked all too deadly. A wave of panic rushed through me every time the blade came near Brianna.

  When I finally had my arms under my feet and out front, I toppled sideways out of the chair. The repercussion of hitting the floor put me on the verge of passing out. For a moment the two sparring girls were blurred by the pain.

  I looked up to see they had separated. Brianna palmed her two spears in one hand and hurtled a large chunk of ice at the user with the other. The user deflected it with a glance, sending it shattering into the wall.

  I scrambled painfully up onto my hands and knees, I couldn’t believe how hard it was.

  The girls came crashing together again, chunks of crystal sized ice rained down on the floor as their weapons met.

  Brianna was enticed with the effort of trying to stab the user, she failed to see a whip begin to rise from the table. She only saw that she was beginning to get the upper hand. I sensed that the user had switched to a defensive tactic simply so she could have the mental capacity to use her power.

  The whip shot up through the air, straight towards Brianna. It coiled around her neck like a snake and squeezed tight. Her neck began collapsing inwards under the rope. Her eyes went wide and she dropped both of her ice spears. She scratched wildly at her neck as she fell to her knees, and then to her side. She was turning blue.

  I mustered my energy and stood up onto my broken feet. I couldn’t allow the pain to affect my movements, not now, not when Brianna needed me. With my first step I almost collapsed. I had to regain my balance, the step had been too wide for my body to handle in its current condition. The next was little more than a shuffle, it felt like I was walking on fire but at least I didn’t fall.

  The physical user was so concentrated on the whip that she didn’t see me coming up from behind. I threw my arms over her, wrapping the rope that bound my wrists around her throat.

  We both fell backwards, crashing into the floor. There was a moment after impact that I let the rope loosen from her neck. She started to pull away but I yanked it tight again, trying to ignore the pain that consumed me. I felt something like hot iron burning my leg and looked down to see the handle of the knife protruding from my thigh. Blood poured out and onto the floor.

  The user began to kick and flail. She reached out with one hand and the gun she had been holding earlier cam bouncing across the floor and flew into her palm. She turned it up at me and pressed the barrel against my temple.

  I closed my eyes and pulled the rope as hard as I could. My body screamed for me to let go and yet I still pulled tighter. I cried out with the effort of fighting the pain, I was waiting for the moment when she would pull the trigger and it would all be over. It wasn’t until I heard Brianna coughing that I finally let up and opened my eyes.

  She was lying on her side, stripping the whip from around her neck. I wanted to crawl over to her but couldn’t muster the strength to pull my body across the floor. The physical user laid motionless at my side. She was still holding the gun. Why hadn’t she shot me?

  I realized that the safety was still on. She must have already been too far gone to know to take it off.

  Brianna crawled over to me and grabbed the gun. “I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again.” She said in a hoarse voice. As she spoke she started to cry.

  “It’s ok now.” I kissed her shoulder because that was as far as I could lift my head.

  She gave me a weak smile, I finally allowed myself to rest and laid my head down. Even on the hard, glass covered floor, I knew I would be asleep in no time.

  “What are you doing?” Brianna asked. Suddenly she was more alert, her voice reaching its normal tone. “We have to get out of here.”

  “I can’t, you’re going to have to leave me behind.” I hadn’t even thought about the words before I said them. They just kind of came out as I closed my eyes.

  “I don’t think so William! You’re coming with me whether you like it or not.” She grabbed me by the arm and began to pick me up.

  I felt a broken bone shift around and let out a wild cry. Brianna didn’t stop, she threw my arm around her shoulder and held me up by my waist. Blood from the stab wound was running down my leg.

  The user still held the knife in her bloody hand. She lay there looking up blankly, gun in one hand, knife in the other. I had done that to her…

  All I could think about was lying down, the pain of standing was far too much to bear, but Brianna wouldn’t let me go. She forced me to take that first step towards the door, and then the second and the third. Before I knew it we were making our way down a hallway.

  The blood from my feet and leg left a trail following us down the corridors. If anyone was curious enough to look, it would lead them right to us. The lights in the ceiling flickered on and off at random. Every so often we would pass where a bomb had gone off and blown through a wall. These places were usually accompanied by hordes of dead soldiers.

  We reached a cross-section in the hall, in one direction we could hear explosions, in the other we could hear gun fire.

  “Which way should we go?” Brianna asked
.

  “Gun fire.” I said. Bombs meant traps, gun fire meant allies. Of course it also means enemies…

  Step by step, we made our way slowly toward the gun fire. I shuffled my feet, placing as much weight as possible on Brianna. Every time I tried to stop, she would demand I keep going and continue to pull me without even considering a rest.

  At some point, about halfway down the hall, the gunfire stopped and the bombs started to decrease. This was the part of battle that I had always learned to hate. It was when the chaos began to ebb and everybody becomes painfully aware of their surroundings. It was a time when the enemy could regain their footing and come back at you. We had to get out of here and we had to do it fast.

  You could now hear our footsteps in the calm silence, the click clack of Brianna’s shoes, and the pitter patter of my bare feet. We passed only bodies, there were no signs of any living soldiers.

  Something was extremely off, sure the place had been bombed and a lot of soldiers seemed to be dead, but there were far more men than what we saw lying in the rubble, the place should have been teaming with them. It was like being in a ghost town, a beaten and battered ghost town with flickering lights and wafting smoke.

  I flinched as sparks showered down on us from an exposed wire in the ceiling. Brianna pulled me away and continued on.

  The hall ended at a set of double doors. I couldn’t see anything but smoke through the door’s windows.

  “Should we go through?” Brianna asked.

  “We have to.” My voice came out as a whisper. If we took any longer than necessary to get out of here I was going to pass out. It was hard enough staying conscious as it was.

  As soon as we opened the doors and the smoke began rolling out, my eyes began to burn.

  “It’s tear gas!” Brianna said, pulling us back into the hall.

  She must have seen the panicked look on my face because she started to reassure me that we could find another way. What she didn’t realize was that there was a shadow coming at us from inside the smoke.

  “Behind you.” I gasped.

  The figure came out of the smoke with its rifle raised. It had a gas mask over its face.

  Brianna propped me up against the wall and turned to face the gunman. I wanted to leap out in front of her, to shield her from the coming bullet. But I knew I would only succeed in collapsing to the ground.

  Instead of shooting, the figure took one hand off the gun and ripped off the gas mask. It was Spencer.

  “Man am I glad to see you two.” He said. “This place is a hornet’s nest.”

  He was suited up in a Kevlar suit that almost covered his entire body. The only thing exposed was his head. His face looked horrible, it was black and blue all over. Between that and a severe limp, he looked to have been beaten up pretty bad recently.

  Brianna came over and helped me off the wall. “We need to get him some help.”

  “Tell me about it. William, you look like crap.”

  Brianna started walking me towards the smoking room. Spencer grabbed her elbow, stopping her.

  “We can’t go that way. Certain sections of the building are being pumped full of tear gas in order to flush the soldiers into a trap. That’s where the others and I are supposed to meet up.”

  “How did you get away?” I asked. They both looked at me as if they were concerned of the weakness of my voice.

  “Adrian found where they were keeping me and broke in. At first he wanted me to get out and head home. I refused to leave and he eventually suited me up and sent me after you two. Now let’s get moving.”

  Spencer slung my other arm over his shoulder and the three of us began making our way towards where the bombs had been going off. We moved a lot faster with his help. I barely had to let my feet touch the ground.

  Brianna was ever watchful and Spencer was careful to always have his gun pointed and at the ready. I was finding it hard to focus. The pain was slowly being replaced with numbness.

  Soon the hallway was riddled in bodies and debris, most of the walls had been blown to pieces revealing destroyed rooms where flames still smoldered. Even the ceiling had collapsed in one place. We had found where most of the bombs had been going off.

  “Hang on William, we are almost there.” Brianna said as we slipped through a crack in the collapsed ceiling.

  On the other side was a completely different picture. The building returned back to normal. No bombs had gone off and there were no bodies. Even the lights flickered on every now and then.

  “We tried to flush as many soldiers out of your section of the building as possible.” Spencer said. “Once they were all baited away from you we bombed or tear gassed any path they could use to get back. Up until now, you have been detained in your own private section of the building.”

  “You guys didn’t think we could take care of ourselves?” Brianna asked.

  “We doubted you would be in any position to form a tactical defense.”

  “Good call.” I managed to say.

  We were about to turn right, down another hall when we almost stepped into a barrage of gunfire.

  Spencer immediately let go of me and shoved us back. Brianna almost lost her footing, if he would have pushed any harder we would have tripped over each other and crashed to the ground.

  Spencer fired off a few rounds and then dove to the other side of the hall. His gun sounded quiet, almost as if it was more distant than it really was. In fact everything seemed more distant. Even Brianna’s reassuring words were muffled as she huddled against me on the ground.

  I was growing disinterested with the fire fight. I didn’t even try to turn my head to see how Spencer was doing. Instead I gazed straight ahead at the opposite wall. There was a green line about half way up that ran the entire length of the building. I had never noticed it before, or had I? I tried to concentrate harder but the line kept getting blurry. When I tried to rub my eyes I had trouble lifting my arms.

  That was when I looked down. I was sitting in a puddle of blood. How long had I been sitting there? It couldn’t have been that long. The bleeding in my leg had to be stopped or I would soon be dead.

  “Tourniquet.” I whispered to Brianna.

  She looked back and seemed to be just as surprised with the blood as I was. “Spencer,” she yelled. “Throw me your belt.”

  “You picked a really bad time to start coming on to me Brianna.”

  “Throw me your belt now! This is serious.”

  Spencer fired another shot around the corner then slipped off his belt and tossed it over.

  Brianna caught it and immediately wrapped it around my leg. I watched as she sized up how tight it would be and then punctured it with a small piece of ice that shot out from her finger. She used the puncture hole to lock the belt tight around my leg.

  My first thought was pain, it hurt and I wanted to rip it off. I had to scream out, I tried but only managed the hoarse whisper of a groan. The belt and my leg soon became so numb that I couldn’t feel it at all.

  “Ok, let’s keep moving.” Spencer said, helping Brianna to pick me up.

  I counted four dead soldiers in the hall as we passed. Spencer had proved himself quite the marksmen. His light-hearted exterior, bouts for popularity, the techniques to make so many friends, they all disappeared under this mercenary leading us down the hallway. We were not innocent kids, this is what we truly were.

  We made our way down three more hallways before coming to a set of large, wooden doors. Thankfully we didn’t encounter any more soldiers.

  Spencer kneeled down and snapped his fingers, a flame began to dance above his hand. With the flame moving to his pointer finger, he pressed it to the door. If you listened close enough you could hear it crackling. His finger went through the door like butter. He bent down and peered through the hole.

  “Perfect, the soldiers are already starting to gather inside the room. Adrian’s plan is working, they are being herded like cattle. Now all we have to do is wait a little longer.”
He stood up and threw a couple of canisters down the hall. “In the mean time we don’t need anybody trying to sneak up behind us.”

  The canisters started spewing white smoke that engulfed the entire far end of the hallway. We were now trapped between a wall of tear gas and the large wooden door. Spencer kneeled down and went back to peering through the hole.

  Chapter 20

  “Brianna, can you seal this door up with ice?” Spencer asked.

  Brianna looked away from me for the first time since we had sat down. “Sure.” She said, standing up and walking over to the door. She ran her hand down the crack between the two doors, filling it solid with ice along the way. She was quick to come back over and sat down at my side.

  I closed my eyes for a moment because it was getting so hard to keep them open, a strange relief washed over me when they were closed. It wasn’t long before I felt Brianna slapping me lightly on the cheek.

  “Sleep is not an option William, I don’t know if you will wake back up. We have to get through this first.”

  It felt like there were heavy weights pulling down on my eyelids as I opened them. I wasn’t going to hold out for much longer. My head was in Brianna’s lap and she was running her fingers lightly down my scalp. It was a heavenly feeling amid all the pain. I shivered under her touch.

  “Looks like they are beginning to grow suspicious.” Spencer said. A few moments later you could hear people trying to force their way through the door.

  “And now it’s time to ensue a little panic.” He ran his hands down the bottom of the door leaving a trail of flames that quickly began to grow. “Nothing like believing you are in a burning building to make you let your guard down.”

  Our side of the door was soon entirely engulfed in flames. The heat coming off the fire was extremely uncomfortable. It didn’t seem to bother Spencer, fire couldn’t hurt him.

  The ice in the door began to melt, luckily there was still enough to hold the soldiers at bay on the other side.

  Brianna ran ice across our exposed skin to counter the intense heat. It actually worked pretty well. I wanted to inform her that she had missed a spot on my calf but decided it wasn’t worth the energy it would take to say it.