I didn’t care about this one way or the other. Regardless of their plans after this I would take my sister and find somewhere safe, somewhere remote. I could finally be free. Renee had once begged me to go with her. After I had saved my sister I would find Renee and we would all be free of this.
Colonel Stafford had obviously determined that we’d had enough time to chat. Two soldiers moved in on each side of me. This felt more familiar, just like I was being led into a prison. It’s amazing how the little things can make you feel right at home.
“Keep them alive,” Levenson said to me as we turned to leave.
I nodded back to him briefly as I headed out the door. Soldiers immediately flanked me on each side. It was an unusual experience, I was more used to being their prisoner than being protected by them, yet their entire demeanour was one of protection. It was almost humorous as the reality of the situation was that I was there to protect them.
“Target is on the move,” a voice whispered in my ear. The earpiece was uncomfortably loud. “She’s not alone.”
“Does that change things?” I whispered more to myself than to anyone.
“Proceed,” Levenson ordered down the line, “Ensure that civilians are not harmed.”
I had wondered what they had meant by minimal casualties when they had said that earlier. I guess I was about to find out.
One of the soldiers directed me to follow him as he led me through the streets. This university appeared to be in dispersed with small houses, shops and industrial looking buildings. I didn’t know if they were occupied or not. The whole place had the desolate look of a closed factory. It was strange contrast to the lights of the CBD that weren’t that far away.
We held up in a small foyer that led out onto one of the main roads. Allie would have to come this way. From here we could monitor the situation without being too far from the action. It was important that I stay out of direct sight. If Allie saw me first, things would go badly very quickly.
“I’ll wait here,” I said. I hope that whoever was on the other end of the line heard me. I vaguely wondered if there was some sort of button I had to press like a walkie-talkie button.
“Team two is in position,” another voice called down the line.
“Target sighted,” the voice continued. I could tell they were nervous.
“If she shows any form of resistance, back off,” I whispered into the line. I hope to god they heard me.
I could hear muffled talking through the earpiece but couldn’t make out any exact words. The grim look on the soldiers’ faces seemed to indicate that they were readying for something.
“Let’s hope this works,” I whispered quickly.
I could only hope that having her friends with her might convince Allie to co-operate rather than risk revealing herself. I found myself holding my breath in anticipation.
At any moment I expected to hear the short sharp staccato of gunfire that would indicate that Allie had chosen to fight. Nothing happened for several minutes. Just long enough for me to convince myself that this would all work out.
I almost didn’t believe it when I heard it. It began so softly, a soldier simply swore into his headset and then the gunfire tore through the night. I didn’t need the headset to hear it. The sound was quickly followed by several screams and then more gunfire.
The soldiers in front of me took off in high speed towards the fight. It took me several seconds to realise I was supposed to go with them. The sound of gunfire increased along with the muffled shouts and curses from the headset between blasts.
There was no way I was going to be able to keep pace with the soldiers, but fortunately I had other options available. I took to the air and vaulted over the building between us. From this vantage point I could see a team of soldiers fanning out to keep Allie within their sights. Four of their number had already fallen and Allie was about to deal with the others.
I was terrified that I would see the fallen bodies of Allie’s friends that had been gunned down by the soldiers, but fortunately there didn’t seem to be any sign of them. They must have been allowed to flee or had been collected once they had left the immediate vicinity. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they had already been picked up by Levenson’s team.
Allie had almost finished off the original soldiers before we arrived. The second team of soldiers opened fire. It was impressive how quickly they dropped into firing position. The shots ricocheted harmlessly off Allie’s shield, but distracted her from finishing off the survivors of the first group of soldiers.
This wasn’t going to end well for the soldiers, if things kept going this way. I had to stop her. The problem was how to without escalating things. This was the exact thing that I feared would happen. A disrupt spell would merely impact harmlessly against her shield now. I’d need to take down her shield first, but to do that I’d have to engage and that would lead to a fight. It wasn’t a fight I was even sure I wanted to win anymore.
Voices were screaming into my earpiece, begging me to intercept. Two more soldiers had gone down before I managed to gather control of my wits. Allie had almost cut down the last of the soldiers who I had been supposed to be protecting when I leapt from the building and raised a shield around myself.
The impact created by my feet on the concrete behind her sent a wave of Mana pulsing in all directions. That got her attention. She turned around to face me and her eyes narrowed with hate. It took everything I had not to physically reel from her look.
There was no love in her eyes. There was no compassion, no recognition. I was dead to her now. It would have been so easy to simply turn around and walk away from her. I would have probably saved so many lives had I done so, had I accepted the fact that she wasn’t mine to save any longer. But I didn’t. I couldn’t accept that.
* * * * * *
Allie’s eyes narrowed as she summoned her powers and directed them against me. I let her flail at me as I summersaulted out of the way of her assault. Her attack was aggressive and powerful. If I hadn’t been expecting such an attack I would have been downed immediately. Fortunately however I knew from our last encounter just what she was capable of.
“Why are you here?” she snarled, “You’re dead! I killed you! Why didn’t you stay dead?”
I didn’t answer. Let her weaken herself as she expended her Mana ineffectually. She obviously wasn’t thinking clearly as her rage took control of her. She increased her assault in an effort to end my life. Four threads sought out my destruction, but unfortunately for her I was always one step ahead.
This wasn’t to say that I was always successful in avoiding her assault. She had managed to clip me several times, but I was moving too fast for her to secure a solid strike. The building behind me appeared to be taking the brunt of her fury as her threads were slowly and methodically tearing it to pieces in an effort to get to me.
I had leapt back onto the roof to create some distance between us, but unfortunately the roof collapsed under my feet as I landed. The damage to the building below had weakened the support structure for the roof and I slid into the chasm created by the collapsing tiles into what had previously been an internal room. I landed badly, but my shield absorbed most of the impact.
Allie didn’t give me any time to recover from my fall as she attempted to bring more of the roof down upon me. The sound of gunfire distracted her; several of the soldiers had resumed firing at her.
It didn’t take me long to clear myself of the rubble of the fallen building and break free. I sent shards of rubble flying in every direction as I emerged from the ruined building. I had thought that Allie might have turned to deal with the soldiers firing at her. Unfortunately she hadn’t determined that she was done with me yet. If she hadn’t been hit by some of the flying shrapnel caused by my escape she might have knocked me straight back down again. I couldn’t allow her to corner me like that again. If she then did I was finished.
It had only been a fluke that the flying chunks of building had knocke
d against her shield and sent her back onto the defensive. Her distraction allowed me to clear myself from the ruin and leap up on top of the roof again. Allie soon followed me, leaping up onto the other side of the smashed building. She didn’t attack immediately and I quickly realised my mistake.
From up here the soldiers couldn’t get a clear shot. I was on my own and Allie was more enraged than ever. There was no way out of this, I had to subdue her without seriously hurting her.
“Allie! Please come quietly!” I called, “we don’t have to do this! I don’t want to hurt you!”
Allie’s response was more of a cry of outrage and anger than any real response.
I engaged Allie tentatively, throwing a thread that I knew she could easily defend, to keep her on the back foot. She had already expended a serious amount of energy in her previous assault, but she didn’t seem to be tiring. It was clear that this wouldn’t be over quickly and certainly wouldn’t be without cost to either of us.
“Why won’t you just die?” Allie snarled as she launched a vicious attack at where I had previously been standing. “Leave me alone! I don’t need you! Just leave me alone!”
The hatred in her words cut me to the core, but I knew that I could fix this. I could make this right. I could bring her back from whatever sick and twisted fate that Victor had planned for her. I had to. The alternative was too painful to consider.
I landed with several seconds before Allie brought her thread back around, and brought a thread of my own to block hers. Our threads collided in a shower of sparks and sound. Allie was relentless in her assault and I found that I had to use increasing levels of power to match her.
I grunted at the effort as I pumped more and more power into the thread. She was matching me! She was just as powerful as I was! That thought alone was staggering. I had never met anyone without the title Arch Mage attached to their name who could match me for sheer power!
Victor had trained her well, too well for me to simply exhaust her. I had to change tactics. Letting her thread sweep past me and smash the roof next to me into shards of tile, I threw everything I had at her. She wasn’t able to bring her thread back in time and my thread caught her solidly on the hip and sent her flying.
She landed poorly against one of the buildings on the far side of the road. Her shield protected her as she barrelled through the wall and into the building beyond. I didn’t give her any chance to recover from the blow as I knew that if I did so she would come after me with a vengeance.
I could hear soldiers screaming orders for updates in my ear, but I pulled the earpiece out in anger as I swept my thread down shattering the roof above Allie and bringing large chunks of wall down onto her.
This was exactly what she had done to me about two minutes ago and had much the same effect, our shields were simply too strong for kinetic damage to have much effect. I saw the tell-tale glimmer of her shield through the veritable vortex of dust and rubble that surrounded her. Beams were still falling from the ceiling, landing with a crescendo of noise. Allie appeared unhurt by her fall and was already launching her counter attack.
I had first thought that her target was me, but I was wrong. A powerful thread impacted against the building I was standing on and caused one of the few remaining walls to be reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds. Had I been able to predict her attack I may have been able to save myself, but as it was my footing was taken out from underneath me I fell into the ever-increasing void beneath.
I must have smacked my head on a beam on the way down as loud ringing noises reverberated throughout my head. I barely felt my landing even though I turned a bed of broken bricks and beams into rubble. My shield had held.
I leapt to my feet instantly and sent threads out towards Allie, literally tearing down walls to get to her. The sudden activity sent waves of dizziness washing over me, but I managed to hold things together. I pulled down the only remaining wall between us only to find that she had gone.
I quickly flicked the earpiece back into my ear.
“Spread out,” I called into the earpiece. If I could distract Allie with the soldier’s gunfire again we might be able to take her by surprise, “I’ve lost sight of the target.”
There was a request for confirmation of the order, which was crisply given. It wasn’t comforting to know that I wasn’t the one directly in command here and that my orders would need to go through a third party. That could become a problem later. Especially if they kept seeking confirmation every time I needed them to do something.
Several soldiers emerged from around the corner and converged on the building where Allie had last been seen. It hadn’t been hard for them to find, I was surprised that we weren’t already inundated with cops and other emergency crew.
We had certainly created enough of a mess. It was lucky that this was a university campus and not general housing. At this time of night there unlikely to be anyone within the buildings. If there were people in those buildings then they had chosen the wrong day to work back late. There was little else that could be said really.
I emerged from the rubble to stand in the middle of the street. I hoped to provide her with an opportunity too tempting to resist and lure her back out into the open. The staccato of gunfire alerted me to her presence before I saw her.
She was on the roof of another one of the campus buildings. By the time we were finished here there would be very little university left.
The gunfire did little more than annoy her as she leapt down to strike at me. I knew from experience just how devastating these attacks could be so it was critical that I didn’t let it hit me. I rolled to the side at the last minute and recovered my footing just in time to see Allie’s thread leave a massive gash in the tarmac.
“Allie…” I called again, “please…”
She didn’t respond. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to come quietly. This fight was like nothing I’d ever experienced before and I was well out of my depth. In all the fights I’d been in I’d never had to pull my punches like this. If truth be told I had become brutal and effective. I overpowered my foes through sheer strength and power. Whilst there was technique to my actions it was callous and without forethought. Any finesse was applied purely through instinct rather than design. Those traits would not serve me well here.
I deflected her follow up attack, sending her thread careening into a power pole and smashing it into splinters. The lines buckled as they absorbed the weight of the now useless pole. Amazingly enough they didn’t snap.
The soldiers were still firing erratically at her. They knew that they weren’t going to break through her shield through force alone and were obviously worried about wasting ammunition. They were right. The bullets were little more than an annoyance to her as she launched her next attack at me.
I countered with an attack of my own that swept past her assault and impacted solidly on her shield. The shriek she made as her shield buckled cut through me like a knife. Her temporary defeat seemed to bolster her as she launched yet another furious assault. Unfortunately for Allie she had let her rage get the better of her and her assault, while furious was mainly taking its toll on my surroundings once again.
Allie’s attacks were getting increasingly erratic and I was able to make several decisive strikes to her side on her backswing. I was very conscious that although her attack was wild it was still very powerful. If she should connect my shield wouldn’t be able to last for very long.
The more I struck her the angrier she got and the more aggressive she became. I couldn’t see her face properly through her shield, but I could see her hate filled eyes. They pierced through me more devastating than any attack could ever have been.
I drew her in as I retreated before her. She was a whirlwind of aggression and power as she sought to catch me, but I was always just a step ahead. I ducked as a thread passed over me and leapt straight at her. She hadn’t expected that.
This next part was going to be difficult. I needed to take out her
shield without one of the soldiers shooting her. My thread impacted against her shield with shuddering force and sent cracks along the confines of her shield. Her shield held but only barely. It did not survive my next strike.
I moved in to point blank range as the final thread impacted against her shield at stomach level. I lunged at her hitting her seconds after my thread did. I pulled her into a tight spin and held her against me. I took several gunshots against my shield before the soldiers realised that it was over and held their fire.
Allie grunted and attempted to push me away, but I was too strong. Letting my thread dissipate I built up the power along my arms and formed the disrupt spell that would finish this. Allie’s face took on a terrified expression as she realised that her end was near.
“No, no… no!” she whispered, “just… kill me… end this!”
The disrupt impacted at point blank range between us. It bounced harmlessly off my shield, but was absorbed by Allie. I felt her go rigid in my arms as her Mana field went crazy. I knew from experience just how much this hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I gently let her down. She was so light, so very, very light.
I glanced around to see soldiers closing in. Allie was convulsing slightly as the disrupt spell did its nasty work on her nervous system. She would be fine in time, but the experience was not going to be pleasant.
“Take the girl into custody,” a distant voice said, at first I was confused, but quickly realised that it had come to the earpiece hanging from the wire on my chest. I quickly grabbed the earpiece and placed it back in my ear. This was the first time that this voice had interjected on the radio, but I recognised the American accent. Colonel Stafford was certainly a man of few words.
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