“Very well done Stacie, you mastered it pretty quickly”, she laughed in a sing song tone. “I mean, you did take out that mammoth monster all on your own”.
“That wasn’t me”, I gasped.
“It was, you felt it, you impaled him”.
“What did you do to me?”
“I didn’t do anything, this was inside you all along waiting to come out”.
“But you bit me, whatever it was I used came from you”.
“I bit you so the doctor would think you were newly infected and let you rest. Rest would make you gain control of your new found gift quicker. I needed you alive and the tease of a newly infected playmate was too much for the doctor to ignore”, she mused.
“Why and how am I like you now?”
“The doctor will explain it all to you soon, but for now I need you to get up”.
“Get up for what?”
“So, you can fight”.
“Fight what?”
“Me”, she breathed.
“I don’t want to fight you”.
“You have no choice, either you fight me and defeat me and save the world or I win and you die and so does the world”.
“I can’t…My brain it hurts”, nausea rocked me just thinking about using that insane power again.
“But it’s the only way… Now get dressed, he’s coming for us”.
And with that Kaley shut down, her chin rested on her neck and her mind closed off.
I looked around the room to see a chair with some clothes on, they were hospital type scrubs which the lab technicians and scientists had to wear but I wasn’t complaining, after coming out of the incubator I was cold and shivering. I slipped them on quickly before sensing the footsteps approaching the room, I ran faster than before and jumped up a wall and pulled off a metal grate that covered the air conditioning vents and hid inside just slipping on the cover as the door opened revealing Doctor Enok.
He paused as he entered looking at Kaley on shut down mode and both our incubators broken and open. Then he smiled slyly and called out, “Her infection is in your veins child, she has made you a super human. Your human life was pathetic before but now you are great”.
I sighed and whispered to myself, “Where have I heard that before”.
He continued on walking around the room looking for me, “Now child why don’t you come out and see Kaley again, I’m sure you will want to see what the original virus has turned her into?”
I wanted to talk to him but not reveal my hiding place, if only I could be in two places at once… Just as I thought it I felt my mind flex and bend and then I was standing right next to him, well my astral self anyway.
“To see what it’s turned her into? I don’t really think that’s what you need to worry about”.
“Whoa”, he said surprised jumping back from me.
“You should be worried about what she’s turned me into”.
“My dear”, he grinned from ear to ear, “She infected you, giving you some of her gift”. He moved away from me and took out a gun from his pocket and aimed it at me, “She opened your mind from the normal 10% human mind… To… Well maybe 60 %”.
“What are you babbling on about?” I snapped.
“Your speed, how you moved here so quickly that was from her”, he smiled not knowing how wrong he was about me, “The average human only uses around 10% of their brain. The brain is a huge universe of electrons, brain waves and signals and that 10% is monumental in that it controls thoughts, feelings and senses, it tells the organs to work in a certain way, it tells your legs to walk and your arms to move, for your mouth to speak. It lets you dream and remember memories like a video playback. The brain is marvellous at 10%”.
“So what happens at 60%, like her?” I pointed at Kaley.
“She can use telekinesis and telepathic thoughts along with limited visions of the future”.
“What would happen at 100%?” I asked intrigued.
“Everything… Telekinesis, telepathy, empathy, agility, speed, self-healing, to make new or re-use broken body parts, full use of visions… To open time and space”, he smiled, “The brain could become so open even time wouldn’t hold it back”.
“Go back to the beginning”, a voice whispered to me. I shook my head and spun around, I could hear Sian and Ollie, telling me to go back to the beginning but they were not hear.
“What about, what about hearing the souls of the passed?” I asked him.
He shrugged, “Maybe, if telekinesis is real then why not”.
“Go back to the beginning Stacie”, Kaley whispered only to me through the air, she was beginning to wake up again. “Make them pay for all this pain and misery. Make the Enok’s pay before they unleash it”.
I held my hands to my head, “I don’t understand?”
He looked at me funny, lowering the gun slightly until I turned back to him and he saw something in my face then he lifted it back up, “Her darkness consumes you too?”
“No…It is my own”, I replied and I summoned my claws out.
His face paled and he aimed the gun and me and shot me point blank in the stomach. I didn’t flinch, I didn’t feel anything. “No…no it can’t be?”
“You should have killed me when you had the chance doctor”, I replied as he watched the wound on my astral self heal up and disappear, “I was infected before she bit me, and I could already self-heal but now I have her powers too I will stop you from hurting the world”.
He laughed a choked strangled and uneasy laugh, I could taste his fear on my tongue, “But how, the damage is done?”
“Go back to the beginning”.
BANG!
A blur of movement pounded into my side…
“Where’d she go?” Aksel screamed shaking the gun at Kaley who stood before him. Her eyes blank and no longer her own.
I sat back in the air vent, looking down at my stomach, my projection had looked and felt real and had healed like me but it hadn’t been fully me. This infection was wrong on so many levels and I knew I wouldn’t have long until it consumed me fully, just like it had Kaley, I could feel it.
“Where are you?” He screamed. “Find her”.
A flicker of power and the metal of the vent groaned and was crushed and was then ripped from the wall and thrown to the floor. Winded I climbed out to be greeted by Kaley’s fist which collided with my chest and sent me flying into the air. Feeling no pain I stood and walked over the now crumbling room from her power, something wasn’t right, crumbs of cement were frozen and floating in the air.
“Destroy her”, he commanded to Kaley and without even blinking she charged at me.
I dodged her charge and spun on my heel sending out a wave of my own new found power and sent her crashing into a wall. It cracked and crumbled under the pressure but again the debris just floated in the air around us.
She moved again and jumped, sending out a wave at me which threw me headfirst into a large computer console. My neck snapped sharply and I fell to the floor in a slump of broken bones. As she came closer to me I felt my body rebuild itself, faster than before and by the time her foot reached the console I was up and blasted her back but she stuck out her arm and her power and only skidded a few feet.
“Kaley”, I gasped, “It’s me, Stacie, remember? We got you hear to win, to fight, to fix all this… Please remember… I don’t know what else to do, how to fix this”.
But she wasn’t home she just raised her hand again at me but I raised mine back at her and our powers collided in the middle. The building shook and the ceiling began to crumble above us, dust sprinkled down before stopping and floating like everything else.
“Kaley please, show me what I must do”.
Her eyes blank and unfocused she raised her hand again but not at me, at the far wall, she turned it in a clock wise motion and I felt my jaw widen in terror. A huge spiralling hole appeared.
“Kaley what the hell is that?”
“It’s a black hole, a
time loop… You fall in that and you would never even have been born”, Aksel laughed a high shrill excited laugh, “Push her in, kill her!” He shouted to her.
Her legs moved, “The gift is the way… The gift… The way… To finish… THIS,” Kaley screamed and ran at me. I ducked out of her way and spun kicking her in the back causing her to stumble.
“Rahhhh”, she hissed and lunged again, this time hitting me in the stomach and sending me skidding over the tiled floor towards the swirling vortex. I could see what she was doing, getting me to push her away from it so she could push me near it.
“Finish this Stacie… Let me go… Free me from my pain…”
I shook my head as a part of her voice hit me. I felt numb as I realised she was still in there, the infection had taken over her body but she was still aware of what was happening.
“I can’t kill you Kaley… If you fall in there you might never have been”.
“I know… Just do it or everyone falls to the new sickness”.
I stood my back held high, her eyes looked like her own for a moment as she stared at me, then they glossed over and she was Kaley no more. The inky blackness of the infection ruptured over her skin and she became the darkness before me.
Kaley lifted her arms and bent the world around them making it flex and causing a wall of concrete to disintegrate like it was nothing. I felt the wall explode around me and I tried to use my own power to stand tall and not let it hit me to knock me towards the void. I swirled the explosion into my power it threw it out back at her causing her to fly backwards towards her own undoing.
Time slowed down all around me as the gaping hole in the wall began to swallow up parts of the building, it sucked in everything in its wake, the small crumbs of debris that had been floating in the air now made their way to the void, hitting it and vanishing into nothingness. I even watched as a small fly buzzed past me, fighting to survive but being taken by the darkness.
This all felt too easy as I sent out another blast of power at her forcing her to the edge of the vortex, it was like she really did want to go.
Then Kaley lurched forward, I jumped back but not enough as she grabbed my hospital scrubs and pulled me to her, her hot decaying breath hit my cheek as she spoke, “If I go, then the chosen One comes too”.
Shock hit my core as she called me the chosen one, “No, no it was you. You were the chosen one to end all this not me”.
Then her eyes flashed back as we stood there being dragged closer and closer to the void, “No… It was you all along, I just saw it wrong and thought it was me. It is you Stacie, it always has been you. I was meant to find you and bring ‘you’ here, not the other way around. You are the one who can fix all of this… Just go back… to the beginning”. Then her eyes glossed over once again, “But you won’t get the chance”, she snarled in my face.
She grasped my neck and shoved me against one of the remaining walls. I could feel the cement crumble beneath us. I shoved her but she didn’t move, she was a solid statue. Her hands tightened round my neck and although I gasped for air I knew inside that it couldn’t kill me. Knowing this too she leant her face into mine and snapped her jaws at me, saliva dripped from them as she tried to devour my face.
“Ollie would be proud of you Kaley, you know that right? For getting me here, for getting us here”.
Her eyes came back as her own, her face softened, “It’s ok, I know. And we will meet again in another life me and him”, she mused, “Another life, that sounds good… But…”, she paused, “You alone have that choice to make, whether we get a chance at another life”.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, it was like time had slowed down around us.
“Either you die and the world lives, or you live on and the world could too but then it could also fall at your hand”. She looked saddened, “Either way has its consequences”.
“DESTROY HER”, Aksel Enok commanded and her eyes went dark for a final time.
Darkness then began to pour out of her very soul, the infection became a tangle of black infected veins which attached themselves to the floor, ceiling and walls. I could see her forcing the virus into the foundations and spreading them outwards to infect the whole world, she forced them down to infect the soil, the water, the animals, the plant life, all the humans and the Earth’s core.
“No what are you doing? I said destroy her not the whole world! I want to rule over it not destroy it!” Enok cried out stumbling over a thick branch of black veins.
“This is what your infection has done Aksel”, I called out to him, “You can’t blame her, you only have yourself and your Uncle to blame”. As I finished talking to him I turned back to her hand that was still around my neck, now encrusted like a darkened tree bark around me.
“Do something”, he called to me, “I didn’t want this, I only wanted to prove I was better than him, better than Russel, my uncle”.
Ignoring his pleas but knowing I had to do something anyway I summoned my claws and slashed at the darkened veins. They snapped and popped, pouring out the infection all over the floor, the small vein droplets started moving and wriggling over the floor towards Aksel, Cain and Kian. Sending out my power I exploded the freak of nature worms that slithered over the floor until they were inky mush on the floor.
Moving out from where she had me pinned I took in the whole scene before me, she was like a large tree of death, rooted to the floor and spreading her inky roots and branches out into the world to break it. I spotted her small, sullen frame in the centre of the tree, her body limp and lax, being held up only by the veins but still powering the veins with the virus.
Rushing at the tree trunk and her veined figure I slashed away at it, a hot, putrid stench of decay wafted over me again and again as I slashed at it more and more, sending chunks of meaty decaying flesh to the floor like puddles of gloop.
“What are you doing?” Aksel asked but I ignored him, still slashing away until I hit the heart.
“RAHHHHHHH”, Kaley screeched, a sound so piercing, so similar to the screech that the screechers that once roamed the Earth had produced. I rammed my claws into her heart and she howled in pain, falling to the floor in a pool of inky black blood. “You can’t stop me, I can build a new tree”.
“This isn’t what you want”, I told her.
“It’s what the virus wants”, she cursed in pain, “It’s alive inside of me, inside all of us that are infected. It will call to you soon enough and even if I fail it will make you build the tree, you have to…stop it…Stop me!”
I knew she was right, I had to stop her, I had to get her to the void.
I went to her and grabbed her arm expecting to move her but she was re-rooting herself to the floor, once again she was trying to become the tree. I watched as her hair grew down around her, hitting the floor like deathly tendrils of power. Launching at her I cut her hair with my claws from the neck down, but as it fell from the cut more grew in its place.
“You can’t defeat me”, she whispered but I had an idea forming.
Again I rushed her, sliced off her hair and blasted her with my telekinetic power causing her to slide back, back towards the void. I done this again, again and again until I only had to push one more time to get her into it.
Then she awoke again and lunged at me, once again holding onto my top. Her dark eyes void of all things Kaley, it was just the infection left now.
“The chosen one should have been me, your too weak to win. Just like you were too weak to save your sister… Tanya. Tanya died because you were too weak and slow… And now you will be too weak and slow to save him, to save Cain”.
The numbness took over as I pushed my arms forward with such force using my new gift as a boost she had to let go of my top. She fell to the floor by the lip of the void, “You will never win this, not alone”, she hissed.
“No I won’t, or I didn’t on my own but I had your help and theirs”, I pointed to Cain and Kian, “Say hi to the others for me on the other side�
��, I sniffed and kicked her in the face. She flew back into the hole in the wall, her screams echoed all around me and the hole waivered and blinked, getting smaller and smaller with every passing second until it was no more than just a speck of dust.
“Good bye Kaley, in my eyes you will always be the One”.
Chapter Nineteen…
I stood there for a moment numb and exhausted watching the wall where Kaley had vanished into. It didn’t seem real that she was gone, that I was still here, that it was me who was meant to be the one that lived on to somehow ‘Fix’ all of this and by fix I had no idea how to do it. What had the world I lived in come to? The infection, the mutations, the gifts, the powers… The end… But how to end all this, what was it I had to do? And what had she really meant by telling me I had two choices? Could my choice really impact the world so much?
“You are truly a magnificent creature”, Doctor Aksel Enok commented from behind me. He was such a small threat to me now I had almost forgotten about his sick and twisted ass that I needed to kick.
“No…I’m not”, I replied bluntly looking around the room not really paying him too much attention, looking for the way to fix this.
“Yes you are”, he mused. “I thought she was the one, the most amazing thing to ever exist on this Earth but I was so wrong. It was you all along and she knew that. You’re self-healing, your abilities, your inner strength, all things she did not poses, your mind must be at nearly 100% capacity for you to be able to selfheal? But she could manipulate time and cause a black hole of sorts but in the end it wiped her out, erased her, like she never even existed, I don’t think you can do that, can you?”
“Oh she existed and she knew what she was doing”, I said wryly.
“Oh and what was that?” He smiled with a sing song voice, “What was it she was doing other than erasing her own existence?”
“Showing me what I need to do to fix everything you and your sick little cult created”.
One (Alone Book 3) Page 25