Floor 21- Dark Angel

by Jason Luthor

  “The pleasure was all mine, Belinda.”

  We look forward together, staring at the faces of our enemies. There are a sea of rifles pointed at us, and at this point, we’re all out of options. I feel her squeeze me tighter as we brace ourselves, waiting for an eternity as rifles lift up and prepare to fire. All around us, I can see the armor my troopers are wearing detonating apart as the people I’ve served with for years go collapsing to the ground under the pressure. Maybe that’s when I realize . . . I lied. I do want to live forever. But it’d be a sad life if I made it there without the people I’ve fought with my whole life.

  But I also think . . . Well, I think I’m going to miss them.

  With guns rising up to fire, Torres lets me go. I collapse onto the ground as she screams, turning toward the walkers facing us, her gauntlets flashing in the darkness and fire as she charges at the nearest one of them. The blade slices through its head, sending it collapsing into the ground as she charges for the next, guns erupting all around her as she starts hacking into another walker. The rounds ricochet off her arms and sides, but she’s exposed down the torso, and I see blood flying through the air as she gets off a final few hits. Everything is gunfire and blood for a second, then she staggers backward, her body collapsing down over mine as she puts her back between me and Yousef’s walkers.

  I feel her arms lock around me as she shields me with her body, her face inches from mine as gunfire tears through her back. All I can see is her eyes open wide as she stares into nothing, blood dripping out of the corners of her mouth. And, all I can do is hold onto her as the back of her suit explodes apart, her body forming the wall that saves my life. With her mouth just above my ear, I listen. There aren’t any grand last words, nothing she says that defies death. All I hear’s the breath she has leave her body, her eyes closing as she slumps forward and rolls to the side.

  Gone.

  For a second, I’m sitting there, the world swimming around me. Fire is burning against the night sky, and I’m surrounded by walkers piloted by the same men and women I used to serve with, their rifles pointed at me. Blood’s running down my face and plastering to my skin, sweat and dirt brushed against my face. My armor’s almost completely done, and I don’t have anywhere to run to. But then I think, maybe it doesn’t matter. At least, when I look over at Belinda’s body, lying calmly on the ground, I think that, maybe, it just wasn’t meant to happen. It’s funny because, I’ve spent my whole life fighting and seeing death, calling myself the goddess of destruction, but it’s not until that second that I really think . . . I’m as human as everyone else, and maybe it’s my time to go. And, maybe it’s strange but, the second I accept that, I don’t feel as scared.

  And then, one more time, the world fills up with light. Just . . . this time it isn’t from artillery or missile fire. It’s not from guns or explosions. This time, it’s not even directed at us. It’s a light so intense that it sweeps right past us, like tornado winds that go sweeping over everyone standing on the grounds of Fort Silence. Everyone braces as they turn, trying to find where the light’s coming from but almost blinded by the intensity. Still, everyone’s eyes are on a beam of light that looks like it’s connecting the heavens to the earth. It’s cutting through the sky, burning out of the clouds above us with so much power that I even see the Dynamis lurching away to avoid the energy wave that nearly knocks it out of the air. The night almost looks like day for a second as a shock wave rolls along the ground, nearly knocking all of us off of our feet as we brace against whatever’s happening. As I’m staring at the ground around me, I start seeing stones shaking and flying past me with the force of the energy flow.

  Then I hear something that makes me breathe a sigh of relief. It’s Erin. “Kali,” I hear in my ear. “Kali, are you hearing me?”

  “Erin. You’re alive,” I say through clenched teeth as my legs dig into the dirt, bracing just so I can hold my position. “Thank your God, apparently.”

  “Are you seeing this?”

  “It’s not easy to miss.” My eyes are pinned to the column of light emptying down from above. “What’s . . . what’s happening?”

  “It’s a massive tear in Pocket Space. The largest I’ve ever seen. No word on what’s causing it. I’m sending you a video feed from the Baby Boys.”

  A video widow opens in the headset wear in case something happens to my helmet, and suddenly I’m watching that same beam of light, except this time from the air. I can see it perfectly. It’s this . . . How do I describe it? It’s raw energy that’s gathering in the courtyard, like a vortex, and connected to a column of energy flowing from the sky. It continues to pulse and fire off for just a few more seconds before the beam starts to die off. Slowly, it gets thinner and thinner before disappearing, and then all there is to see is this burning fire on the battlefield. White fire. Still, it’s not until that overwhelming light starts to die down that I really get a real clear look of what’s happening. There’s a person, standing in the middle of the flames, a tall silhouette against the light. No armor, and her jumpsuit’s as white as the fire around her, but there’s no one else it could be.

  It’s Jackie.

  She takes a step. It’s slow at first, like she doesn’t remember how to walk, so it takes her a second to look like she’s gotten her legs under her. Still, she ends up taking one step after another as she walks out of the crater that the artillery shells left behind. It’s almost like she doesn’t know where she is. Watching her from that aerial view, I look on as she flexes her fingers, her chest rising and falling while she takes deep breaths. Then she looks up, and it’s like watching a baby that’s seeing the world for the first time. Almost like she’s realizing that there’s still a battle going on. There was, anyway, because everything happening on the ground seems to grind to a stop just for her.

  Erin’s in my ear again. “Kali. What . . . What is this?”

  “Damned if I know. Have you ever heard of her . . . doing this? Burning white fire?”

  “Nothing in our reports, and nothing about opening up holes in Pocket Space.”

  “None in ours, either. This is . . . this is new.”

  And that’s when Jackie’s head snaps forward, and just like that? She’s gone. I don’t see it happen. She just vanishes, and the next thing I know, there’s a line of explosions lighting up through rows of Fort Silence walkers. I lose my breath when I see it, but what happens next is what almost makes me have a heart attack. I nearly scream when I turn my head and Jackie’s standing right there. She looks at me, then at the soldiers in front of us, who’ve all backed up a step at her arrival.

  She looks at me, and I see the pupils of her eyes have changed. They’re not burning red anymore. They’re burning silver. “I’ll clear some space for you.” She says it dead calm, like there’s nothing to worry about. “Can you still manage things out here?”

  “Uh. Yeah. Yeah.” What else am I supposed to say? “I think . . . My armor’s almost done.”

  “Like I said. I’ll clear some space.”

  It’s one of those blink and you’ll miss it moments. Literally. She vanishes from right in front of me, and the rows of Fort Silence troops that were just pointing guns at us are suddenly exploding apart or collapsing to the ground, their legs cut out from under them or their arms severed at the mechanical joints. There are dozens of explosions all around us as walkers vanish in fire and reappear, lying on the ground in pieces. Then Jackie’s in front of me again, nodding at me. “Remember to protect Erin. You’ve got the rest.”

  “Yeah.” I shake my head and blink hard. I’m busy trying to convince myself that this isn’t a dream. “Yeah, I’ll keep things steady out here.”

  “I know.”

  And then she’s gone again.

  Tommy’s Recording 40

  General Yousef takes a step backward and clenches his golden fists as he growls at the monitor. “What am I looking at?” His eyes shoot over to Doc Watson. “You. What is this?”

  The doc
tor’s head is lowered and shaking. “I . . . I don’t . . .”

  Yousef practically spins him in a circle as he grabs him by the shoulder. “Answer me, doctor. What is this?”

  “She’s . . .” He sucks in a hard breath. “You’ve pushed her. Beyond the Alexander Limit. This is, normally, what would make her go feral.”

  “And this time? What happened this time?”

  He has this confused look on his face as he look at the general, like this should be simple to understand. “She didn’t.”

  Our eyes go to the screen all at once as we see explosions erupting across the courtyard. Tanks are sent tumbling upside down and troops wearing powered armor are sent collapsing into the dirt. It’s what’s left of the walls though that really gets me. All those gun emplacements that are left go ripping apart, like she’s streaking by them. My face actually twists up as I say, “She’s flying like Mike flew. Without the jetpack.”

  Yousef only growls as he looks back at Doc Watson. “You’re telling me you’ve never seen this before?”

  “Twice,” the doc corrects himself. “Only twice.”

  “When?”

  “That’s not really the most pertinent issue at hand. Well, I don’t believe so, at any rate.”

  “You’re right. Tell me what you think is happening.”

  We keep watching as cameras throughout the courtyard keep trying to track Jackie. Each one of them clicks on too late, missing her by seconds until she finally stops at the blast doors that guard the entrance to the administration building. The doc shakes his head as he keeps watching, his eyes fixed on the images. He actually lets a smile slip for just this one second. “Normally, when Jackie is pushed to her extremes, she loses control. She enters a feral state, similar to other hyper powerful, Creep infested individuals. Sally. Judge. Individuals with the power to command the Creep at extreme levels.”

  “And this time? Doctor, what is happening this time?”

  “It appears that her powers reached that same heightened state as in her feral mode, with one notable exception. This time, she retained control. Think of her feral state like a hammer. Powerful, but imprecise in many instances. Deadly, even to her friends. What Jackie is currently experiencing is a state in which she retains all that power, but controlled and sharpened, like a blade. A blade that is currently turned towards you, General Yousef.”

  Yousef snarls as our eyes go toward the screens again. This time, Jackie appears at the heavy doors of the inner fort. “She’s moving faster than our sensors can track her? How do you explain that?”

  “She’s not moving, per se. She’s, well, she’s space skipping.”

  “What?”

  “Space skipping. It’s an almost unheard of term used to describe people who move their full bodies through Pocket Space. She’s essentially transferring herself through Pocket Space, as opposed to her weapons.”

  “I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “It’s not. Typically, at any rate. It’s almost always fatal. Even in her heightened state, Jackie could die doing it. So long as she’s doing it though, it only appears as if she’s moving faster than you can see.” He pauses as he continues looking at the monitor. “Though it seems the energy output from Pocket Space has, indeed, made her both faster and stronger.”

  “Pocket Space? What does that have to do with this?”

  I see the doc’s face twist, and I can tell he practically want to laugh at the question. “General . . . have you truly studied the Creep this long and not realize it acts as a gateway between our dimension and the Pocket Space dimension? Your Advanced Reaction Core works much the same way, increasing both your strength and speed as you subconsciously manipulate the reality around you. Jackie is only doing the same thing, though she is doing it entirely organically, without the need for a mechanical aid.”

  Yousef just scowls as he turns back to the monitors. On screen, we watch as half the crowd of soldiers just outside the gate close around her. Their rifles lift up, dozens of them, and start pouring fire. Even from this distance, I can see a flash of light across Jackie’s eyes before she vanishes, disappearing from right in front of the camera. When she pops back into view, she’s holding her sword in her hand. At that same second, we watch as the barrel of every rifle that was pointed at her slides off and falls to the ground. As fast as it took us to breath once, she managed to dice the ends off of every gun pointed her way. The second the soldiers outside realize what they’re up against, they start to stagger backward. Jackie just ignores them though. Instead, she turns toward the fortress blast doors, crouches down, and digs her hands beneath it. A second later, she’s lifting, her legs bracing against the floor as she starts to lift a few tons of reinforced doorway into the air. Light starts to pour into the fortress entryway as she grunts, her muscles tensing as she heaves upward and the door locks into its open position.

  The general looks at some of the guards. “Grab the girl and take her to my secured office. And take these two with you,” he snarls as he looks at me and the doc. “And have every weapon in every hall trained on the Dark Angel.”

  The next thing I know, we’re being handcuffed and pushed through the halls. Every time we take a turn, there’s another hallway full of soldiers in full power armor or fully automated defense turrets pointing from the ceiling and walls. Then it’s up an elevator, and I’m honestly completely lost by the time we get pushed into a final room. It’s just a long office with a desk at the back and a screen against the wall. There are two armored guards inside, but that’s not what I care about. What I care about is the little girl who looks up at me like I’m the only thing that matters in the world. Mandy. It feels like forever since I’ve seen her. “Tommy!” she screams as one of the guards pushes me forward.

  I practically go falling over my own feet as I crumble to the ground. Mandy’s right on top of me the second I do, her hands falling over me in a hug. “Tommy. You’re alright.”

  “Yeah, champ. I’ve just had my hands tied,” I tell her with a smile. It’s my best effort to try and keep her calm, but I can tell she’s scared. “Don’t worry. Jackie’s coming.”

  “She’s alive?”

  A voice interrupts from the doorway. “Not for long,” Yousef barks as the doors close behind him. His eyes shoot to the guards. “Give me a view of what’s happening in the halls.” A second later, the screen at the back of the room comes to life. On it, we can see the twisting halls of the fortress. Turrets are firing off and rifles blasting into the air as a searing white light burns its way through the dark corridors. At one point, we see Jackie come to a stop as she stares down a whole hall of walkers who are lining both sides. A second later, she disappears, a trail of explosions erupting behind her as the arms of powered armor go blowing off and legs explode into nothing, the soldiers falling to the ground before Jackie appears again at the end of the hall.

  Next to us, I can see Doc Watson grinning, even with his hands cuffed in front of him. “Incredible. Truly incredible. I never thought it possible to see this again in my life.”

  “Doc,” I whisper over to him, trying to keep Yousef from getting angrier. “You said there were two others. Who were they?”

  The question freezes him for a second as he stares at the screen. His smile dips as he takes a heavy breath. “The first was someone very close to me. A colleague, as it were. I remember him as if from a dream. The second . . .” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “A terrible person who never deserved to have this kind of power.”

  “A terrible person?”

  “I can’t . . .” He squints hard and sucks in a deep breath. “When I try to remember, it’s as if there’s a wall in front of me that I cannot pass beyond. But I know he and my colleague knew each other. They may have even arrived at their powers in similar ways. It’s . . . difficult for me to say in any definitive terms.”

  Yousef looks over at him. “What I need to know now is how we put a stop to her?”

  “A stop?” His smile
returns, like it never even left. “I told you when you started this, general. You’ve placed a bet against Jackie Coleman. You’ve gone all in. You’ve shown your cards. Now, she’s showing you hers.” He pauses, his smile flickering in and out as a look of anger keeps threatening to push across his face. “To be quite frank, I thought she would murder you and the rest of us in her feral state. I never assumed you would come out of this victorious. I always believed that Jackie had an ace up her sleeve that guaranteed her a victory. This though . . .” His voice trails off for a second as his eyes lock onto the screen, and he just looks completely lost in thought for a long second. “This is an unexpected development, an outcome not even I was capable of predicting.”