Evolution

by R S Penney

  Slade punched him in the face, filling his vision with stars. In his mind's eye, he saw the man spin for a back-kick. A sleek black loafer went right into Jack's stomach. It was like being hit with a sledgehammer.

  Jack was thrown backward.

  He landed doubled over just a few feet away, backing up toward the edge of the pavilion. “I do not understand you,” he muttered, tossing his head about. “You have the power to help people, and you waste it on this.”

  His opponent strode forward with a face as smooth as the finest porcelain. “I am helping people,” Slade insisted. “It is you who stands as an impediment to what must be. A shame you do not realize that.”

  Jack leaped.

  He flipped over the other man's head, then uncurled to land right behind him. Every muscle in his body was aching, begging for reprieve. He felt slow and sluggish, and this gave Slade the half-second he needed to spin around.

  The next thing Jack knew, there was a forearm pressed to his throat. The incredible strength of his opponent forced him down onto his knees. Trapped by the choke-hold, he was running out of breath. “When I'm finished with you,” Slade purred in his ear. “I will enjoy torturing Lenai before I kill her.”

  Clenching his teeth, Jack felt tears run over his inflamed cheeks. “To be honest, I hope you do kill me,” he croaked. “It's the one thing that will pretty much guarantee that she's pissed enough to rip your heart out!”

  Jack threw himself backward, forcing them both to the ground. He landed stretched out atop Slade, delighting in the sound of the other man's high-pitched grunt of pain. No time to savor the moment.

  Curling his legs against his chest, Jack somersaulted backward over Slade's body. He came up in a crouch just behind the man's head. Forcing himself to stand required a fair amount of effort. The pain in his throat was no small ordeal.

  Slade got up, whirling around.

  Jack kicked him in the stomach, causing the man to double over. He spread his arms wide, then brought his hands together to box Slade's ears.

  The other man backed away, groaning as he passed between two picnic tables on the other side of the aisle. “You could be one of us, Hunter,” he whispered. “You could serve the Inzari.”

  Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, hissing softly. He turned his head and spat on the floor. “No thanks,” he growled. “I told those dimwits in Vancouver that I wasn't interested in Scientology, and I'm not joining your cult either.”

  “You're stronger than I gave you credit for.”

  Hunched over with a hand against his chest, Jack let out a half-hearted laugh. “And you're much more verbose,” he said, shaking his head. “I gotta hand it to you. It takes a special kind of narcissism to like the sound of your voice that much.”

  “You don't understand.”

  “Try me.”

  The other man looked at him, and then his face twisted in obvious pain. It seemed he hadn't expected Jack to last this long. “None of us can prevent what's coming,” Slade whispered. “But we can minimize the harm.”

  “What harm?”

  Slade winced, shaking his head. “It's too late,” he said, stepping forward. “Our only choice is to serve and pray for the Inzari's mercy.”

  “Hate to tell you this, Greck,” Jack said. “But there's not gonna be any mercy for you.”

  He ran at the other man.

  With the broken jamming device toppled over and sending the occasional spark into the air, their work was done. Harry closed down the comm app on his multi-tool and hoped that Anna would get here soon. Regardless, he and Ben weren't exactly helpless. Between the three of them, they would be more than a match for Slade.

  Harry was down on one knee in the middle of the shed, rolling his shirtsleeve back down to his wrist. “Our luck isn't this good,” he said, shaking his head. “This whole thing has been way too easy.”

  Ben stood against the wall with his arms folded, glaring at him. Well, it was hard to say what the man's expression was, but that visor made everything look like a glare. “I can't believe this,” he muttered. “You're complaining?”

  “I'm stating the facts.”

  “Ever heard the term 'pessimism'?”

  Craning his neck, Harry narrowed his eyes to a fierce squint. “Of course I have,” he said, getting to his feet. “But that doesn't change the fact that Slade should have had a lot more security around the lynchpin of his-”

  He noticed it out of the corner of his eye.

  Through the opening that had once been a door, he caught a glimpse of something coming out of the treeline. He turned his head, and there it was, standing still and silent like the Slender Man himself.

  A tall, shirtless man stood in the grass, watching them with a blank expression. He was pale-skinned, hairless from the waist up and marked by some kind of blinking device built into his chest. Harry knew exactly what that thing was. He had read the reports, and now he knew there was a good chance that he wasn't walking away from this.

  Ben spun to face the door, raising a pistol in both hands. “What the hell is that?” he asked, taking two steps forward.

  The ziarogat thrust one fist out, pointing at him. White tracers sped from the tube on its gauntlet, flew over the grass and struck Ben in the chest. He slumped forward, arms hanging limp as the circuits in his suit overloaded. “What in Bleakness?” More tracers struck his helmet. He fell to the ground.

  Harry whirled around to face the door, raising his left hand to point the N'Jal at his opponent. A force-field appeared before him, shimmering and rippling, and through it, he could see the blurry figure of the ziarogat loping across the grass at inhuman speed. Like a tiger pouncing on fresh meat.

  The creature raised its fist again.

  Three white tracers sped toward him, phased right through his force-field and hit his chest instead. Thankfully, his body armour absorbed the electric charge – it was of Leyrian design – but the impact was devastating. He felt as if he'd been kicked several times by a horse.

  Harry threw himself sideways so that he would no longer be visible through the door, gasping when his shoulder hit the wall. Oh God…The pain was so intense he could barely think. Keep your head together, Harry.

  A head-sized hole appeared in the brick wall, and something zipped right past him to hit the wall behind him. The ziarogat had switched to High-Impact ammo. It would bring the whole shed down around him!

  Harry threw up another force-field by instinct – it was the only thing he could do – and more holes appeared in the wall. Bullets slammed against the rippling barrier and fell to the floor instead of splattering his brains against the wall. High-impact rounds or EMP rounds: you couldn't have both.

  Think, Harry!

  Ben was still down! Was he dead?

  The ziarogat appeared in the doorway, taking half a second to survey the scene with those reflective, silvery eyes. Its gaze settled on Harry, and then it lifted one arm to aim.

  Harry let loose with this force-field, sending it racing across the interior of the shed. That should have knocked his opponent senseless, but the ziarogat raised one arm as if to shield itself, and Harry caught the briefest glimpse of a flickering wall of static before the two force-fields collided and winked out.

  Despite the pain in his chest, Harry ran at the beast. He slammed into the ziarogat like a football player tackling an opponent and forced his opponent away from the shed. By a whole two steps.

  Two hands seized Harry's torso, and then he was lifted off the ground, flung over the ziarogat's head. He flew a good twenty feet before landing painfully on his belly in the middle of the open field.

  Harry rolled onto his back.

  The ziarogat was already facing him.

  By instinct, he threw up a rippling force-field half a second before a bullet slammed into it. Standard ammunition. The fancier stuff drained your weapon's power cells fairly quickly, but the ziarogat would change tactics if he decided to turtle up behind an energy barrier. Think! You have
to think.

  He sat up and sent the force-field speeding forward. However, this time, he angled it to sink into the earth, kicking up chunks of dirt and spraying them at the ziarogat. The creature raised an arm to shield its face, backing up until its body was pressed to the wall of the shed.

  Harry loosed another force-field.

  This one hit the ziarogat head-on, flattening it against the wall of the shed, landing with enough force to leave a spiderweb of cracks in the bricks. Any normal human being would have been dead, but he could already see the ziarogat starting to regain its balance. “High Impact!” Harry growled.

  He thrust his right hand out to point a pistol with red LEDs on its barrel at his foe. This is going to be ugly! He fired.

  The ziarogat's right shoulder exploded in a flash of silvery fluid, and then its arm was dangling by a single tendon. Another shot to the torso left a crater in the thing's chest and sprayed silver blood onto the back of one of the men who was still passed out in front of the shed.

  The ziarogat stepped forward.

  Harry felt his eyes widen, then shook his head in disbelief. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” he exclaimed. “Seriously? What does it take to kill you bastards?” Worst of all, he'd been aiming for the thing's head. High-Impact rounds were the most inaccurate form of ammunition.

  The ziarogat stumbled forward, one arm flopping about, its chest leaking silver blood onto the ground. Fortunately, he had damaged the arm with the gauntlet, and the creature wasn't able to shoot at him. “Standard ammo,” Harry muttered.

  He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, then did his best to calm his nerves. “Sorry, friend,” he went on. “But this game is over.”

  He fired.

  A hole appeared in the ziarogat's forehead, and then the creature fell to its knees, collapsing on top of one of the fallen men. The other one was groaning, slowly regaining consciousness. It was time to get out of here.

  He was about to go when Ben suddenly appeared in the open doorway to the shed, patting his armoured suit with one gloved hand. The man shook his head vigorously. “All right, someone's gonna have to fill me in,” he said. “What the hell was that thing?”

  “It's called a ziarogat,” Harry said.

  “An ancient devil?”

  “Huh?”

  The other man marched through the grass toward him, his movements slow and sluggish thanks to the damage to his suit. “It's Entarelese,” Ben explained. “An ancient Leyrian language.”

  Harry tilted his head back, blinking at the sky. “Whatever it is,” he said, stepping closer to the other man. “Slade constructed that thing as some kind of super soldier. And you saw what it can do.”

  “How many are there?”

  “We don't know,” Harry answered. “But I suspect he has only a handful of them at his disposal or we would have come up against more.”

  “So let's grab Jack and get going.”

  Harry looked past the shed, toward the distant pavilion in the middle of the field. He could just barely make out two figures facing each other, but the picnic table that had somehow flown a good twenty paces into the grass and toppled over onto its side was an obvious sign that things were heating up.

  “That,” Harry said, “may be difficult.”

  The pavilion was a mess with a big empty space where one of the picnic tables used to be and a few drops of blood on the wooden planks. One of the wooden beams had been scarred by the bullets from Slade's gun.

  Jack ran at his opponent.

  On the other side of the aisle, Slade jumped and grabbed one of the wooden beams that ran across the ceiling. He swung like a pendulum. Two black loafers came flying at Jack's face.

  Dropping to his knees, Jack slid past underneath the other man and came to a stop between two picnic tables. He got up quickly, despite the aches throughout his body, and spun around.

  Slade was already facing him.

  The man spun for a hook-kick.

  Jack turned his body, intercepting a polished shoe with both hands before it made contact. A touch of Bent Gravity sent Slade flying face-first into one of the pillars that supported the ceiling. Now, while he's stunned!

  Jack leaped and kicked out, aiming for the back of his opponent's head. At the last second, Slade blurred and resolidified just a few inches away. Jack's foot hit the beam instead, cracking the wood.

  He landed with a grunt.

  Something grabbed the back of his shirt, and then Jack was thrown head-first into the pillar. Pain flared as his vision darkened, and he felt blood spilling from his nostrils. Suddenly, he was spun around.

  Slade twirled him in a circle as if they were slow dancing, and then his back was to…he couldn't say. A palm-strike to the chest drove the wind from Jack's lungs, and he felt Bent Gravity lifting him off the floor.

  Jack flew upward and back until the top of his head nearly grazed the ceiling. His back crashed through one of the wooden beams, with an ear-splitting crunch, and then he was falling to the ground, landing hard.

  Pain made it hard to think. Damn it, the other man was just too good at this! Jack had faced his share of villains – and he'd gotten pretty good at holding his own against an opponent with Keeper powers – but Slade was a powerhouse. He seemed to drink in the pain of every blow and use it as fuel.

  As his vision cleared, he saw Slade moving toward him with teeth bared, bending low to seize Jack's shirt. The other man lifted him until he was in a sitting position, and then a fist slammed into Jack's face.

  Everything went dark.

  Jack was hoisted to his feet like a rag-doll, his arms hanging limp, unable to follow his commands. Slade whirled him around and threw him across the pavilion.

  Jack went flying through the air like a log rolling down a hillside, his battered body crashing through one of the pillars, splitting the wood in two. He landed atop one of the tables and rolled onto his stomach.

  The urge to cough was too hard to resist. His body spasmed despite the agony that movement caused him, and he realized to his horror that he had just spit blood onto the floor. A big old gob of blood.

  Footsteps coming closer.

  Jack tried to force himself up, but he just couldn't find the strength. In the back of his mind, Summer was trembling. The Nassai's fear was like an icy fog that threatened to rip the warmth from his body. She knew it as well as he did: they were going to die here.

  Another sound filled his ears. The screech of tires? It made no sense, but when he focused on the spatial awareness that flooded his mind, he saw the blurry image of an old police car racing through the grass toward the pavilion.

  The cruiser spun in the grass, turning its passenger-side toward them, and then the door swung open.

  Anna launched herself from the cruiser, landing hard in the grass. Feet pounding on the ground, she raced toward the pavilion with such intense speed that she half expected her skin to catch fire.

  Slade had his back turned as he made his way across the pavilion toward another man who was sprawled out across a picnic table. Even from here, she could see that it was Jack, and that made her rage boil.

  Slade froze in place, trembling for just a moment. The man spun around to face her with his teeth bared. “You!” he spat. “I should have expected as much! Wherever one of you goes, the other follows!”

  “Get away from him!”

  “And if I refuse?”

  She scrunched up her face like a pug dog, then tossed her head about in disgust. “Just give me a reason,” she said, passing underneath the roof of the pavilion. “I'd love nothing more than to end you.”

  To her surprise, Slade actually backed away from her with fear on his face, blinking as if her skin really had caught fire. “Both of you,” he muttered. “This is no coincidence. But it can't be…”

  Anna leaped at him.

  The man blurred into a streak of colour and resolidified a few feet away. He didn't attack her, though; he just spun to face her and backed up down the aisle toward the en
d of the pavilion.

  Anna lifted her chin to squint at him. “I don't believe it,” she growled, shaking her head. “You're afraid. You're actually afraid of me!”

  He backed away.

  On the picnic table, Jack groaned. It seemed to take an enormous amount of effort, but he looked up to blink at the other man. “You're afraid,” he whispered. “What's wrong, Greck? No contingency plans? No cliché villain speeches?”

  Slade's face became a hideous snarl, and he blushed. He actually blushed! “I fear nothing!” he insisted. “The will of God protects me!”

  “Care to test that will against me?”

  In response, Slade turned and ran from the pavilion. He ran through the grass like a man with a hungry lion on his back, like all the victims who had fled from his ziarogati. Anna had never seen anything like it.

  Instinct took over.

  She ran to Jack.

  Climbing up to sit beside him on the picnic table, she gently put a hand on his back. “It's okay, Jack,” she whispered without really thinking about what she was saying. “I'm here now. I'm here.”

  He rolled onto his back, groaning, and stared up at her with his mouth open. “Remind me never to do that again,” he said, sitting up. “Fighting him is like fighting a hurricane after it just made its first alimony payment.”

  “What?”

  “Just go with it. I'm too sore for coherent metaphors.”

  Tenderly, she slipped her arms around him and pulled him close, resting his head on her chest. She ran fingers through his hair. “Apparently,” Anna murmured. “Because you don't even realize that was a simile.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Hate to break up this beautiful moment…” Anna nearly jumped at the sound of a man's voice, and when she looked up, Harry was standing just outside the pavilion with some guy in a dark suit of armour. Sneaking up on a Justice Keeper wasn't easy, but you could manage it if the Keeper was sufficiently distracted. And much to her chagrin, Anna had been pretty distracted.

  She would have reached for her gun if not for the fact that she had recognized the speaker's voice. “Ben?” she exclaimed. “When did you get back? No, never mind. Tell me all about it later.”