by Jerry Hart
Owen heard a scream, and then he saw Jason drag a young brunette back to where he lay. Michael grabbed him and held him in place, facing Jason and the girl. Jason pulled out a knife from his pocket and held it to the girl’s throat.
Owen knew what this was. He knew what Jason was hoping to accomplish by having a hostage.
And he hated himself for the decision he had already come to.
“Turn it on, Owen,” said Jason.
Owen looked at the orb on the ground, and then back at Jason and the young girl, who was squirming in his grip. She had to be in her mid-twenties. Her black eyeliner began to smear from the tears which started pouring down her face.
“Turn it on!” Jason said more forcefully.
“No.”
“What?” said Jason.
“I’m sorry.” Owen was apologizing to the young woman, and for a moment, he could see she had understood; her eyes seemed to be pleading with him more intensely.
But he couldn’t do it. It was something he and Chris had agreed to (Alyssa and Daniel had refused to accept such a policy): If either one of them were ever in a situation where few could be sacrificed to save many, they would do it.
Owen found himself in that very situation now.
He shook his head. Jason pressed the knife against the girl’s throat, drawing blood. She tried to scream.
“What’s your name?” Jason asked her.
“Hope,” she cried out.
“How fitting. Well, Hope, this guy in front of us has chosen to let you die rather than do something as simple as help us turn on that orb.”
She looked at the orb between her and Owen.
“How does that make you feel?” Jason asked.
“Please stop.”
“I will once he turns it on.”
“What does it do?” asked Hope.
Jason looked taken aback by this. “Does it matter?”
“Is it a bomb?”
“Far from it.”
Suddenly Hope turned and punched Jason right in his crotch. He keeled over in pain. She got up and ran away from the scene.
“Run!” Owen screamed. “Get help!”
Michael tossed Owen to the ground, grabbed the knife from Jason, and threw it with such force Owen couldn’t even see it; he could only hear it piercing the air.
What he did see, though, was Hope’s head exploding in a shower of red. Her body dropped to the ground.
* * *
Chris watched the scene with increasing agitation. He felt helpless as Michael and his friend harassed Owen. He watched as they shoved a dark orb in his face. He watched as the stranger grabbed a girl and held a knife to her throat.
Then...then he watched the girl run for her life only to have her head explode, her body dropping a few feet from him as he hid behind a car.
He didn’t know what to do. He had concocted a plan that involved blowing these guys to hell with a Buster or two, but Owen was too close to them. Chris had to come up with another plan that didn’t involve harming his best friend.
Then again, he saw how Owen had handled the hostage situation moments earlier, not giving in to his captors’ demands for the sake of one person’s life.
Should Chris do the same?
* * *
Owen was too tired to move. He lay on his back, looking up at the sky, at the stars twinkling above.
“Isn’t there something you can do, little brother?” he heard Jason ask desperately.
“Well, there is something I’ve been experimenting with,” said Michael.
“Do it.”
Michael appeared over Owen, blocking his view of the sky. He held his hands out in front of him now, placing them on either side of Owen’s head. For a moment, nothing happened....
Then the most horrible feeling overcame Owen. A terrible rumbling filled his head, literally making his face shiver violently. He felt an immense pressure in his head; it felt like it would explode at any moment.
Suddenly images started appearing in his mind: He saw Daniel, and the silly way he’d fallen out of the tree house when they had taken out those two vampires at the Trails. Owen wanted to cry at the sight of it.
He’s dead, an unfamiliar voice reminded him. No more softball.
Now he saw the orb being constructed under his delicate hands. His long white fingers touched the surface, first running them around the top, then down the middle, and then finally drawing three circles at the base. As he did this, yellow lights appeared where he had touched. When he finished, the orb glowed from within.
Instantly the images in Owen’s head vanished as if they were wiped clean from his mind. He could see nothing at all for a moment; his vision had grown to a white blur.
“I got it,” he heard Michael say, though he sounded as bad as Owen felt. “I know how to do it.”
“Then do it!” Jason barked. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Les did something to me earlier. I feel sluggish.”
With all his strength, Owen turned his head and, with his returning vision, saw Michael pick up the orb and do the same things he’d seen himself doing: First, he circled the top of the orb, then traced his finger down the middle until he got to the base, where he drew three circles.
Immediately the orb lit up from within, and the air around Michael became electric. A rumbling was emitting from the orb, and it was getting louder.
“Hold it higher!” Jason snapped, putting two small black earplugs in his ears as he wrapped his arms around his brother to get as close as possible. There were steady blue lights blinking from the plugs, and Owen assumed they were specifically made to protect Jason from the orb.
Michael held the orb over his head. It looked to Owen as if he was having trouble with it; it was shaking wildly in his grip. Waves were pulsing out of it now, heading in all directions.
Whatever this orb was built for, whatever Jason and Michael wanted to accomplish...it was happening now.
* * *
Chris had seen enough—now was the time to act. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Buster. He had to blow them away; he didn’t like what that strange orb was doing. He knew it was wrong.
Owen was still too close to them, though.
Owen....
He was looking straight at Chris. Chris stared back. There was something in Owen’s eyes. The orb was pulsing loudly, too loud for Chris to hear anything around him. It looked as if Owen wanted to speak, but it would have been impossible to hear him.
So Owen nodded.
What did that mean? Chris asked himself. Owen simply nodded. Then it came to him. Owen was telling him to blow them up. Right now.
Chris nodded back. Now was the time. But he had another idea. He reached into his pocket again. Suddenly a loud bang that sounded like a thunderclap came from the orb, and the pulse grew in intensity, spreading in all directions. Glass shattered from the nearest buildings, as well as all the glass from the parked cars around them. Car alarms were going off, barely audible due to the pulse.
“Now!” Chris thought he heard. He turned back to Owen and saw him screaming at him.
Now was definitely the time. Michael and his brother stood close together, directly under the orb, as if trying to stay in a protective circle. Chris pressed down on the activation button of the Rejecter bomb and threw it at them.
The explosion was worse than he imagined it would be. The ground shook, and the explosion itself almost seemed frozen in time; all sound ceased to exist, as if someone had flipped a switch to turn it off. Everything lit up brilliantly.
The next moment, time caught up with itself. A powerful force sucked everything inward, toward the orb. Chris grabbed onto the closest car, but it too was being dragged. Then, an explosive force blew everything away. The entire parking garage wobbled and cracked. It felt like it was about to collapse completely.
Chris had to get Owen out of there. He ran toward him, trying to stay away from Michael and the orb. He didn’t even bother looking at them. He re
ached Owen, pulling him to his feet. That’s when the ground below them gave way. Chris yanked Owen back as the ground collapsed, taking Michael, Jason and the orb with it.
But the crack in the ground spread, and then more ground began to collapse. Cars fell through the expanding hole. Before Chris could even think, Owen lifted him off the ground.
The entire garage, all six levels of it, was collapsing. Owen ran away from the ever-expanding hole, carrying Chris in his arms.
“I can run, you know!” Chris screamed.
“No time,” said Owen.
The ground disappeared below Owen’s feet. He leapt onto the nearest car, and then the next one after that, as the cars vanished. He continued to leap from car to car, staying off the ground as best he could. The sound of the collapsing structure was overbearing to Chris. How were they going to get out of this? It was only a matter of time before they ran out of space, before the entire building was gone.
Owen jumped onto a car that had already begun to fall. Utter fear grasped Chris as the two of them fell, but Owen didn’t give up. He jumped to the next car that had started falling above them. And then he jumped to the next one after that. They were going to run out of cars before too long.
And that they did. Owen stayed on the last car he’d jumped to, pinning Chris against the roof so he wouldn’t fall away. The car spun and the roof faced down, toward the ground. Owen gripped both sides of the roof and pulled one side with all his strength. The car tilted until the roof faced upward again. Chris took this moment to look around—the entire parking garage was collapsing.
All because of one tiny Rejecter.
Chris and Owen looked down as they fell into the void.
Chapter 20. Aftermath
The dust hadn’t settled yet when Owen opened his eyes. He was on the hood of a car—the last one he’d jumped on—with his back against the windshield. Chris was next to him, unconscious. Other cars were littered around, some almost completely crushed by rubble. Something was digging into Owen’s back, but before he could look to see what it was, a low rustle of gravel alerted him to something moving in his direction. He held his breath as the figure drew closer. Owen could see the silhouette of a man pushing through the dust.
“If only you knew who you really are,” said the figure, “you would not have stopped us.”
“I know who I am,” said Owen.
The figure stepped into a patch of light coming from the moon far above, and Owen saw it was Jason, blood covering his face and clothes.
“Do you really?” asked Jason.
“I made that orb. I knew it the moment I saw it. It’s mine to do with as I want.”
He noticed a body lying a few feet behind Jason. He assumed it was Michael.
“You’re wrong about that, my friend. It’s ours,” spat Jason, “and the decision is not yours, as much as you’d like to believe that. The decision will never be just yours. Never forget that, brother. I hope you’re ready to die for this world.”
Sirens wailed in the background. Jason became fully aware of them and tensed on the spot. He started backing away, never taking his eyes off of Owen. In the blink of an eye, Jason and Michael disappeared. The dust that had surrounded them puffed inward, as if filling the void the brothers left behind. Owen wasn’t sure what he had just seen, but he also didn’t care.
He looked over to Chris, who was still passed out. Only then did he remember the pain in his back. He reached to feel for what was behind him and his fingers touched upon a hard, round object.
“It can’t be,” he said.
He grabbed the object and brought it to the front so he could get a good look at it. Sure enough, it was the dreaded orb that had caused all the chaos.
The orb he knew, in some unexplainable way, belonged to him.
And now it was back in his possession.
Owen pulled Chris off of the car and carried him away from the collapsed garage. Cops surrounded their condo down the street, and some were headed to the parking garage now. Owen knew police had to have discovered Daniel’s body by now and it wasn’t safe to go home. He couldn’t think of any other place to go right now.
And just then, he remembered Mr. Elfman was out of town. The old man wouldn’t mind if the boys crashed at his place without his knowledge. At this point, at least, Owen didn’t care if Mr. Elfman would mind.
* * *
The room was packed with police. The body lay on a puddle of blood. Patrick tried to hold back the vomit that was about to spew from his mouth at any moment.
A photographer was taking pictures of the body, which had been slammed into the floor with great force, as coroners came in to bag it. Patrick couldn’t believe this had been the guy he’d talked to only hours ago about Alyssa. Daniel Hudson had been his name, and he had been crying due to a death in his family.
What did this to him?
Patrick stared into Daniel’s eyes, which stared back, unseeing. The boy was smiling. Patrick looked around the armory; there were weapons everywhere. There were pistols and bombs and crossbows—enough to raise the eyebrows of any self-respecting police officer, or anyone in general.
What had these guys been up to?
Sticking his finger in his ear, Patrick tried to relieve the pressure that seemed to build up in his head. It had been steadily increasing for at least two minutes and he felt if it didn’t go away, his head would explode.
Almost as if reading his mind, the remaining windows in the armory exploded, sending shards of glass toward him and the other officers. Everyone ducked. And now everyone heard—and felt—an explosion rock the building. An officer ran to one of the windows and looked out.
“An explosion,” he yelled. “Down the street, the parking garage. It’s collapsing. I can see it from here.”
The other officers ran for the front door. Everyone except Patrick.
As the coroners quickly zipped the bag closed, Patrick’s breath caught in his throat. As crazy as it had seemed, just before the bag closed (despite the fact the boy was dead), Daniel Hudson blinked.
* * *
“What do we do now?” Owen asked Chris as they settled into Mr. Elfman’s condo. Chris held the orb, studying it. Neither one of them knew what it had done after it had been activated, but they had stopped it before it could do any real damage, and that was something.
“I think we should just chuck it into Trident River and be done with it,” Chris said, handing it back to Owen.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, what if someone else finds it?”
“Then let’s destroy it.”
Owen pondered this. “How?”
“Beat it with a sledgehammer. I don’t know.”
“What about Nikki?” Owen asked. “She told us to bring it to her.”
“Why should we?” Chris asked. “We stopped what those guys were doing, and you said Michael was dead, right?”
“He looked dead,” Owen amended. “Daniel and Alyssa were killed because of this thing,” he added. “I want to know why.”
Chris had just woken up from his unconscious state and found himself in the old man’s place. Owen had filled him in about what had happened after they’d fallen to the street, and how Jason and Michael extracted the knowledge of how to activate the orb from Owen’s mind. Police were swarming their own condo down the hall, so they couldn’t return there. Chris rubbed his temples; his head was ready to split wide open, and he doubted it was because of the concussion he’d suffered at the garage.
“But how did you know how to activate it?” he asked Owen for the third time.
“I told you, I don’t know. I kept having those dreams about this thing, like I was the one building it. That’s why I think we should take it to Nikki. Maybe she can tell us.”
“So you think you built it?”
“I don’t see how or why. I think I know everything about it, but, at the same time, I know nothing about it. Michael knew, too. He knew what it does, but not how to turn it on. I knew
how, but not what it does. It’s like pieces...”
Chris looked up at him when he suddenly stopped talking. “What is it?”
“Pieces of a puzzle,” Owen finished. “That’s what Michael said he and I were. Two pieces of a puzzle. And when we were together, we completed that puzzle.”
Chris said nothing. He only stared at the orb—the puzzle. After a moment, he got up and went to the bedroom.
“Let me just lie down for a second,” he said to Owen over his shoulder. “I just need to lie down. Then we can go.”
* * *
Chris wanted nothing more than to sleep. His head throbbed and his body felt stiff. He felt he deserved to rest. The orb was now in his and Owen’s possession, Michael and Jason had fled, defeated, and the world was safe.
So why did Chris not feel at ease? Even as he lay in the bed, he felt he should be up. A sudden fear washed over him. He felt himself slowly fading away. He sat up from Mr. Elfman’s bed, his heart racing.
He was still infected by Eric. He had forgotten.
Until now, nothing had come of that; he never felt the urge to feed on human blood; he didn’t develop super-human strength. But now he felt something odd. He suddenly felt if he fell asleep, he would wake up changed. Not in a coma, like Stephanie, but completely changed.
He walked over to a desk and sat, staring at Mr. Elfman’s computer monitor. He slapped himself hard. I can’t fall asleep. He had no idea where this realization came from, but he felt it to be true.
He was starting to panic now. He looked around the room for something to distract him. His thoughts dwelled on the bed, and how Mr. Elfman was out of town and, according to Daniel that day D had snuck into this apartment, wouldn’t be back for another week.
With that, Chris figured he could catch a quick nap before things got busy.
No, he thought, I can’t go to sleep.
The feeling he wouldn’t be the same if he slept filled him with an overwhelming fear. He thought of going for a jog, but he was much too tired for that.
