Dereck stood on a broad square platform with his arms wide open, inviting Athan to approach. Behind Dereck loomed a wall of screens. On each of the screens there was well-dressed person behind a desk.
Each face was very different; they represented nearly every race on earth. They had a mixture of expressions: anger, fear and concern.
“Right here behind me,” Dereck pointed to the wall of faces, “are the faces of every organization that is worth anything on this shitty planet. You can’t stop them, you can’t stop their greed, and you certainly can’t stop me.” Dereck looked again at the blue glow emanating from the gateway. “You’re too late to stop the rending of our universe. You were always too late for that. Too busy trying to save people that had been put away because they knew too much. This is something too big for you, Sleepwalker. Look!” He held out both hands. “Look at that beautiful doorway, the dam has broken and the water is rising. The Blind are coming through, not just here but through doors in the minds of their prey. Everyone they feed on becomes a birth canal for another of their kind. And you thought you were going to waltz in here and destroy my hard work? You are too late Athan Harper, too bloody late.”
Smoke began to rise from the floors below, bringing with it the stink of burning meat.
The fire was spreading.
Athan knew he couldn’t take down all of Dereck’s operation on his own, but the fire would be his ally, when it finally became an inferno the top level would burn too. He just had to make sure that Dereck died in that fire, and that all the machinery burned too.
The gate needed to be closed, even if some of The Blind were already through. Surely they could find a way to send them back, or destroy them, later.
“What have you done down there? It smells like a barbecue. I think I can safely assume that Easy has failed.” The man looked around at his atrium and the machine in its centre. “Very clever. A fire. I didn’t think of that. I thought you’d come up here guns a’ blazing.”
“I don’t need a gun to kick your arse, Dereck!” Athan taunted.
“Well from memory, I think you do. The last time I saw you, you ran away, and the time before that, you did the same.”
“What do you mean time before that?” Athan searched his memory.
Dereck laughed and pulled the white mask off his face. “You still don’t remember?”
Athan faltered at the base of the steps that led to the platform where Dereck stood.
There was something familiar about him. He was handsome and clean-shaven, smiling, full of confidence.
“You really don’t remember, do you, Sleepwalker. Back then I was doing some military work to please my father. Though I don’t think you’d call the DPHR military. We had ambushed your gang of rebels trying to shut down one of my drug operations. But that time we were ready for you. You nearly had me, you know? But you were too good, like Boy Scout good, and tried to stop me from hurting your friends. I killed one in the end. The quick one. He was cocky. I’m just chuffed that the rest of you made a break for it.” Dereck smiled.
You were there that night…
Athan couldn’t believe he was facing Ian’s killer. And the man stood gloating in front of him.
“How did a Post-Human get to be a DPHR officer? Didn’t they want to kill you like an animal too?”
Dereck grinned and crossed his arms. “Not at all Sleepwalker, they were mercenaries once, in the Middle East. When they came home they had nothing better to do, so we bought them. Now they are a tool; attack dogs for the highest bidder.”
“You will burn tonight for what you have done.” Athan hissed, the image of his friend in his mind.
“Today, burn today. It’s two am. But no I wont.”
Athan strode forward keeping The Blind and the other people in his periphery.
The scientists or technicians milled about frantically using the equipment, or staring up dumbly.
No guns were raised by anyone, they ignored Athan and Dereck, or pretended not to notice. They were too afraid of their employer to leave their duties.
Then came the boom.
The gas bottle must have finally exploded downstairs, and it made the floor shake, and the lights flicker.
“You’re not going to survive this time, Sleepwalker.” Dereck said as he braced himself for a fight.
Athan noticed all the concerned faces on the television screens on the wall, the faces of the world, Dereck had said, businessmen and women selling out the human race. The dupes could not even see the creatures coming through the gate.
Athan realised that ordinary people couldn’t see The Blind, they went about their business while the grey creatures stalked about and stared blankly.
The faces looked confused as Athan stepped up on to the dais in his grubby, bloodstained suit.
Dereck poised himself for combat, something Athan thought he should have practised more.
Athan swung with his gloved right hand, but it was knocked aside, and Dereck gave him a low left in the stomach.
He stumbled back and then kicked out as Dereck rushed at him.
The kick was dodged, but he caught Dereck’s elbow with the glove and threw him to the floor.
“Aaah…what the hell was that?” Dereck groaned, blinking.
Athan took the moment to punch down at Dereck’s shoulder making the man jolt and cry out in pain, and then kicked at his stomach.
But Dereck was not so easily defeated.
He kicked Athan’s feet out from under him and knocked him on to his back.
They rolled around on the floor in front of the videoconference screens kicking and punching. They matched each other in strength and unnatural speed, but Athan’s shock glove countered Dereck’s better technique. The two men were a perfect match, beating each other repetitively.
Soon there were more streaks and smears of blood on the smooth white platform beneath the videoconference.
The faces on the screens were either turning off or watching with morbid interest.
Around the atrium, nearly all of the scientists and programmers ran for the emergency stairwell. They were taking the moment to run for their lives before the atrium and the top of the building became an inferno.
Dereck’s tech manager Cam, was panicking.
Another light turned red, indicating that another of the receivers was gone. Soon there would be too much power in the system and the machine would become unstable.
The comm link flashed for Key Four, and Cam pressed it. “Key Four this is Gate Keeper, what’s the situation?” He sweated while he waited for the response.
“Gate Keeper, this is Key Four. The transmitter has been compromised. We are evacuating, over.”
“What? How did they get to your side of town so fast? It should have taken them forty-five minutes just to get there!”
“Dunno Gatekeeper. Everything went up in flames, like magic. They must have planted explosives at our location, over.”
“Furnace,” Cam muttered. “Shit. Get out of there. Abort the mission now, and keep it quiet if you want to live through it.” Cam stole a look at the dais where the two men were fighting.
Due to the unnatural speed of the two men, he couldn’t see who was winning, but he didn’t want to take his chances.
He needed to flee before there was no way out. The machine would likely blow too if any more of the receivers went down.
Athan landed a good punch to Dereck’s head, sending him flying back into the video screens, smashing multiples, making some of the faces disappear.
Dereck shook his head and tried to get up.
There was blood on his teeth, and scratches and bruises all over his face. His suit was ripped.
Athan looked exactly the same, battered and bruised. “You ready to give up yet?”
Dereck spat some more blood on the floor, then smiled back at Athan tauntingly. “I’m loving this too much, Harper. Why would I want to stop?”
Dereck tore one of the screens from the wall and grinned
maniacally. He charged at Athan who blocked the screen with his arm, but the weight of the hit knocked him to the ground.
Athan hissed through his teeth to try and overcome the pain, and then there was a shaking sensation.
The floor vibrated.
The structure of the top of the building is failing…he thought.
Dereck looked about distracted momentarily by the earthquake, so Athan threw his right fist into Dereck’s ribs, knocking him two metres away, groaning in pain.
The earthquake was followed by a massive crash downstairs. The fire was out of control.
Athan looked back at the stairway and saw orange and yellow flames licking the air through the thick black smoke.
The flames were high, and they were producing a lot of heat, hopefully enough to wreck Dereck’s machine.
Athan thought about running for the emergency stairwell, but he couldn’t risk letting Dereck get away. The secretary said that one of them would have to die, because the energy between them was warping the fabric of the universe. It may have been a lie, but Athan really didn’t like the man. Dereck had killed Ian and opened a hole in the universe for emotion sucking demons to get in.
He had to make sure Dereck paid for what he had done.
Athan picked up the television screen and held it ready to beat Dereck over the head.
He needed to end this.
Cam watched the dais anxiously. His boss was either going to die, or survive and track him down later for running.
He pushed his glasses back up his nose and cringed.
Just as he was about to run, flashing lights appeared on the console.
Two more receivers were down.
The place is going to blow.
Cam backed away from the fight and crept toward the emergency stairwell.
The gate flashed brightly, throwing energy around the room like a shockwave. Cam was thrown back into another console, and he saw Sleepwalker get thrown to the floor too.
Dereck won’t die fast enough, he thought.
He got up quickly, ready to run, then he became overly content.
Here is just fine, he thought, it’s nice right here. He couldn’t move, but he was happy, like he was asleep, watching the whole crazy event take place on television.
“I think I’ll just stay…”
Athan was knocked to the floor with the force of the blast.
He could see from his prone position that the gateway to the other universe was immense, filling the whole room with a wavering blue glow. It looked like it was building up to something, and he didn’t really want to hang around to find out what. He pulled himself up and tried to stand, and then everything went black.
When he cleared his head, Dereck was gone.
Athan crawled towards the edge of the dais and felt the light burning his eyes, and then the air began to throb with energy.
He rolled behind the closest console and held his head to try and block the surge in the air.
His heart sank, he was going to be killed in an explosion and Dereck was going to walk away.
Then the heat filled the room. Athan couldn’t tell if the fire from downstairs was cooking the atrium from underneath, or if it was the gate building up to explode.
This is it…
The Gate suddenly flashed out and the room grew dark, all the light was stolen. There was a monstrous flash and the room shook and filled with fire. Computers were torn from the floor and the remaining glass for the videoconference screens melted and rained to the floor like black rain.
The giant atrium window smashed inward, the glass being sucked into the heart of the room where the gate machine had turned into a rippling black hole.
Glass floated like horizontal rain toward the point between the giant electro magnets; the heart of the Gate.
The scorched room peeled and fragmented in every corner, with all the debris drifting into the black hole in the centre.
Athan dared to look over the ruined console he had used to shield his body.
The room was icy cold with a strong wind streaking in from all sides of the building through the gaping holes that were once the atrium windows. The cold wind was still carrying fragments of glass and debris to a swirling black hole a couple of metres wide where the blue glowing Gate used to be.
The Gate was gone.
He searched the room, looking for Dereck, hoping he was sucked into the abyss that he was responsible for.
The grey creatures were gone; either destroyed in the explosion, or wandered away while everything was going on. And there was a charred human looking carcass not far from one of the glassless windows.
Athan felt as if he was standing on the deck of a ship during a storm. There were so many things happening around him and the air was trying to escape from his lungs.
He wanted to get out of the building, but his options were limited only to the fire escape that was now cluttered with debris.
He had a purpose to fulfill.
The Gate was closed, but the threat still remained as long as Dereck Lucas was alive.
He looked up at the swirling black hole that hovered in the centre of the atrium. It was growing weaker, but the fire from downstairs was growing stronger.
Athan decided that he needed to check Dereck’s body and make sure that the job was done, this couldn’t happen again.
He pushed himself, step by step, to get across the room to where a charred corpse lay.
The pain in his body was excruciating, every step was a labour, and his head throbbed like someone was repeatedly hitting it with a rock.
He had to shield his eyes from drifting shards of glass that were being sucked toward the centre of the room. The wind that carried the debris and broken glass was freezing cold after the heat of the explosion.
As it buffeted his bruised skin, it felt like a cross between an ice pack and sand paper.
Dereck was nowhere to be seen, but he was there, Athan could feel his presence close by.
Then, as if on cue, a sharp pain shook his body. Dereck had punched him in the side.
Athan cried out and stumbled forward.
Too far forward.
The edge of the window raced up to meet him, but he wasn’t going down alone. With the effort it took to throw the punch into Athan’s side, Dereck’s damaged body lost balance and fell forward against Athan pushing them both towards the empty window frame.
Athan grabbed Dereck’s tattered shirt to try and balance himself and took the chance to hit the man once more in the face.
The punch was dull and sickly, the shock glove didn’t work and he barely had the strength to carry on.
The secretary had told him that one of them had to die for the strain on the universe to ease, but Athan felt neither of them was going to survive.
Dereck’s face was so burned and mangled, he was barely recognizable. He was coughing and choking on his own blood. Both men were barely conscious and streaked in blood and black soot.
“Do…you even know what…you are doing?” Athan gasped.
Dereck shoved him backward and Athan tried to keep his balance, but his legs were weak and numb. He took tiny stumbling steps and grabbed desperately for Dereck’s shirt. His throbbing fingers clawing the fabric.
Then the world tipped upside down.
There was a sense of relief as all the strain was lifted from their bodies; everything was weightless.
The two men had fallen from the ledge and into the cold night air.
They were plummeting downward in the dark.
Slow motion.
Over and over they spun in their silent descent.
The world was a blur.
The cold air rushed up around them as they struggled with one another.
Athan had no concept of how quickly they were falling or how long it would take, only that it was done. Dereck would be destroyed, but it had cost him his own life in the process. Somehow it felt fitting. Peaceful. The way it should be.
Downward they sp
un.
Cold.
Emptiness.
The city lights were reflected in the glass that encased the Lucas and Associates building making the surface into an enormous mirror.
Through squinting eyes Athan watched these reflections flash. His awareness was peaked and it felt like the fall was happening in slow motion.
Then something caught his attention; there was a continuous, vertical black line cutting through the reflected lights.
A hanging cable?
He was contemplating this only a second before both of them crashed onto the window cleaner’s suspended platform.
Pain and cold.
Athan tried to get his bearings, but couldn’t loosen his grip on Dereck who was now unconscious under him.
The wind was still heavy and cold, sucking the air from his lungs. He wanted to yell or call out, but all he could do was groan and try to swallow the blood in his mouth.
It hurt to breathe.
Athan was straining his teary eyes trying to analyse his new surroundings. He was about to try and find a lever or some other way to lower the platform when there was a groan and a crack.
No…
Suddenly his stomach leapt upward as the platform’s cables came loose.
There was a creak then a rush of cold air in his face.
The platform was falling and they were falling with it.
The cables whistled over his head.
Falling again.
Athan dared to look over the edge and saw the street below rushing up to meet them, but it was a lot slower than it should be, he had channeled his ability to experience time faster than a normal person. His mind raced with the idea of being able to avoid plummeting to his death in the street, or being able to somehow miraculously survive by holding on for dear life.
He decided he must live.
Someone had to ensure that Dereck’s evil mess was cleaned up somehow, and a vision of Furnace came to mind.
He had not seen her in a few years, but the thought of meeting her after this was all over gave him a warm feeling beneath the broken ribs in his chest.
He looked over the edge again, roughly one hundred metres left.
The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League Page 28
