The Nexus

by Gary M Martin

  Candace first stopped by James. “Any suggestions?” she whispered.

  “Not unless running is an option.”

  “He’d probably catch us.”

  Walter lumbered up to them, slightly out of breath.

  Stone came up behind them a second later. One cheek bearing long scratches where the creature had clawed him but no broken skin.

  “Stay here,” he said, and continued ahead.

  “Stone,” Candace called after him. “Your face, it’s…”

  He looked back. “I heal quickly,” he said and continued away from them.

  Up ahead of Stone Hammerhead extricated himself from off of Hands then pushed unsteadily to his feet. Hands lay limp where Hammerhead had landed on top of him. He was bloodied and looked as though he might be dead.

  Mira inched tentatively toward the mayor. “Please change back,” she pleaded. “It’s not worth it. You stay this way too long and you may not be able to turn back.”

  “No,” he growled. “Not until this is over.”

  “Byron, please. It’s too dangerous.”

  He roared like that of a wounded gorilla. His deep-set eyes narrowed. His whole body tightened as heated rage burst out of him, and for a few moments, all he wanted to do was to swing at someone or something. To destroy any and all. It was an anger that shocked him, and he knew he had to get it under control before he hurt Mira. He knew Mira was right. He could feel the beast inside him beginning to overtake his reasoning. But he couldn’t allow Stone and the others to win. Even if they were allowed to live, they would likely spend the rest of their lives locked up. Being this giant, this behemoth, was the only way he knew to defeat them. He just had to do it quickly.

  Hammerhead charged the giant, oblivious to the size of the behemoth and to the fact that he had just been effortlessly hurled across the floor into Hands. With the top of his steel-like head, he rammed him hard into the side just above the hip. The explosive blow sent the giant careening to one side, but amazingly his powerful legs kept him from falling.

  The creature screamed out in a feral rage and drove a right fist across the side of Hammerhead’s face. Blood splattered and Hammerhead went twisting and tumbling over the concrete floor, finally ending up arms and legs splayed, lying face down.

  Stone arrived just after Hammerhead had been pummeled across the floor. He swung a powerful left fist toward the center of the giant’s chest calling forth all the strength his computer arm would allow.

  He missed. The big creature was incredibly swift for someone his size. He twirled around avoiding the punch and brought the back of his fist against the side of Stone’s face knocking him off his feet, spinning him backward to hit the floor several yards away.

  Stone struggled up to his elbows and knees fighting at the murky haze that was trying to settle over him. He hadn’t the strength to rise to his feet. He only hoped that he would have some respite to recover and fight again.

  For a time, Candace watched in disbelief as Stone struck the floor. Then she ran pell-mell toward him realizing that he wasn’t jumping back up to his feet.

  James started up behind Candace, somewhat embarrassed that she had reacted before him, and had begun racing to help Stone.

  Walter followed, cursing himself for not being able to offer as much help, feeling like he was turning into a liability.

  The giant started toward Stone then noted the three people running at him. He stopped, smiled, or grimaced; it was difficult to tell which. And waited.

  Candace slowed as she came near it stopping a few yards away. She wasn’t sure what to do next. She turned to James as he halted next to her then to Walter as he arrived a moment later as if to get their input.

  James met her look but said nothing. Instead, he began to slowly edge around to the left of the behemoth who faced them.

  Mira stepped forward and to her left effectively cutting into James’s path.

  James stopped cold eyeing the woman who was blocking him. She stared back at him seemingly daring him to move.

  Stone clambered up to a kneeling position. His senses were beginning to clear as if he were just beginning to push up through the surface of a pool of turbid water. It was still too early, though, for him to think about standing up.

  For a few tense seconds, no one moved. It seemed that everyone was waiting on the other person. Mira was the first to break the standoff.

  She was quick. Much faster than James was prepared for. She rushed him, jumped into the air, turned swiftly, and drove the side of her foot into James’s chest.

  To James, it felt like a sledgehammer had just struck him. He sailed a few yards through the open air. He landed solidly on his back and head with a muffled grunt.

  Walter reacted immediately by running at Mira. He knew he wasn’t going to match her combat skills but hoped that a simple football tackle from a two-hundred-and-ninety-pound overweight man would do the trick.

  Candace took a gingerly step in the direction of the hulking creature concerned that he might go after Walter or decide to go back to finish off Stone. Either way, she didn’t know what she could do to stop him, but she would have to do something.

  A space away Walter hit Mira from the side just as she was ambling up to James, apparently to be certain he wasn’t going to get up. She left her feet as if she were hit by a raging bull. Her body jerked violently, and she struck the concrete hard with her right shoulder. Walter’s momentum had driven him further and he tripped over her body falling and rolling several feet away from her.

  For precious moments Mira groaned, unable to move. Every part of her seemed to hurt. A part of her was content to stay put where she was, if only for a minute or two. But she knew she couldn’t. Everything was on the line. With a determined effort, she pushed up to her knees. She began to crawl away from Walter. She needed another minute to recuperate.

  The giant had watched the altercation between Mira and Walter with interest but hadn’t reacted. His thoughts had become muddled. He hadn’t recognized the people before him -- though there was a familiarity about them -- and hadn’t comprehended what they were doing. He had simply stared for several minutes before a sudden lucidness began to return in the depths of his eyes.

  Stone pushed unsteadily to his feet at about the same time that the behemoth started walking toward Walter who was also rising to his feet after falling over Mira.

  “Walter!” Candace yelled. Walter turned slowly, shaken by his impact with the floor. He was just in time to see the giant coming at him, and Candace diving onto the behemoth’s back.

  The big creature abruptly halted when it felt the sudden weight of Candace settle onto his back. With its long arms, it reached over its shoulder and clasped the upper arms of Candace. With ease, it wrested her loose from her grip around his neck and hurled her over his shoulder.

  Walter was momentarily frozen as Candace hit on her arms and legs just to his right. But when the creature began to move in the direction of Candace Walter was suddenly infused with anger, terror, and a shot of adrenalin.

  Walter attacked, crossing the few feet between them to land a hard right to the creature’s wide muscled stomach. It barely moved with the contact of Walter’s fist. It only served to irritate him. He reached out quickly and lifted Walter high above his head. Walter spotted Stone moving toward them, stumbling somewhat as if the strength hadn’t completely returned to his limbs. Then Walter was airborne. Split seconds flashed by when Walter crashed through one of the long, glass windows of the Transportal building. It was like hitting a brick wall. He could feel his bones snapping and his flesh being ripped apart as he passed through the jagged glass. He thought he screamed but wasn’t sure as the floor of the building came up to meet him suddenly and he fell into a sea of blackness.

  CHAPTER 46

  Walter awoke. At first, he thought that he was dead. He was pleasantly surprised to find that he was still breathing. He wondered how long he had been out.

  He was on his back. He felt a
s though he were lying in water but figured (somewhat detached) that more likely it was a pool of his blood. He wondered if he was bleeding to death. If so, how long did he have before death took over?

  Oddly he didn’t hurt. He felt numb, and bemused. It all felt so chimerical to him as though all of this was happening in a dream and to someone else.

  Above him, he watched rhythmic reflections of a red light dancing across the ceiling. He wondered where it was coming from. He tried to move his head, but it was not easy. It was stiff, like hardened plaster. It took a while for him to turn it to one side.

  He saw a flashing red light on a small console. He realized that what he saw on the ceiling was a reflection of this light. Directly below the flashing light was a wide, flat-screen, computer monitor. Large, red letters flickered. It read: Danger! Activation error! Below it was lines of words that were too small for him to make out.

  What did that mean? He tried to think, but it wasn’t easy. His thoughts kept thinning and disappearing like melting snowflakes. He struggled to focus.

  From the corner of his eye, he could descry a yellow mist. He forced his head downward to get a better look at where it was coming from.

  A tall metal bottle, like an acetylene tank, lay canted a few feet from him partially submerged in a control panel that was spurting and spitting out sparks among the broken metal and plastic. The tank itself was leaking out a thin, yellow mist from the top of the container.

  I must have hit the tank when I came busting in here, Walter thought matter-of-factly. Must have hit it hard to knock it into that panel.

  He looked back up to the computer screen. Some of the large words at the top had changed. It now read: Transport. Two minutes flashed to the right of that and began counting down. Below the counter ‘Error’ flicked in bold red letters.

  Now what, he thought. Am I about to be blown up into about a million tiny pieces? He laughed softly as the darkness washed over him once again.

  CHAPTER 47

  James sat up. His ribs were aching. Breathing was painful., and his head was throbbing like a heartbeat. Ahead of him, he noted Candace getting to her feet. She looked shaken. Her forearms were scraped and bloodied. To his right not far away Mira was pushing up to a sitting position. Her face was streaked with blood and she looked to be quite dazed. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but he hoped that her recovery would be slow. He didn’t fare too well at their first encounter and figured another encounter in the condition he was in now would be catastrophic.

  Stone felt somewhat unsteady on his feet, but when he saw Walter being thrown toward the Transportal building he knew that he had to act. He had to stop this ungodly creature, if any of them hoped to make it out of here alive.

  He trotted at the behemoth whose back was to him. It was simply standing there looking from James to Mira to Candace. He seemed confused, as though he were trying to figure out who all these people were and if they posed a threat to him.

  Stone stopped just a few yards shy of the behemoth. He could use another minute or two to recover, and since it was not attacking anyone at the moment, he figured he could afford to take a breather.

  The giant turned suddenly to his left. Out of the corner of his eye, he had spotted Hands fighting his way to his knees. For a short time, the giant simply looked on curiously.

  “Byron!” Mira yelled, also getting to her feet. “Behind you!”

  At once nearly all the muscles in Stone’s body tensed. His moment of respite was gone.

  The giant didn’t turn right away. It looked as though it were trying to digest what was being said and who the person was who had just spoken the words.

  When the creature finally turned around it still looked confused. Stone didn’t move. He didn’t want to shake it out of its bemused state. He concluded that its thought processes must be quickly deteriorating. That soon it would be no more than a Frankenstein monster. Either way Stone wasn’t anxious to engage it in combat.

  Its benign condition only lasted moments before a spark seemed to ignite inside the big creature’s brain. It suddenly roared sonorously. It was a thunder that rolled about the large room. It started its attack.

  The moment was shattered by an explosion that rocked the large warehouse-size room. A tremendous surge of warm, gritty wind sluiced over them in a violent vortex knocking them off their feet—all except for the behemoth who staggered but never fell—dragging them across the floor like plastic dolls toward the center of the room.

  A great roaring shrill bounced off the walls and ceiling. They covered their ears against the piercing sound as they fought the push of the wind.

  Then, just as suddenly as it came, the wind and noise evaporated into nothing.

  Stone quickly sat up. The first thing he noticed was the expanse of new space. The octagon building which housed the Transportal, as well as the Transportal, itself were gone. Not a brick or a windowpane remained. A large portion of the floor where the building had once sat, and a few feet about its perimeter were also gone. The building had not exploded. Not in the true sense. Something else had transpired, but he wasn’t sure what.

  Had it imploded and disintegrated into nothing? Or, had the whole thing been transported to who knows where? He thought that the virus he had planted would have disabled the commands, but had it caused this destruction instead?

  A distance away from Stone Hands crawled over to Hammerhead whom he noticed was lying motionless on the concrete floor. Hammerhead had not moved on his own since the creature had slammed an oversized fist into the side of his face.

  His eyes were closed. He looked to be merely sleeping, but if that were true Hands would have sensed it. Instead, there was a silence in his head like the turning off of a radio. He gently shook Hammerhead hoping that he was wrong, that his psychic powers were simply no longer working. Unfortunately, as he shook the big body, he could feel that all resistance had faded from Hammerhead. Hammerhead was dead.

  Not very far from Hands Mira pushed herself to her feet. Across the big room, she spotted the giant standing virtually where he had been before the eruptive disappearance of the Transportal building. He was now many yards away since she had been blown across the floor.

  The others were strewn across the floor also, but not as far away from her as she would have liked. That, however, wasn’t her primary concern right now. What had suddenly settled on her mind was how Byron had looked when she had yelled out to him. For a matter of time total confusion suffused his face. It was as if he couldn’t determine who she was. Finally, he seemed to have figured it out, but how many times could his mind come back? Or, had the previous time been the last one?

  The emotions swallowed her up inside and she couldn’t stop the tears that filled her eyes. She couldn’t stand to lose him. If he were unable to return to his right mind it would be as if he had died.

  She began jogging unsteadily toward him. She wanted to run but her head felt as if it were crammed full of cobwebs and she didn’t want to chance losing her footing.

  Byron, the behemoth, looked anxiously about the large room, pausing twice to stare at the empty spot where the Transportal building had been. He looked both angry and bewildered. Frozen by an inability to decide what to do. He suddenly stood bolt upright when his eyes picked up Mira’s approach. His muscles tightened, he snarled exposing jagged yellow teeth.

  Mira’s gait ground to a halt a few yards short of him. “Byron,” she said softly, gingerly. She was surprised at how frightened of him she had just become. For the first time, she was beginning to see him as a monster, and not as the man she loved. Yet, somewhere, locked away inside that big creature, she believed that he was still in there. She just had to reach him before it was too late. Before the essence of the monster had absorbed all that he was. “Byron,” it’s me,” she continued. He simply looked curiously at her. “Think, Byron. Come back to me. Please.”

  A guttural noise escaped his mouth. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to talk to her or thr
eatening her.

  “Byron,” she pleaded, “if you understand me you have to try to change back. Please try.”

  He looked at her sternly as if fighting to retrieve her memory from the midst of his muddled mind.

  After a few tense moments of watching him struggling within himself, she stepped closer to him. His body instantly tightened, and he eyed her suspiciously.

  “Mira,” she said. “My name is Mira.”

  He only stared.

  Just over thirty yards away Stone inched his way toward them. He halted close enough to hear Mira’s plea but not close enough to appear as a threat to either one of them.

  “Byron,” she started again, “come back to me. Will yourself to do it.” He looked puzzled as though the memory of her was just out of reach. “Byron,” she said louder. “You have to come back now.” He simply stared at her. He wasn’t responding as she hoped. The anger and frustration was building inside of her. It began to increase exponentially until she could hardly contain it. She stepped forward suddenly, meaning to grasp his arm, to compel whatever rational part of him that was left inside that monster to listen to her. “You have to …”

  He backhanded her. A cry stuck in her throat as her body bounded over the concrete floor like a Muppet doll.

  He roared. A wild ferocious scream of warning to all who would dare oppose him. He looked to Stone, bared his teeth and growled, raising his big arms in a show of strength. When Stone didn’t advance, he turned his attention back to Mira lying motionless on the concrete floor. He moved toward her.