Darkest Before The Dawn

by Michael Anderle

  Their ship, however, appeared as if it was from the future.

  —

  “It is so beautiful!” Sabine spoke in the stillness of space. Akio had taken them all the way up into the mesosphere on their way back toward France. “I don’t understand why you don’t go up every day to see something this beautiful.”

  Akio smiled as he confirmed their course. Michael was in Myst form, allowing Sabine to sit in the back seat.

  “Wait until you get a chance to see it from a true spaceship. You will be just as impressed, if not more, than you are now,” he told her.

  “I’ll just have to trust you,” she said as she turned to look behind them at the little island they had been on not that long ago. “With no clouds, it’s amazing.”

  Akio stayed quiet.

  How far away will we land, and do we know if William has anything that can locate us? Michael asked.

  Unlikely, and at least five kilometers. I will come in about twenty kilometers away and fly close to the ground. We will land on the other side of a mountain range, Akio replied.

  Very good.

  The craft started down, the antigrav engines creating a shaft of air ahead of them, cutting through the air and reducing the friction and drag on the Pod.

  For all intents and purposes, the craft was in its own bubble as it came out of the sky, keeping the wind from buffeting it and preventing contrails.

  Five minutes later the Pod was zipping over the ground, flying nap-of-the-earth as it headed toward the mountains. Within moments, enough time for Sabine to worry that they wouldn’t slow down and would just fly straight into the mountain itself, they landed.

  Near Saint-Genis-Pouilly, France

  Sabine slid out of the Pod and reached back in to grab her gear. She took a few moments to admire the landscape as she locked her belt and made sure her pistols were set on safe.

  It was a testament to her weird life that she didn’t jump at Michael’s appearance as his body blocked her view. “Could you appear somewhere else for a moment?” She waved him to the left. “I’m enjoying the view.”

  Michael shook his head, but took two steps to his right and spoke to Akio. “Direction?”

  Akio picked up a tablet from inside the Pod. “We are here.” He pointed to a map displayed on the screen. “We need to go here.” Both men looked up at the peaks and Akio pointed again. “Between the second and third there,” he explained.

  “Looks right to me,” Michael agreed as he grabbed his sword out of the Pod. He turned toward Sabine. “Ready?”

  She nodded, then turned back to him. “I never want to say I failed to enjoy the view.”

  The Pod backtracked, following the landscape before it rose into the sky. The Myst went the other direction, heading between the two peaks.

  —

  William stood and closed the drawer next to him. Grabbing a set of keys and a remote control, he walked to the office door and stepped out. He nodded to Gerard. “He’s coming.”

  “We’ve got nothing, sir.” Gerard looked back at the screens he could monitor.

  “Trust me,” William touched his head. “I can feel the bastard. I trust my instincts where he is concerned. Make sure everyone is ready.” He continued walking toward the elevator. He had stopped sleeping during the day decades before. He imagined Michael thought that attacking today, after he had killed his team, would be the best choice.

  He did rather enjoy outsmarting Michael. It was a shame he wasn’t going to have time to gloat once he powered up the LHC. He punched the button for the elevator and waited for it to arrive.

  Once in the elevator, he dropped another three floors to the main concourse. This was a large tunnel with a flat floor. Stepping out, he nodded to his first group of protectors and continued walking down the concourse.

  He walked a total of a kilometer, passing the multiple doors his people had specially fitted in the large tunnel. The actual channel to run Michael through was a damned pipe. They had to figure out a way to get Michael to slip into the pipe, but once he was in they could fire it up.

  He checked on four of the little Michael-traps, making sure they were set appropriately. They had placed another six in the tunnel earlier, in case Michael paid more attention than he remembered.

  Even an old dog like Michael might learn a new trick or two…

  But he doubted it.

  —

  Michael swept through the buildings, registering no minds. He stopped, and the three materialized on a grassy hill.

  “Just for the record,” Sabine stepped away from the two and bent over, spitting into the grass, “that’s not easy to get used to.”

  “I’m impressed. Most people who get bothered by traveling in the Myst would have been vocal earlier.”

  “I’m trying to be a good rider,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Eve,” Akio said, “I need those schematics.” A moment later, he pulled out his tablet and started swiping on the top. He stopped and looked to his right, then held the tablet up and rotated it a quarter-turn counterclockwise. His eyes went from the tablet to the buildings and back again. “That way,” he said, and pointed toward a building a couple blocks away.

  The three moved along, Michael allowing his senses to reach out. “I’m thinking one up here to protect our back door.”

  Akio turned to Sabine. “Do you want topside or underground?”

  “No contest,” she told him. “I see plenty of things I can use to make a fort.”

  The three of them walked into a building and looked around. “That way.” He pointed.

  Walking past an area that Michael could imagine had been a security station once upon a time, they started to head down a hallway. “Hey!” Sabine called, and the two men turned.

  “I’m going to build up my little protection area here,” she told the men, then grabbed a wooden bench and started pulling it across the floor. Both men’s faces scrunched up as a squeal from the wood hurt their hearing.

  “Hey!” she called one more time. “Don’t let anyone come up behind me!”

  Michael touched the brim of his hat and turned back around. Both walked down the hall.

  Sabine watched them go, then turned back to her area. “Well, merde,” she said, hands on her hips. “Where is a strapping vampire when you need one?”

  She walked over to a desk and started pushing it. “Perhaps I let them go a little too quickly. Should have played the ‘small, frail female’ card there,” she grumbled as the desk started moving across the floor.

  —

  The two men descended the stairs, their senses alert for any hint of where William might be. They searched two floors before stopping in front of an elevator.

  “Good place to get stuck,” Michael said, eyeing the elevator.

  “Myst down?” Akio asked.

  “Should be plenty of space, sure.” Michael pulled Akio into his Myst and slid between the closed doors, then headed down the elevator shaft.

  Rather deep, Michael commented.

  Hai.

  At the bottom, the two materialized on top of an elevator car. Akio bent down, grasped the top, and pulled. A door screeched off in his hand, and he tossed it aside. Standing up, he jumped into the car feet-first and hit the button. The door opened and he peeked out.

  No one.

  Michael Mysted down and appeared next to Akio. Both men looked both ways down the circular tunnel.

  “Damn,” Michael exhaled. “I can sense people both ways, but not William.”

  “Hai.”

  “I’m thinking left is a good direction.”

  “Splitting up is a very bad idea,” Akio said.

  “I know.” Michael looked to the left. “I’m going this way.”

  “Hai, I’m going the other,” Akio replied as the two men parted.

  Michael spoke over his shoulder. “Hope we don’t meet up thirteen and a half kilometers from here with nothing to show.”

  Akio’s chuckles could be heard for a l
ittle while as Michael walked down the tunnel.

  Ten minutes later, he received a call from Akio. “Michael?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve found a bunch of scientists spread out. And, a group of undesirables.”

  “You mean you found some fun, and a group to put you to sleep afterwards?”

  “Which is which?” Akio asked.

  “If I have to explain the joke,” Michael replied, “it isn’t funny.” He stopped. “Sonofabitch, Akio. You got me.”

  “Hai!”

  “I’ve got humans ahead.” Michael’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve seen William. Looks like we have the right place.”

  “Be careful,” Akio advised.

  “’Careful’ is my middle name.” Michael chuckled. “Sorry, that is so wrong. It’s more like my fifth or sixth name after Maim, Kill, Destroy, and a couple others that I forget.”

  “Regretful and Repentant?”

  “Uhhhhh, no.”

  Akio’s mood sobered. “If you get killed right after we found you, Bethany Anne is going to resurrect you so she can kill you herself.” Akio heard Michael’s chuckles through the communications device. “Akio out.”

  He put away the comm and limbered up. Maybe this time he would just use a sword.

  Using the pistol wasn’t providing him any practice.

  —

  “Michael, Michael, Michael…” The voice came from speakers located every thirty feet or so in the tunnel.

  “William,” Michael answered as he allowed the last guard to slide off his sword. He cleaned the blade on the man’s pant leg. “Have you decided what should be on your tombstone?”

  “I see you are still annoying.”

  “I hear you still have a penchant for believing you are somebody in this world,” Michael replied. “Your days are numbered. I’d say somewhere between zero and none.”

  “Cute,” William replied. “I believe I’ll have to satisfy myself with just how many times you have been wrong in your life when I think about you. Which I’m afraid to admit won’t be too many.”

  “Well,” Michael slid his sword back into the sheath, “I should let you know that Valerie asked me to provide you a chance to repent and change your ways.”

  “My Valerie?” he asked. There was a pause. “I had such hopes for her, but she was too weak.”

  “Not too weak. I believe you need to assign that attribute to Donovan, since she kicked his ass and then killed him. Mind you, she was horribly hurt at the time.”

  “I did have such hopes for him,” William replied, annoyed. “Perhaps I’ll toast you on the anniversary of your death as being a decent adversary.”

  Huge BANGs started occurring, and Michael turned around. His eyes narrowed as he heard them coming from the other way as well. He changed to Myst and flew in the same direction he had been heading. He made it perhaps a few hundred meters when he stopped, blocked.

  He reappeared, his eyes blazing red. “I thought you considered me nothing but a pest, yet you seem to not want us to meet, William.”

  The speakers in this area of the tunnel worked for William as well. “I’m smart, Michael. I’d rather have all the time in the world to kill you.”

  Michael looked around the room, noticing the two-foot-diameter pipe which went through the wall. He changed to Myst and went up to where the pipe met the wall. He couldn’t locate any spots to make it through to the other side.

  He reappeared.

  “And that is why I think we need to agree.”

  “What?” Michael responded. “Sorry, I tuned you out there for a moment.”

  “Tuning me out, or are you losing your focus in your old age, Michael?”

  Michael’s face twisted in annoyance. His eyes kept flitting back to the pipe, then the door.

  —

  A kilometer away, William was in a section of the tunnel which had an exit to the surface. If Michael was able to get out of the trap, he would leave and close the door, giving him more than enough time to get away and work on trapping Michael another time.

  He had watched Michael disappear the first time from his hidden camera, then growled internally when he reappeared.

  Patience… He just needed to have patience.

  —

  Sabine looked around the area, bored. With Michael and Akio, attacks had rarely been boring.

  Now she was almost impatient, wanting her turn to do something. Anything. Hell, she was willing to be taken up in his Myst again and swung around so much she felt like throwing up.

  This waiting shit sucked.

  —

  Akio had just dispatched the third guard when a bullet pinged two feet from his head. He ducked low and searched ahead of him for whoever had shot. Not seeing anyone, he wondered if it had been a ricochet from farther down.

  He started jogging down the tunnel, his eyes red and his lips pressed together. He was in his zone, and he was a happy man.

  —

  “You know, William,” Michael called, “I don’t suppose you had anything in that chalet you wanted?”

  Michael smiled when William’s voice changed timbre. He is definitely annoyed now, Michael thought. He started ranting about the things he, Akio, and Sabine had destroyed.

  He disappeared and headed into the pipe.

  —

  “You cowardly, useless cretins aren’t worth the effort to shoot you.” William was spitting now. He breathed in, ready to fire off another vitriolic paragraph when he noticed Michael wasn’t in the room anymore.

  “Sonofabitch!” he shouted, slamming his thumb on the button. He turned and hit another radio button. “GO!”

  —

  The noise was just enough to bring Sabine out of her daydream. Her hands flashed down and drew her pistols before she understood what was going on. She got off two shots before her fort was attacked, rounds slamming into it as she heard boots arriving through the front of the building.

  She thought she saw one person go down before she had to duck. “You bastards!” she shouted. She looked down at her pistol and dialed it up to eight. “I’d better not get a broken hand!”

  She started firing through her own fort. “This isn’t going to be a good solution in the long term, Sabine,” she bitched. “You’ve simply got to stop destroying your protection from the inside.”

  That’s when life went upside-down for her.

  She was violently blown down the hallway when something large and explosive slammed into her fort and blew it apart, sending her rolling over and over. She spat out blood. She couldn’t hear anything, but she did notice that her right arm was still aiming down the hallway and pulling the trigger.

  Her left was hanging at an odd angle. She returned to looking down the passage, pleased that she had taken the time to admire the landscape earlier that day.

  If it was her day to die, it had at least been a pretty one.

  A helmeted head came up above what was left of her protective fort just long enough for her to squeeze the trigger, blowing that fucking asshole’s brains across whatever friends were behind him.

  If she was going to die, she was going to send a shit-ton of enemies in front of her to announce her arrival.

  —

  “Miiiichaeeellll.” William’s voice reverberated through the pipe. “Have a nice death.”

  Hell opened and started pulling him everywhere and nowhere at once. It was worse than David’s device, and in his mind, Michael screamed in pain.

  —

  Akio flinched, hearing the scream in his mind and realizing it wasn’t himself. He slid his sword back into his sheath and got on the communicator. “Yuko, Eve, I need you here!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Under the Kurobe Dam

  Yuko’s voice came back to her over the communicator.

  “Jacqueline, hi?” Yuko responded. “How are you getting on?”

  Jacqueline tried a door on her right. “Mark’s in the server room now. He’s already powered up the server he ne
eds. I’m just taking a look around.” The door opened, and she stepped into a dark room. She found a light switch and realized she was in a control room with more computers than she’d ever seen in one place. “Wow! This place is…” her voice died away.

  Yuko prompted, “Jacqueline? Are you still there?”

  “Yeah. I’ve just found a room full of more computers. Like you have in the flying box.”

  Yuko waited.

  Jacqueline remembered something. “Oh yeah, that’s the other thing that is strange about this place.” She was vaguely aware that Akari and Ichika had wandered in behind her and were now examining the Aladdin’s cave of technology they had stumbled upon.

  Jacqueline brought her attention back to the conversation over the device. “We’ve not come across any bodies or skeletons, which is suspicious given that the history buffs are telling us there was an accident.”

  Yuko’s voice sounded curious. “You think that maybe it wasn’t the earthquake that caused the base to be shut down?”

  Jacqueline could hear Eve in the background as she responded, “It’s certainly looking curious.” She watched Ichika’s eyes light up as she ran her hand over the console she was inspecting.

  Yuko’s voice returned. “Ok. Eve says to grab the data as quickly as you can and get out of there. Michael is in danger. We’re going to have to go help him.”

  The color drained from Jacqueline’s face, and a second later her eyes flared. “What’s wrong? Where is he?”

  Yuko’s voice was even. “It’s ok. Nothing we can’t help with. But we’re going to have to leave you. Will you be ok?”

  “Yes, of course. The hard bit is done. We’re fine here.”

  She paused. “What about the Pods?”

  Yuko responded quickly. “Eve can control those for you. Just make your way back to them when you’re ready, and we’ll be notified that you’re there and get you out.

  “Ok. No problem,” Jacqueline agreed. “Now go. Save Michael, please,” she added softly, her anger giving way to her vulnerability.