HALLOWED GROUND

by James Somers

  It was Jonathan’s turn to appear skeptical. “Somehow, I don’t picture Nemesis allowing those officers to do anything. He’ll kill them, as sure as you’re sending them in there.”

  Agent Wong tried not to take the criticism personally. “Well, it’s just one possibility. I’ve got something else to show you, gentlemen.” He escorted them beyond the recon station, into the front of the compartment.

  Beyond a stainless steel partition, sat an oversized metal chair. It looked like some robot suspended in a state of explosion.

  Jonathan eyed the monstrosity carefully. “What is it?”

  Jay stepped past him, providing the answer. “It’s a stealth battle suit—top secret government project.”

  Wong frowned at Jay. “Which leaves me wondering how you know anything about it, Dr. Young?”

  Jay continued to look the battle suit over. “I’m still a government contractor, Daniel. I have friends in high places—eyes and ears.”

  Wong smiled wanly. “Remind me to get their names and addresses later.”

  Jonathan moved closer, giving the suit a cursory examination of his own. “What can it do?”

  Wong smiled. “For starters, it enhances the strength of the wearer by five times. On an ordinary man that’s pretty good, but on you it would be incredible, Mr. Hallowed.

  Jonathan looked up at Jay and then to Agent Wong. “What makes you say that?”

  Wong grinned deviously at Jay. “I’ve got eyes and ears in high places myself.”

  “Any offensive weapons besides the strength enhancement?” Jay asked.

  Wong pointed to what appeared to be metal gloves which surrounded the wearer’s hands. “Two Omega Six charge packs power these electrostatic guns located in the fingertips of each glove. The voltage is selective, meaning you could set them to simply stun an individual, or go all the way to barbecuing them.”

  Jay looked up. He wasn’t laughing.

  Wong continued. “Of course, your goal is to try and incapacitate them, not kill them.”

  “Me?” Jonathan asked.

  Wong looked confused. “Well, from what Dr. Young was telling me on the way over here, I just assumed…”

  Jay caught Jonathan by the shoulders. “I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t my daughter on the line, Jonathan. It’s just that you’re the best qualified candidate.”

  “Jay, I’ve never used a suit like this before.”

  “The suit is easy enough…the problem is the punishment you may have to endure.” Jay seemed ashamed for even suggesting it now.

  Jonathan smiled, patting his shoulder. “Of course, you’re right, Jay.” Jonathan knew the truth. He could take more punishment in a fight than any of the police officers could. He would stand a much better chance of delivering a stunning blast without getting killed in the process. It seemed the only viable option available.

  He started toward the chair. Jay caught him by the shoulder. “Jonathan, if you don’t want to do this…I mean, with your body still on full burn and everything, it could kill you just from using your strength and healing too much.”

  “Nonsense,” Jonathan said. “This is your daughter. She needs you. No matter what happens, my time is short. Maybe this is why the Lord has kept me kicking this long…so I could help get your daughter back from Trenton.” He turned to Wong. “Now, show me how to get into this thing, so I can get out there.”

  •

  Samuel hurled another kinetic blast at Margot, as she mentally pushed aside several cars blocking her way on the street. She deflected the force of Samuel’s attack, allowing it to barrel into a parked vehicle, crushing it like a soda can.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, Stokes!” she said.

  Samuel hovered away from her, as she advanced down Vineyard Avenue. Pedestrians had taken shelter from the battle raging in the streets, abandoning their vehicles for the sake of their lives.

  Samuel wasn’t sure how to regain control of the girl. He hadn’t been expecting such a fight out of her. She was giving him a run for his money. Only his greater experience with these abilities had saved his life, so far. No matter what, he still had no desire to destroy the girl. He had wanted so badly to free her, to protect her from scientists like Dr. Young and protect her from the fate dished out to his Halo Project siblings. Everything had gone terribly wrong.

  A line of police officers entered the area carrying rifles. Samuel noticed them first. Tranquilizers. He thought, for a moment, to stop them from interfering, but with Margot out of control, he reconsidered. Maybe if he distracted her they could get a shot and take her down. Then he could retrieve her and try to help her.

  He had no idea how he might remove the creature possessing her mind, but he knew for her sake he had to try. “Margot, fight that thing inside of you! Don’t let it have its way with your mind!” he called.

  The girl seemed to falter for a moment, struggling again as she had before. The moment was short lived. Several more parked cars flew into the air toward Samuel. He seized them, forcing her to push against him for control of the vehicles floating over the street between them.

  The sharpshooters took aim from positions behind Margot. When they had her in their sights, they fired the tranquilizers. Margot released the vehicles and spun on the officers, shielding herself from the projectiles. With a blast of her mind, the tranquilizer cartridges shattered in flight.

  A shadow bore down upon her as she turned again to face Samuel. The vehicles she had released during their mental struggle hurtled back down upon her position. There was no time to stop them.

  Margot launched herself away as the cars came crashing down where she had been standing. One of the vehicles exploded. The shockwave sent her tumbling across the pavement. When she stood, cuts and scrapes covered her small body. A vicious leer appeared on her face again. “Not nice to hurt little girls, Samuel!”

  Samuel watched her on the street below, pouring her energies into something he couldn’t see yet. He hovered nearly thirty feet off the ground—something he realized would tax his own energies and put him at a disadvantage.

  Margot squeezed her eyes shut, then screamed at the top of her lungs. The building to Samuel’s right exploded, showering his body in concrete, steel, and glass debris. The building looked like a giant had taken a huge bite right out of the side.

  Samuel fell to the street, barely able to shield himself from the debris pushing him down with it. The shower of metal and stone cascaded to the pavement, smashing into more abandoned cars. Several exploded, releasing orange fire balls in the midst of the gray cloud of concrete dust.

  19 TAG TEAM

  Jonathan watched the battle unfold below him. He inched closer to the edge of the building to better judge his target. Margot suddenly screamed in fury on the street below. Samuel hovered nearby some thirty feet in the air, but still below Jonathan’s perch.

  Jonathan watched in astonishment as the glass panes on the building near Samuel shimmered, vibrating. Then a huge portion of that same side of the building burst outward, covering Samuel in a maelstrom of debris. The whole mess hit the street below, right in the middle of an abandoned traffic jam.

  Jonathan stood up, judging the distance. He backed over the rooftop, then ran as hard as he could toward the edge of the building. He knew it would take everything he had to reach Margot.

  He ran to the edge of the building, leaping away from it, wearing the exoskeleton Agent Wong had given him. Jonathan sailed through the air out over the battleground below. The suit felt a little heavy, but its micro-hydraulics more than made up for the instability. Jonathan assumed a normal man would not have been able to get this kind of jump out of the suit.

  Gravity overtook the force Jonathan had expended. He plummeted toward the street, and Margot standing upon it. Jonathan charged the weapon system, feeling a slight, tingling hum course through the gloves. Agent Wong had told him the electrodes contained in the helmet would allow him to use thought in order to discharge the gloves
and control the current. All suit parameters, as well as his own visual information, displayed upon the inside of the helmet visor.

  With a thought, the display zoomed in on Margot’s face as she stood relishing a seeming victory over Samuel Stokes. He had not yet emerged from the pile of rubble. Jonathan noticed the facial expression and was reminded of Trenton during some of their own exchanges so many years ago, before cryonics brought them to this time. Margot turned her head skyward and saw him. Jonathan aimed one of the gloves, watching the onscreen targeting icon zero in on the little girl.

  An invisible force battered him inside the suit, knocking him away like a bothersome gnat. Jonathan flew away backwards, tumbling until he hit something solid. He smashed through the concrete wall of the building he had just leaped from.

  Jonathan heard people screaming around him as he tumbled through the building, striking obstacles. He came to rest inside the office cubby of a terrified woman with disheveled blonde hair. She looked aghast, her red framed spectacles sitting askew on her face.

  She had managed to grab the keyboard to her desktop computer, before Jonathan and his exoskeleton pummeled it into oblivion. The woman looked like she wanted to scream. Jonathan extricated himself from the destroyed desk. He lurched through the office, full of wide-eyed employees, following his own path of destruction back the way he had come. He waved at a few along the way. “How ya doin?”

  When he came to the hole in the building, he found Margot staring at the pile of rubble she had laid on top of Samuel. The debris parted as Samuel lifted himself out, levitating above the smoldering pile of wreckage. He was injured, but holding his own.

  Jonathan wondered if he would now have to fight them both. He put a bead on Margot, locking on target. The display beeped inside his helmet, telling him the girl was too far away. He would have to get closer—perhaps with her attention drawn to Samuel.

  Jonathan stood, darting back through the office building. Shocked employees stumbled out of his way as he made for the elevator. This would be his shortest way down to the street level. The indicator lit up for his floor and dinged. The double doors opened, and Jonathan climbed inside the car with his exo-suit as a frightened security guard spilled out of the car, carrying a fire extinguisher. “Excuse me,” Jonathan said. The guard only looked at him with his mouth hanging open.

  The doors closed in front of him, and Jonathan tapped the first floor button. The car groaned into motion. He noticed the weight limit sign bolted next to the control panel. Jonathan gulped down the lump in his throat, praying he wasn’t exceeding that limit right now.

  •

  Samuel descended until his feet touched the scorched asphalt. He stood scowling at Margot, fifty yards away. “Release the girl!” he shouted.

  Margot smiled. “I don’t see any reason why I should. What’s the matter, can’t bring yourself to kill a little girl, Stokes?”

  The building next to Samuel groaned as fires spread throughout the structure, following Margot’s explosion minutes before. He was still standing underneath it. “I’ll do what I have to,” Samuel said. “She’d be better off dead, than possessed by some psycho monster.”

  Margot frowned sarcastically. “Ah, please don’t hurt me, Mister, I’m just a wittle girl…and girls just wanna have fun!”

  The pavement peeled away in chunks between them, as Margot sent a shockwave barreling toward Samuel. The asphalt flew at him, the very ground beneath his feet erupting.

  Samuel diverted some of the heavy debris, dodging past other portions as he retreated. Margot pulled on the half destroyed building with her mind and sent it careening over top of Samuel.

  He tried to blast away as much of the oncoming building as possible before it buried him, but it simply had too much mass and momentum. Samuel shielded himself as best he could, before the whole thing came down on top of him. The building collapse sounded like a bomb going off. Billowing gray clouds of concrete dust rose into the air, rushing along the nearby streets for nearly a mile. Car alarms rang out, and hundreds of people screamed like the end of the world had finally come upon them.

  Margot simply stood, shielding herself from the cloud of debris. It washed over her like a tsunami, while her kinetic bubble kept her safe and sound.

  When the dust finally began to settle, after several minutes, Margot noticed a shadow running toward her from one of the other buildings. She realized, a moment too late, it was the same person, dressed in an exoskeleton, who had tried to attack her moments ago.

  They lashed out at one another—her with a kinetic blast, he with an electrostatic charge resembling a bolt of blue lightning. The charge connected first, penetrating the column of intensely vibrating air Margot had been using as a shield. She jolted and flew back ten feet, landing on the pavement.

  Jonathan had only just managed to discharge his weapon when an invisible brick wall smashed into him. He flew backwards thirty feet, stopping only when his exoskeleton collided with the front façade of the building he had just exited.

  He heard the wall of glass and steel partitions buckle, shattering around him as he came to a skidding halt within the building lobby. The glass cut him up pretty badly, but his enhanced healing had already stopped the bleeding and begun to seal up the wounds by the time he stood again.

  Jonathan ran back toward the shattered entrance, grabbing a thick, tubular piece of steel from the debris. When he entered the street again, Margot had already managed to get to her knees. He had hoped the charge would have left her unconscious, but with Nemesis onboard it wouldn’t be that easy.

  •

  Jonathan leaped over a wrecked car and hit the pavement running. The girl threw a small hand toward him, straining to exert her power. Chunks of debris, both small and large, flew at Jonathan. He dodged a twisted car door, then batted away a piece of concrete with the steel pole.

  More and more debris rose from the road, hurtling toward him. The onslaught forced Jonathan to stop and defend himself against the attack. In the meantime, Margot got back to her feet. She sent a thin metal rod into the fray concentrating on getting it by Jonathan’s defense. The rod bypassed a swing at another piece of debris and plunged into his stomach.

  The strike threw his defense off for a moment—long enough for a piece of concrete to hammer him back into a parked car. Margot laughed, quite pleased that another police officer had bit the dust.

  Then, the man moved. He actually got up. Margot studied him, finally realizing who he must be. “Jonathan?”

  Jonathan stood and pulled the piece of steel from his abdomen, grunting inside his helmet from the pain. The blood flow was minimal and quickly stopped altogether. The wound began to close quickly.

  Margot smiled wanly. “I see you’ve got some new toys to play with, Jonathan, though it won’t do you much good.”

  Jonathan raised a gloved hand, pointing the fingers toward the little girl. On his helmet display, the target lock beeped. He discharged the weapon again. Margot tried to shield herself, but vibrating air currents couldn’t stop a static charge like it did solid objects. The energy passed through her defense, hitting her square again.

  Margot was thrown by the discharge. She landed ten feet away in a pile of gray concrete dust from the fallen building. Jonathan took advantage of the moment and ran toward her.

  Nemesis fought for control of his host, pushing the little girl to stand despite the pain. Margot shot up from the ground covered in gray dust. Jonathan had managed to get within fifteen feet of her. Margot raised her hands toward her attacker, a devilish grin playing on her lips. “Time to die, Jonathan.”

  Jonathan raised another charged glove hoping to discharge it before she stopped him. The wave of power that hit him seized his body and sought to tear it apart. His feet left the ground, levitating before Margot as her power surged through him.

  20 TORN

  Jonathan felt bone cracking, sinew and muscle tearing, and organs on the verge of bursting within his body. Margot, possessed by Nem
esis, leered at him, teeth bared as the full fury of her parasite’s rage surged from her mind into and through Jonathan’s levitated form. He jerked against the pain, crying out as waves of agony coursed through him. Only his mutagen enhanced strength and healing did anything to keep his body from exploding under the strain.

  As tissues tore within him, Jonathan felt his body trying to keep up, healing them, only to feel them torn again. He looked into her eyes, willing himself not to pass out. “Help me, Lord Jesus!”

  Waves of pain overcame him. He screamed at the top of his lungs for mercy. The possessed little girl had none for him. Jonathan hit the ground amid thunderous booms. Samuel, bloody and bruised, threw an onslaught of debris and damaged vehicles toward Margot. He had somehow emerged alive from the wreckage of the fallen building.

  Margot frantically turned her attention toward Samuel’s attack, trying to deflect at least a hundred different objects flying at her from every direction. Her power was taxed at this point, but Nemesis wouldn’t give up his hold.

  Jonathan summoned the last vestiges of his waning strength, pushing up on his hands and knees. He lunged for the girl, tackling her while her back was too him. She struggled in his grip, until he turned her to face him.

  Blood poured from Jonathan’s ears, nose, and mouth, a sign of desperate internal hemorrhaging. He lifted Margot, shouting with everything he had left. “Lord Jesus, I beg you to intervene and release Margot from Trenton’s hold!”