The Gate

by Jennifer N Hibbert

  When Kevin left the house, he followed Varuk’s scent to an open field at the back of the house. His tracking led him to a large, round, Colosseum-like building, a stadium clearly built for sporting activities.

  The structure was laid out on three levels. The two upper levels had seats but there were no seats on the ground level; instead, there were bloodstained compartments sectioned by metal gates. Cages of all sizes were lined up in some of the booths, covered in teeth marks and bent out of shape, as though by the use of strong weapons. These compartments smelled of rotten corpses. Splashes of dark, half-dried blood, pieces of skin and even clawed-out eyeballs were splattered across the walls and ground. There were also dried faeces on the walls and inside the cages. This facility was where the Dark Lord of Vencin held training and competitions for his soldiers. Fights here were usually battles to the death. He loved the sport of war.

  The middle level contained a huge platform, similar to the one in the hall in which Carrol and Zatol had been interrogated by Lord Varuk. On the platform sat a throne carved from rocks; it looked dirty and ashy, as though it had either been painted for that effect or had suffered harsh weather conditions. The back of the seat was constructed of spikey, uneven rock.

  On either side of this throne was another, more feminine model. Kevin saw two other vacant seats on both sides of Lord Varuk. He knew one of them used to belong to Varuk’s wife, Lady Adlerna, and the other one still belonged to their daughter Kylephina. Kevin, having accessed the information on Varuk, understood that he had loved his wife, Lady Adlerna very much. After she had passed away, Varuk focused all that love on their daughter, Kylephina, as well as on doing evil. Finally, the two seats behind Varuk’s seat were for his personal guards.

  The Colosseum was eerily quiet. Lord Varuk was sitting peacefully on his throne, casting an ever-watchful eye on the Gatekeepers and preparing his next move.

  Tobus and the other Gatekeepers had caught up with Kevin and they convened to discuss a plan. They saw Varuk sitting on the throne like a spectator, waiting for a battle to commence. A few of his guards were standing to attention while others paced around protectively. They could tell he was up to something.

  Kevin, Tobus and Naffata entered the colosseum through a gate facing Varuk’s throne while Wood, Ai and Clafy stayed outside. Clafy was still sitting on the dragon, suspended in mid-air: the other two keepers also floated in the air. Neither Varuk nor his men moved from their positions when they saw the Gatekeepers enter.

  Tobus quickly leaned over to speak to Kevin but, before he could say anything, they heard Varuk’s voice. ‘Hey, Tobus! Why are you still here? I thought I asked you nicely to run along to my old man for the ransom I demanded. It seems to me that you’re either deaf or you want this poor human to die right now,’ he said, pointing at a cage on the ground beside his feet.

  He took his staff and poked at the cage’s occupant; a voice that sounded like Martin’s cried out, ‘Please don’t hurt me. Let me go!’

  ‘Shut up!’ Varuk thundered.

  Kevin started edging towards Varuk.

  ‘Hey, whoever you are, don’t come any closer or he dies!’ Varuk said.

  Kevin slowed almost to a stop. Before Varuk could say anything more, he was up in the air and starting to take his form as the Gate. His armour appeared, piece by piece, and attached to him as a whirlwind encircled him. He absorbed all the similar power his colleagues had displayed, liquid, sand, snow, shadow, metal, tree, wind, flame and more. It all happened in only a moment.

  Suspended in front of Varuk was the hollow shape of a man built of metal bars, like an iron cage. They fitted his body like a straitjacket, just as they had done during his programming.

  Varuk stood and gave the performance a standing ovation. ‘I see, Tobus. Why didn’t you tell me that my ransom was right in front of me all along? You could have saved us all a great deal of time and trouble. Well, I’m impressed. My old man did a fine job, I must admit. I always knew he had it in him. Now I will have to keep this one here until Calbas sends me the software. Then I’ll see if there is anything worth extracting from this one before destroying it.’

  As he finished speaking, Kevin moved at the speed of light, quickly bouncing up and down in front of Varuk with such speed that Varuk’s eyes could hardly track him.

  The guards reached swiftly for their weaponry. The guard closest to Varuk was about eight feet tall; he was the same man Kevin had seen at the beach earlier. His name was Hashota and his hand seemed as long as a normal man’s leg. He wore a belt that held ten short blades packed in sheaths. He drew one and threw it at Kevin but it went straight through him. He tried to reach for another blade but Kevin was too quick for him. He reached into the man’s belt, pulled out two blades and jammed them together into Hashota’s neck. The soldier fell backwards and did not get up again.

  Varuk’s other soldiers gasped in horror and immediately drew their weapons but Kevin ravaged them like a wild fire. Before Varuk could react, all of his guards were lying flat on the ground either dead or badly wounded.

  Kevin could tell that the Dark Lord was fascinated by his speed. He also noticed a change in Varuk’s expression to anger once he saw the destruction of his soldiers, even though he admired Calbas’s work.

  Varuk was enraged and hurled shards of lightning at Kevin and the other Gatekeepers. Kevin reacted quickly; he began circling Varuk like a whirlwind before flipping him up into the air. While Varuk was still suspended, Kevin opened the cage – only to find that Martin wasn’t trapped inside: it was a shapeshifter.

  Kevin was angry and he kicked the cage, which went flying up in the air. At that very moment, he saw thousands, if not millions, of vampire bats flying towards him and the rest of the Gatekeepers. One of the bats darted straight at Kevin’s eyes and he swung his head to the side, using one of his hands to fling the bat away. As soon as he came in contact with it, Kevin was able to download their information. The bats were the Biddatals. Kevin knew about them from Calbas, and Tobus had told him about them, too. Now he was able to receive information directly from coming in contact with one. They had shapeshifted into bats to conceal their identities.

  Kevin understood that they were there to carry out Asariel’s threat made at the meeting of the astrobiologists, the Gatekeepers and the world-governing body, which a man named Atta Rogers had also attended. All this information was made available to Kevin in an instant. The Biddatals had made their disapproval of the city on Mars clear from the onset when they had rejected the idea of humans sharing their airspace. He remembered discussing the airspace issue with Tobus on their way to Earth.

  The Biddatals had failed to stop the project on numerous occasions. They had also tried to kill the migrants in the Channel of Exchange but the Gatekeepers had been too powerful for them and only one migrant had suffered. The other Gatekeepers had quickly joined the fight, unleashing the divine powers of nature that they possessed.

  The Biddatals had formed this alliance with Varuk to defeat the Gatekeepers, in order to have their way and evict the migrants from space. By teaming up with Varuk, they hoped their combined powers would be enough to prevail.

  Kevin soon saw fire arrows; some of the Biddatals had taken that form. A few of the arrows were directed towards him and he caught more than twenty of them and threw them on the ground. Immediately, they shifted their shapes back to Biddatals, which looked like mythical creatures. Kevin blasted them with fire before they could take another form. His eyes followed some of the fire arrows as they dived towards the Gatekeepers, but Tobus spread himself out like a metal curtain in front of them. The arrows bounced off before the Biddatals could react. Naffata covered the flaming arrows with gushes of water, extinguishing them.

  By now, all of the Gatekeepers were using their special powers to fight the Biddatals, both in the air and on land. The shapeshifters darted around, changing into different forms as fast as possible unless they were killed or smashed into pieces first.

  A cluste
r of the shapeshifters turned into a body of seawater up in the air and mixed with the water Naffata had used, perhaps hoping she would find it difficult to separate them. That way they would be close to her and could transform into some type of weapon to kill or at least injure her. Kevin wanted to react but he saw Naffata open her hand and the water, including some of the Biddatals, landed on her palm. There was a struggle in the water; maybe some of the Biddatals had realised what was happening to them and tried to transform again. But Naffata already had them under her control; she pulled them hard into her hand then released them again quickly to the ground. In an instant, the water became a block of solid ice; Clafy had turned the water into ice and it smashed into millions of pieces, causing the Biddatals’ demise. Clafy was still riding the dragon; maybe, with the advantage of height, she’d seen an opportunity and quickly turned the liquid into ice.

  Kevin was pushed back forcefully when a blade passed through one of the hollow spaces in his body. Glimpsing a number of laser blades directed towards him, he bounced up and down so fast that they all headed in the opposite direction while he was behind them. When the Biddatals, who had turned into the laser blades, saw what he was doing, they turned and aimed squarely at him. Kevin spun a massive wind, which twisted the blades together in a ball and blasted them with lightning.

  Some of the blades darted off towards Clafy. She took some of the glass rope she had created and threw it at the incoming laser blades to lasso them. After roping them together, she covered the Biddatals with piping hot lava.

  Another group took the shape of short, pointed, metal rods. They took flight and scattered across the air, diving towards the Gatekeepers, hoping to pierce some of them. Unfortunately for them, Ai attracted the metal magnetically and solidified the rods before blasting the mass into pieces. When the metal fragments fell, they returned to their original forms: some changed back into people, while others regenerated into different types of creatures.

  Kevin noticed that Wood didn’t even need to summon trees and plants, both large and small, to come and fight the Biddatals inside the Colosseum.

  Finally, Naffata released a raging storm with a squally wind that sucked everything into a heap in front of her. After the tornado effect had gathered all the remaining Biddatals, Clafy spread liquid lava on them and they soon became a heap of ash and vanished.

  Kevin knew that the Biddatals hadn’t stood a chance against the Gatekeepers. Varuk was the Gatekeepers’ only worthy opponent, not only because of his knowledge and strength, but because they had a soft spot for him because he was Calbas’s son. Even Varuk hadn’t counted on the strength of his father’s newest combat machine, Kevin thought.

  He released a rope and started spinning it quickly as he tied up Varuk, who was now exhausted from all the fighting. Varuk couldn’t engage with Kevin because of his speed. The rest of the Keepers stood guard.

  Kevin left the scene and returned to Varuk’s mansion. The guards saw a flurry of wind sweep past them into the building; they tried to chase after it but it was too fast. Kevin rushed inside and found Martin bound in a cage in one of the rooms. After releasing him, Kevin picked him up easily, as though he was just a feather, placed him on his shoulder, took to the air and headed back towards the battleground.

  Martin was struggling and shouting, ‘Let go of me, man! Who are you guys?’ Kevin didn’t respond; he just held onto the boy firmly.

  When he returned to the battlefield, Varuk was still struggling to free himself. He looked up and saw that Kevin had taken Martin. He shouted in a thunderous voice, ‘This is not over! Do you hear me? Mark my words, this is not over!’

  Kevin released Martin and set him on Tobus’s carpet. Martin was shocked by it but being high up in mid-air made him stop struggling. As he did so, Varuk freed himself from the rope and shot lightning bolts towards him.

  Wood erected a sand wall, which caused the lightning to rebound towards the sky where its light lingered until it disappeared. The sand came crashing down.

  All the Gatekeepers departed. Clafy was still riding on the dragon. Behind them, a few of Varuk’s guards stormed out in pursuit. Some shot lasers, while others brandished wooden clubs and sticks until the Gatekeepers disappeared out of sight. Varuk didn’t try to chase them.

  Tobus and Kevin took Martin back to the time wall. When they arrived, Kevin pushed his thumb onto Martin’s forehead and Martin instantly fell asleep.

  Tobus closed the portal permanently behind them. Taking an invisible form, he returned Martin, who was still asleep, to Mars Rothadam. Tobus sat him on his balcony chair next to his sandwich and erased his memory. Then he returned to Carrol’s apartment and permanently closed that portal, too.

  *

  When Morgan returned from work, he saw Martin sleeping on the balcony. He called out to him a couple of times but Martin didn’t answer. Morgan walked over and shook him. Martin quickly jumped to his feet.

  ‘Hey, man, what are you doing asleep out here? When did you get back from work? You didn’t even finish your sandwich. You must have been really tired. You never sleep during the day,’ Morgan said, smiling.

  Martin stood in front of his friend, confused and sweating.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Morgan asked.

  ‘Ghost? What ghost?’ Martin said.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you, man. Did you have a nightmare?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ Martin said. He thought for a few seconds. ‘Yeah, I did have a nightmare. I was so scared, but I can’t remember what it was about.’

  ‘Look, don’t worry about it, my man, it’s only a nightmare. People have them all the time and it means nothing. Please quit worrying about it,’ Morgan said, laughing.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Martin agreed, but he couldn’t shake an underlying feeling of horror.

  CHAPTER 32

  CARROL RETURNS TO HER FAMILY ON EARTH

  The rest of the Gatekeepers also travelled back to Mars Harrogate; everyone returned without significant harm. They presented themselves to Calbas and told him all that had happened.

  ‘Yes, I received Varuk’s ransom demand and his threats regarding the safety of the migrants. We all know there’s no way we could have complied with him,’ Calbas said. ‘I’m glad you rescued them without wasting any time negotiating with Varuk, who we all know to be unreasonable.’

  Calbas asked Kevin and Tobus to follow him and they returned to the grand library room. ‘By the way, Tobus,’ Calbas said, settling into his armchair, ‘apparently the girl’s companion is your nephew. He arrived on Mars on board the ship that transported the migrants.’

  Tobus nodded; he and Kevin had already accessed that information.

  ‘He was coming here to find you and he formed a kind of friendship with the girl; that’s how they ended up at Mars Vencin together. Anyway, I’m glad they’re both safe now.’

  Calbas was sorry about his son, Varuk. He often wondered why Varuk had chosen to cross over to the dark side. He dreaded conflict between the two of them because a real victory was impossible. Despite his sentiments towards his son, his priority was to uphold peace and justice throughout the universe and protect humanity as a whole.

  Calbas turned to Kevin. ‘First of all, congratulations. You have won your first battle and had the privilege of meeting my son, Lord Varuk of Vencin, as well as my granddaughter, Kylephina. She’s rather a beautiful young lady, right?’ he asked.

  Kevin nodded.

  ‘My son and I haven’t been on speaking terms for such a long time,’ Calbas offered by way of explanation. ‘Anyway, thanks to you both for a job well done. I’m especially glad that there wasn’t much damage to the island and that its inhabitants weren’t harmed.’

  Calbas turned to Tobus. ‘We’ve taken excellent care of your nephew. He is recovering well and will be back on his feet soon, then we can decide how to proceed with him. As for the girl, it may be best to return her to the migrant camp at Mar
s Rothadam. On the other hand, she’s seen far too much. We can erase her memory or, better still, return her to Earth to protect our secret even more carefully.’ He paused before addressing both Kevin and Tobus. ‘You may speak to them and we’ll discuss the options in more detail later.’

  Zatol had already been treated for his injuries. Varuk’s guards had tortured him for information; they’d cut open his stomach and extracted some of the glowing objects before closing him back up again. It had been painful but he hadn’t suffered too much damage and he would recover in time, Calbas explained.

  *

  Kevin and Tobus visited Zatol. He was already awake when they arrived and was jubilant to see his uncle. Kevin’s eyes met Carrol’s when they entered their care room; she was sitting at Zatol’s bedside when they entered. Kevin nodded to her and smiled. She smiled back and quickly looked away.

  ‘Hello, uncle. It’s nice to finally meet you,’ Zatol said. He and Tobus hugged and Zatol quickly started telling Tobus about his efforts to find him. ‘I’ve longed for this meeting since the first day I became a warrior. My father told me all about the courage and bravery you showed to defend our kingdom. I have studied our Book of Chronicles. All your war medals are still displayed with pride in the archive,’ he said proudly.

  Tobus nodded and broke into a little smile.

  Carrol was also smiling and looking excited. Perhaps she is happy that I finally got to meet my uncle after all the risks we took in the attempt, Zatol thought. ‘I’m sorry for all the trouble this may have caused you and your colleagues. It was tough to access Mars on my own, even as a shapeshifter, without being clamped down by the planetary security so I decided to use the migrant spaceship. Please understand that Carrol wasn’t supposed to come into the portal with me. It was a mistake,’ he continued.

  ‘Don’t worry. The most important thing is that you’re here now and both of you are safe. Concentrate on getting well and we’ll have plenty of time to discuss everything,’ replied Tobus. He turned to Carrol and explained that they would be returning her to Mars Rothadam. She immediately started crying.