Merciless

by Robin Parrish

  Unlike the others, who entered the city via main roads, Payton used back alleys and empty fields to make his approach, doing all he could to avoid the thousands of panicking people.

  "Poor Thresher," Devlin whispered as they knelt just outside the remains of the Damascus Gate. "Always fighting the hopeless, bitter cause."

  "It's hardly hopeless if I'm still fighting," Payton remarked, his alert, coiled body taking in their surroundings and making sure they hadn't been followed.

  "I shall never understand you," Devlin said, ignoring their surroundings and the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd between them and their destination, and focusing entirely on Payton. "You hate this world as much as I do. Yet you keep fighting to save it, despite your disdain."

  "And what does that tell you?" Payton asked idly, with very little interest in hearing the old man's answer. Tactically speaking, as long as Payton could keep his mentor talking, he wouldn't be trying to escape and warn Oblivion.

  "It speaks volumes to your greatest weakness, my boy," Devlin replied. "After everything you've been through, all the times when those you loved and trusted turned on you ... Even though you would kill another man for even suggesting it ... Be honest with me now, at the end. You still believe that the human race is a thing worth saving. Don't you?"

  How Payton loathed this man. Why had he brought him along? Truthfully, he wasn't entirely certain. Mostly he wanted to beat Devlin, to overturn all of his grand plans, and he wanted Devlin to be there to see it with his own eyes when it happened.

  Yet he considered the words Devlin had spoken. None of his observations about humanity were incorrect.

  Was it true? Did he believe that people were still worth fighting for? Payton was a legendary assassin, his skills honed to a razor's edge and unmatched by any fighter in the world. He knew that by definition, humans were selfish creatures, given to letting their survival instinct outweigh nobler concerns.

  So what was he doing here?

  Didn't the world deserve what it was about to get, courtesy of Oblivion? Hadn't it unapologetically merited this fate since mankind's earliest days?

  Hadn't this world betrayed him countless times?

  I never kill the innocent," he'd told Alex. Yet by definition, there were no innocent to be found among humanity's numbers. Not one. All were guilty, all deserved death.

  Payton stood, slowly and watchfully.

  "You're not going to answer me, are you?" Devlin replied, his eyes still locked maddeningly on Payton. "You fear the answer, I know you do."

  Payton considered gouging Devlin's eyes out, but then Devlin would just be that much harder to manage, and Payton needed to remain unencumbered.

  "Bear witness to what I do next ... and you shall have your answer."

  Alex might not understand, but Daniel knew he was the only one who had a chance of getting close to Trevor.

  If he could creep close enough to the boy to tap in to his powers and mimic them, Daniel believed he could reverse those powers back onto Trevor, canceling out his nullifying effect. It was a sound scientific principle, like two equally polarized fields aimed at each other, but he could only hope it would work in practice.

  Daniel ducked quickly and quietly into the swarm of human beings, simultaneously trying to blend in and covertly look for Trevor. The boy had to be here somewhere among the crowd for them to have felt him so close before, but now the sensation had passed. Perhaps Trevor was doing some kind of sweep through the crowd.

  Which way would he have been moving? The possibilities were too countless to consider, and Daniel had no experience with this sort of thing. Covert ops were Ethan's forte.

  Daniel gave a feeble jump on his limp foot, trying to get his head high enough over the crowd to catch a glimpse of Trevor. Nothing. No sign of the kid.

  The ground gave a tremble, the first quake Daniel had felt since that moment when time stopped.

  He turned in place, looked off in the distance toward the Dome of the Rock.

  Are you in there, Oblivion, waiting for us?

  Are you in there, Grant?

  Oblivion stood before the ornate double doors that led to the interior of the Dome of the Rock.

  This was it. The place where he would end it.

  The doors were bolted shut and sealed to prevent outsiders from intruding. Oblivion stepped toward them, as if he would turn incorporeal and phase through the solid doors. But at the last moment, the doors and the frames that held them in place blew inward, stirring up a cloud of dirt and dust and soot. Oblivion marched fearlessly through the smoke and into the revered building.

  The building seemed to hum or tingle as if in anticipation of what he would do here. So much history. So much of mankind's beliefs and struggles and hopes and deaths sown into this ground. The earth itself felt welcoming to him, felt as though it were breathing a sigh of relief that all of the pains this ground had known were finally coming to an end.

  Oblivion's reverie came to an end when he heard footsteps behind him. Two teenage boys had seen the open door and followed him inside.

  They ran in, approaching Oblivion from behind. He remained facing forward, showing them his back.

  "Hello?" one of them shouted in Hebrew. "Is it safe in here?"

  Oblivion waited until they drew near. He turned, revealing to them his granite face and burning eyes. His face was implacable, his head tilted slightly to the right as he examined them.

  The boys froze in place; one of them tried to scream but no sound emerged from his lips.

  "Safe," Oblivion replied calmly, "is no longer a reality."

  Oblivion jutted out both of his arms and grabbed their faces. A single gasp was heard before Oblivion made contact, and then the boys slumped to the ground, dead from his touch.

  Oblivion looked down upon these boys, these mere children. He felt nothing for them. He did not consider himself cruel or uncaring or vicious. He was doing what he was created to do.

  "Why don't you try that trick on me," said a voice he remembered hearing for a moment before it'd vanished.

  Oblivion turned to find Ethan Cooke standing three feet behind him.

  Ethan, fist wrapped to protect himself, slammed into him with a right hook that made hard contact with Oblivion's rocky hide. For the first time in his existence, Oblivion was surprised.

  He slid backward across the floor, his dense shoulders, arms, and feet digging grooves into the ground. It shook violently beneath him.

  Alex decided to honor Daniel's request. If Daniel was intent on finding that kid, she might as well let him. But she couldn't wait around forever.

  "Hold it," Tucker whispered, holding out a hand, and the three of them ducked low behind the fence.

  A moment later they peered over the fence as an animal crossed the driveway adjacent to the small house. At first Alex thought the creature might be a fox, but its fur was striped black and brown with scattered tufts of white and a white furry tail. Its head slinked lower than its body as its black eyes seemed to look through them, and it bared its sharp teeth, a white frothy liquid dribbling from its mouth. It passed in silence, either not noticing them or not stopping if it did. The sounds of chaos reached them from the main road, and Alex silently prayed that this thing wouldn't find the other team.

  At the sound, the animal's head darted around to look, and then it was running at great speed into the dark.

  "What was that?" Xue whispered as the three of them rose to their feet.

  "Hyena, I think," Tucker replied.

  "It was rabid," Xue observed.

  "I think all the animals are rabid," said Tucker.

  They stood carefully, watching the nearby crowds disperse as the hyena entered their midst. A few screams spread until they became many.

  "Come on," said Alex, "let's find Daniel."

  They returned to the Jaffa Road and worked their way through the crowd. The ground was unequivocally sloping downward now as they marched deeper into the heart of the great city, eyes scanning for
Daniel. The Old City loomed a mile or so ahead, electrical lights scattered inside, illuminating the boiling sky.

  Alex thought she caught a glimpse of someone who looked like Daniel and made to shout when a powerful electrical volt surged through her body and the bodies of her two companions. She seized violently, her whole body writhing as the energy poured through her system.

  The electricity stopped for a moment, and all three of them fell to the ground, limp and weak.

  Alex was on her back, and into her field of view stepped an unkempt, mousy Ringwearer she'd first met in Los Angeles the day of the riot. His name was Wilhelm, and he could exude electricity from his body at will. Grant had left him behind in Jerusalem to help with the cleanup and reconstruction when the team was forced out of the city.

  He looked down at her, his dead, expressionless features all too familiar. Alex panicked, knowing exactly what this meant.

  Game over. Oblivion knows we're here.

  The ground quaked as electricity jumped from his fingertips again, rushing through them until smoke rose from their skin.

  Daniel had wandered farther than he meant to, he realized, when he looked back and couldn't find the house with the garden where he'd left the others. The Old City loomed closer in his path ahead as well.

  An outcry of screams made him spin in place, and he saw flashing sparks of light some two hundred feet away. His view was largely blocked by all the people, many of whom were trying to get away from the source of the lights.

  Fighting the urge to panic and with Trevor still nowhere in sight, Daniel hastily made a platform out of a wrecked sedan and, standing at the top, bellowed, "TREVOR!!" as loud as he could.

  Hundreds of faces turned in his direction. Daniel hopped down from his perch and waited. He felt Trevor before he saw him. But it was mere moments after calling out the kid's name that he felt the rising nausea in his gut.

  Daniel closed his eyes and concentrated, forced himself to breathe slowly. He could very nearly sense the boy's powers emanating from somewhere nearby. He hadn't had to do anything to activate his mirroring ability with any of the others, so there was no reason to assume he would need to do anything to trigger the effect here. The one stumbling block was that the focal radius of Trevor's powers was known to be at least one hundred feet, possibly even wider. Daniel's powers required much closer proximity to work.

  He swallowed down the food rising in his throat, forcing himself not to retch.

  "Trevor ... ?" Daniel called out, not as loud this time because he was dizzy and struggling to stay upright. He put out a hand to brace himself on a tree. Eyes darting in circles, he had to find Trevor, had to get a bead on the kid if he were to have any chance ...

  Come on, kid ... Where are you?

  The vertigo became overpowering and he toppled. Daniel's head was on the ground when he turned it to his left and saw a pair of torn blue jeans standing twenty feet away.

  Trevor, dirty and exhausted, stood just out of Daniel's range, staring at him impassively.

  Fading in and out of the unconsciousness brought on by Wilhelm's electrical attack, Alex caught fleeting images of things happening around her.

  Light flashing on their surroundings as the electricity poured from Wilhelm ...

  Agonized screaming emerging from her own lips as well as her two friends ...

  No more flashes ...

  Wilhelm was on the ground, not far away ...

  He seemed to be rolling around, wrestling with someone ...

  Commotion all around as new legs and feet entered her field of view ...

  Someone was prying Wilhelm's attacker off of him ...

  Alex came to with Hector's hand upon her shoulder. She felt better instantly and stood up. A crowd had gathered around her-Tucker, Xue, Wilhelm, and the rest, all of whom appeared healthy and fine, no doubt thanks to Hector.

  They stood over a dead animal on the ground-it was the hyena they'd seen only minutes earlier. Wilhelm appeared to be in control of his faculties again, with fresh red cuts all over his arms and chest. Hector touched his hand, and the cuts stopped bleeding and vanished.

  Another earthquake asserted itself, this one enough to nearly knock most of them off their feet.

  "Somebody please tell me what just happened," Alex said, rubbing her head to try to fight the onslaught of emotions from the people watching them and refusing to move on.

  "I'm sorry" was all Wilhelm could muster. He looked even more diminutive and self-conscious than she remembered. And with good reason: He'd very nearly killed them.

  "I summoned the animal, I think," said Sergeant Tucker, staring at the hyena lying in a sickeningly twisted position on the black earth. "I remember thinking about needing help when we were being electrocuted, and then the hyena appeared and attacked the short guy as if it were following my orders. And when we hid from it earlier, I felt something odd ... I think I was sensing it. Its instincts, its intentions, its hunger."

  Alex took this in. So that answered that. Tucker could sense and bend animals to his will.

  She turned to Hector and his team. "How did you know we were in trouble?"

  "How could we not?" Nora replied. "The light display was so bright it lit up the sky."

  Alex took this in stride. "Wilhelm," she said, "you've been in this city for a while now, and I'm sure you know some of the people here. If Oblivion didn't know we were here before, he certainly knows now, which means the rest of the Ringwearers are no doubt converging on us as we speak. We need to get out of here, but we're going to have to recruit some local help if we're going to finish this."

  Wilhelm hesitated as if too ashamed to contribute to the conversation.

  "What you did wasn't your fault," Alex comforted him, placing a hand on his arm. "Believe me, I did much worse while I was under Oblivion's influence."

  "I may know some people who can help," Wilhelm replied softly without looking at her. "But we must hurry."

  Stay on the offensive, Ethan told himself, chanting it in his mind like a mantra. Stay on the offensive!

  Dropping his guard long enough to let Oblivion get a blow in would mean his death. His only chance was to keep pummeling Oblivion, blow after blow, not giving the immortal being a chance to get his bearings.

  His blood sped through his veins at dangerous speeds, and he loved every ounce of sensation. He wore thick gloves and a jumpsuit to protect himself from Oblivion's touch of death. A balaclava over his face, allowing only his eyes to peek through behind a pair of sunglasses, completed the effect.

  Ethan hammered Oblivion again, sending him flying this time until he broke a hole in the outer wall of the ancient building and blew through it. The ground shook again, and Ethan ran over the moving earth, eager to catch up with his quarry before he recovered. He vaulted through the hole, rolled, and leapt to his feet running.

  Oblivion was thirty feet away, getting to his feet already .. .

  Ethan closed in on him, but Oblivion flung up a hand before Ethan could make contact. Ethan was sent soaring in reverse by Oblivion's psychokinesis back toward the Dome, but he turned quickly in the air so that he was moving feet first. His powerful legs absorbed the impact and he immediately kicked off of the brick wall. Oblivion had no time to react as Ethan barreled into him again, tackling with the force of a battering ram. The earth quaked once again in response.

  Oblivion put his hands into the dead earth and dug in with four rocklike fingers on each hand. With deadened eyes that pierced Ethan's soul, the Angel of Death didn't move a muscle as he shot Ethan wildly into the air, aimed at the golden Dome.

  "Are you all right?" asked a frail voice.

  Daniel looked up; an elderly woman stood over him, leaning on a cane not unlike the one Daniel himself used to rely on.

  He used one hand to brace himself against the ground and extended the other to the woman above him. With great effort, he was able to get to his feet, but he couldn't lean on her; she was too feeble. The nausea intensified, and he nearly d
oubled over from the abdominal pain.

  This brought him at eye level with the old woman's cane.

  "Borrow this?" he asked, grasping the cane with his free hand.

  He threw it and it spun circles in the air. It clunked against Trevor's legs, and the boy went down.

  Swallowing a fresh taste of bile, Daniel half-ran, halfcrawled. Lurching toward Trevor, he made it just before Trevor got to his feet again. Daniel's powers finally kicked in and the queasiness immediately vanished.

  Daniel pulled a sharp piece of the Dominion Stone out of his pocket and slashed Trevor across the palm of his hand with it. The Stone made contact with the boy's blood.

  Trevor gasped, blinked, shook his head violently as if he were waking from a bad dream.

  "You all right, son?" Daniel asked, catching his breath.

  Trevor picked the cane up from the ground and returned it to the old woman. He was battered and weak, but he stood tall and looked Daniel in the eye. "Never better," he said.

  Daniel appreciated the boy's attempt at bravery through his pain, but knew that finding Hector needed to be their first order of business.

  "Come on," Daniel said, leading the way.

  "Stay back!" a voice ordered over a bullhorn as Wilhelm led Alex and the others to a reconstruction encampment. "We do not wish to shoot you, but we will if you force us!"

  A small city of tents had been erected where the cultural center of town had once been, but now was little more than black dirt with remnants of buildings piled on top. Parked between the tents was a row of military trucks and Jeeps that had seen a lot of hard use since the city's collapse. Spotlights running on portable generators shone on collapsed buildings where workers had recently been sorting through wreckage, cleaning up and trying to find bodies. Tens of thousands were still unaccounted for.

  Alex guessed that the searching had stopped when Oblivion came to town.

  She looked up; Daniel came hobbling onto the scene with Trevor in tow. He took in what was happening and wisely chose to stay back, out of the way.