by Darrell Pitt
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I fly low over the landscape back towards The Agency complex. I do it just as Mr Brown trained me. I stay low to keep off the radar. I come in to land near one of the bunkers, angle one of the cameras away from me and use a hard clot of air to unlock the door.
The stairwell embraces me. A few minutes later I’m making my way through the corridors of the main complex. Soon I’m crossing The Cavern. Administrative personnel and scientists are everywhere, but I’m looking for one man.
There’s no doubt in my mind most of the staff here don’t know what’s been going on. How could they? The Agency works like most secret organizations – everything is on a need to know basis only. There are a hundred projects taking place at any one time. But there are some people who know. They’ve always known what was intended for us; the experiments, the abuse, the deaths.
And one man has certainly known right from the start.
I make my way to our dorm rooms first. I hope to get the others behind me before I go on the attack, but they’re nowhere to be found. A sense of disquiet seizes me. Maybe they’re out partying. Or maybe on some impromptu training exercise.
Or maybe they’ve been ambushed like me.
When I return to The Cavern I spot Mr Jones stepping out of an elevator. His eyes widen slightly when he sees me. It’s his only giveaway, but it’s all I need. I grab him and push him back through the elevator doors. They slide shut behind us.
“You’ve known all along?” I ask him. “Haven’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re -.”
His reply is suddenly choked off.
I tell him. “It’s hard to speak without air. The vocal chords don’t work. The lungs refuse to function.”
He tries to grab me, but I use my powers to force his arms down by his side. Then I hit the emergency stop button for the elevator.
“How long can the average person survive without air?” I ask. “Someone told me the world record is seventeen minutes. How long do you think you’ll last?”
Jones looks at me in horror as he starts to suffocate. Finally he shakes his head from side to side. His eyes fill with terror.
“You want to speak?”
He nods energetically.
“Really? And you’re going to tell me the truth?”
A kind of pathetic horror comes into his eyes.
I release him and he falls gasping to the floor. His hand makes for his jacket.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warn him. “I can crush you like an ant.”
I don’t actually know if I can crush him like an ant, but it’s a good line.
He gasps. “What do you want?”
“Where is Twelve?” I ask. “Where are my friends?”
“They’re in the main lab on Level Fourteen.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I force his arms back to his sides. “Please,” he begs. “I really don’t know. I think he’s lost it. He said he needs to carry out more experiments, but -.”
“But – what?”
“He’s not a scientist,” Jones says desperately. “What could he possibly be doing?”
What could he be doing?
That’s the sixty-four million dollar question. I don’t know what you get when you combine an alien without ethics, a lab full of potent mixtures and a collection of human guinea pigs. It’s a terrifying thought. I hit the elevator button and it sinks down into the earth.
The elevator draws to a halt and the doors open. I grip Mr Jones by the arm and draw him close.
“We’re going for a little walk down the corridor,” I tell him. “If you make so much of a squeak, I’m going to tear your head off. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to lead me to this lab,” I say. “Let’s move.”
We make our way down the corridor. Two scientists pass by and give us a long glance, but say nothing. It’s Mr Jones who gets us through; he must have the clearance to get into just about every part of The Agency.
“I want you to know I was against these experiments,” he pleads. “I’ve got kids of my own. Why would I want to harm -.”
“Shut up.”
He shuts up. We reach the door of a lab and Jones takes out a swipe card. The door clicks open. We shuttle inside.
My friends – Brodie, Chad, Dan and Ebony – are lying unconscious on lab tables. I release Jones and grip Chad’s wrist. Thank God. A faint pulse. He’s still alive. My eyes scan the lab. There is equipment all around. Pieces of machinery fill every corner. Dark shadows hide benches of test tubes, beakers and gadgetry I don’t understand.
This is where we were born.
Correction.
This is where we were reborn.
The alien known as Twelve steps from the shadows.
He’s laughing. Actually laughing.
“What’s all this about?” I ask.
“Do you know how long I’ve been watching your race?” he asks. “I’ve been stuck on this insignificant little world at the back end of the galaxy for over two thousand years. I’ve watched and tried to steer you away from your animalistic natures – and you know what I’ve realized?
“I don’t want to. There’s something…alluring about humans. The way you happily kill and mutilate and torture each other. It’s strangely intoxicating.” He shakes his head. “Oh, the other Bakari don’t share my beliefs. In fact, they’re in the process of having me replaced. Can you imagine? I’m returning home after two thousand years.
“Guess what? I don’t want to go.” Twelve laughs. “I’m more human than Bakari now! I wanted Doctor Richards to turn me into the ultimate human! Can you imagine? A human who can kill and destroy with ease, tearing apart anything in his way?”
“But when I told Doctor Richards my intentions he thought me mad! He and the other scientists stole you away from here so that you would be safe! We only caught up with them again when we realized they were using Cygnus Industries – one of our safe houses – as a meeting point.
“But Typhoid was ahead of us. They wanted the secrets of The Alpha Project too.”
“You have your formula,” I tell him. “Just let me and my friends go -.”
“Don’t you understand?” Twelve screams. “We no longer have the formula. Richards destroyed it before leaving the base. The remaining batches he mixed together so that we could never replicate it again.”
His face cracks into a leer. “All the formulas. Mixed together. Do you know what that means?”
Actually, I don’t. I glance over at Jones and even he looks terrified. I’m beginning to realize that Twelve has not just exceeded his authority, but also his reason. Somewhere along the line he has crossed the fine boundary between sanity and madness.
“Did you really think we would leave such power in the hands of children?” he asks.
Twelve curls his hand into a fist and holds it out in front of him. He unravels it and stares at his palm.
He’s lost it completely, I think.
But then a tiny flame appears in the palm of his hand. It grows into a white ball of fire, hot and bright in the dimly lit laboratory. With sudden horror I begin to understand what he has done.
“You’ve drunk some of the remaining formula,” I say.
“No.” The alien begins to laugh. “I’ve drunk all of it.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
He flings the flame at me and I leap to one side. The ball of fire strikes the wall behind me. I hear Jones scream and see him race to the open door.
“Run!” Twelve thunders at him as he disappears through the doorway. “Run and tell them a God has come to Earth!”
Oh dear.
Twelve has been reading too many comic books.
He leaps over a table and cartwheels over a bench. I can’t let him touch me. If he has everyone’s combined powers then he has Ebony’s transmutation ability. He could turn me to dust in seconds.
I create a f
orce shield between us and he collides with it. He points at me and a jagged band of ice tries to reach through the shield.
Damn, he’s strong.
“They will build a statue to me!” he snarls.
I don’t care about statues. Instead, I focus on removing his air supply. Suddenly he finds out what life without oxygen is like. At the same time I leap over a table and through the exit door. While we’re fighting in the lab the others are in danger. I need to get him away from them and out into the open.
Racing down the corridor I keep a shield up behind me, but Twelve doesn’t follow. Mr Jones is already gone. I jump into an elevator and hit the button for The Cavern. There’s plenty of room up there. At least I’ll be able to maneuver -.
The elevator shudders violently. I look down at my feet. It took me some time to get used to flying. Is it possible that -.
A fist slams through the floor.
Damn!
Twelve’s enraged face appears through the jagged tear in the floor.
“You will obey me, child! You will -.”
I send a wall of wind at him that takes out the entire floor. The elevator – or what remains of it – continues to rise. I destroy its ceiling and fly past the useless cable. Down below Twelve has fallen several floors and punched a hole in one of the walls to stop his descent.
Zooming past several floors I reach ground level and force air molecules between the doors. A sound comes rushing towards me as I throw myself through the gap.
A ball of white hot fire screams up the elevator well and out of sight. I hear an explosion and screaming. The ground shudders. Sirens start sounding throughout the complex. Fire alarms come to life. I fly across a sea of machinery.
Another explosion sounds from the direction of the shaft. Landing, I look back and see an enormous piece of machinery flying through the air. It slams into a number of scientists scattering for cover.
No!
I take to the air again. I’ve got to take Twelve out as quickly as possible. He is completely out of control. Whereas I have compunctions about taking a human life, he is clearly beyond caring about such trivialities. I build up a blast force of air, but before I can hurl it at him he fires a column of ice at me and I am instantly encased within -.
- a block of ice.
Cold.
It’s so damn cold.
I am completely enclosed within a frozen coffin. Even before I hit the floor the block of ice has expanded so rapidly it has become several feet thick. It is almost worse than drowning; I am unable to move at all.
Yet, that’s not completely true. There is the tiniest space between my body and the ice. It’s not even a sixteenth of an inch, but I think it might be enough. I focus on that tiny pocket of air. I make it search out for a weakness in the ice. It finds a tiny crack near my pelvis. It breaks into that crack and expands it and like a stone cutter smashing open a rock with a single blow -.
Cracckkk!
The ice explodes into a thousand pieces. I’m just in time to see a look of astonishment on the alien’s face before I wipe away the expression with a blast of hurricane wind that knocks him flying.
A hail of bullets ring out just as Twelve regains his feet.
Damn.
Fortunately they’re aimed at Twelve. Unfortunately, they don’t make a mark. Obviously his alien makeup also gives him some sort of super tough skin. How quickly we become obsolete. While Twelve is distracted I pick up a bench and decide to use it as a club. As I bring it around to take off the alien’s head, he swings about and grabs it in mid air.
He turns it to white powder.
That’s a problem. Anything I hit him with is just going to dissolve into some chemical compound. Unless I throw so many things at him at once that he can’t focus on them all simultaneously.
Within seconds I’ve got dozens of items flying through the air at him. I see a cut open up over his left eye. Okay. I’m getting somewhere now. His invulnerability is dependent on his focus. If he is kept busy, he can’t focus on protecting himself.
A person races across the concourse towards Twelve. At first I think it’s a guard trying to attack him. Then I realize it’s Mr Evans, Twelve’s receptionist. Don’t tell me he’s going to -.
“No!” I yell. “Keep back from him!”
Through some misguided loyalty, Evans has decided to try to make Twelve see reason.
There’s nothing I can do. The aide has already reached the alien. Twelve looks up to see the man and laughs. It is the delusional cackle of a madman. The expression on Evan’s face falters.
“Get back!” I scream.
Twelve steps forward. “I want to thank you for all your years of service, Mr Evans.”
He grabs the aide and turns him to a yellow powder. Sulphur. The person that was Mr Evans splats to the floor. Now Twelve returns his attention to me.
He blasts me with another beam of fire. I only just get my shield up in time. This time the heat is so intense I can’t concentrate on staying in the air. I hit the floor and curl up into a ball as I struggle to keep my barrier in place. Twelve is directing some sort of nova blast at me, a heat so intense it’s seeping through the barrier.
I should have flown away, I think. Now it’s too late.
At that instant the blast ends. The floor all around me is scorched and burning. I expect to see Twelve advancing on me, but instead he is lying on the floor about ten feet away. He is badly burnt.
What has happened?
A voice rings out from my right.
“You take on one of us,” Chad yells. “You take on all of us!”
Chapter Forty
Chad!
I never thought I would actually be pleased to see him. The others suddenly appear from behind a pile of smoldering equipment.
“We leave you alone for five minutes…” Brodie starts.
“We need to move this fight out of here,” I interrupt.
I look past them and spy the break in the roof for the aircraft to depart. Dan is one step ahead of me. Within seconds he has reefed it apart and light is steaming into The Cavern. I build a flying ramp to take us through the gap. No sooner are we through than a bolt of ice flies past.
“He’s been doing that all day,” I tell them.
“What the hell’s going on?” Chad asks.
I give them the abridged version. “So he’s got all our powers. And then some. I’m not sure how we can put him out of commission.”
“Don’t forget we have something he doesn’t have,” Brodie points out.
“What’s that?”
“Experience,” she says. “Thanks to the last few weeks we know how to control our powers. He doesn’t. He almost blew himself up with that last blast of fire.”
Something comes flying out through the gap in the ground. We watch it soar over our heads and hit the earth about twenty feet behind us.
It’s some sort of tank.
“How much of that juice did he drink?” Dan asks.
Twelve flies through the opening and lands awkwardly on the grass before us.
“You children are finished!” he snarls.
“Hey Twelve!” Ebony calls out. “Get some new lines. You sound like you’re out of some bad comic book.”
We look at Ebony with new respect. I’m just about to make a really snappy follow up when Twelve levitates a metal bench from the cavern. He swings it around like a child swinging a toy. Just as it’s about to collide with Brodie, she leaps out of the way. Dan is not so lucky. It catches him a glancing blow and knocks him flying.
Chad drags him out of the way.
“I think my foot is broken,” he groans.
We need to co-ordinate our efforts. It’s too late to have a meeting to formulate a plan, so we need something simple. Something with which we’re already familiar. An idea comes to me in a flash.
“The island!” I yell. “The same as the island.”
Chad and Dan move away from us. Dan raises a piece of metallic debris and u
ses it as a shield while Chad fires alternating bursts of fire and ice at Twelve. I gather up Brodie and Ebony and we take up position behind the alien. So far the plan’s working. The boys have created a diversion. Now we just need to trap Twelve – permanently.
“I can get his attention,” Brodie says.
“Will I make a hole?” Ebony asks.
“Yes,” I tell her. “We just need to make him lie in it.”
Brodie grabs up a piece of debris, a thin shaft of metal that has flown off one of the pieces of equipment. She hefts it experimentally in her right arm.
“I’m ready when you are,” she says.
“Hey Twelve!” I yell.
The boys momentarily stop their bombardment. Twelve swings around as Brodie flings the makeshift javelin with all her might. It strikes the alien across the eyes. He flinches. At the same moment Ebony drops to her knees.
A hole, thirty feet across and twenty feet deep, forms under the alien. He falls into the pit. Using all my power, I somehow drag the tank – or whatever it is – into the air. It hovers over the hole.
“Chad!” I scream.
He understands instantly.
As I drop the device, Chad directs a molten blast at the metal. Whatever it is turns to molten liquid and slaps into the base of the pit. There is a single, brief scream from below us that dies into a horrible silence. We hesitantly make our way to the edge and look in.
The metal is still cooling, but at the centre of the molten liquid there is the figure of a man. He looks like some sort of heroic figure. Almost like something out of Greek mythology.
“He said there would be a statue,” I muse. “I don’t think that’s what he meant.”
Chapter Forty-One
“But you can’t just leave,” Mr Jones tries to tell us.
We have found a campervan parked in one of the underground car parks. It’s quite modern. Must be worth a fortune. Unlike the one we arrived in, this one has windows and bedding for everyone. This will be our home.
For now, anyway.
“Try and stop us,” Chad suggests.
After seeing us fight Twelve to a standstill, the idea obviously does not appeal to Mr Jones.
