“I don’t know what else to do, Enlai,” she said.
“Have you ever thought to trust me?” He asked just as gently.
“Of course, I trust you with my life but I don’t want any of you getting hurt, or worse.”
“You will die for us but we will also die for you, Rain,” he said, finally walking towards her, pulling her into his arms. “I will die for you,” he said, kissing her on the lips and she sighed into his arms.
“Don’t leave,” he said and against her better judgment she didn’t.
The next morning the house was unbearably quiet, the children absent from the kitchen table as was Belle and Mark. She knew what had happened, that in this, at least they had listened to her, they had taken the family to another safe way house without her knowledge for their own protection. She would not search for them only praying that they were safe and well protected.
It seemed the group of five now lived and breathed in the sub-basement, making plans after plans; it would have been so much easier without Rain’s twin there, for them to go and blow the labs up around the world that had any connection to the experiments, but with her there, she did not know how much power she had or her own ability to stop it.
She woke up in the middle of the night, Enlai, next to her sleep, feeling a presence in the room, she knew it meeting the shadowy form of her twin.
She was still, making sure the barricade was up around her and all those that she loved, her twin had not entered their minds.
“They never told me about you,” her twin said without speaking, in her head, just superficially. “They said I was the only one of my kind,” she stated. “What did they tell you?”
Rain shook her head. “What do you want?” She asked.
“You don’t trust me?” Her sister asked, smiling with the same lips. “I don’t blame you. I’ve searched for you for weeks, when I felt you flit across my mind. It was hard but I managed. I saw you at the conference, extracting Lebna’s thoughts, his memories. I will warn you not to do that again,” her twin said.
“What is your name?” Rain asked.
She smiled. “Snow.”
“You are my twin? Or a clone?” Rain asked.
“Twin, you were born first. Lebna did not even know about me. The government did not know I was also Lebna’s granddaughter, until he started searching for you. When Enlai and Song sent pictures of you to John, John thought it was all some great big joke. How could I be in Seattle and living, a lab rat, right there in Washington, D.C.? He tortured me for days, believing that I knew you existed out there no matter how much I denied it.”
“I don’t believe you,” Rain said. “If John tortured you then why are you working for them? You have your powers why have you not escaped? Why have you not retaliated if they had treated you like a lab rat all these years?” Rain asked.
“They are all the family I have,” Snow said gently. “I know no other family. I do not question it. It is my loyalty. John let Lebna know about me but they still wanted you, when they began the search my powers had not begun, I was so very ordinary to them. They searched for you, when you told the doctors how you read Songs mind…they talked of destroying me, simply like that, I was no longer needed to them. They had found the right twin, the twin with powers. But they didn’t know that as soon as your powers began so did mine. A light switch turned on. I could do things I had only imagined.”
“What do you want from me?” Rain said.
“To die,” Song said.
Rain grew angry; she stood out of the bed, watching her sister’s shadowy form carefully. Enlai awakened beside her as Snow turned towards him, smiling softly, evil. “I could kill him, you know, from the inside, squeeze his heart until it shattered like glass, make him go crazy…make him kill himself. So many delightful ways,” she said, laughing softly.
Rain couldn’t say exactly what happened other than a bitter rage came over her, unlike anything she had ever felt before, one moment she was in the room with Enlai, staring at her sisters evil face, the next she was rushing towards her so fast, her mind searching for her sister until she found her at the same facility that they had brought Rain to run tests, her sister in a barren, square room, her cell, Rains’ hands around her sisters throat and this time she was not a shadowy form, Rain had projected through space and time, straddling her sister in sheer anger.
“You will die!” Rain screamed, throwing her sister against the wall.
Her sister laughed, even as blood spewed out of her mouth from the force of the throw. “Will I?” She screamed, attacking Rain in return.
Rain pushed her off, punching her in the face hard, three times, red covering her vision, she projected her sister out of the facility, holding onto her, flying with her through space and time before she slammed her into a side of a building in downtown Washington, D.C., the woman was mad, laughing widely as Rain threw her from one building to the next, pummeling her, until she stopped, staring at the woman in shock.
“This was a trick,” she said, staring at the woman. “To get me out of the house,” as soon as she said those words she went back to the house, in the bedroom but Enlai was gone, there were men coming, in masks, machine guns, she knew where Enlai was, in the sub-basement.
“Enlai!” She cried as bullets began shattering the house.
She raced to the sub-basement, Enlai, Taka, Levi and Song already strapped up. “They are in the sewers,” Rain cried out, glancing to make sure everyone was safe. “She pulled me out of the house, to distract me, just enough,” Rain said. “Go, I’ll hold them off, get Taka and Levi to safety but you can’t go to the office building, they are waiting there,” she cried.
“What about you?” Enlai said.
“There is no time!” She cried, pulling on cargo pants, a jacket and boots from the emergency kits. “Just go!”
She pulled at a machine gun, stuck two other guns and knives within her waistband. “They have those bullets, the different ones, if they shoot Taka and Levi they have no chance. Protect yourself, protect them,” she said, before she raced back upstairs.
The bullets seemed to come from everywhere, she kept Enlai and the groups mind shielded from her sisters and herself, and searched through the minds of the agents that were raining bullets on top of the home nearly nonstop, her sister, Snow was covering them, but Rain’s anger, her complete emotions over rode her sisters and she began working on the agents minds one by one as she shot out a window, spraying the agents with bullets.
One was about to throw a bomb into the house, she stopped him, made him turn it on the weaponry jeep that was barreling down the cul de sac, the jeep and the men inside exploded, Snow reacted instantly, trying vainly to overtake the men, to cover them from Rain’s probing mind but Rain would not allow her.
She turned five of the men on each other, while still shooting through the window, others were coming inside the house through the roof, she heard the sound of windows being kicked in from upstairs and scrambled back to the sub-basement, making sure it was securely closed behind her as she restocked her submachine gun and headed further into the sub-basement, taking the narrow corridors underneath the city streets before feeling for Enlai, in less than ten minutes he had already flown Levi and Taka to another safe house halfway across the country, Song was meeting her in the corridor.
“You alright?” He asked. “Enlai got them to safety,” he said.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, taking a breath. “We need to get out of here, they are on top of us,” she said. “I can only hold them off so long.”
“Hold on to me,” Song said, as he pulled her to his side, wrapping one arm around his waist and he simply began running, so fast the cement corridors passed in a blur. “We are coming to the office, are they there?” He asked.
“Yes,” Rain said. “Make a left, into the sewers, from there we can reach the airport,” she said and Song nodded, breaking through a wall in the sewer as if it was mere paper, flying through the corridors on feet that
barely touched the ground.
He ran for a few minutes more, covering at least thirty miles of underground corridors before he stopped, pointing towards a ladder. “Up,” he commanded as Rain placed the gun by its strap over her shoulder and behind her back and with Song’s help pushed the street cover off, they had traveled well past the city limits, on a deserted road at the base of mountains.
“Tell Enlai to meet us here,” Song said and Rain did just that.
Enlai joined them minutes later, relief upon his face. “What the fuck happened?” He asked.
“She wanted me out the house, she knew exactly where we were. They had planned this two days ago, when I read Lebna’s mind, she had read mine. The only thing she didn’t know was where Belle and Mark were because I don’t know either. She is pure evil. Whatever was done to her there is no turning back. She is the poster child for the soldiers that they will create. No mercy, no humanity…just evil and loyalty. I have to destroy her and I have to do it now.”
Enlai nodded. “We are going to the facility, we are going to bomb it, give me the coordinates for the other facilities,” he said.
She nodded, searching throughout before giving him four other facility locations, one in Beijing, one in St. Petersburg, one in Atlanta and another one in Frankfurt.
“Done. Do it now,” Enlai said. “She must be destroyed now, Rain. If she lives the end of everything will begin.”
“I know,” she said and projected herself into her sisters presence, she was talking with Lebna, John.
Lebna and John looked shocked at Rain’s form, but Rain was too fast for them, she threw both men out the top of the twenty story building, ignoring their screams as they plummeted down, on top of her sister, keeping the woman from helping them as she attacked her voraciously, slamming her face with her fists.
Her sister fought back, battling her with her mind, her body.
“The baby, they baby, I can’t wait to experiment on the baby,” her sister chided. “My niece, she shall be perfect…the beginning of the soldiers,” Snow smiled as she punched Rain so hard Rain flew back into a wall. “That is if she survives our little argument,” Snow said, kicking Rain in the stomach.
Rain grunted, caught a hold of Snow’s foot, twisting the woman and throwing her through the wall. Her sister cried out but like Rain her wounds instantly knitted itself. They fought for what seemed like hours, through the empty building, through one floor and another, projecting their bodies through space, different cities, until Rain flung her into the side of a house and Snow was momentarily stunned, just enough for Rain to point a gun at her head as her sister smiled.
“Really, a gun, sister, dear, how do you think that little toy will hurt me?” She chided, the blood pouring back into her mouth.
“It’s a special gun,” Rain said before shooting her sister point blank in the head.
She watched her sister crumple to the ground, she stood over her, shot her three more times, and there was nothing within her that cared or that had compassion. She lifted her sister’s body and projected them through space until she was in the woods on a cliff in Alaska. It was cold, the wind blustery, her sisters was dead, she searched her body, but Snow was gone.
She covered the woman’s body with timber built a funeral pyre on top of her and stared at the wood, until it ignited in flames. She stared at the flames, the violence that she was capable of now a part of her as her sister went up in flames.
She watched the fire well into dawns light, the sun sparkling upon her and she didn’t know how many hours passed, only that she continued burning the fire for hours until night came again and then another dawn until there was nothing left of her.
When there was nothing except ash of what was once her sister she threw the ashes over the edge of the cliff, watching them fade in the glow of the sunlight, settling throughout the wind.
Rain knew Enlai was searching for her but ignored his calls. She floated down wards on to the edge of the raging river without thought walking into the distance, Enlai was searching for her, he was close, she put up a barrier so that he could not find her.
She sat upon a rock overlooking the torrential river, in the freezing temperature but she didn’t feel the cold didn’t feel anything until she felt his hand upon her shoulder.
He didn’t talk, picking her up, wrapping her in his arms as he flew for more than thirty minutes, close to the ground before stopping at a small home deep in the wilderness, she did not know where they were, did not care, as he entered the house, placing her into bed.
He left her there for a moment, while she heard him move around in the other room. He came back, picked her up again, walked through a hallway into a large bathroom where a hot shower was running. He undressed her, then himself, picked her up into the glass shower stall, sat down on the bench seat with her on top of his lap as the water poured over their bodies and held her until she finally began to cry, silent painful tears of horror at the violence that she had inflicted upon another, she had killed agents, John, Lebna…her sister.
“You didn’t call me, but our daughter did. Let me in,” Enlai said, whispering to her. “Take down the barricade and let me in,” he urged. “I can help. Take my strength, you can’t do this by yourself, take my strength,” he said, whispering against her lips.
Shaking her head she wrapped shaking arms around his neck, sobbing into his neck uncontrollably.
“Please, baby,” he whispered. “Please,” he begged her. “I am here, I want to help. Open up to me.” He said.
She did, finally when her sobs ended, her tears dried, dropping that barricade that she had put up three nights ago when she had thrown John and Lebna through the window, hearing their screams as they plummeted to their deaths.
“You did what you had to do,” he asked. “You saved millions of others, you saved innocence. You saved Belle, Mark, the children, you saved Taka and Levi. You saved me and Song. You saved us,” he said.
She brought down her walls, took her strength inside of her, his warmth, his love for her and their unborn child, his loyalty using it to renew her soul. “How many times can I ask for forgiveness before it is given?” She asked.
“Just once,” he said.
“You saved us,” he said again.
“I don’t feel as if I did.”
“Don’t question it. One day, one day soon we will have peace,” he said. “We will live anywhere you want to live, have a little white picket fence, take our daughter to school. Remember this, okay? One day soon. But for now, we have to live one day at a time. But every day it will get easier and easier. The baby has grown,” he said, caressing her growing belly. “She will arrive soon; we will stay here until her birth, okay?” He said.
Nodding, she agreed when he finally stood her up and bathed her from her head to her toes.
“Where are we?” She asked.
“Safe house,” he said.
“Were you all able to bomb the facilities?” She asked.
“Yes, they are destroyed.”
“Everyone safe?” She asked.
“Yes,” he said, smiling slightly.
“Why are you smiling?” She asked.
“Because I love you.” He said.
Her breath stopped, she stared down at the bottom of his bent head as he washed her calves, ankles, feet.
“Lift up your foot,” he demanded and she did as instructed.
“Enlai,” she said.
“You have the most beautiful skin I have ever seen. Pure silk, mocha. Doesn’t even look real.” He interrupted intent on cleaning her feet within an inch of their life before he stood. “I brought this onto you, and you will never understand how sorry I am. I wish more than anything that our first date had been, real. That we were both quite normal, that we dated for six months, made love on the third date, exchanged Christmas, birthday gifts. I wish that I introduced you to my family and me to yours. I wished that we met each other on our lunch breaks, that I told you how much I loved you over dinn
er at some fancy restaurant. That I asked you to marry me at a picnic in the spring. But it didn’t happen like that. That doesn’t take away how much I love you,” he whispered, kissing her. “Or that I want to marry you, if you will forgive me for bringing this pain to you,” he said against her lips, a deep sorrow unlike anything she had ever seen before in another human in his eyes.
He kissed her again and when she opened her eyes he backed away gently and she saw the diamond ring in his hands. “This was my mothers,” Enlai said. “It is the only thing I have of her. I don’t even have memories of her.” He said softly, sadly. “Rain, will you forgive me for the sorrow I have brought to you? There is no other in this world for me. No other I will ever want. No other for me. You are mine; I give you my life, my blood, my soul, you and our child. I love you. Will you marry me?” He asked.
The Beginning Of Rain In December Page 14
