by David Beers
“FIND HER!”
Perhaps it was that leadership which led to this, though, and so his taking credit wasn’t a lie. Without his directive, none of this would have happened.
One of his subordinates—Wen didn’t know who—had looked at the roads connecting the Sesam house to their family up north. Apparently, the subordinate thought a bit more out of the box than Wen, and asked what would happen if the family veered from the intended course.
From there, he’d sent out pictures to every motel he came across. All three were included—the father, the woman, and the Acolyte.
A hit came back.
On the father. He’d checked into this shitty motel, probably coming to the conclusion that his extended family was being watched.
None of it mattered to Wen, though. The reasons why. Who did it. (The credit would matter later, but not at the moment.) Right now, all he cared about was relieving the pressure building on him, and to do that, he needed to capture the damned girl down there.
His men would be arriving soon. Fifty, all armed, yet with strict instructions that no harm befall her. They would die before the girl, Wen had told them, and he meant it. The Pope wanted her alive, and that’s exactly what he was going to get. The Most Holy Father.
Wen realized his hands had formed fists and his chest was breathing in much too deeply. He relaxed his hands, trying to regain some composure.
“How much longer?” he asked the pilot.
“Tracking shows them arriving in five minutes.”
Nicki’s reality was different than anyone else’s.
To her, reality no longer existed as the physical world she had always occupied. For a little while—a very brief time—her reality had been separated between visions and the physical world. No longer.
The physical world was now her visions, and her visions the physical world.
Sometimes she saw her father and other times she saw the stranger who tried to kill her in her bed. Sometimes she saw neither, but rather the dark man with the gray eyes.
More people were coming into her reality now, growing more numerous by the moment.
Most of the time, Nicki didn’t know where she was at; the world moved too quickly around her. A motel room. A study of some sort. A flying machine—she thought they were called transports. At one point, she thought she saw hundreds of them all at once, though that had been quick and she wasn’t completely sure.
What Nicki did know with certainty was that people were coming for her.
A lot of them.
She saw the man in the car, had actually sat next to him. He’d been talking to someone, though she didn’t know how because he said nothing aloud. Some of his thoughts came to her, and she knew he was scared. Sad, too. Nicki thought the person he spoke with was sad as well.
He was coming for her now. She watched as he stepped from his car.
Someone flew above her, too. Nicki saw him, a chubby man who wore a Priest’s collar. She supposed he was a Priest, technically, but from what she felt—he held none of the love Nicki once associated with the Church. He wasn’t as bad as the man who tried to kill her, though. The chubby Priest was also scared, but Nicki thought for different reasons than the person in the car.
The more she saw, the more confusing reality grew. Because it wasn’t just seeing anymore, it was feeling. Emotions came to her that weren’t hers, things she shouldn’t know. It felt like mixing different paint colors, creating something that shouldn’t be, something that wasn’t any color at all.
She needed to keep these people separate from herself.
Her father. She saw his face again.
He was petrified, and had been holding her for … but Nicki didn’t know long. She didn’t even remember he was holding her until she was brought back to the room. That’s what it felt like—being carried to and fro.
Nicki needed to get to her father, but she couldn’t stop the constant movement. She had to tell him what was coming, to give him some warning. People would be here soon, and she thought they wanted her alive, but anyone else? They would all die.
Her father was going to die.
She had spoken to him before, but that felt like a long, long time ago. And it hadn’t been speaking. She’d been hysterical and screaming, unable to come to grips with everything around her. She thought, though, if she could somehow pull herself back now, she could talk to him calmly. She could tell him he had to leave, to get out of here as fast as possible, because if not, he was dead.
Nicki focused on his face.
She focused on how much she loved him and how much they had been through together.
She focused harder than she ever had in her life.
Nicki opened her eyes and he was there, above her as she lay in his lap.
“Dad,” Nicki said.
“Honey, shh. Don’t talk. Shh,” he said, obviously thinking her still hysterical.
She wasn’t, though. She was calm.
“Dad, you need to get out of here. Right now. Or they’re going to kill you.”
Rhett stood in front of the room. He held the gun David had given him, feeling its weight in his hand. It was too heavy, just like everything else in this place. He hated it, all of it, and this woman inside the room made him hate it all the more.
She’d made him come here. She’d made him carry this gun.
She was trying to take everything from him. Everything.
His anger grew and Rhett let it come, because he needed it. Because everything running through his mind was true. This woman was trying to destroy both him and what he’d dedicated his life to.
“Everything,” he whispered, sounding slightly insane. “She’s trying to take everything.”
Rhett gritted his teeth, his jaw flexing hard, and he walked forward.
He didn’t wait at the door. No knocking.
Rhett kicked the fucking thing in.
“What is that? What is that?” Wen asked. He was looking through the transport’s floor, it magnifying the ground beneath him to some nth degree.
Someone had just walked up to Sesam’s motel room and kicked the door in.
“I don’t know, Father,” the pilot said.
“HOW LONG?”
“Three minutes.”
Wood burst from the door, splinters flying across the room as it nearly slammed off its hinges, banging into the wall.
Daniel instinctively grabbed Nicki tighter, pulling her to him.
A man stepped through the doorway, holding a gun in his hand. It was pointed directly at Nicki’s head.
Not Daniel’s. Nicki’s.
He stood still for a second, Daniel able to look him over. Younger than himself though older than Nicki. Short hair. His clothes weren’t from the Old World, though Daniel didn’t know what Ministry he claimed. All of this happened in less than a second, and then Daniel’s mind went to his own gun—the one the psycho in the corner had brought. It was next to the television, but he couldn’t get to it.
The man’s face was full of rage, his lips nearly snarling. His left hand shook, the one not holding the pistol.
“GET UP!” he shouted. “GET THE FUCK UP!”
Daniel didn’t move.
“DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME? I SAID GET OFF THE BED!”
“Dad,” Nicki whispered. “You need to leave.”
She sounded … crazy, like the visions had stripped her of her sanity. She’d gone from screaming with no one in the room, to whispering as a man pointed a gun not 10 feet from her.
Daniel ignored her. “Okay. Okay. We’ll get up.”
The man with the gun seemed to be realizing what he’d done—broken into a motel room. He looked at the door on his right for a second, then did his best to shut it, though it wouldn’t completely close. Daniel was helping Nicki off the bed, moving against the wall at the back of the room. He stood in front of her and looked at the man.
“Dad, you’ve got to go. You’ve got to go now.”
Her voice was sounding more and
more urgent, as if he could simply walk out of the room and that would make everything okay.
“What do you want?” Daniel asked.
“Her,” the man said, his voice slightly calmer. “Send her over here. To me.”
“I can’t do that,” Daniel said. “Tell me anything else, but not that.”
The man cocked his head slightly and his eyes narrowed. He was thinking. Determining how serious Daniel was and probably what he needed to do to get Nicki.
“Give her to me,” the man said, and moved forward, halving the distance between them. “Or I’ll kill you.”
Daniel swallowed and shook his head. His hands weren’t shaking. His body was still. He felt no panic at the near certainty of his death. His only worry was that if he did die, his daughter would be here alone—now with two men who wanted her dead.
Noises outside the room broke through the stalemate. Daniel’s eyes glanced up to the window, and the man with the gun hesitated.
Multiple vehicles pulling into the parking lot, screeching as their tires skidded across the asphalt.
“Who is that?” the man asked.
“It’s too late, Dad,” Nicki said. “It’s too late now.”
“Those would be my friends,” the skinny man on the floor said.
Daniel heard all the voices, paying very little attention to any of them. All that mattered was keeping Nicki safe.
Car doors slammed and Daniel’s heart beat harder, hammering against his chest.
The man with the gun half turned, pointing the barrel toward the door
These people didn’t care at all about being quiet and Daniel thought the psycho on the floor was telling the truth. The Church was here. Daniel hadn’t been able to escape them, not for more than a few days.
“Come on,” he said, pulling Nicki into the back bathroom. They would try for the window. He’d be damned if he was going to sit here and simply watch them come.
“No,” she said.
Daniel didn’t turn around, didn’t bother looking at the man with the gun, just moved Nicki in front of him so that it was his back they would see instead of her.
“No, Dad,” she said, putting her arms on his and forcing him to stop pushing her.
He looked into her face.
“There’s nowhere to go. They’ll find us.”
“Hush, Nicki. We’ve got to try,” he said, finding her calm frightening as his pulse continued climbing higher.
Daniel was about to move again when he heard the door slam open. Shots were fired behind him, multiple, though he felt no pain in his own body. He looked down at his daughter and she was staring back up at him.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
Nicki slipped out of his grasp as if she were water, unable to be held at all. She stepped around him with the grace of the beautiful, and faced those coming for her.
Daniel turned, following her with his eyes.
“GET ON THE GROUND!” someone shouted. They wore helmets, hiding their faces, and black armor across their bodies. One lay on the ground. The first man who had entered lay on the floor, blood leaking from him.
“NOW!” someone else shouted.
Nicki walked forward and Daniel felt lost. He didn’t know what to do as he watched his daughter leave what little protection he could give her.
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice a stark juxtaposition from those screaming at her. She kneeled, her hands held high. “We’ll go. Just don’t hurt my Dad. Don’t hurt him.”
The men rushed forward and Daniel’s paralysis broke. He moved, going to his daughter’s side and swinging at the first man he saw. His hand collided with the headgear, his body still propelling forward, trying to tackle the person.
His movement stopped as something blasted into his shoulder. Daniel saw himself flying backwards in the air—though it didn’t make sense, as he’d been going forward. He slammed into the bathroom mirror, cracking the glass and hitting his head hard on the wall.
Three men were on him at once.
Daniel tried to get up, needing to get to his feet and protect his daughter.
He saw, briefly, someone swing a black stick at his face. The pain crowded out any thought of movement, and then darkness crowded out even the pain.
Nicki felt their hands grabbing her. Roughly. They didn’t care if they hurt her.
No, that’s not true, she thought. They know they can’t hurt you.
Something else she understood, even though she shouldn’t.
They twisted her arms behind her back, two other men approaching from the front. It was okay. It would all be okay. She didn’t know if she believed that, but she knew if she didn’t go along with these men, then her father was going to die. That she couldn’t abide. So it was okay. It would be okay if she went with them.
One of the people in front of her held a black, cloth bag. They lifted it up, clearly intent on putting it over her head.
She heard something behind her, a moment later realizing it was her father.
Moving.
Coming to attack.
She tried to turn her head, to tell him no, that there wasn’t anything he could do.
Nicki didn’t have time. She watched as he threw a punch, desperately wanting to tell him to stop. No words left her mouth, though.
A blast wave hit him in the chest, fired from some weapon that Nicki couldn’t begin to understand. His shirt and the flesh beneath rippled. Daniel lifted into the air and flew backwards, the fear in Nicki finally jumping forward. She’d been calm. She’d seen all of this happening, these men coming and them wanting to take her.
She had stayed calm because she thought by doing so, she might save her father.
He smashed into a mirror, glass shattering and shards falling to the sink beneath.
Nicki watched as her father seemed to hang there for a second, gravity not yet taking complete control. He fell to the sink beneath, then slumped to the floor.
More men rushed into the room, heading toward him. Nicki didn’t know what they would do, only that she had to stop it. She couldn’t let these people hurt him—regardless what else happened, he had to be safe.
Nicki stood, hardly realizing she was doing it.
Someone screamed at her. Nicki heard the anger in their voice, but not the actual words. She turned around, her hands still pinned behind her back. Another scream, this one closer, but all Nicki saw was her father briefly trying to get up. Someone stood above him, black helmet hiding their face, black club in their hand.
They brought it down on top of her father’s head, and a crack echoed out into the room.
She watched blood spurt out of her father’s face, covering his skin and shirt.
Something rose inside Nicki then, and it wasn’t anything she understood or even liked. It came forth unbidden, driven by the terror at her father’s blood pouring from his body. It rose in her chest, and she felt it physically, as if something was filling her up—moving aside organs as it took over.
Pressure built in a matter of seconds, a pressure too great to be contained, not by the people with their helmets and carrying their black bags. Not by guns or other weapons.
Not by Nicki herself.
Father Wen Nitson had the best view for what came next. Those in the motel room would have only seen a brief flash, and then the expansion would have grown far too quickly for them to focus on anything.
Nitson was up high enough that he could watch everything as it happened He’d seen his soldiers run into the room. He’d heard gunshots—the transport amplifying the sounds. He couldn’t see inside the room and for a few moments stared down with his heart lodged roughly inside his throat. If those idiots hurt the girl, he would kill every one of them before he ever stepped foot in the Pope’s office.
Nitson didn’t have to wait long, though.
Light?
It was a curious thought, but the only one his mind could come up with. He wasn’t sure if it actually described what he saw, but … he sim
ply had no other words.
The light shot out of the door, though it wasn’t like any color the Cardinal had ever seen before. It was gray, with the tiny pieces inside its path constantly flickering in and out of existence. The light shot straight from the door, not spreading up or out, but continuing in a straight line—the same shape as the doorway, a rectangle.
The Priest tried to follow it to its end, but it pushed forward further than his eyes could see. It didn’t stop like usual light, either, but flowed through whatever was in its way. Not around it, but through it, as if solid objects were nothing but glass.
Nitson looked back to the motel room, panic gripping him. He heard nothing else from beneath—and what he would have given to hear even gunshots. There were men still standing outside the room, but they stared at the light too. Their guns were raised and they didn’t appear too keen on rushing in anymore, but were slowly walking toward the door, careful not to step inside the gray light shooting from it.
“Go in, you motherfuckers,” Nitson said between clenched teeth, using a word he hadn’t in more than two decades. “Go the fuck in.”
Those men had very little time left on Earth, though Nitson couldn’t have known.
He saw the light moving up through the roof next, the gray flicker flooding it. Nitson knew that wasn’t possible, yet, that’s what he witnessed beneath him.
The light was nearly overflowing the room, looking ready to escape, when the roof actually bulged. It moved upward as if some giant’s hand tried punching through the ceiling. The room’s glass window burst out onto the parking lot, spraying a soldier standing next to it.
The roof sagged back down to its normal state, broken shingles rolling down its side.
Another bulge, this one larger. Wood broke through and shingles flew into the air.
It sagged back down again, this time falling partly inside the room beneath, though Nitson still couldn’t see inside.
“What is this?” he whispered. There was no longer any anger in his voice. He felt only cold fear. Something much deeper and more profound than what he’d felt about the Pope. Because what he saw now could snatch his life away in a heartbeat.
