The third man wore wraparound mirrored sunglasses and sported jet black hair, matching the color of his bodysuit. He grabbed a small backpack and sprinted for the stairs leading to the upper levels of the house, donning a device over his mouth and nose as he moved.
The man looked around for several items as reached the first floor, breathing clean air purified by the device worn on his face. He retrieved the gun that the Assassin had taken from Hope Stark, as well as a clip of ammunition the woman had dropped during the altercation. He grabbed a spare set of eyeglasses worn by Will Stark. He also spotted the baseball Josh Stark had thrown at the Assassin. He hesitated, then added the baseball to the collection of items in the backpack and zipped the bag closed.
He walked to the unconscious form of the Assassin, and a look of pure rage contorted the visible parts of his face. He kicked the man’s side, snarling “That’s for my wife.” He stomped on the man’s chest, and the sound of ribs breaking could be heard over the crackling flames. “That’s for my daughter.” He spied the black Labrador laying only a few paces away, and kicked the killer in the face, watching his nose shatter in a spray of blood. “And that’s for the dog.” After donning the backpack, the man with the sunglasses knelt down, picked the Assassin up, and threw him over his shoulder.
As he stood, the man noticed that the dog was still breathing. A smile curled his lips. The animal seemed to sense the attention, and her tail twitched briefly.
He sprinted down the steps to the shimmering vehicle in the basement, and kicked the rear of the vehicle. A panel opened, revealing a large storage compartment. He threw The Assassin’s unconscious form into the trunk, making no effort to prevent the man’s head from slamming against the sides of the vehicle, and kicked him roughly into the compartment until The Assassin fit into the confined space. The trunk lid slid closed silently. He tossed the backpack in the front seat and turned around, racing back toward the steps.
The brown haired man noticed the movement. “Fil, where are you going? We need to be leaving, not sightseeing. It’s too dangerous up there.”
“One more trip, Adam. Can’t leave any evidence behind.”
“Why didn’t you get it all on the first trip?”
“I had two hundred pounds of Assassin on my back. And this is a special bit of evidence.”
He ran up the steps back to the first floor, the oxygen mask back over his mouth and nose, but not before he heard the woman shout out. “Adam! He needs a shield, right now!”
“On it, Angel!” Adam replied.
Fil reached the first floor, and sprinted to the gravely wounded dog, grateful to see that she was still breathing after his brief excursion to the basement. He gently picked her up in both arms, careful to avoid any excess pressure on the badly wounded and burned animal, and walked slowly down the steps, careful to avoid making any sudden movements that might disturb her. The dog’s muzzle twitched, and a scratchy tongue reached out to the man’s face in a silent, wet expression of canine thanks.
The dirt continued pouring into the basement from the hole Angel had created as Fil returned to the lower level. A moment later, the immobile form of Will Stark emerged through the hole in the basement wall of his home, floating through the air toward the vehicle. The woman named Angel moved her hand, and suddenly the dirt began moving into the hole in the wall, filling it back up.
Fil sat down on the front seat, still holding the wounded dog, as Will was gently deposited in the back seat. He turned to face Angel, who sat in the back, her arms protectively shielding the battered man. A tear streamed down her face. “I wish we’d protected him sooner,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
“If we’d protected him sooner, the Hunters would have been alerted to our presence,” Fil replied. “It was his unfortunate role to play in his own rescue.”
Will, barely conscious, saw the dog lying on the lap of a young man wearing what looked like sunglasses. “Smokey,” he whispered, barely retaining consciousness. “You saved Smokey. Thank you.”
The dark-haired man merely nodded at him.
“My wife, my son...did you save them, too?”
The young man shook his head. “They were already gone.”
Will wept, his burned face remaining dry. His body had lost all of its moisture, and he could no longer produce tears.
The dark-haired man turned toward the young woman. “Angel, he needs deep sleep, but he needs to remember this when he wakes up.”
She nodded. “Got it, Fil.” She reached in a bag near her feet, studied the contents, and removed a small vial of fluid. She looked at Will. “This will help you sleep, but you’ll need to swallow it for it to work.” Will nodded, opening his mouth, happy to be relieved of the pain for even a short time. He swallowed the fluid poured into his mouth, grateful for the promised sleep.
He would have swallowed it faster if she’d told him it was poison.
Fil looked at the man next to him. “We need to leave, Adam. Now. They’ll figure out where we are soon enough.”
Adam nodded, and as Will’s eyesight faded into a deep sleep, a cover formed over the top of the vehicle, blocking out everything outside. The last thing he remembered seeing was the woman’s right hand, raised to indicate something to the men. He was only vaguely away of a golden tattoo on her palm, a tattoo with three intertwined dashed circles.
The incendiary device Adam had planted outside on the ceiling was started using a remote inside the vehicle. The readout showed five minutes, and started counting down.
Porthos looked around, trying to make sense of Stark vanishing. “It’s the Alliance. It has to be them. Why can’t I sense where they are? That... that... that vacuuming Stark into the ground trick, that was not minor Energy usage.” He was frustrated, effectively rendered blind to a target he knew was out there.
“I don’t know how they did that, but the fact that they pulled him into the ground suggests he must be nearby,” Athos said, glancing around. “Perhaps they’re in a secret chamber nearby? Or another house in the area?”
The Leader turned and looked at the burning building. “Or perhaps it was a means of getting him back into his own house?”
Athos started sprinting toward the building, followed closely by Porthos. “The basement!” Porthos said, catching on. “They’re pulling him into the basement!” Aramis ran as well, and the Hunters vanished into the flames and smoke of what remained of the Starks’ house.
The Leader walked closer to the house, but did not go in. He would leave the heat, smoke, and discomfort to his Hunters. He saw a scrap of paper on the ground, picked it up, and gasped in shock. He hid the paper in a pocket, fighting to control his emotions. The revelation from the paper, and its implications, would need to wait until later for processing.
Athos entered the burning house, stunned at the intense heat and low oxygen levels he encountered. The basement suggestion from Porthos was sound; it would put Stark in the nearest structure to his departure point, and in the spot best protected from the flames. Upon spotting the steps, he sprinted to them and raced to the bottom, with Porthos close behind.
Athos looked around for some sign of Stark or members of the Alliance, suddenly aware that he’d be quite vulnerable to an attack right now. He looked around and then spotted something entirely different: a huge hole in the wall nearest to where they’d been standing outside. What truly caught his attention, though, was the dirt. The hole in the wall was strange enough, but at least it would explain dirt in a pile on the ground nearby. But in this case, the dirt was flowing back into the hole. Athos stared. How was that possible?
Porthos reached him, his jaw agape at the sight of the dirt. “If we’re right, Stark came in through that hole. The question is, now that they’re filling it back up...where is Stark?”
Aramis reached them, likewise puzzled by the sight of the moving dirt. “No ambush by the Alliance down here then?”
Athos shook his head. “No. They’re gone, if they were ever here. St
ark has escaped again. We need to get to the Leader and leave before the human police and firefighters spot us here. We’re in danger of exposure here.”
The men paused for a moment, trying to determine if there was anything else to be done here. Then Athos noticed a strange noise. “What’s that sound?”
The Hunters whirled around, searching for the faint beeping sound. Porthos found it. “It looks like a clock.”
“What’s a clock doing on the ceiling?” Aramis asked. “And why is it counting down from ten seconds?”
Athos sucked in a breath of air. “That’s not a clock. That’s a bomb!”
The three men teleported the short distance to the backyard, no longer concerned that the Energy usage would alert the Alliance to their presence.
The incendiary bomb detonated, exacerbating and reactivating The Assassin’s accelerant. The remaining flames burned with renewed and increased vigor, and only moments later the spot in the basement where the Hunters had stood was covered in ash and dust, the only remains left of the entire Stark home.
Michael Baker had heard the explosion and had seen the flames. He shook his head. Will Stark had been a fool to run to his house after that killer. Now he was probably dead — given the timing of his entry into the neighborhood and the explosion — along with his wife and son. He couldn’t imagine any of them had made it.
When the fire trucks arrived, everything was chaos at the entry to the De Gray Estates. Crime scene investigators had photographed the Guard Tower and Guard Station from every angle, the shards of glass on the entry driveway, and the two dead bodies, and were diligently looking for any type of clue as to the identity of the killer. A fingerprint, a lock of hair, a strand of clothing. They’d finally released the bodies of the two guards to the coroner. When the fire trucks arrived they’d needed to wait to sweep the glass, and then realized that they needed a guard to open the gate, due to the biometric security features. They waited nearly twenty minutes until the man had arrived, pale and understandably jittery at the scene of chaos and word of his colleagues’ deaths. The off-duty guard had seen the flames in the distance as well, and shook his head. “We lost good people today, didn’t we?” Baker could only nod.
He rode behind the fire equipment in his cruiser, in no hurry to arrive at the home of a man he considered to be a good friend. Will and Hope were friends to many and friendly to everyone, their generosity and kindness legendary in the domed city and surrounding communities. He didn’t want to rush to the house as he knew there was nothing he could do to help them now, and he had no great desire to locate their bodies...and he most certainly did not want to find the body of their six-year-old son, a boy the same age as his own son. The confirmation of their deaths would have a devastating effect not just on this isolated community or the domed city nearby, but the entire country as well. Will Stark was the symbol of the slowly emerging economic recovery. His death was not an omen they needed.
He rounded the final bend and pulled up at what remained of the Stark home. It was a scene of complete destruction. Nothing remained standing or intact except for the concrete foundation walls and floor. Every wall, every piece of furniture, every personal belonging — and likely, every person — had been reduced to dust and ash. The only good news was that the fire had been confined to the house, and therefore they’d avoided the chaos of a forest fire inside the massive walls of the community.
Baker shook his head, still too much in shock after the events of this day. Investigative teams would secure the area, but it was too dark to see anything, even if they could bring in portable lights. Clearly, there was nothing left to see. They’d all be back out here tomorrow morning, and he’d be here with them, trying to figure out what had happened.
He walked to the fire chief, who was staring at the destruction in disbelief. “Any chance of survivors?” He knew it was a ridiculous question, but felt he needed to ask.
The chief shook his head. “None, Michael. Not unless they got out before the fire started. We’ll be lucky to recover any remains, let alone find survivors. If the explosion and flames happened as you described them...anybody inside would have been dead almost instantly, either from the blast or the heat. Given the destruction I’m seeing, this is clearly arson, and the arsonist used some type of chemical that made those flames spread rapidly, and at an incredibly high temperature. I’m guessing the explosion meant that it happened faster than he expected.”
“Meaning...?”
“Meaning that our arsonist probably turned to ashes in there as well.”
Baker nodded, and his expression was grim. That meant they’d never get the true answers as to why all of this had happened, why at least six people had died in this neighborhood today, counting the two security guards at the entry to the community, and the killer arsonist.
He shook his head at the tragedy of it all. “Call me if they find anything tonight,” he told the chief and the lead crime scene investigator, without really meaning it. He climbed into his cruiser and headed back to the station, wishing he could go home to his wife and son instead, and hug them just a little tighter than usual.
VII
Debrief
The Aliomenti Hunters and Leader watched the police cruiser leave the human community where Will Stark’s home had once been. They were safely hidden in the trees opposite the entrance to that community, having exited without being seen by any humans, emergency personnel or otherwise. Like many advanced Aliomenti, they possessed many incredible skills, including short-range teleportation. Those skills enhanced their ability to exist in the human world without being discovered.
Athos wondered, in hindsight, if they should have used teleportation to enter the neighborhood. Having The Assassin kill the guards as planned did have a number of benefits, the most important being that they’d used no Energy getting inside, and that meant Will Stark would have no idea where they were or if they were even involved. Since neither guard had been able to alert anyone to their presence, they’d significantly reduced the chance that anyone would see them. The fact that Stark’s own security prevented the human authorities from entering the community to come to his aid — and potentially seeing them — was deliciously ironic. Stark had seemed truly stunned by the fire. Somehow, though, he’d contacted his Alliance friends and gotten his memory erased, and everybody had gotten away. Again.
He sighed, considering the nature of the plan as the Hunters and Leader walked back to the hotel suite they shared. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, as flawless as a plan could be against a powerful, resourceful criminal like Will Stark. But the Leader would undoubtedly blame him for the failure, citing poor planning, or poor execution of the plan. Stark wasn’t in custody, and thus the Hunt had failed.
The four men arrived at the outskirts of the hotel on foot, staying in the shadows, and then teleported into the suite. They couldn’t travel far with teleportation. Teleportation was an Energy-intensive skill, with demands increasing exponentially as the travel distance grew. That was, in fact, another of the reasons he elected not to use teleportation to get into the neighborhood. The Hunters needed to be fully charged to deal with Stark. He hadn’t wanted to use it to get back out of the neighborhood, either. They had a small transport craft, capable of near-invisibility, waiting outside the fortress; once they’d subdued Stark, Athos had planned to summon the robotic craft to fly them all out, and they would board a private airplane back to Headquarters. The eventual use of teleportation was forced by circumstance; the sirens of the fire engines and police cars were getting too close, and they couldn’t risk being spotted.
Athos spoke immediately. “Sir, I just wanted to say—”
“Silence,” The Leader said, his face drawn. “I was there, Athos. The plan was sound. It was executed correctly. The Alliance clearly has some power unknown to us, and that is what they used to remove him from our clutches.”
Athos was relieved. “Sir, I...thank you.”
The Leader ignored him. �
��If you had told me the tale and I’d not been there, I’d likely have had you imprisoned for lying. But I saw it with my own eyes. We must deal with the reality of what this encounter with Stark means for our future.”
The Hunters were tense, concerned about where The Leader might go with this.
“My first question is this: where is The Assassin?”
Porthos blinked. “He hasn’t contacted you?”
“Clearly not, since I asked,” the Leader replied, his tone one of scathing exasperation. “I am wondering if any of you saw him in Stark’s house when you entered.”
Athos opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. He hadn’t thought to look. “I saw no one in the house. That’s concerning. We should have seen the bodies of the woman...and the alleged child. The fire was more intense on the exterior walls than on the inside; it was difficult to breathe, but it wasn’t so hot that the bodies of the two humans would be burned to ashes.”
“How much of the house did you search?”
“We were focused on looking for Stark on the way in, sir, and we teleported out before the fire bomb went off. We saw a large portion of the first floor and the entire lower level. There was no sign of anyone in the portions of the home we viewed.”
“I was a bit slower to the lower level, where we’d surmised Stark had been taken,” Aramis added. “As Athos said, there was no sign of any human or Aliomenti in the house. So the only possibility is that they were upstairs...”
“...or that The Assassin failed to kill them,” the Leader finished. At the looks of incredulity on the faces of the Hunters, he continued. “I think we have to consider the possibility that an Alliance that could save Stark, in the manner we saw, would certainly be capable of saving his wife and child as well. If that is the case, The Assassin fled, or he was captured as well. This is a disturbing development.”
Athos frowned. “They couldn’t have gotten to the house that quickly. And the hole that Stark used to enter the house—“
A Question of Will Page 7
