by Thomas Green
“See you.” I hung up. The suppressed rage boiled through me. All my willpower had to be used not to roar out in frustration. This wait was killing me. But he was the fastest ticket to Evelyn, so I had to be patient.
I tied up Sora to the other three demigods and gagged and shackled Sora with the aether-blocking irons Vivian got me earlier. Afterward, I moved them all to the back lobby of Lucielle’s tower and waited.
Miller better show up on time.
Chapter 17
THE WAITING was killing me. I had long ago arranged the unconscious bodies by the far end of the back lobby of Lucielle Legal headquarters on Wall Street. I also uploaded a fake archive to my ftp server and cleaned the fresh blood off myself. My sides had stopped bleeding, but I was still slightly nauseous from the blood loss. Sora stabbed me deeper than I thought.
The lobby itself was a transit room with elevators on both sides, staircases next to the elevators and two doors at the opposite end from the entrance. The glass on the doors was matte. Since I placed the unconscious Sora and his team in the far corner, I stood waiting between the two elevators, leaning against the wall. Normal working hours started at nine, as would the Summit of the Hand of God Lucielle was hosting upstairs, so the staff would start pouring through this lobby starting at roughly seven thirty.
The cross hung heavy around my neck and Evelyn wouldn’t leave my thoughts. She was kidnapped, interrogated, and imprisoned, all because of me. I had to save her, bring her home, and then figure out a way how to atone for this. My own blindness brought this fate on her and I had to fix it, no matter what.
At seven sharp, the outside door opened and Agent Miller entered. My heart started beating like mad and icy sweat covered my back.
He wore his usual suit, arranged to perfection. He greeted me with a smile. “I see you never sleep.”
“I had to finish this first.” I said with a forced smile and motioned at the four captured demigods. “There they are. They’re all alive with aether-blocking shackles, so all that needs to be done is to take them to Tul Sar Naar.”
He stepped to me. “Looks good. Got some evidence?”
“Yeah.” I drew my phone and sent him the prepared email.
He took out his phone from his inner pocket, typed in the unlocking pin code, and looked at the screen. “That’s a big one,” he remarked.
Over two gigabytes, so he couldn’t download and check it in the moment. “Lots of pictures.”
He nodded and pocketed his phone. “Well, I’ll go take them then, thanks.”
“Think this’ll be all for now.” I smiled and offered him a handshake. “Pleasure dealing with you.”
He shook my hand, returning my smile. Even now, when I knew what he had done, how much he lied to me, he still didn’t show a hint of falseness. The perfection with which he faked everything impressed me.
My knees wobbled and I fell on him.
“Whoa, careful.” He helped me stabilize. “You need to rest.”
“Sorry,” I whispered and leaned back against the wall, seamlessly sliding the phone I nicked from him into an inner pocket of my duster. My heart was still beating like crazy, but I had enough experience not to show it.
He walked to the unconscious demigods, picked them all up and started dragging them through the lobby.
“Sorry, but I’m a bit too weak to help,” I uttered.
“No problem.” He flashed a grin. “I got this.”
I waited for him to leave through the door and then instantly drew his phone. He entered his unlocking pin code in front of me so many times I have long remembered the numbers. I instantly went to email, tapped the magnifying glass icon and entered Evelyn into the search.
Two emails.
My heart leapt to my throat. The subject of the older one said Interrogation record.
I tapped the message, opened one of the eight attachments—an mp3 file—and pressed play. Evelyn’s painful wailing sounded from the phone.
My blood froze in my veins. When her screaming stopped, she stuttered in weak voice. “I don’t know, I told you I didn’t—” and then she started to scream again.
They tortured her.
Rage and despair clashed within me. I opened the second email. For your approval said the text and attached was a pdf document.
I opened the attachment and skimmed through it. Evelyn Natheast… sentenced to execution… scheduled for Monday 8 am... in the NYC Base. Without breathing, I stared at the screen. The reply Miller sent to the email was approved.
The agent who took me said something about the possibility of me facing execution about the nightmare plague. He wasn’t exaggerating.
I glanced at the time. 7:14. Frantically I started searching through the phone for the location of their New York base. Executions were illegal in New York State, so if they were doing one, they had to have a special authorization for it and a black site facility where they could do so. After a bit of searching, I found a document.
This one the official granting of access for Chief of Supernatural Investigations, Frederick Miller. But it also contained an address in the forests behind New York.
The door opened and Agent Miller entered. He glanced at me suspiciously. Since both our phones were black, he apparently couldn’t tell which one I held. His hand still moved to the gun holstered by his side.
The door closed behind him, and he said, “Have you seen my ph—”
I clenched my thigh, drew my colt anaconda and shot. One. The bullet hit his forehead and his skull exploded.
Evelyn was right. Once I found my reason to murder, I didn’t hesitate for a split second. My only chance of saving Evelyn was to immediately head there. If Miller realized what happened and told the FBSI I was coming, my chance of success would have been zero. All it would take would be them moving her to any other facility and I would never find her.
The aether overflowing from my body stabilized and Lucifer’s presence disappeared from my mind. We merged. The next breath I took felt like the first breath I have ever taken in my life. As if my entire being forgot to breathe and only now remembered. My vision cleared to sharpness, sounds I couldn’t hear before arrived at my ears and my entire body lightened.
My wounds still hurt though.
Miller had a partner. I walked to the doors. They opened just as I stepped to them.
Attracted by the gunfire, a man in his forties stood between the wings, staring inside, gun in his hands. The black suit he wore matched Miller’s. Before he could shout, I grabbed him by the face and spun, throwing him at the wall. He pushed aether through his body to lessen the impact.
I leapt to him and shot him in the foot where his shield wasn’t yet built.
He shouted out in pain. I put the barrel of my gun into his gaping mouth, pointed up and fired. Two. His brain splattered all over the wall.
I opened the door and peeked out. Miller’s car stood in front of the building, empty. A black van was just joining the traffic, apparently containing Sora and his friends.
Not my problem.
From my backpack, I withdrew Kenji’s rollerblades. After stowing my shoes into the backpack and putting them on, I tied the strap of my hat under my jaw and I rushed toward the door. I had about half an hour until Evelyn was to be executed and Kenji’s flying spell was faster than a car could be in the morning jam.
Outside, I molded my aether the way Kenji did. The rollerblades hummed and gray mist wreathed me. I leapt up, using more of my aether to form an invisible platform of hardened air. This temporary square served as the foundation for my next step, which propelled me further into the air.
The whole process was like running up the stairs which I was making before each step. With gritted teeth, I put all my strength into the run. Seconds later, I was running up in the sky above the skyscrapers and Lucielle’s tower disappeared behind me.
Sharp wind battered my face, making my eyes tear up. I lowered the hat into my face and tilted my head not to allow the wind to hit my
eyes directly. I still had to strengthen every fiber of my being and clothes to withstand the wind. This took a lot of strength.
The FBSI base lay in Norvin Green State Forest, roughly thirty-five miles away. By the way things moved beneath me, my speed was a bit over seventy miles per hour. That gave me less than fifteen minutes after my arrival. Not much time.
I drew my phone and dialed Konrad.
He picked up fast. “Not a good time… and what’s with the noise around you?”
“No time to explain,” I shouted into the phone, amplifying my voice with aether to outpower the wind. “I need you to drive to Glade Road in Bloomingdale, now. Matter of life and death.”
I couldn’t hear his answer, so I hung up and focused on running. This was the worst plan I’ve ever made.
But I refused to let Evelyn die.
The broadleaf forest of Norvin Green State Park flowed below me. The FBSI base was hidden deep inside. I had no real plan and little strength left. While I hated to admit it, I wouldn’t have had enough aether if I haven’t merged with Lucifer.
Strange, I always thought it would change me. I was terrified of that. Now, half an hour later, I felt no different. Have I become so much like the fallen angel that his consciousness merging with mine didn’t change anything? Or have I changed without realizing?
Then again, I was kind of in love with Vivian, easily the evilest woman in the world. My core had to have more than enough darkness inside.
I spotted the base. From the distance, it looked like a standard, tree-covered hill. I didn’t slow down. Despite my aether defenses, my entire body was freezing. The cross pressed against my chest felt as if it were made of ice.
When I was approaching the base, I made out the finer features. Tall walls with watchtowers ringed the hill. Black vans and cars stood parked inside and satellites covered the higher part of the hill. I ran straight toward the top. During my run, I searched Miller’s phone for any information about the base.
From the interesting parts, the execution room was apparently next to the prison in the first underground floor. The base stationed about three hundred personnel, a third of which were agents, all of whom could use aether to some degree. I glimpsed the two combat helicopters on the helipads by the base’s side wall.
A frontal attack was out of the question. Even without my aether mostly depleted, I had no way to fight through this many aether-wielders. Sure, I killed Miller and his partner with ease, but they were unprepared. I would also catch some agents here unprepared, but then the alarm sounded, and they would form their defenses.
What I needed were the ventilation exhausts. All complexes like this had controlled airflow and not only to save on the heating costs. Given the hill being high enough to contain six floors, I guessed there were at least two separate ventilation systems with one covering the ground floor and the underground and the second one handling the rest. In case of an attack, contamination of air in the lower floors would have no negative impact on most of the building.
Like four headless snakes, four ventilation exhausts loomed among the satellites. I tried to stop my run. My legs screamed with strain and I hit the hill much faster than I thought I would.
My vision blanked upon impact and mud filled the air around me. No time to pity myself. I crawled up to my feet, ignoring the blinding pain, and stepped to one exhaust shaft.
My fingers formed the pattern Aiko used for the fire spell, I formed the correct sequence and started blowing a torrent of flames into the exhaust shaft.
Normally, the outward-heading flow of air protected this part of ventilation system from any natural fire. But the spell put force behind the torrent. I didn’t stop blowing like before, instead, I kept fuelling as much aether as I could.
Sharp ringing of an alarm echoed through the base. Good. The heat from the flame warmed up my frozen body. Fire erupted through other exhaust pipes.
I didn’t stop. The steel of the exhaust started twisting and melting. Not even a minute later, people started running out of the building, shouting and coughing. Flames burst out from multiple spots in the base. I gave it thirty seconds more and then leapt back. I didn’t bother cloaking myself and, instead, fortified my body with my strongest combat pattern.
Mid-air, I made a hardened-air tile, and kicked it to propel myself through the door. Two people were running out. I crashed through their midst, throwing them to the side. Smoke lingered beneath the ceiling and the automatic sprinklers were doing their best.
There was no way they could douse this much magical flame. I searched for the building’s evacuation plan but didn’t see one. A woman and three men people ran through the two-winged door in front of me. Two wore suits, the rest had civil clothes. The second they saw me, the men in suits reached for their guns.
I clenched my thigh, drew my colt and fired. One, two, both in the head. The other two started shrieking. I bolted forward, grabbed the woman by her shirt, pressed her against the wall and aimed the gun at her head. “Where’s the execution room?”
She was pale as death, crying, “I… can’t…”
The other man leapt at my back, putting his hands around me. He didn’t have enough aether to strengthen himself enough to move me.
I turned my wrist and fired. Three. The brain exploded out of his head and his corpse slid down from me. I turned the gun back to the woman, raising an eyebrow.
“Third door to the right… downstairs… far end,” she stuttered. I let her go and bolted through the door. A group of people were rushing toward me, screaming. I dove into the crowd, wrestling through.
These people had enough sanity to keep running to save their lives. I replaced the bullets in my guns and reached the stairs. After I slid down, a massive steel door stopped me. Apparently, the safety procedure in the case of fire turned the basement into a sealed vault.
Fuck. I gathered aether in my palm. The woman said the execution was at the far end of the floor, so I didn’t have to bother regulating how much power I put into the blast. With my aether-fuelled sight, I saw faint purple markings on the door. Given how dim they were, they didn’t have too much aether.
The blast burst from my outstretched hand. The world exploded in front of me as the whirling aether tore through the door like heaven’s drill, the room, the next door, the hallway, the wall and hundred more feet ahead.
I sprinted forward, gliding on the floor. Twelve mutilated corpses lay at the edges of the blast radius. Whatever. First, I had to save Evelyn, and only then, I would worry about the salvation of my soul and other stuff.
The steel hallways passed by me. A security door stood in front of me. Fully coated by aether, I rammed my shoulder into it. The door bent and flung from the hinges. I pushed the door in front me as I passed the next hallway.
The rooms by the sides contained agents. They all jumped to their feet when they glimpsed me, drawing weapons. I kept running and reached the end. Hallways led left and right.
The agents chased me. I clapped my hands together, formed the arcane symbol in my mind and touched the wall. My aether passed through the wall and made the ceiling collapse behind me.
Okay, left, or right? Both. I stretched out my arms, formed a globe of aether in each palm and released the spells. The explosions tore through the doors and walls. To my left was a destroyed depot. At my right lay a chamber with a glass in the wall. Behind the glass, Evelyn was strapped to a raised bed, her eyes hollow and face stained with dried tears.
A man in a white coat was putting an injection to a catheter connected to her arm.
I clenched my things, drew my colts, turned, and fired. Twelve bullets, all in the same spot. No bulletproof glass could withstand that. The window shattered and the doctor’s arm exploded in blood. The injection fell from what was left of his hand.
My left colt slid into the holster while I bolted forward, reloading the second gun with a full moon clip. The doctor fell to the ground, unconscious from the shock.
Three people sa
t in front of the shattered glass. They had to be there to watch the execution. Two more were inside, near Evelyn, and they all drew their guns.
Like I cared. One, two, three, four, five. Five corpses fell to the ground and I towered above Evelyn.
She was staring at me with wide eyes and tears flowing down her face. She wore the standard, orange prison jumpsuit and a white shirt underneath.
With a smile and the weight of the world falling from my heart, I started unstrapping her from the bed. “We need to go.”
She kept staring at me, mouth gaping. She didn’t believe this was real.
And I didn’t blame her. When I finished unstrapping her, I rose and looked around. “We need to get you some other clothes.”
Evelyn exploded into tears, grabbing me by the waist for a hug, pressing her head against my body.
I softly stroked her hair.
“I… I thought… I’d…” she couldn’t form words.
“You’re safe now.” I did my best not to burst out into tears as well. Heaven knew I wanted to. Later, I would do that when she was safe. “But we have to go.”
With a gentle shove, I detached and reached for the body of the female agent I killed. Her suit and shirt were stained in blood and brains, but her figure matched Evelyn’s. Each piece that I removed, I handed to Evelyn who started putting them on.
Her entire body shook as she kept weeping, but she managed to pull off the orange jumpsuit and dress. She put on the shoes, low black pumps, and stood up, her legs wobbly.
I stepped next to her. “Cover your ears.” I raised my hand above me and formed the rotating sphere of aether. But I couldn’t channel anymore power into it. My aether ran out, not leaving behind enough to finish the blasting spell.
Not today. I spread out my leftover aether in form of darkness-made tendrils. They wrapped around the corpses, slid on the walls, and absorbed aether from my surroundings. When I used this power to gather aether to heal Katherine, the absorption was slow. Now, I sucked out all the aether in my surroundings in seconds.
