In the moment Nicole reacts before I do, taking the gloves off Carmichael's corpse, she waves her hand in the same way he had and the room returns to normal,
"Great job, Nicole."
I turn my strength on and I scoop up Marc then run for the door which skitters open, he looks pale, so pale it's scaring the hell out of me, but his chest keeps heaving ever so slightly, his arm is in gnarly tatters, and he has a gash on side slick with blood, oh man this is bad. Nicole is running beside me sobbing, I'm close to tears myself.
"He's okay," I reassure her, "We just gotta get him to Tony, he'll fix him right up.
To be honest I'm in pain too, I can feel my face is a mess, the broken ribs scream in pain even with my strength on, thank goodness Nicole hadn't been hurt, I glance down at the charred hole in her clothing left by the blast she took in the dragon form from Carmichael, the dragon skin looks like it absorbed the hit for her, I'm glad she's okay. Marc on the other hand, arm aside he is in bad shape.
As soon as we burst outside Nicole gets coordinates to our new hide out from Janice. She turns into her dragon form and I jump on with Marc to keep him from falling off, with us both on she flies through the air at a blistering speed, each wing propelling us faster, the trip is long enough that I start to feel myself wanting to fall asleep.
It feels like it took about an hour to get there, by the time she drops in low, into a thicket of trees, I jump off as soon as she lands and Nicole returns to normal little girl form As we approach our new place, I wonder what it looks like, it's less extravagant than the last digs, from what I can tell were might be out in the middle of the North West farmlands of, in and our new place is an old farmhouse.
The door swings open as we approach the door, Janice gasps when she sees Marc, as do the others.
"This way, quick." Toni says leading the way.
He pulls a chair and sits right next to the bed, readying to use his healing touch power as soon as I set Marc down on the bed.
"Look I know it's the only power amongst us that has a blow back, and right now you're a ten year old in a fifteen—" before I finish speaking Tony lays his healing touch on Marc, who jerks slightly as his bones mend and wounds heal.
He reaches and touches me before I say anything, only he doesn't age.
"How?"
"I don't know, I guess when it really matters there's no consequence."
"Thank you," I say looking at Marc who has colour returning to his face.
"What happened out there, Terry?"
Where do I even start? I mean yeah the beginning is a good place to start but where in the beginning.
"Come on, everyone needs to hear this." I say standing.
It's the first time I'm getting to see them, I think it's the first time it's really hitting. Carla, Toni, Nicole, Janice, Marc in the other room, myself. It's only really hitting that Winter wasn't with us anymore. At this moment there is no plan or immediate payback, the most immediate was Carmichael and he was dead. Right now all that's hitting is the pain of losing a friend, and it being entirely on me. It doesn't occur to me how long I've been standing there until Carla wraps a hug around me, shaking with sobs, only then do I also realise tears are falling from my eyes
"I'm sorry." I croak with a cracking voice. Gently releasing Carla's embrace, and walking to stand in the center of the room.
"It's my fault, now everything we worked for has been sullied," I swallow hard as a tear rolls, "And we lost winter… I couldn't stop him, I couldn't see it coming."
"Terry–" I cut Janice off with a hand before she could finish.
"Carmichael is dead." I announce.
I look around at the reactions, Nicole seems haunted by it still, naturally. Carla seems satisfied but there seems to be some kind of question there, like she's trying to see if I still have my soul. Toni is shocked. And Janice somehow looks disappointed and that reaction is the one that affects me.
After a few seconds of silence I explain everything that happened, and everything that Carmichael said to us in that room. I see them process everything in time as I speak, they give every necessary reaction possible, the others commend Nicole on her contribution to the ending of the fight against Carmichael.
"The next event is coming, in less than two weeks and who knows what that one brings, yeah we know Marlea is an alien scientist and we're pet project, but we still don't know why." I finish.
"And you killed the only person that could give us answers." Janice says quietly.
"What'd you have done?" Marc's voice cuts across the room like a knife.
Janice is quiet a moment but only because she didn't expect Marc to be up as soon as did, none of us did.
"I would have gotten what we agreed to get first, isn't that the entire reason why we split into two teams in the first place. We did our part, O.R is waiting even though it's for nothing now." Janice says
"That… Our friend died, we were allowed to be angry." Marc says stepping into the room
"Angry, yes, but not stupid." Janice says
Matters are getting heated quickly, Carla steps in before I need to.
"I think what Janice is trying to say is, no one expected what happened but without information we're dead in the water. We don't know what's coming, why it's coming or anything else." Carla says, I see Marc calm a little but he and Janice still shoot each other angry glares.
"There's a lot of emotion right now," I say speaking with an idea of what I wanna say, "but isn't this the sort of thing the bad guys do in a movie, make the the good guys fight amongst each other and doubt themselves. You're right Janice, we should gotten some more info, but you weren't there. When Carmichael and Lecob dumped Winter's body at my feet like nothing at my feet. He deserved it. I don't know what's next, and yeah maybe they got us with a checkmate tonight and we lost support, I'm still willing to fight. But right now, I'm tired, I think we all are, I'm going to sleep."
With that, without really wanting to wait for anyone else to say anything and feeling my exhaustion wash over me all at once, I walk into the first empty room with a bed I find and crash into it.
None of the movies, comic books of videogames ever really get into what it feels like to be where I am, it's always somehow fixed after the villain who did something terrible, in this case killed Winter, is dead and Carmichael is dead but I don't feel better, I guess maybe Lecob was right about me not having the stomach for actual killing with intent because I keep seeing his face.
Something he said is stuck in my brain though, something I can't figure out, the second time when Nicole had told he was speaking in riddles, 'you gotta start somewhere with knowing something'. The more the thought cycles through my head, the more I wonder if it was nonsense or if there is some element of sense in there. Start.
Stay with me a moment here, what if that's the key word, for me all of this didn't technically 'start' until I met Marlea, and that was outside the computer class at my school, pretty sure there is windows reference in there too but I need to tell the others.
I stand taking a single step toward the door, then stop, this is pretty vague and feels a little like I'm grasping at straws. So I take the window instead, and then gently lift off and out, increasing pace once I reckon I'm far enough that none of them will hear anything.
The flight is quiet, but I'm also more alert this time around. That encounter with Lecob taught me that just because I'm in the air doesn't mean I'm safe, for all I know I could be shot down. Not that I'm inviting that kind of karma or anything…. Great, now I'm gonna over think getting shot down the rest of the flight.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
It's the dead of night when I arrive at my old high school, it's around 3am. I hover above the school a moment in the shadows of a tall tree, there's a nostalgia to the 19th century style buildings I always found suffocating. I remember wanting to graduate so bad, but now considering everything that's happened… Man I could trade some of those days for a bit.
The night lights are on and the security is definitely doing the rounds. I spot him standing with his flashlight trained on something, I fly low around a corner, into the hallways. I don't land in case my footsteps echo, I hover just above the ground, slowly passing the classrooms, I can almost hear the hustle and bustle of what they'd be like full of teenagers in my head, so this is what being sentimental feels like.
Shaking it off I head for the computer classroom and just as I make it up the stairs of the solitary building the computer classroom is in, I turn to find her there, Marlea. I guess my whole start theory wasn't so crazy after all, she stands there dressed in a sharp joker purple pants suit, her usual strobe light eyes are in disco mode as always, and she is smiling, kind of properly, at least better than that creepy thing she used to do.
"Oh how you have changed Terry Barnes," she begins, "from when we first met, you're taller, more sure of yourself, less childlike." She smiles like a sad parent, and I can't figure why.
"It's kind of a human thing, change, growth. Speaking of change, how about for the first time ever, you just answer my questions." I say, almost pleading, "My friends… What happened will tear everyone apart unless I can prove that there was a reason to it, to all of it."
Marlea stands there, regarding a moment, in that way she does, as if she's seeing everything that I'm entirely made of, then she nods, and she gestures simply, in an instant everything within my field of vision begins to warp, one into the other, everything having its shapes distorted and colours melting into each other. Before I can process it, it all goes black, and when light returns we're in the grand, brightly white technological marvel that is Marlea's ship.
On my left is a massive viewing deck and above us looking gigantic, is our little blue planet earth, I don't think I've ever seen a movie or a picture of anything of a view of earth from the bottom up, it's spectacular, eerie looming like a god in silent judgement. The sheer size of the damn thing is overwhelming, clouds swirl in slow hypnotic motions over impossibly vast stretches of land bent on this ball..
"I prefer this view." Marlea says behind me.
I nod slowly. "I can see the appeal."
"What is coming in less than two weeks? Whatever it is, I get the sense you haven't told WECA yet." I turn to look into her strobe eyes.
"The end of your world, unless you can stand in the way of he who comes." She says, her expression blank, but her words hitting nonetheless.
"You know you're gonna have to explain that a little more, really drive that doom point home." I say
A panel the size of a small bathroom tile gently peels itself off the wall and expands three or four more sizes, then floats in front of me.
"Humour, as always," she says, though she doesn't seem amused, "There is a being called Rekith, he is, a Ruler of a far away world, who grew bored, for lack of a better term. He had bested everyone in his world, Muun, ruling it entirely, a planet five dozen times the size of Earth, it took time but eventually he did it. In all that time all he ever desired was a challenge, to know what it is to taste defeat."
As Marlea speaks the tile projects holographic imagery of a Rekith, he's tall and lean with one of those Randy Orton honed physiques, honed and angular, I can almost feel the balance of precision and strength he has. His hair is pretty cool I'll admit. It's that untamed, deliberately chaotic hair that falls in waves look, like the Joker in The Batman series.
His armor clings to his body like he was born with it, it's made of some kind of sleek metal, dark and imposing, it's covered in geometric patterns that look ritualistic almost. The gauntlets he wears end with razor-sharp claws, I don't see any other weapons on him except for them, I would not want to know what it's like to be torn up by those.
A long tattered cape hangs from his shoulders, it bellows like it's whispering tales of countless battles fought and won. When he was moving on the battlefield, though projected, I noticed how his armour shifts around him fluidly, and these veins of molten red energy that flows across it.
The dude's face is a study in the art of how to look menacing, it's sharp and angular, with an expression that speaks of infinite patience and unrelenting cruelty.
The projections show Rekith tearing his way through countless different armies from the different nations, from the look of this projection it didn't matter what kind of weapons they came at him with, missiles, giant robots, living weapons, warriors of all creeds from that planet of Muun.
"Hang on a second, I'm seeing armies going up against him, warriors that clearly have weapons a few centuries ahead of Earth, why isn't this thing showing his army?" I ask
Marlea looks at me and shakes her head, "He has an army, in the event he finds a challenge, but they have never seen a single battle because he has never needed them."
I swallow slowly, well that's not great news now is it.
"With his planet conquered he grew bored, and created me alongside his greatest scientists. I was raised and given this ship and being taught every art known to them about the universe and DNA alteration. With one purpose, to find planets with sentient beings like yours and prepare fighters, armies to face him, to narrow down worthy adversaries, in the hopes someone can beat him.." She says.
This dude is psychotic, "How many planets has he been on?" I ask
"Earth is his 70th planet." She answers.
"So that's what you really meant when you said we're an experiment," I say, as a thought hits me like a truck, "Is this how you normally tell a planet they're gonna die and they should get ready to fight for it?"
"No, it is not," I could swear I see a hint of shame flash across her face, "but your planet introduced a different prospect." She says, stepping closer to the glass of the viewing deck.
"It is hopelessly divided by too many factors to be convinced to be a singular force against him. Religion, race, a post on social media, your world in parts is literally at war with itself," She says then turns to look at me, "then in my search I found you, and the others, five genetic anomalies on a planet of nearly 8 billion human beings. What are the odds."
"See, your words are supposed to make me feel special, but our history, yeah that says different. If we mean so much then why put us through what we have gone through?" I ask
"Having seen human history adversity is the most common way to get–" She says.
"Common," I repeat before laughing a dry laugh that has zero humour in it, "We lost a friend. And for the first time it hit me that I've killed people, multiple times! And you're telling me this domino effect of events is all because of one super megalomaniac?!"
Marlea looks at me a moment before she simply says, "yes."
I feel defeated like I'm a balloon and the air is being taken out of me slowly. She has told me so much, I know I wanted information, but I was hoping there would be something in the answers that would ring of a little hope, just a tiny bit. There is one thing she has said nothing about yet.
"What happened to all the planets that lost?" I ask, my voice tight.
"With the exception of Muun, which he calls home," the floating hologram pate projects a planet, "Remember that army he has, the moment a planet loses, Rekith calls his armada."
The planet becomes surrounded by countless space ships of varying sizes, starting from really big, right up to quite a few of them being absolutely gargantuan.
"The armada fires upon the planet obliterating until there is nothing but the remains of what it once was." The ships on the hologram absolutely obliterate the planet.
Marlea opens up a screen above the planet and opens pictures that unfold in front of me, of remains of planets taken in space, some are just pieces of space rock floating in space, others have larger pieces, I wonder if those have survivors somehow living on them. Each picture held the same thing, some are pictures of destroyed planets as smoldering husks, one is even a once desert looking world split into pieces where the magma bled from it just hanging there in space.
A part of my mind can't help but imagine the helpless horror of trying to run from gunfire from those ships, blast upon blast taking out cities and towns and people. Parents shielding children in the hopes they make it, but no one made it. Could they see the shapes of their killers in the skies?
"Please take me back, I'd like to see my friends now. But before that, please answer me this one last question, why did you change the entire planet, why that chaos, why not just us five?
"Your human race has been the third most receptive race to the DNA changes that give you your abilities, that I have come across. Even if the other humans changed on your planet do not at all stand a chance against Rekith, I hoped you would rally enough to have some kind of vanguard to slow him somehow." She said, her strobe light eyes somehow glowing brighter.
"Can we beat Rekith?" I ask
"I do not know, Terry Barnes, but I also do not think so." She says. This is the most pleasant her and I have spoken since our first meeting.
With that I black out, and wake up with a star lying on the floor outside the computer class, staring at a sky going from deep blue to lighter, dawn was approaching. And we apparently have a villain to fight, I wonder how they react to me telling them this.