Come back to life, was ringing in my ears and from there on, as soon as a flinch of his finger went in my direction to grab out to me, I was grabbing it, contorting it until I heard a crack and then sub sequentially seized his wrist to do the same. I then grabbed his elbow and used it against his own body weight to wrap around his back and I kicked him from behind, onto a table, but with his left hand, he smacked the desktop and a red orb of energy emitted and was sent my direction. At first, it threw me back to my feet, but as I glared up at him, I felt no injury. Quite the opposite actually. I felt my cells recharging with a new adrenaline directed to destroy him in any way I could.
So as his fists spread apart to create a defensive stance, red waves neared me, but as it tore up the carpet of the office, I focused on the red sound and I suddenly saw curved wave lengths bouncing back onto his body when his concussion hit me. And as he looked down at his hands for an explanation, there were two yellow-sounding, steel arrows breaking through the air, heading straight for him. I looked back to see Wib standing out of the body-sized cast he made in the wall, ready to fight with a bow and arrow.
The guy charged at the bloodied-up Wilbur, with his fist enlightened with red energy and Wib's eyes fell to the pair of feet charging at him with gray blunders of sound and then suddenly, he lifted his hands and the gray waves flipped upward like a snap-ruler and our enemy flew backwards.
"Whoa," I commented, very impressed.
"Chevy to Noble. I'm on my level. What the hell is going on down there?" a personal radio sounded from across the office-building floor where he was passed out. I was already hearing the rubble move from when he was struggling to get up, and I didn't want to wait for him to answer the familiar-voiced Chevy.
"Stairs," Wib pointed out after grabbing our files from the desk and hesitantly passing the awaking body, we opened the door of the stairwell and started going up, realizing we couldn't go down. Not because there was a fight, but because up was the only way.
After one level, there was a door that was labeled "Chevy's Cabinet."
Wib pulled at me, but I waved him off, signing for him to keep climbing the stairs, but I immediately opened the door so I could finish this. And for the first time tonight, I grabbed the one gun I had in my belt. There was another door and in my fury, I kicked it open. When I looked around to the setting in front of me, I paused. It was as if all this government funding was for some rich snob, who lived in this ravish penthouse that had large windows on a full side that overlooked the downtown area of corporate and federal offices. There was a yellow, blue, and white theme to what seemed to be a living room and visibly connecting dining room, as if the person rooted for my old high school pride or something, and then there was a notable, huge, stainless steel kitchen towards the back hallway, but as I walked back to where I assumed a bedroom would be, I pointed my gun in every direction. Before I reached the furthest sliding door, I looked over to see an open doorway (no door, in fact) with a desk office and a cracked TV screen. The frame was paused on a recognizable scene: when I kissed Zaine. My feelings of adoration for him and that moment clouded my realization that he might be gone entirely, but I wanted to know who was spying on us in the first place. And why they were so mad to break a plasma screen. I saw the same files belonging to me and Wilbur and I was that much more confused. I suddenly entered the bedroom and saw simple shirts that any guy could wear and nothing personal at all.
"Chevy, they're gone. I lost her and Wib," I heard a familiar voice say, out of breath over a radio mounted on a counter. I grunted in anger, but then paused when I realized what he said. Her and Wib. It was someone I knew. I had recognized the voice earlier, but not completely and now I knew they knew me because only certain people knew I called my brother Wib.
Suddenly, I heard something like fabric sliding something and I ran out of the room and into the living room, to see a balcony door opened. Sh!t. I ran outside and then noticed that, besides the grand pool, there was a staircase going up the side of the tall building. I didn't even need to look down to see how high it was, or that the smoke in the air was coming from explosions and fires downstairs, but I grabbed the stair's railing and followed the man in charge.
But when I got to the roof and walked twenty feet around a corner, my brother was standing near the edge with his hands up and his bow on the ground, facing five soldiers pointing a gun at him. I couldn't identify a single one of them as in charge...just like I couldn't identify a way to save him. But then of course, he glanced in my direction and then I was held captive by someone how had snuck up behind me. They had an arm around my neck and another crushing my hand to release the gun. So I had to drop it. In the meantime two of the guards that had been facing Wib, now turned to face me.
Upon looking into the eyes of the closest soldier, my memory started to work. It took me all the way back to Skye's beach house:
I looked at the desk and saw a picture of three people. There was a place cut out where maybe a woman was supposed to be, but other than that, there was a middle-aged man with glasses and an over the top cliché Hawaiian shirt; then of course there was Skye beautifully positioned to the man's left as she wore a fringed white and brown bikini with colorful beads; and then beside her was a blonde boy with a smirk on his lips and power in his gray eyes, but yet he stood out because he didn't have on beach wear. He was simply wearing a dark grey v-neck and some black jeans.
The powerful, gray eyes from the picture matched the gray pupils of the uniformed soldier standing in front of me...however all of the power had seemed to be controlled for some reason.
"Draco?" I asked and the dreary eyes softened into storms of confusion. His weapon lowered a fraction as his head tilted. It was him. And when his lips moved, I heard nothing. I wanted to blame Wib for disenabling my hearing, but there was then a black hole forming in the cement and in a red flash, the man from before was back.
"What are you waiting for? You have her. Shoot him!" he ordered, pointing at my brother, but then, the boy I pointed out as Draco, removed his face covering and turned to him.
"Those weren't the orders," he voiced.
"The orders have changed," he said. There was a silence as the soldiers just watched him. "You all heard me!"
But as I looked around, I don't think they did. I noticed Wilbur paying attention to the crazy man and he must have muted his speech to the soldiers. But not me.
As I heard a squeak from the stairwell door to the roof as if someone was spying out of it, I paid more attention to his decisions.
"You stupid soldiers! I'll do it myself then!" he called, walking over to one guard and stripping him of his automatic weapon. But as soon as he did, Draco put a hand on his shoulder and it took one scoff before the man dismissed him with a wave of his hand charged with concussive powers strong enough to send Draco off of the building. In concern, the man holding me had loosened enough for me to use minimal combat to throw him to the ground and watch after Draco as he was in the air. As little as I knew him, I didn't want him to die because he meant something to Skye. He was her brother.
But before he made contact with a street light, a rainbow-dust-trailed object flew in the sky and knocked him off his course. It took five repetitive blinks to realize the dust was manipulated wind pushing him higher into the sky until a winged girl flew up into the air to rescue him.
"Words cannot describe how lucky I am to see you," I heard him say, relieved in the distance as Skye carried him to the ground and I saw her wings fold and disappear into her back at the ground, but other than the pure white feathers, I saw nothing else.
"No!" I heard a male voice yell before I spun back around to hear a gun fired off. As if in slow motion, I was seeing Zaine out of nowhere, pushing Wilbur out of the way and then a bullet bounced off his chest. Despite the bast4rd shooting straight at my brother, I smiled at Zaine's presence. I bent down and picked up the gun I had dropped before, as Zaine and Wib stood, Zaine trying his hardest to shield my brother. But I still had four other soldiers to take care of. The four of them watched me intently, but I heard them whisper beneath their breath expressions that proved they were unsure of what exactly I could do and what they should do. I smirked at that and decided that I would use it to my advantage. However, when I took two steps near them, three bullets were fired off from one gun, sending the rounds into my lung, shoulder, and grazing the side of my face. To say the wind was knocked out of me was an understatement. Hell, I just got shot in the artery that held my air supply!
My body recognized my pain as I hit the ground hard and my eyes were shut but I was still seeing yellow specks. The pain wasn't as nearly bad as a bullet through the heart, but it was a close second. I felt myself lose consciousness for a moment or two, but when my hearing returned before my sight—listening to a yell so prominent as if it was Wilbur on the night of the car accident—I used it to my advantage because by then, I was still feeling the blood on my body, but I felt healed more than anything.
"You killed her."
"Noble told me to."
"That wasn't part of the plan."
"Look who didn't listen to the new plans before now. Sheppard got sent off the fu**ing building!"
"Chevy will do worse."
"Chevy won't do sh!t."
"Unless...she's not dead."
I felt their close proximity and when I felt one of their fingers on the side of my neck, I grabbed their arm to pull them over me before I brought my knees and feet up to his abdomen and kicked him over. Just like I had done to Zaine for fun—but this was serious. I wrapped my legs around him long enough to pin him when his back would hit the ground, but in that short time, while he was above me, he was picked off of me and thrown onto the ground by Zaine, who was ruthless in beating him to a pulp. I hadn't even noticed that there was only one other guard on the ground while the recognizable man from before was throwing away his ammunition-shy weapon and charging at us. I was still on the ground, but when he had raised his fist at Zaine, the concussive energy fields shot out right when Zaine lifted the soldier's body and the pressure sent him off the building, leaving Zaine kneeling to the ground. The man grunted in frustration and took to traditional combat with Zaine, trying to use each energy force with every punch he could land—as if it affected a diamond-tough boy.
But as it amused me that his energy was wearing out, I noticed that Wilbur was no longer on the roof. I started to panic and in that, I was distracted and the one remaining soldier landed a punch on my face. I'm sure it left a cut or bruise because as I felt it healing, the man's brown eyes were hit with confusion, focused on my left cheek. Before he could see my healthy, fair skin return, I landed a punch on him and I heard bones in his face break. I didn't think I was that strong, but hey, I'll take it.
He took a short recovery time and immediately swung on me, but I ducked and swiped his feet to see him land on his back with a grunt. I wanted to laugh in his face, but he grabbed my ankle and I fell to the ground with him. Unexpectedly, he had climbed on top of me and I remembered what Zaine had said in this position.
"I'm afraid of what could happen in a position like this," he had said before I pinned him. However, the man's knees were firmly on the ground and he was way heavier than the first guy. I needed the strength from before, but I didn't know how to get it. I was running out of oxygen so I didn't think I would get that wish. It was worse when Zaine's fight had completely crushed us both and I was at the bottom of the stack, feeling several bones crack as a final held breath escaped. But by then, the soldier had been knocked off of me...thankfully. And now, Zaine was on top of him.
"Stay off of her!" he yelled and punched the guy's face and straddled him to a point in which I wanted to do.
"I think my partner should be saying that you!" the man said, now standing with blood running down the side of his head and face. I heard the breaths of the soldier beneath Zaine slow down, but then Zaine's hands felt his neck around for a moment before the soldier was knocked out with a barely audible breath or heartbeat. Zaine tossed him aside and stood, glaring across at the man and gesturing his hand out for me to get up. So I got up and scurried to his side, only for him to wrap an arm around my waist and pull me behind him, protectively. "She's ours!"
"And why's that?" Zaine asked. "W-why are you and your boss so persistent on having her?"
"It wasn't just her," he hissed. "He also wanted her pathetic brother, who I considered valuable, myself, before you threw him off the roof."
He...what? I looked up at Zaine in horror and he frowned...not allowing me to recognize the look as denial or regret. Either way, my brother wasn't here right now.
"I didn't—"
"'Jump! You can save yourself!'" he mocked as if trying to be Zaine. Tears found themselves in my eyes as I let go of Zaine's arm and took a step back, realizing I was right on the edge of the roof. "You really think he'd save your brother than himself? Yeah right."
And before I actually considered that, my memory was giving me reasons that proved Zaine wouldn't do that. But my hearing sensory took over and I heard something that not even my memory could find.
"Aspen, I'm fine." It was Wib's voice as clear as day. He wasn't whispering in my mind like Maxwell had the power to do. I was hearing him, far off somewhere. "Don't listen to him. I'm fine. I'm down here."
And I was compelled to believe it because as I heard his voice, I wasn't hearing another. The only person that could block a sense was Wib. He was okay. So I recovered my step near Zaine, even though not all contact was lost. Ever since I stepped back in the first place and my shoes scraped rubble off the building, Zaine had taken a hold of me, just so I wouldn't fall off the building.
"You're so stupid!" was the first thing I heard from him as he judged my five-inch step return.
"Am I?" I questioned. "Or are you the stupid one? Why are you even doing this?"
"I have my reasons."
"What reasons?" I asked him, stepping from behind Zaine. "You have a life. You have powers. You have a family—"
"A FAMILY?" he roared at me. "My family is the whole reason I'm like this! And each and every one of them deserved—"
"How can you stand there and say they deserve this, Jase!?" I yelled at him, closing the space between us. I was maybe two feet away, now. I knew who he was. I knew perfectly who he was. "You had a father and brother—and especially a grandfather who helped you no matter what happened in your family because of these powers. So what are you benefitting from destroying all that he made!?"
"He knew that developing these powers—my father's, even, that it would lead to disaster!" he yelled. "My father used his powers as often as he could to get away from his life—from me more than anything. So in the slight moment when I think he would stay around long enough for me to tell him I met a girl, I didn't expect him to ignore me. I was fourteen and stuck in some low-rate dimension for eight years! So when I get back and I have no clue on any whereabouts of my brother or girlfriend are, I joined forces with someone else with a vendetta against my grandfather's Academy. And it's taken us two years to accomplish this. I hope my family is proud."
"They're not," I sighed, but still produced a pathetic smile for him. "And I know for a fact that Sentara isn't proud of her first love destroying the one institution she put her life into and ultimately killing her in the process."
At first, his lips slightly parted in shock that his plans had ruined Sentara's life (I didn't even know it was the truth), but that was enough emotion from him to drop his stance. He bowed his head for a moment, but then when I was starting to let my sympathy feel pity for him, his head lifted and his brown eyes darkened and in one fluid motion, his hand went from behind his back and then he plunged a knife into my heart from that perfect distance. I fell back to the ground, not feeling my wound heal until the knife was pulled out, so I squirmed on the ground, trying to pull it out in the most painless way possible, but above me, Zaine had tackled Jase to the ground and fought him harder than ever before. But as I kicked around, wanting and not wanting to pull out the small blade, I was feeling the knife on my ankle coming out of its straps. By the time I had pulled the knife out of my chest and laid on the floor in heavy pants, my own eight-inch knife had slid out of my boot and onto the ground. I had even recognized someone sliding it across the cement as if picking it up, and then when I decided I was able to pump a full volume of blood with my heart, I hopped up with my head spinning, and saw Zaine at the edge of the roof with Jase holding the knife in his hand.
From behind, I heard the stairwell door exploding open before I heard a familiar voice say: "Gotcha!" but I didn't care to what that obtained to. I was focusing on a knife being pointed at Zaine as he aimed my gun at Jase. I knew Zaine wouldn't actually kill someone...but I thought now could be that exception. Jase then looked over at me.
"Now you're going to feel how you just made me feel about Sentara," he spat with blood running into, out, and down his mouth. Before I questioned him, he raised his other hand to point a gun at me and before I even called him out on being stupid, he pulled the trigger that hit extremely close to my heart, but as Zaine positioned himself to make his way over to me—even though I didn't fall at the shot—Jase entered a blade through Zaine's abdomen.
Tears were in my eyes before I could even process it. Before Zaine fell back, I ran over to grab him, but the combined weight still threw us off the perimeter and I still held on, optioning to take the hit to the ground than him. Gravity separated us and I saw a body on the pavement, but it was spinning. Then again, I didn't care who it was.
"Catch him! Catch him! CATCH HIM!" I yelled on repeat, hoping it was enough for someone to hear and then I was seeing more and more people populating the area beneath Zaine as if he was about to crowd surf. Since Zaine weighed so much more than me, I focused my sight as he would hit the crowd way before me. It seemed to be huge numbers of red headed friends catching him, but myself? I just closed my eyes and waited for impact, but when I stopped feeling my healing heart floating in my body, I presumed I was dead, but I had peeled my eyes open to see I was in an invisible, but humming pink, force-field bubble. I was head-down, four feet from hitting the ground and I was suspended in the air by the girl standing by the closing door of the burning building, holding up her hands as her nose was bleeding. I saw her hands drop when a recognizable redhead caught me.
"I got you," he assured and I was never gladder to see the real Andres Dixon. He led me down from the cradle and I rushed over to where the duplicates were fading into two separate files, souls flying into Anthony and Andres' bodies. However, while one twin was behind me, the other was beneath Zaine, trying to pull a knife out.
Saying I felt like I got stabbed in the heart was an understatement. It was much worse. Worse than being heart broken by your own doing. Worse than getting shot in the heart. Worse than getting stabbed in the heart. Worse than falling from a forty-something story building. It was even worse than losing Tyler. I felt like my heart official stopped, but at the same time burst with a compassion that grabbed the knife and tried to pull it out.
"It won't come out!" Anthony yelled as we both grunted and he had given up. I looked up at Zaine's face and despite the people flooding out of the false building, enemies or not, and the sirens coming up the street, he was calm. He was peaceful and I couldn't have it...not for this reason. I slapped his face.
"Zaine, wake up! ZAINE!" I cried.
"Aspen," someone was saying to me, preparing me before they admitted the death of the man I grew to love.
"Zaine!" I yelled at him, shaking him. "What did they do to you!?"
"How did they even get that in him?!" Andres questioned.
"They could've cured him," a new voice said, belonging to Draco Sheppard.
"They didn't. A bullet or syringe can't penetrate him," Anthony said.
"But a sword can? Yeah right," Andres scoffed, even though the evident was in front of his face. I was crying too hard to even snap back at him the obvious, but I pulled at the knife still lodged in his lower torso without effect.
"Move," another new voice said and Cariba was tearing through the crowd. She opened a tube that was at her waist and poured the three ounces of it in Zaine's mouth as if his comatose state would swallow. She then wrapped her hands around mine to pull at the knife and it didn't budge.
"Where's Warren?" Skye asked as Cariba pressed her hands to Zaine's chest.
"Where's my brother?" Indica asked, but she was looking over at my brother. Wib looked up the tall building that was sure to collapse at any moment as if he was watching something...or listening. I listened up as he did...up to the roof...and heard someone behind repetitively thrown to the floor. But then it stopped awkwardly.
"You're a sad, malicious man who doesn't deserve to live on this Earth and you're not even worth me fighting you," Cheshire's voice preached. "You had a love, a family, and a life and you threw it away. I would give anything to have that now!"
"That's not my fault. You should've joined us when we raided the Academy," Jase said after spitting out most likely blood.
"You know what the funny thing is? I've been away from my parents and the SSAS killed my girlfriend but all of these people you and he overlooked...they are my new family. I can fight and argue with them and say I despise them, but that's not true. I love every single one of them and I'd do anything to anyone if they tried to disturb that."
"So why'd you stop hitting me?"
"Because you're going to jump," Cheshire simply answered. By now, I knew he was looking in Jace's eyes and making him envision a getaway on the side of the roof or something. "Take two steps back...and JUMP."
It took a mumble before seconds later, seeming so short, that Jase's body not only splattered to the sidewalk, hundreds of feet away, but a sinkhole opened beneath him and took his dead body into the earth, along with a couple of other soldiers' bodies, before reclosing itself. But the sinkhole had enough cracks to break the building's frame.
"Sh!t..." Andres commented.
"This building is going to fall soon," Anthony observed.
"Where's my brother!?" Indica yelled, now. Wib, still stunned by what he heard and observed, frown and blinked, unable to answer.
"He's inside with Warren. They're looking for the other children or prisoners," Cariba answered. I looked over and realized that she and Anthony were preparing to pick up Zaine's heavy body to move. However, my hand connected to his as some sort of hold on him and his life, and then the knife had loosened itself from his thick muscle and slid down. Everyone's eyes fell down at the knife, now beneath a mysterious four inch gash as if someone had the ability to yank it down. Then their eyes fell on me.
"We need to go get Isaac and Warren," Indica insisted and because she was so willing to assist me with Zaine, I repaid that debt to her by tearing myself away from Zaine and rushing into the HQ to find Isaac and Warren.
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