But the man in black hadn't gone five meters before three heavy-set men stepped into the building from the outside. Pausing just inside the door, they pulled dark sunglasses from their tanned faces to quickly scan the inside of the terminal with dangerous eyes. As their eyes swept over him, the man in black slowed cautiously to a halt, his eyes narrowing behind his sunglasses.
That had been no ordinary glancing gaze that had swung over him; the tingling rush in his head told the big man otherwise. It had been a telepathic scan meant to uncover individuals that had powers of the mind. While the man in black indeed had such powers, he had no intention of being uncovered by such a scan. As the tingling swept over him, he exerted his abilities and tightly shielded his mind in such a manner that only a very powerful, very deep scan would reveal that his brain possessed the abilities to warp matter to his will, among other talents.
Having protected himself thusly from any type of telepathic scan, the big man carefully, his head still partially down, looked over the tops of his sunglasses at the three men. A slight satisfaction touched him when he saw they apparently hadn't noticed him, continuing their scan over the crowd from their vantage point near the door. But, upon seeing the long black trench coats and black gloves they wore, his expression returned to thoughtful.
It didn't take much for his abilities, shielded and hidden as they were, to find the men's auras shining more brightly than those around them. Confirmation of what they were, in addition to their ability to scan telepathically. 'More psionics,' he silently mused, labeling those with the brighter auras and powers of the mind. And highly visible ones, at that; a scan of his own would reveal exactly how powerful they were, but he couldn't risk revealing himself prematurely. Cautiously he stepped to the side and watched.
He was quickly rewarded when he saw the men's faces tighten as they caught sight of someone deeper into the terminal. Instantly the telepathic sweep was gone and they were striding forward, replacing their sunglasses in smooth, economic motions. The trench coats quickly cut through the crowds to approach a rather ordinary looking man in slacks and a polo shirt, sitting at one of the many small coffee shops that dotted the terminal's promenade. He was drinking coffee from a battered looking mug, eyes unfocused as he stared off into space, looking tired and worn. Several pieces of luggage were piled untidily around him, announcing his intentions. And the aura around him made him a psionic as well.
The big stranger's eyes narrowed. What was this? His curiosity piqued, he watched as the trench coats bore down on the man drinking the coffee. Hearing the heavy tread of three sets of approaching footsteps, the man looked over his shoulder, the mug frozen in place halfway to his mouth. And instantly blanched with fear at the sight of the three men bearing down on him. Released by suddenly nerveless fingers, the coffee mug crashed to the counter top where it roughly shattered, sending shards of ceramic and hot coffee spraying in every direction. Several heads jerked around at the sound of the impact, eyes wide with wonder and curiosity.
Only to bear witness as some invisible force wrinkled the air around the man, pinning him hard against the counter. Then the three trench coats were on him hard, grabbing the stunned man by the arms to hustle him towards a nearby maintenance corridor, its entrance warded by a heavy steel door. As two of the men dragged the stunned man between them, the third turned to the shocked occupants of the tiny coffee shop.
"Forget what you just saw, Normals," he growled in a low, viperous voice. And then he was turning to follow his two companions, who had managed to win past the door and into the concrete corridor beyond.
A frown replaced the watching stranger's thoughtful expression as he watched the door close behind the four men, leaving the occupants of the coffee shop muttering uneasily amongst themselves. The wall of force that had pinned the man invisibly to the counter could only have been a shockwave, a weapon used by psionics gifted with the talent of telekinesis. But such things were carefully hidden from the general populace, who would certainly panic if they learned that individuals existed with powers of the mind, since such abilities could potentially be dangerous to those not in their possession.
The man in black had made it one of his life's pursuits to prevent the world at large from learning about his gifted people and their powers, fearing the prejudice it would incur against them. History itself had born witness several times to wars began from similar prejudice and ignorance, as well as fear of the unknown. And when those who feared heavily outnumbered those feared as psionics were by humans without powers of the mind, or 'Normals', then it became a massacre. If he could help it, the man in black wouldn't allow that massacre, a new Holocaust to happen to his people.
His frown darkening, the man let his bag fall softly to the floor in the shadows before he strode forward, eyes intent on the now closed maintenance door. While he somehow knew this single incident wasn't what had drawn him here, the big man sensed that it was a symptom of a much larger issue, one perhaps large enough to create his early morning vision not an hour ago. In fact, he could feel Reality itself shifting as he moved forward. This warranted further investigation.
"Are you ... are you with airport security?" a nervous counter clerk stammered, looking pale as she stared at the man in black. Pausing with his hand a heartbeat from the maintenance door's handle, the big man looked up. He then forced a reassuring smile on his face even as the young woman's features melted away to be replaced by the ever more frequent skull's leer. The other faces that turned towards him also donned the same death mask visage in the same plastic moment and the man in black found a chorus of decay staring at him from the empty, dark pits of hollowed out eye sockets.
"Not exactly," he continued in his low, powerful voice, a blink and effort of will restoring the faces to their previous states. "But don't worry; I'll take care of those three." And then he was opening the door to step through and into the corridor beyond.
Just in time to see one of the trench coats hammer a couple of clenched fists in rapid succession into their captive's solar plexus, doubling the man over where he gasped loudly for air. Thick fingers knotted themselves into the man's hair and he was jerked back up erect. Jaw aggressively out thrust, the trench coat that launched the assault leaned forward to almost put his nose into the man's rapidly blinking eye.
"C'mon, Constantine," the thug grated. "You don't really expect us to believe that you got nothing out of those banks, do you?"
"I swear, Kyle," the man named Constantine managed between whistling attempts to fill his lungs, tears of fear and pain streaming down his face. "I didn't download a thing!"
Carefully the powerful stranger closed the door behind him, making sure it made no sound as Kyle leaned back to bark a short snort of laughter. His two cohorts, one standing back to the door and the other facing it, quickly joined him in mirthless amusement. From where he stood, the stranger could see the humorless smile on the trench coat facing him, an odd-looking expression that was more a grimace on the hard face than anything else; a shark baring its teeth before striking. And there was no question about who would soon lose a bite-sized piece of themselves.
The powerful stranger kept his eyes focused on the three trench coats and their quarry as he eased forward. All it would take to alert them to his presence would be the slightest sound. And then any thoughts of stealth would have to be abandoned because he had no doubt they'd attack as soon as they discovered him. And that would defeat his reason for stealth in the first place: he had heard enough to be intrigued and needed to know more before any action could be taken. But he wouldn't mind knowing more before he acted. Unfortunately his attention was so focused, he didn't espy the small device pressed against the wall where it projected an invisible beam of energy across the corridor.
He felt the beam brush against him, bend for a moment around his energized body then abruptly break. Then the unfolding drama before him tumbled into the chaotic blur of motion straight out of an old karate movie. As the stranger brought himself to a halt, a rough curse on his lips, three heads abruptly snapped around to face him, eyes first wide then hard at the sight of him. They moved almost as if they were in slow motion. Grimacing, the big man knew it was because his own accelerated senses had slowed perception down to enable him to react more quickly. Still, he had been spotted and now he had to deal with it whether he wanted to or not.
"And just who the hell are you?" Kyle snarled and the stranger painted a quick smile on his face.
"An interested third party," he replied softly and all three trench-coated men grimaced.
"There's nothing to see here, pal," Kyle hissed, "so fuck off!"
But, before the big man could beg to differ, the captive psionic turned pleading eyes onto him.
"Please," he pleaded in an emotion-filled voice, tears springing free to trickle down his cheeks. Burn him, but the man feared for his life! "Please, you have to help me!"
There was no mistaking the strange blurring that appeared around Kyle's forearm and hand as he turned back to the crying Constantine.
"Shut up, you," he snarled, slamming his open hand against Constantine's forehead, meaning to pin him back against the concrete wall behind him. Instead, with the shockwave sheath around his hand and arm, Kyle's open hand became a battering ram that hammered the psionic's head back into the unyielding wall with enough force to crush the back of his skull like an eggshell.
With a sickeningly wet 'crunch', Constantine's eyes bulged and a red trickle of blood immediately began to make its way down the wall.
"Smooth, Kyle," the trench coat facing the stranger said, his face a mask of disappointment. "You whacked him. You knew Mr. Preacher wanted to talk to this guy."
"Fuck you, Tempest," Kyle hissed, drawing his hand back to let the dying Constantine slowly begin to slide to the floor, leaving a wet, red streak on the wall as he dropped. "How was I supposed to know his skull would pop like that?"
Strangely enough, it wasn't the words that the stranger found himself focusing on as he stared at the dying Constantine. It was the expression on the telepath's face as he sat limply on the floor, his life ebbing from his twitching body. Instead of fear or anger, or even pain, there was a singular expression of relief on the dying man's face. As if welcoming the release death brought. Relief? The stranger almost wondered out loud, astonished by what he saw. Then, as his eyes met Constantine's, the dying man mouthed the words: 'Know what I know.' An instant later a telepathic train hit him.
Strong enough to withstand the simultaneous psionic assault of several powerful individuals, the stranger's shields nevertheless buckled under the pressure of the telepathic battering ram Constantine launched at him with his dying strength. The big man had barely enough time to reinforce the shielding around his mind's core before his main shields fell, letting Constantine's probe in like the torrent of an overflowing river rushing through a burst dam.
Immediately he was staggered by the surge of information into his head, so much so that it instantly overwhelmed his senses. Groaning out loud, he fell against the wall, his head spinning. The probe penetrated the shields surrounding his brain stem, an unusual site for a psionic assault, yet vulnerable to an attack that had a physical impact. And in doing so, nearly rendered him unconscious!
Hearing the sound, the trench coat facing away from the stranger jerked around with a frown. And instantly he spotted the big man slumped against the wall, hand to head. One look back down at the now dead Constantine, eyes wide in Death's last stare as they focused on the newcomer, was enough to tell him what had happened.
"Shit," he snarled. "Kyle, Tempest. The teep managed a data download before he bought it!"
"What?" Kyle barked, head jerking around. His eyes immediately narrowed when they caught sight of the slumping stranger. "Our interested third party; how unfortunate for him. Tempest, Justin, drop him!"
The first shockwave, a pulsating wave front of psionically charged air particles, took the big man by surprise, shields down and relatively defenseless. But, instead of hammering him back along the corridor, as Justin had intended it to, it merely folded around him and dissipated down into the floor, like water off a duck's back, making the concrete underfoot quiver with the redistributed force.
"What the hell?" the trench-coated man rasped thickly, disbelieving what his own eyes had just told him.
Yet they were even more disbelieving as they watched the big man seemingly shake off whatever had downed him to push away from the wall, eyes hooded and expression stony.
"That," he husked tightly as he began to stride forward, "was a mistake!"
"Holy ..." Tempest began with a wondering shake of his head. Then all three men were grimly setting themselves to send shockwave after shockwave rippling through the air at the advancing newcomer, bodies stiff as their minds gathered the energy together before hurling it outward.
With each shockwave formed, the air grew colder, as if the very heat was being leached from it. Within seconds all four men's breath could be clearly seen as plumes of white, the chill bringing the shockwaves themselves into higher contrast. In a heartbeat they went from shimmering walls of movement to quicksilver battering rams of force.
Still each folded around the dark man advancing on the three in trench coats as the first shockwave had, rolling off him to ripple into the floor, the concrete shivering with the impact. Within heartbeats of their attack beginning, as the shockwaves increased in power, the ripples began to run up the sides of the walls on either side of the powerfully striding man. That was enough to make the entire corridor shiver as if the concrete had become the liquid surface of a pool, disturbed by the entrance of a stone.
At the heart of the rapidly spreading concentric rings of force, the man in black remained untouched. But how? None of them could detect the man's shields, which should have been massive in order to blunt their attack in the manner that they were witnessing. If anything, he was naked to their aggression. Each bolt should have slammed him back with enough force to turn his bones to jelly. But here he was, walking towards him as if against a stiff summer breeze, untouched by even the most powerful of their shockwaves!
And then he was in physical range of the trench coat, Justin. The strike came quickly, with the speed of an agile viper. Half stepping to his left, the stranger drove a clenched fist into Justin's jaw, snapping the man's head back with the force of the impact and his body into the wall. Hitting with a groan, he slumped to the floor, unconscious.
The man in black then dropped into a crouch, his hands held cupping together at his side as a ball of liquid lightning appeared between them, scintillating and hissing with its power. With a shout he slung the ball forward, the grapefruit-sized knot of energy screaming as it darted through the air to power into Tempest's abruptly visible shield, a cone of force surrounding his body to the floor.
In the blink of an eye, the shivering ball of blue light splashed over the shield with the actinic pulse of a lightning strike, sending tendrils biting deep into the formerly seamless shield wall that had protected the heavy set Tempest. With a shriek of dying power, the shield crumpled and imploded, the resulting shock wave hurling Tempest back with undeniable force. The second trench coat hit the concrete floor several metres further down the corridor, impacting hard before sliding another handful of metres to come to a limp rag doll halt.
Kyle watched disbelieving as Tempest was thrown aside like a used dishrag, his most powerful associate treated as casually as he would treat a burn out. Then it was his turn to be pinned to the wall as powerful hands took hold of the clothing about his throat and drove him back.
"Just what the hell are you?" he gasped into the stranger's darkened face.
"No one to be trifled with," the newcomer growled, giving Kyle a rough shake with the grip on his lapels. "Now it's my turn to ask the questions."
Despite the cold fear twisting his belly into knots and the ice that was running down his spine, both inspired by the incredible creature that now held him pinned helpless against the wall, Kyle shook his head.
"You'll get nothing from me, pal," he managed to husk, fumbling mentally for his psionic abilities. A second cold wave of fear washed through him when he found them not there. "I've got nothing to say!"
The stranger's eyes narrowed.
"Who said I would be getting my answers from your mouth?" he asked tightly and Kyle felt his body twitch uncontrollably as a tight telepathic probe abruptly pushed up against his mental shields.
"No," he moaned as the probe began to shoulder aside his shields despite him throwing his entire strength behind them.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The big man frowned as he let Kyle's unconscious body slide to the floor. Regardless of how careful he had been, he had found the man's mind a morass of disintegrating thought and jumbled consciousness by the time his probe had made its way to his core consciousness. He had been unable to make any sense out of what he could untangle from the mess. It had been an exercise in futility.
Yet the stranger had learned several things: Kyle and his associates didn't work for themselves. The reference to a Mr. Preacher by Tempest had been a clear indication of that. Yet he had been in a position of enough importance that whatever had resided in his cranium had been essential to protect. He glanced at the remaining two trench coats. Dare he risk a probe into these other two to see if they were protected as well?
Unfortunately for his growing curiosity, his answer came in the faint sounds of approaching police sirens from somewhere outside the terminal. The clerk at the coffee shop must have called them. It wouldn't take them, and airport security, long to reach the corridor and find the bodies sprawled all over the place. Considering he was the last one standing, the finger pointing wouldn't need to go far a-field to find a likely suspect as author of all the destruction.
The stranger sighed in resignation and stepped back from Kyle's unmoving form. He was done here ... for now. With a thought his bag appeared on the floor with a soft 'puff' of displaced air. As he summoned the energy for a more powerful teleport, his mind ran across the mass of data the dead telepath had dumped into his cortex. At least he had something to do before going to bed tonight, he mused. And then he was gone, the corridor already echoing to the sounds of shouts and running feet.