Enjoy - and Vote. The first part of this (until the *** break) was meant to go at the end of the last chapter - I missed moving it.
"I'm sorry, so sorry," Tom pleaded, Sin had returned from one of his mysterious adventures, his mood—not so great, Tom thought it was because of him acting out earlier, that Sin's mood was about his, mistress, showing up.
"I need your help," Sin's voice was firm, he ignored the fact that even after half a day Tom hadn't gotten over the death threat or that Sin's mistress actually showed up. The Red Reaper, as some called her, was in his home; the Red Reaper let him live. From the stories, that never happens—she never lets anyone live.
"What?" Tom had since gotten up off the floor—the shaking from fear long gone, but he still had that look in his eyes when he saw Sin—that different look, half fear half respect, like he'd just seen a ghost.
"Arabian, what can you do for it?" Sin asked.
"I don't know anyone who can translate that as secretive as the professor that did the Russian."
"Find someone," Sin was frustrated about something Tom could see that, something he heard from his Mistress he guessed.
"Well, I'm sure I can find someone, but they won't hold a secret."
"They will," Sin flung his bladed finger at the corner of the table in the kitchen area of their hideout and clipped it clean off. Before the wood could even hit the ground he was gone.
***
Oh yes, people heard of this commander, people heard of the brutal take over when the pressure of the third world war forced India to collapse in on its self. Rumors spread that this dictator was as dark and cruel as Stalin, Hitler—even more recently J Adams from Brazil. But no one thought he would dare make his move for the world—not in this modern era. It was simply too risky, too much technology piled up against him—body count doesn't matter in this world anymore, weaponry does, and with over two dozen countries more advanced than India in terms of weapons, invasion seemed impossible.
The world was wrong. The black market is a wonderful thing when it comes to power hungry dictators, especially with those billions of people willing to fight for Mother India. It was an utter shock when India attacked its neighbor Pakistan. Oh, India needed a scapegoat—and when lies leaked into the commanders ears he jumped on them like a leopard hunting its prey. The Middle East will fall, his plan set into motion. Oil, the last remaining drops of oil will be his.
It was simply a beautiful time for his plan. One he never dreamed would exist, for he knew the moment he made a play for more control the entire world would go against him to stomp him out. But with every single major power out there clawing their own eyes out and infighting now was the perfect opportunity. For the past twenty years a gap never rose in world politics making his plan possible. His body was getting old, but his mind was still strong. There was no one left to stop him. With China and Russia in a new found bloodbath, Europe dealing with its own unification problems, and America in the center of its Second Revolutionary War it seems like the UN was finally torn apart—unable to cope with his plot of world domination.
He let the name slip off his tongue—General Hinder, Conquer of Worlds. Dictator of Earth. It sounded good, no it sounded better than good—it was perfect. Nothing could stop him now…
***
Lilly appeared next to rock entrance of the Shanan Hideout, Shanan she learned over the last two days was the name of the group hidden under the ground—no relation to Iraq might she add, this just happened to be the place they ended up when seeking asylum—from who she was still unaware. Kelton and a cloaked man she assumed was the same one from the tent the other day were standing in the chilly morning. Lilly had her chain-link cloak hanging limply over one shoulder, today was a day for her full battle gear—equipment she hasn’t used since the assault on the Egyptian fort so long ago. The jagged blades hanging off its backside were saturated with dark red dry blood; she never cleaned them from her last use of the cloak.
Sin's mind came crashing into hers a few moments ago, confused. For the first time in months Thomas, the guy he somehow befriended started acting up—asking questions. She needed to interfere. Then on the way back she stopped at her hotel suite and picked up her battle armor—an excuse for her vanished mid-conversation with the two leaders of the Shanan’s—hell, she was to take down an army ten million strong. It became quickly apparent that she was not going to apologize for her sudden disappearance so the conversation went on, "Continue," she glared at Kelton.
"Pakistan fell, Afghanistan as well last night. The Indian army is gathering up on the Iran border—its invasion is in any moment. This isn’t a war like any other. With most countries they’ve plowed through out of commission due to your ghouls all the Indian army has to do is literally across the countries—taking them down with little to no resistance—most the people gone or already dead. With its current rate the Indian army will reach the Iraq border in three to four days. You have two days to stop this army."
She smiled and threw the cloak over her shoulders while disappearing.
After a few jumps Lilly stopped in the center of Iran, a small town was the only thing she could see for miles. Lilly quickly fastened the cloak over her shoulders and made sure her steel plated boots were intact, she already noticed several deep gashes in the black leather—most likely scars from the sharp blades rubbing against her boots, the metal plates were exposed. Lilly slipped the heavy hood over her head and yanked two empty vials out from one of the pockets on the cloak. She made one more jump.
She reappeared in the small town, a rotten smell floated in the air—the town was deserted. She noticed a body hanging out of a half opened door to what looked like a convenient store. The entire town was dead. She took a few more whiffs of the rotten flesh, and looked down the dust covered road. Her eyes locked on a distant vehicle approaching the town. As the vehicle grew closer she noticed police symbols on the doors. The car stopped in front of her, a single officer in a brown uniform stepped out of the car. He said something in Arabic, she didn't understand it.
"What?" she questioned, taking a few steady steps closer to the lone officer.
His voice quickly turned into broken English, "Who? You?"
She responded with a question, "What happened here?" she smiled as her steady stroll grew closer her.
"Monster. Monster kill all."
"Monster?" She jumped, reappearing directly in front of the officer. Her hands went right for his, preventing him from grabbing his gun and her fangs darted in for his throat. She felt that utter ecstasy from the joyous liquid filling her mouth. But no—she didn't let his warm neck take the liquid. She pulled back, let go, stopping the wonderful feeling mid-moment. This stranger wasn't worthy of the liquid, it was designated for another purpose. She swished it in her mouth and jumped—far away from the small deserted town. That officer won't die today.
Once clear of the town Lilly popped open both the vials and stuck her mouth over one of them. She let the green poison leak out of her mouth and into the vial, filling it. She repeated with process the second vial letting the remaining liquid drip out of her mouth filling it about half way. After sealing both vials she stuck the pair back into her cloak pocket and jumped.
Lilly came to her destination moments later, it was a tent—behind the front lines of the speeding Indian Army. Medical tent. Perfect.
She secured the hood tightly over her head, completely covering it, and tore into the tent as a shadow, popping the cap off the first vial of green liquid.
As she sped up the moment seemed to slow around her. Less than a second passed before her gun was drawn and pointed down the long tent. Two consecutive shots raged down the lengh tent, two bullets aimed in two different directions. The moment the second bullet was clear of the chamber then gun was gone, with black smoke revolving around her hand, she swung at a nearby bed. The target, a wounded Indian solider, never saw the blade that had replaced the gun coming. A clean cut. The vial was spun upside-down in her hand. A single drop was able to come out before it was turned back up. Her gloved bone hand, the one with the knife, smashed into the descending drop, sending it hurling at the cut solider. The drop hit its mark, the freshly opened wound. Almost as if by cue the small cut started gushing out blood like water spewing out of a bottle.
Lilly spun slightly to the right, her knife geared up and ready for the next solider. By the time the pair of bullets hit their marks, the guard and doctor at the end of the tent, she had already successfully knifed and poisoned over twenty of the wounded soldiers. Her blade took no mercy, the amputees, the ones with a single bullet wound, right down to a pair of Afghan prisoners of war—she struck them all down. Lilly could hear an alarm after a moment; the gunfire alerted the army outside, the quick siren sounded like minutes rather than seconds as she stormed down the single isle of the tent. It took thirty-five infected people before the threat was registered in the minds of the poor few left trapped and uninfected within her rage. They started to get up, run, struggle to escape, but the blur stabbed and poisoned them one after another nonetheless. The patients in the tent couldn't see what was attacking them but knew one thing for sure, get out.
By the time she reached the far entrance sixty one people had been struck by her blade and the first vial had been run dry. She poked her cloaked head out of tent and into the sunlight, just over a minute had passed, the people outside barely struggled to react to the attack, a few guns were pointed, terrified at the tent. She observed around two dozen soldiers already geared up and more preparing to go after whatever was in the tent. The barren desert outside was covered with thousands tents, vehicles, and soldiers. It looked as if they were ready to attack the next country that day. One of the guns outside went off as she hurled the empty vial at a distant soldier, hoping the glass would break and perhaps poison him too. She jumped, allowing the bullet charging right at her to pass through the smoke.
The first few new born ghouls begun to rise from the pools of blood covering tent. Lilly reappeared and stood in utter glory in the center of the tent as she watched her unstoppable army rise. She waited, listening intently to the panic taking place outside. Soon, sixty-one disconfigured yellow-toothed monsters stood, awaiting orders from their master. The master stood and swayed her body back and forth while looking at the ground, trying her best to avoid the blood, "Kill them," at first her voice was quite, the heavy hood muffled her words, "Kill Them!" the volume in her voice risen and the swaying stopped. She looked up, her eyes shifted first to the left then to the right, taking in the dark eyes and bloodied bodies of her minions. "Kill them ALL! Kill them ALLL!" she roared, the muffle was gone—her voice was loud and clear. "Kill every last one of the soldiers! Slaughter the army! Slaughter IT!!" the last two words where so loud they echoed out at an earsplitting volume.
The order was understood and the mob of blood thirsty ghouls started vanishing from sight, at first just one or two, but soon by the dozens until all of them had disappeared from the tent. Short screams and pandemonium were heard outside, but the bloodshed was vicious and quick. Within a minute everything outside went silent, the ghouls had slaughtered and moved on.
She slowly walked to the end of the tent and peaked out once more. The tents outside were still intact, blowing just so slightly in the light breeze. The smell of death already began to drift in the warm air. As she turned her head to one side she saw what was left of the unit she had seen the first time she looked out. Blood was everywhere and hundreds of bodies were piled up, most of them with their throats torn out. The entire unit that was outside just moments ago was dead where it stood—it was as if the hundred men were torn apart so fast they didn't know to run. Satisfied, she turned into smoke, destined for her next target about fifty miles up, along the more northern line of the Indian army.
***
As Lilly’s day dragged on she slowly grew heavy with blood. She started off trying her best to remain clean, free of the gore, but it didn’t take long with attack after attack to for a mistake to happen, and they happened one after another added up until it got to the point where the gore scattered across her black clothing no longer mattered. She had gone from camp to camp slaughtering and turning the Indian soldiers into her own personal army, she created so many ghouls that her teeth went numb with pain. She had never used them so much in a single day. Her body was not used to it. No normal Darth should ever have to use their fangs more than once or twice a day—her body was hardly able to rebuild its poison reservoirs before she drained them empty once more.
As she traveled through camp after camp the radio signals, some in English and others in languages she didn’t quite recognize, switched from confusion early in the day to a mass evacuation order as the evening wore on. Around the sixth attack Lilly started to hear the evacuation calls. When she heard the first evacuation calls the brisk morning had turned into a warm afternoon and the camps turned from crowded hysteria to ghost towns, the radios she understood said over and over, “Evacuation to the Hotel. Rally point codename Hotel. Regroup at Hotel for defensive tactics and protection of General Hinder. Repeat…”
Once the warning was out the rest of her attacks followed the retreating army, taking down entire caravans in an instant. Hundreds of men fell the same way. Hundreds were cut open and sprayed with her poison. It was a numbing sensation to be able to kill so many—and her sensations were still unclear of if this sensation was a good feeling or a bad one—and that’s what scared her the most. No matter how hard she tried to tell herself how wrong what she was doing was she couldn’t help but smile. She was enjoying the moment.
It wasn’t hard for her to interrogate the frightened soldiers before she slaughtered them. It didn’t take long at all to find out the exact location of the Hotel. It was a heavily fortified rally point on the north-west border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Once she was finally satisfied with the amount of ghouls created, it felt like almost a thousand, and had no doubt they would destroy the Indian Army she jumped for the supposed rally point. She had one more target, the General himself, Hinder.
She quickly arrived at the boundary of the rally point. As she looked down a slight slope she admired the millions of people filling into a valley like swarming ants. The outskirts of the valley were already fortified with heavy barbed wire and tall metal fences. Several tall wooden guard posts were set up every few hundred feet, they looked as if they had been set up overnight—at impressive feat of such a massive army. The guard posts had anywhere from two to three men in them, heavy guns were set up on top of each post and pointed at the outskirts of the valley.
Past the armored barbwire border millions of soldiers sat in huddled tightly packed units. Even with her amazing eyesight Lilly was not able to see the end of the waves of humans already at the stronghold, nor could she see the ends of the lines and lines of soldiers still piling into the congregation. There was no doubt that the massive stronghold was the biggest merging of people ever in history.
But all the people meant nothing to her. There weren’t a threat, if anything they were all the walking dead, the millions of people evacuating the camps only lure her bloodthirsty ghoul’s right to the Hotel—right to the tens of millions trying to evade death.
She looked past the army and to the thing in the center of it all—a single building, a skyscraper. At a least fifty stories high, the windows that remained on skyscraper popped out and glared importance. As she got a better look at the building she couldn’t help to notice hundreds of the windows were blown out, it looked like the building got its fair share of the war, but nonetheless was still used as a staging point. Lilly recounted some of the information she picked up in her forced interrogations. Supposedly the General was located somewhere on the twenty-eighth floor, a floor where the windows were still intact. That’s where she was going. Lilly jumped.
The smell of burnt flesh and charred wood filled her nostrils as she appeared in one of the many blown out rooms of the Hotel. From what she could see, the building wasn’t actually a hotel at all. A large blackened table spread across the center of the room she was in and what was left of computers was scattered along the walls. An old clock was barely hanging on the wall, frozen at two-thirty am—she guessed some sort of attack that happened here during the night. She cautiously shuffled forward over the burnt ground and shattered glass as the cool evening breeze drifted through what used to be large the windows that overlooked the valley. She felt a warmer draft and looked up, the roof near the center of the room was blown out as if some sort of missile went into the room and made its final contact with the ceiling.
It was then she looked at the closed door that she assumed lead to the corridor, behind that door she discovered where the smell was coming from. A rushed stack of charred bodies was thrown into the dark corner behind the door—stashed behind a filing cabinet that looked as if it’s been pried open and its contents thrown into the floor carelessly and left to smolder in the fire.
With gun ready she slowly reached the door and tried her best to not breathe in the fumes coming off the pile. As her hand twisted the handle she felt the metal crumble in her hands. She carefully opened the door to a crack and peaked outside, the hall, unlike the blown out room, was well lit and fairly clean. One direction was empty, but the other had three armed men guarding a door that was up a few stairs—that must be where the headquarters of the General is.
She checked the chamber of her revolver, it was loaded. She swung the door fully open and flew out into the hall. Lilly aimed the gun down the hall without hesitation and pulled the trigger. Without delay the gun and her pocket flickered into smoke and she pulled the trigger again. She watched as the guards slowly turned to the rapid gunfire and she pulled the trigger a third time. With her incredible speed, she sped down the hall weaving around the falling bodies. Her hand twisted the handle and her shoulder slammed into the door up the few steps and her body crashed into the room, she pointed her gun at to a hidden guard next to the door and pulled the trigger a fourth time. Her eyes flung up at the large room she was in and spotted six men in general uniforms and a man near the center of the room in a business suit. The business man, who hadn’t even turned around yet, looked as if he was frozen mid-sentence, only two seconds had passed.
Smoke fizzled over the gun and she pointed it as the small group, while doing so she glanced over dozens of high tech computers in what looked like a large office space. Shelves of books covered the walls and large windows bordered the edge of the building, giving a full view of the congregation below.
“General Hinder!” Lilly snapped at the men in Army attire, “Where is he!” her gun was pointed at them.
The business man slowly turned with his hands in the air and said in a clam voice, with clear English, “You don’t have to do this.”
“Where is the General, or I will shoot,” her voice sounded firm, and the blood already covering her black clothes proved she wasn’t bluffing. In the corner of her eye she saw a glimmer of steel and Lilly’s hand turns in an instant, she pulled the trigger and the furthest man away from her fell, the gun he tried to pull out laying uselessly beside him. Instantly noticing the shot wasn’t fatal Lilly jumped for the downed body and reappeared with her boot swinging with a full forced kick that crushed into the man’s jaw, knocking him still. She then turned back to the five remaining and pointed the gun again, “Where is he, or you all die.”
“Why are you doing this, you don’t need to do this,” the businessman persisted.
Annoyed with the businessman, she jumped for the next General, she reappeared with her cold hands pressed up against his ears and her feet smashed into his chest, with one quick motion her entire body spun, until she heard a crack from the man’s neck. She repeated her threat once more, “Where is he!?”
“Stop,” the man in the suit ordered.
He pushed her too far. She aimed her gun and in less than a second pulled the trigger three times, watching the last three men in uniform fall. “Stop!? Stop!!” she exploded, her black eyes locking on the last remaining person in the room, “You think it’s that easy? You know nothing! Nothing! I’m just the Damn Queen floating around the chessboard—trying to find something important to kill. But all I can find is pawns, PAWNS! Oh, I’ll do my duty. I’ll get moved from square to square until nothing is left, NOTHING! Welcome to the Devils game—and your turn just ended,” With the full force of her speed and strength she charged at the man, ramming into him and kept going until the pair slammed into one of the windows overlooking the army below.
The window shattered with ease and the pair was hurled into the air. Lilly jammed one of her emptied vials into his mouth and slammed it shut, making sure the glass broke and cut his mouth—allowing the poison penetrate his gums, a present for the army below. Once satisfied, she kicked off his body and jumped away.