Gun against his scalp, Dexter's feet rooted into the ground. The Azarean female loomed in the corner of his eye, a cold and calculating demeanor with no expression behind those glasses. She hadn't killed him yet, which could only mean one thing.
Despite the precarious situation, his thoughts were a loop of his last exchange with Jessica. Though it could have and probably should have been different, he was grateful.
A deafening bang accompanied a liquid sensation on his cheek. He flinched over his right shoulder, where the Azarean female collapsed. Meters away from her fallen body stood Ike, alive with a smoking barrel in his grasp.
"Run, shit-stain!" he yelled and commenced firing.
However, the second agent had begun a sprint. Too quick, he dodged the bullet and grabbed Ike's arm like a lunging viper. He shoved him and dented the hood of a car before tossing successive body shots the eye could barely follow. Ike somehow took the brunt of them before blocking his taller opponent and punching back.
The alien swiped the bruise off his face as if it were cosmetic.
Ike rolled off the hood of the car and set some distance between them. He then assumed a fighter's stance and wasted no time advancing. Rigorous breath escaped his every jab, but nothing made contact.
The Azarean dodged like a slippery worm, swerving out of his opponent's reach, no wasted motion. Ike tired himself into the Azarean's clutch. His entire body was lifted then slammed onto the roof of another car. Broken glass hit the street, and dry cackles escaped his lips.
In control of his nerves again, Dexter scrambled and picked up the dead agent's pistol. He lifted its holographic sights to the agent. Aware, the agent left Ike's bloody face on the car hood, stole his magnum from the ground, and pulled the trigger. All in the time it took to blink.
Dexter's pistol flew out of his hand; Ike's magnum burned into flecks, and before Dexter could even register the pain, the Azarean kicked him into the car behind him. Then, an arm fell on the agent's shoulder.
Ike heaved the Azarean's collar and tossed him onto the car hood, switching places. He accompanied his next flurry of punches with loud, begrudging groans.
***
Down the highway of scattered vehicles and scared citizens, Jessica skated, at high velocity, across numerous obstacles. She moved faster than the viral signal transmitting through Babel, which quickly transformed static traffic into a vehicular tide over the superhighway. Mid-focus, Monarch's voice returned.
"Asgard is splitting off! Without a specific target to follow, they're scrambling. Now's our best window: all units, disperse and meet up at the rendezvous. M72014."
Per Monarch's observation, the Asgard airships en route had abandoned their formation, to swerve in sundry directions. Like fledgling birds in the sky, they split their attention for every off-road car carrying potential suspects, and there were many.
"Dexter!" Jessica called, breaking near the fiery wreckage. She found her friend shaken, resting against the dented car door.
The agent was nearby, squaring off with Ike, Ike who had drawn a knife only to sweat bullets in front of his opponent. The fire in his eyes stemmed from fear.
"Jessica?" Dexter moaned. He was tiredly gawking from his sorry position, where surprise impeded his effort to rise. Jessica crouched and carefully wrapped his arm around her neck.
"We're leaving, Dex!"
"Now's your chance!" Ike shouted, and the enemy pinned him to the ground. He had no hope of escape then, no purpose aside from distraction.
Jessica wanted to help, to relieve Ike's bloody exhaustion. She was unwilling to push her luck, however, as the Azarean, without remorse, began beating Ike to death... The operative only managed to spit one last sentence.
"Get out of here, Dark!"
"That's not—"
"Hold on tight!" Jessica accelerated away from the conflict; Dexter's arms instinctively wrapped around her waist.
When they started their escape, the Azarean turned. Just one step in their direction and he suddenly stopped to groan in pain. Ike stabbed his leg with a piece of glass, drawing blood.
"Babel, engage!" A hum and green light underneath preceded their levitation off-road. Though the kickoff was subtle, it carried their combined weight into the sky. Fortunately, Shannon's vehicle was visible on the horizon.
"Jess, behind us!" Dexter warned.
She witnessed a car launch off the superhighway, speeding directly after them. All the worry in the world suddenly struck harder than the wind. Her heart pounded her chest, ready to drop. It pounded, and the car burst into flames. An implosion brought it spiraling down, and the tumultuous crash left nothing to the imagination.
Jessica goggled at the vehicle heap, pondering the cause of the blast. Since the ruins offered no explanation, she read Dexter's somber face. He shut his eyes.
"Run a scan of the superhighway, Babel." Magnified, infrared vision revealed a faint heat signature where they left Ike. And within seconds, the body heat gradually degraded into blue, like everything else.
Panning over the sky, Jessica cast anxiety to the wind. Nothing was chasing them beyond the city limits, where civilization surrendered to a forest. Surfing across the weightless expanse of blue, she trailed after Shannon's vehicle, which showed no signs of stopping. Furthermore, the extra passenger limited their speed. Dexter remained quiet throughout the flight, his heart beating at her back. She counted over a hundred beats per minute.
With the fear of being spotted, Jessica looked down at the seemingly endless sea of trees. Her friend's health was among the list of factors to consider. "Dexter!"
"Yea?"
"Do you know where the rendezvous is?"
His silent delay gave the answer before he did. "I just know it's in this general direction!"
"I'm going down!"
"What about the others?"
"They won't forget us!" She glanced back one last time, relieved by the clear horizon. "Hold on!"
Jessica fell to the lush canopy in a steady decline, a few branches threatening to smack them. When the ground came to so did a clear flowing stream that mirrored the pines, the blue dome. Over a hill, Dexter hopped down.
"But Doc!" Jessica landed several meters away then sprinted close.
"I'm alright!" he remonstrated.
"Are you sure? Because I think you hit your head on a falling car."
"Yea, I know, Jess. I was there... So was Ike."
Jessica stared daggers at his attitude, then warily paced several feet away. Nothing but rows upon rows of bark and shrub lay ahead. "Something else got you irritated?" she asked. "I haven't heard 'Thank you for saving me, Jessica'."
His silence was instructive.
Back around, she watched him squat upright, inhale, and huff. His brow furrowed in either resentment or sickness. Unclear until he spoke.
"It was a bad idea coming after me. It just wasn't—There was no way you could have predicted the end result on that highway. That was pure luck, and you're lucky to be alive."
"Maybe," Jessica replied, fist tightening.
"No. No maybe!" He stomped up to her, the gulp in his neck apparent. "There were two agents, Jessica, and the whole thing was a clear shitstorm, meaning you could have gotten killed. That's all. And it wouldn't have been worth it, you know that? You're here because you're needed, not me. So, no more stupid decisions."
Jessica couldn't calculate her words. Instead, acid welled in her gut and made them spill out of her mouth.
"Listen, you ignorant slut, you want to know what's stupid? It's thinking you had to sacrifice yourself for a clean getaway. Tell me, honestly, was martyrdom your first thought after hitting your head?"
Dexter leered. "What the hell else was I going to do? It was the right thing."
"Don't talk to me about the right way. There's smart, moronic, and then there're variables. Even if Beelz and Dissent weren't perfectly capable, even if Monarch didn't have an intervention plan, even if Ike wasn't sneaking up on NSS before you clumsily drew their attention, even if I didn't transmute the GPS monitoring signal, the one factor that wasn't going to change anything was you dying, moron.
"And you're right, I didn't qualify the agents as a risk! The one thing I did know before I made my stupid decision was that I had to save my friend! But if you have a problem with that, fine! Now, I know. Stupid or not, though"—she closed the remaining distance between them—"you don't get to fucken tell me who I can and cannot save."
She stormed from Dexter's sight, down the hill, to huff and groan at a nearby creek. A strong desire to break something slammed her foot on the ground. "Idiot..." And mulling over the water in languid silence, the reflection was plagued by memories of Beth. She resisted the flashes again, unable to cope at a moment's notice.
Deep breaths.
Eventually, she heard Dexter's footsteps. If one more stupid utterance escaped his stupid mouth, she would jog past the water and find Sub Terra on her own. Already, she deliberated on Valerie and Shannon's whereabouts.
"Thanks for saving me, Jessica."
Her angsty frown slowly uplifted into a sly smirk, and her fingers came together like a conniving villain. Her chakras aligned and helped sedate the trembling frustration. Halfway on the path to satisfaction, she turned around with a canted grin. "Okay! Let's get the hell out of here."
Dexter's brow jerked. "Uh, okay, where are we going?"
"If you don't know, I don't know, but it's better to run than to wait for Elsa, don't cha think? By the way, why Elsa?"
"Because space-elves are ice cold and need more sun, yea."
"Tell me about it." She smirked. "Later, perhaps, when we're not in danger."
"That might be a while."
* Vote for mystery!