When they emerged into the grey light of the world outside the demolished parts of the house, 24 minutes had passed, according to Alex Mars' mental timer. It was the same as when they had gotten in-however, the damned helicopter had left, leaving the ruined Center and house in its wake. He watched as Sarah buried herself in Lyra's chest while Lyra buried her own face in her sister's hair. He was silent as they did it for 3 minutes before thinking of his own family and the Martyr-what if they were getting the same treatment-getting stuck ina burning and falling-down building? He abhorred the idea, especially after he had witnessed another death that had so much significance on all the three-him, Lyra, and Sarah.
Sighing, he turned to find any car parked as near as possible and once he saw an old Tesla parked to the side, he ran to it and using the end of his Martian laser gun, smashed the thing in a minute, ignoring how it split up like a spider web before crashing all of a sudden down to the floor, adding to the particles on his shoes, which were ashes, dust, and the glass from the house. He opened the door from within by pushing his arm through the jagged hole in the window and got in. The Tesla came alive under his scarred hands and he drove it down like hell to the front of the street, the tires kind of sliding on the grass yard of the house.
"We gotta go, Lyra," He succeeded, luckily, in reigning himself in front of them and the words rushed out calmly, though there was a hurried feeling beneath them.
Lyra silently(and thankfully) nodded and prodded Sarah lightly into the backseat of the car, which Alex Mars had already unlocked for them, and as soon as their butts were on the leather seats and the door was nearly closed, he took off down the road.
It didn't feel like the time when he had shown off on the Rexton G4 that would have become Melanie's a few hours later, when he had raced the vehicle in the desert as if filming for a car-ad. He just simply felt horrible-for Lyra's mom, sister, and then, his own family and the Martyr. He wasn't going to lose them, but he knew that the stakes were higher this time than saving Lyra's family, for his entire family and the Martyr were the founders of the protests against the gov and the Military and the top letters on the killing list for the Military would have been spelling out his dad's, mom's, and Michael's names proudly in Times New Roman font.
And he was absolutely ready to kill every single Military soldier in the country, despite his previous goal to never kill a single person that day, if that happened. The death of Lyra's mother had been enough.
He wandered the car down some unfamiliar streets before encountering the road that would lead to his town and with renewed vigor and urgency and a feeling of déjà vu, he hit the pedal. All the while, beyond the soft purr of the Tesla, he could hear tears finally slip fresh from Sarah's eyes onto her lap, and Lyra's hand gripping her closer.
Though his town was tiny and far away from the city center, it didn't mean that no harm had been done to it. He saw every particle of life in the town he had been born in and lived for exactly 17 years and 9 months and 14 days, all in good shape and nearly in the same way he had left them be, but still could never ignore the differences. Some entire cement walls supporting buildings were destroyed by civilian forces, while most of the cars had left their garages or front of their owners' houses already. He could only wish that those residents had left safely enough before any of the Raiders' opponents could deter them.
However, when he got onto the nearest road to his house that would lead him to the front of it, all hopes vanished.
There was still his dads' old shaggy Beetle parked in its neat way in their old garage. And a single lamp inside the house was on, illuminating the kitchen.
"No," He said one of the words that every single movie character said in such a situation. He heard Lyra's head jerk up and see the same thing as he did as his brain started to panic bit by bit. Once more, during the split seconds he parked the car in front of the house, trillions of thoughts ran through his head like hell: They are still there. Maybe for me. Maybe for death. Maybe for an honorable and brave death against the Military. Maybe believing that I am dead already. But what of the Martyr? He isn't stupid enough to suicide just like that...
By the time his head just froze and those trillions of thoughts simply froze with it like a well-preserved, icy, fat mammoth, Lyra had gotten off and opened his door for him, Sarah right behind her, looking at him blankly. Absentmindedly, he looked from top to bottom at Lyra and found her arm bleeding freely, probably from some glass shard.
"You're bleeding," He stated, staring.
"I am," She answered, eyes flickering to the house.
"Um, aren't we out of time?" Sarah commented, hand twitching at her side.
"Give him a sec," Lyra said, and as if having received an order from her sister telepathically to back off, Sarah backed off, stepping a tiny bit to Mars' house, eyes in wonder and straining to listen with her normal ears to see if anything wrong was going on inside the house. And for her, she simply couldn't understand why the boy who had saved her and her sister, the boy who seemed to have been with her sister for some time, the boy who had been amiable to her since that moment, wasn't entering his own house to fetch his parents, who might be getting hassled that moment.
She was simply too young and non-Prodigious for that.
By that time, Lyra had fixed her feet firmly on the grass right in front of Alex and glared and glared and glared at him until she finally managed to make him look up in utter agony and guilt.
"I'm useless," He finally said.
Then he hung his head away to the grass flattened by the tires of the Tesla and stared and stared and stared.
Lyra Cannes no knew that it was useless to get him speaking that moment-the boy she had gotten so used to soothe through talking wasn't simply in his mood, for he was believing very firmly that he had let her mom die, then had let his own parents die or get hurt.
So instead, she reached down for his hand, which was grasping his brown hair tight as if he was trying to root them out in a single second, eased it away, then held it firm.
Just like that.
And that kind of did the trick-Alex Mars became surprised by her voluntary and very rare skinship that he looked up, thus letting his other hand go of his own hair.
He gave her a questioning, puzzled look.
"Please don't be a Thomas, Al. Don't abandon your hope, don't become Alex Nobody. You're Alex Mars. That's all and everything. You're Alex Mars, Al," She finally said, giving their linked hands a tiny nudge to pull him up.
And as it had just worked before, it also did now-he stood up, eyes always on her.
Then he nodded.
After all, she was right, Alex Mars knew-in the realms of both logic and illogic. There were a million possibilities if you combined theological possibilities and the illogical possibilities. For instance, his parents might still be in there, unaware of anything going on outside and watching TV, laughing their ass off. Or, they might have already been killed with blades through their hearts and lying on the tiles, with the Martyr lying cold in his gym from a choke that the Military had given him just before they left the town...
Oh, forget the second one, Al. Fuck, stop being so impossible with yourself, he scolded himself.
So, they all walked to the front door and without knowing, slipped in as quietly as possible.
He heard before he saw, as always. He heard a few drops hit the metal sink some 4 times as they crept down the wooden hall, which was simply so familiar to him. Though he was a boy almost devoid of thick, gooey emotions, he simply had to try to keep down the lump that had come to him so rarely even as a kid, when he remembered how small, how stupid, and how horribly naive he had been before he left for the Military, hoping for the best that the Military had never been capable of serving.
Just as he had managed to keep it all down, they emerged into the living room, which was connected with the kitchen, and all froze in the middle fo their tracks.
Empty.
No one was inside.
"Did we miss something?" Sarah whimpered. Lyra paused, fixing the posture of her hand gripping Mars' sublty before answering. "No. There wasn't a sign of sabotage nor blood nor killings. Isn't that right, Alex?" Well, since his head had been so busy keeping emotions stuck inside his throat and chest, he asked his ears and eyes if they had seen anything out of place. "No," They answered.
"No," He answered.
Then this thought occurred to him, bursting into the clearing inside his brain with a loud crash.
"Maybe, the Martyr evacuated them," He concluded.
"Alright, now I suppose he's the guy who left the only one and last comment in your parents' campaign?" Lyra asked. "Yeah. He was like my-" He squeezed her hand before letting go and sliding over to the counter fo the kitchen. "-lifelong mentor. I should contact him somehow so we can join forces," He threw open the cabinet next to the one that his mom had pulled out her Portmeirion some 13 years ago and dropped it, then pulled out a bag of bandages, which had stayed there for those same 13 years since his dad had cleaned up his mom's wounds after getting her Potmerion damned. "Here," He peeled one open and handed it to Lyra, who pasted it thankfully on her arm. They all watched as her hand pressed the thing to the wound and patted it in total silence, till Sarah broke the silence thankfully.
"If Lyra's right, what should we do now?"
"We wait. We eat and get some rest and try to contact Michael the Martyr as soon as possible-then, we'll see what we can do," Alex Mars answered her for the first time.
So, they all did as their leader said-Sarah cautiously walked over to the couch in front of their family TV and plopped on it before snoring lightly as her sister, while Lyra sat on the kitchen table and also followed her sister into the world of dreams promptly and very deeply, it seemed, and Alex Mars himself sat on the counter, afraid that if he went up to his bedroom, something might happen to them.
So instead of selling thoughts to relish the past memories in the house, he let his gaze wander over to Lyra.
She was in peace once more, but with her arm bandaged up, face a bit dirtied up, though still beautiful. Her face was turned to him and he took such luck for granted as he kept staring. No one has made him feel like that, from that moment inside the burning house...
Sighing, trying to push the feeling away and trying to convince himself that it was just a waste of time, he went over to the fridge and found some water and after checking its expiration date, grabbed a piece of cold bread and went over to the couch to give a chunk of it to the youngest, for it simply felt responsible and right in terms of manner and his leadership.
He had managed to jolt Sarah awake when he heard something.
Oh, how much was he now sick of hearing such things that seemed so simple, but would decide if they would be living the next day or not.
This time, he had heard two cars, definitely heavy army ones, coming straight down the street to them.
He glanced up at Sarah's now-equally-horrified face, then at Lyra's perfectly-at-ease face, before dropping the food, and yanked the window of the living room open, the one where the road would be invisible. Sarah leaped to her feet and he pushed her to the window and helped her get over it and hard the light thud the balls of her feet made when they touched the grass.
"Lyra?" She croaked.
"I swear I'll get both of us alive out of here. Just hide and get away from any moving car," Surprisingly, maybe as if sharing her sister's ability to quickly understand, Sarah Cannes nodded before bolting away into the bushes.
Next, he quickly banged the window shut behind him and rushed to get back to Lyra's side at the table when he heard the front door open with a creak.
And to tell the truth, his heart raced like hell, while the clear sound made him want to jump straight out of his own ass and lose his wits.
But there was still Lyra. He couldn't leave without her, nor would imagine such a thought once more.
He shook her as quietly as possible, but the process managed to be slow. Just when he heard a myriad of heavy footsteps start to make their way down the long hall to reach the kitchen, Lyra Cannes' eyes flew open and fluttered up to him in wonder, then stopped at the edge of the hall.
Before she could say or ask him anything, he whisked her up from the chair without a sound by touching her waist, then stepped a single step in front of her, holding the Martian paralyzer-it was God's sake that the weapon didn't seem like a paralyzer at first glance but just like a normal gun. It might save them some time and a reason to threaten their enemy...
He was wondering who it would be this time: the Raiders or the Military, when they walked into the room.
He and Lyra both froze at the sight-however, for different reasons. Lyra had frozen from how many of them had gotten there.
-And Alex had frozen from the sight of the boy he had never thought he would meet.
It was Mark Higgins.
They stood straight, rigidly as their mentors had told them to--Higgins in the army-straight posture, Mars in the Martyr-and-Prodigy-posture.
They stared into each other, not in a romantic way, but in the most ferocious way that even Lyra was surprised at and related the scene to that of two wolves staring at each other, waiting for the moment to pounce.
But the pouncing part didn't come yet, somehow.
They just stared.
Meanwhile, Alex Mars saw a swirl of surprise, doubt, anger, then utter calm and determination int the other boy's eyes. Mark Higgins saw a wisp of anger, fury, then a hue of red in the other boy's eyes.
Then,
"Al-," Mark Higgins fumbled on his first words after the long silence, but for his other soldiers were watching, quickly recovered.
"Mars," He rephrased himself in the toughest voice possible, but it still shook, nonetheless.
"Higgins," Alex said.
Mark Higgins stared daggers at him, now, eyes slit open like a snake in a strange way, just like when Thomas had handed himself over to the Rebels.
Keep your ground, don't kill the fucker yet, Alex reminded himself, before his hand could go to all of his weapons. But there was one thing that was very clear in his mind: he wouldn't pretend to be normal this time. He deserved to not do that this time, at least.
While he had been thinking slowly to pass the time, some 3 minutes had gone by, filled to the brim with silence. So, both sides weren't surprised at all when one of the dozens of soldiers who had assembled quietly behind Mark Higgins coughed in a strange way that made it sound like a military cough.
"Sergeant Higgins, from the general's orders, you must-" Higgin's face scrunched up like a crumpled paper at the comment and licked his lips and stared at the ground, probably swearing. Then, he went slack and rigid at the same time, somehow.
"You. All. Go. Out. Search the entire town," The guy who had questioned Higgins just now coughed one more military cough of his before nodding stiffly like some robot.
"Yes, sir,"
Then they all swished around on the balls of their feet, then marched down the hall.
Alex Mars found it extremely hilarious, for ut looked as if Mark Higgins had been promoted after all, as he himself had allowed that night in the jail-but only to command around some puppet-like robotic soldiers, completely restricted under Fawkes' and Hales' commands.
Mark Higgins simply wasn't dumb enough to not know that fact-and as soon as there was a thud(to be exact, 0.98 seconds later), he had pulled out a sonic gun with a surprisingly smooth move and was pointing the muzzle at Alex only.
"Who's the girl, Mars?" Though it seemed to be a question, the sentence still drawled out of the boy's throat like a simple statement or observation. "She has nothing to do with this. She had lost her family while she was trying to get out of the city and wandered in," It was the longest statement ever made between the two till then.
Higgins scowled, smirked, then spat on the polished tiles of the house.
"Lier. Was a lier, is a lier, and will be a lier," He spat out, the skin on his finger digging deeper into the trigger of the gun.
Well, he seemed to be quite anxious and nervous, obviously, to be grasping the gun so tight, And there simply couldn't be a reason why Hale or Fawkes ordered their 'best' soldier and now sergeant to shoot their worst enemy down...
Alex Mars finally understood, an with abhorrence.
Mark Higgins wasn't going to kill him.
He was going to kill...
Lyra.
The though punched his heart and he could hardly breathe through his nose and sighed a quick breathe through the mouth before Mark could notice that.
"It doesn't matter now," He replied to the last spoken word of the other boy.
Mark bared his teeth and forced air through those teeth, letting some spit fly from the gaps. And during those hesitating seconds, Alex Mars' thoughts were back on the previous, terrifying concept.
If that was the case, he was going to expect it and what needed to be done... And till then, he would have to divert the boy's attention from Lyra and make him excited and infuriated.
"So you did take my position after all. I just thought that you would be pure and smart enough to not do that," He let the words out straight from his brain. This was one moment in his life when his brain would have the chance to say out loud anything it wanted.
It did the trick.
"Not taking your position would have been dumb," Though the words had come out quite loud, it still shook. The boy seemed to be seething from anger all of a sudden. Good, good, keep ut steady an' goin', man, Alex Mars told himself as he waited for the storm of the words he knew that was inside the other boy.
And his patience was awarded.
Higgins exploded.
"Did you know, Mars, of how much trouble you induced even after you got yourself expatriated? The generals both ran meticulous tests on me, putting me near to the extent of death, and that wasn't all. General Fawkes kept questioning me, giving me this look all the time! You fucker did this to me. Also-" the boy took a deep breath and, surprisingly, smirked and cackled out loud like some old woman straight at Mars.
"-Andrew Stewart. The generals introduced a day to honor his death and abhor your atrocity. You should have been there or seen it,"
The boy was smart. He had known where Alex Mars would have broken down or winced, at the least.
But Alex had been prepared. He winced only inside his heart, but didn't wince on the outside-his determination helped him along the way: he wasn't going to make another Andrew-like situation occur in front of his very own eyes.
"That's fine. It's ok when I'm called a lier or anything. Or a killer. Or some Prod rubbish. But I think that I am much better than someone who leads brainwashed teens who know nothing in truth of their enemies-or to be exact, who that enemy is,"
He enjoyed and watched with alert eyes at the scene as Higgins' nostrils grew as if ready to pump out grey smoke out of them.
"Stop it. Stop it all. Stop ruining my life. I don't deserve it. I just followed my orders. For myself. For my family. For the nation!" Higgins yelped, the arm with the gun inevitable shaking.
"Exactly. You're just like Adolf Eichmann, Mark," Mars replied.
He could finally see it-the blaring inferno inside the boy's eyes. Oh, at least he knew who Eichmann was-good, good...
And finally came the reaction.
The finger tensed further on the trigger, and just as he had predicted, the boy's eyes grew huge and with no regard to his orders but solely with his instinct, he turned the gun in the direction of Lyra Cannes in a switch of the arm and with a strange un-military battle cry, the finger pushed the trigger, the skin pressed into it.
Alex Mars knew what he had to do. He wasn't going to let any more of the people he knew so well die right inf front of him.
But he still did have the will to be the one to get the death penalty, if someone had to die that day.
And he fulfilled that old wish by stepping at the last second directly in front of Lyra.
Finally do I pay back it all-Andrew and Lyra' mother, he thought and somehow, smiled a tiny bit during the split zero point 2 seconds as the gun was activated.
Lyra still has Sarah. The Martyr has my parents. Good. It was God who set up this perfect situation for me to leave. Yes, he had been patiently waiting for me to leave from long ago...
-I'm ready to go.
This, was 17-year-old-Prodigy Alex Mars' last thought that day before he got shot.