Sweat beaded down the side of Marcus' face. He was flushed now, his skin hot. His eyes watered and he imagined he could hear the sizzling of the tears on his cheeks. Only imagination, of course. Ascendancy's screams filled the room.
Where was he? For a moment he felt lost, strength draining from him as lost the Force. The fog in his mind had thickened. He felt the floor beneath him, wood cool on his cheek. He clung to that feeling, so cool. Part of him wanted to just sleep, to let this heat wash over him. To let go and sink into oblivion.
He was scared. He was in that cage again, in the dark. It had been an accident. The milk covering the table, the soft white bread and baloney sandwich now mush. His eyes shot up to Mama Lawson at the ironing board, tired eyes drawn down. His 6 year old mouth drew down in fear and he started to cry. Pleading with her. Andre tried to explain but she slapped him and he hit the ground. She was so mad at the mess. At them.
"You don't know how hard I work to feed you boys! How hard this is!" she said with barely concealed anger and exhaustion. "No appreciation at all." The iron was in her hand and her hand shot out, nails like pincers in his arm to grab him and....
He whimpered at the memory, the searing heat. And then the cold cage, alone in the dark, the cool of the floor a relief to the throbbing pain he felt. The cool floor. So sweet he wanted to sink in and hide, to run away...
Malk growled from somewhere deep inside. The barely contained rage that always simmered below the surface exploded, seizing him. He felt energy suffuse him and he forced his thoughts clear. The scream of pure blinding rage filled his ears and he forced himself up, ignoring the burning of his skin.
Forced himself to think. That metal ball, blue arcing sparks on its surface. And I remembered. The food container with the metal handle in the microwave. He looked at Ascendancy, at the creature attacking him. He inhaled the Force, lord of it, master of if.
In that moment he saw without his eyes the desperate weaves of the Ascendancy, trying to fend off the creature. And in that moment the walls blew out. For a moment his vision cleared, and there! He could see them through the fog and the cloud and debris. People, recovering from the blast. One of them shouted at him, something in his hands.
The agony of the crackling of his skin tried to force its way into him, but Malik refused to feel it. He tried to stand but his legs would not obey. No!
He was Darth Malik. He would not kneel. He struggled upward even as he wove a blast of air at the man, another weave of air thick and dense.
Screams could be heard through the walls. Borovsky and the Regus used their new fangled weapons. Aria could not sense anyone beyond the room. Her handler moved to place charges. The walls blew out.
Aria felt the blast as it threw her into the wall behind her. She could feel debris raking across her skin and dust settling in the air. It made her cough as she righted herself. There was fear for a moment. It wasn't hers or any of the Atharim. But it was soon gone in a blink of an eye as Martin flew backwards as a blast of air hurled him from the man he'd pointed a gun at.
Aria scrambled for her fallen sword. It lay nearby in a pile of debris. There was no doubt in her mind, but she wanted to have that sword in hand. It was her only weapon . She wouldn't be without it. Everything was a blur. The emotions around her were harsh and played against her own darkness. She wanted to envelope herself in it. The pain, the agony - if only she could feel what Ascendancy was. But he was gone - vanished in the power of the gods.
The other man was a godling himself. He could save Ascendancy. But she had to tell him. Aria stole a glance at her brethren. They would kill her before they let her leave this encounter alive. She knew it. There was only one way out and that was if Ascendancy lived. She bore the man no ill will - god or not. He'd let her live on numerous occasions when he could have smited her with ease.
Aria laughed to herself in the chaos of the moment. Her decision made up. Aria yelled over the ring in her ears.
"Freeze it."
Aria knew the two words would be the meaning of her own death sentence, but she was already sentenced to die. Aria put herself against the wall and held her sword unwavering in front of her. The Regus could turn his weapon on her, but she was hoping he'd rush her instead. It would suit the ego of the man to die by her sword. Aria smiled waiting for the moment that the black man figured out what she'd meant. She had other things to worry about...
Edited by
Aria, Sep 13 2016, 01:37 PM.
Armande smiled at the sounds coming from behind the wall. The full throated wail ripped from the man's soul, its volume so loud as to be audible clearly from outside.
Pleasure bloomed in his stomach, warmth suffusing him, growing into his chest and groin, creeping up and down until his whole body quivered with joy, every fiber orgiastically releasing itself in ecstasy. His eyes burned hot, blue furnaces, blazing. Almost...almost it seemed as if the wall before him dissolved and he could see what was happening, as if he were in the room himself.
Apollyon, the Destroyer, the foretold bringer of doom. The Desolating Abomination. Man of Sin. Anti-Christ. Dragon. Hindu Demon Kali. Zoroastrian Ahriman. Mayan Nohochacyum. By whatever name he went, however foretold in prophecy, no matter what power he wielded, he was being consumed. Eaten. Devoured. He could envision the mark of the slain beast, the torn ouroboros serpent on his arm, as he reached out impotently, begging, futilely fighting.
How could Armande not rejoice at that? How could he be expected to not be overwhelmed with the agony of ecstasy, of awe at what had been wrought before him. What he had wrought. The fulfillment of prophecies untold had come upon them. But the mantle sat on his shoulders, the weight of the future of humanity comfortably resting there. Destiny.
So much to do yet, but the end began now. Regus lowered his weapon briefly, so Martin could set the charges. The cool smooth metal in his hand was at once comforting and intoxication itself. His thumb itched to switch it on again. This time the so-called god would see him, see his face, know his judgement. He would face the full brunt of the ADDS, with no barrier. He would see the Atharim bringing doom.
Weakened, dying, he would be eaten alive from the inside out. A serpent, burning in the flames, fiery divine heat wreathing him, his undying worm, now dying, the everlasting fire he'd brought to the world, finally quenched . Words came to his mind. "καὶ ὁ διάβολος ὁ πλανῶν αὐτοὺς ἐβλήθη εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ θείου. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur."
It was now!
Suddenly chunks of wall seemed to explode outward. Debris and dust hit him, knocking him to the ground, rolling him with chunks of concrete. He lost one of the ADDS in his hands, though he held on to the other through force of will. The pack he rolled with pressed uncomfortable up into his back as he came to be still on it, but only for a moment. His head was still swimming but his goggles had protected his eyes as he got to his feet in seconds, scanning his surrounds.
In front of him was a scene out of nightmare. In front of him was a scene out of his fondest dreams. Apollyon- No! Nikolai Brandon, the man who would be god- was writhing on the floor, as the Ijiraq hovered over him, mist quivering and shifting, the deep glow from inside now a blazing fire as it fed, the divine fury made flesh.
On the ground, struggling to get up from his knees, a black man- his face barely recognizable through the burns. The Sigma- face death, a smile and look in his eyes that promised death. That looked forward to it. That face, wreathed in burns, seemed death incarnate, hungering for it.
His eyes went to Martin and suddenly his Metatron flew backwards through the air as if hit with a car. Armande's eyes widened. Another god! He started to bring up his ADDS. His arm tried to respond but a stab of agony tore through his shoulder and his arm wouldn't move.
Betrayer!!! he shouted in rage at his weakened flesh. The spirit was eager, but his pathetic flesh was weak. Thought raced through his mind at the speed of light and just as quickly, the flick of his eyes and focus sent the drone at the godling to distract him, perhaps even to deliver its payload.
And then he heard the sentient yell something. His mind tried to parse the words, to understand what they meant. And then he understood. She was calling out to the others. To the Sigma.
Anger and disgust and betrayal exploded in his mind. It was not like Lisssandra. Not now, despite the small form and green eyes. This was hatred in its purest form. A creature who had lived at his sufferance had dared to turn on him. The white hot lava seared his veins and he immediately swung to her, all other thought gone, ADDS going to the other arm which would obey its master.
His thumb flicked the switch on as it focused on her.
Pain was nothing to Malik. No. That was a lie. Absulutely a lie. The truth he had learned- had always known- was far deeper. Pain was life. Pain was power. Pain was strength. He drew on his pain, drank it in, as deeply as he drank in the Force, felt them blend together inside him, dark, a malevolent torrent that coursed through his veins, steeling him.
And his smile deepened, the cracking of his burnt lips and cheeks- the tearing of crisp skin and trickle of fluid fueling the fire in his soul. His eyesight had returned enough that the room was clear. His pain forced his mind to push through the cloud that surrounded it. The arcing of the metal in the room- the ball clear on the floor next to him- had stopped and the heat on his skin stopped growing.
Every one of his senses was on fire, heightened to a degree unknown- as if he was the room, one with every mote of dust and every flicker of flame and every molecule of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the air. They were his body, now. All of it, and he felt every shift, every twitch, as if their were his own limbs. A tiny machine the size of a fly flew at him and he crushed it with fingers of air.
And then his 'body' vibrated, the air itself responding to something. A voice pushed itself to him, over Ascendancy's screams and into his ears. "Freeze it!"
Yes. Compression, but to an ultimate degree. Without thinking further, he drew water and fire from around the creature, drawing out the energy into himself, feeding it into the fire of the fireplace.
The creature now writhed and fought, no longer hovering over the Ascedancy. It billowed and shifted angrily, as if an expanding cloud, but in reverse. Its head shook violently as it coalesced into the shape of a man, vibrating and shaking as if trapped and desperately trying to get free, face now showing human features, mouth opened to a gash.
And unearthly howl tore through the air and through his brain, the pain agonizing, and Darth Malik drew deeper on the pain, on his rage and anger- he felt power fill him until he was near to bursting.
The ecstasy was the purest pleasure imaginable, distilled into its finest essence. It was the purest agony, acid and blades through every part of him. He swam in it, luxuriating. Seeing everything clearly.
The metal sphere he'd wrought floated in the air.
The entire room- the blasted gash in the wall, the Ascendancy on the ground, creature whining and twisting and rippling with the smoke that steamed from off of it, the rubble and the girl and old man in their own world, all of them inhabited the reflection on this silver steel ball. And he was God, holding the world in between his fingers.
And the the metal ball shot like a bullet from him, aimed directly at the forehead of the now solid creature, hole blossoming red, misty spray of blood immediately behind, body falling dead to the ground.
The whine stopped instantly, the silence suddenly as loud as the cry was before. Through it, though, he could see Ascendancy still on the ground. He breathed in, feeling the Force flow around him, strengthening him, and tried to come up from his one knee to stand-
-and couldn't. He couldn't walk. Rage boiled over, but he pushed it away. He crawled to Ascendancy, watching the corridors for any others.
His eyes, if he had eyes, were liquid pools of lava. His hair, if he had hair, sizzled around the red-hot metal of the Arcus Band, burnt like a branding iron against his skull. His wrist, if he had a wrist, bubbled beneath the links of a searing hot, tungsten watch. The room, if there was a room, was filled with chaos: with the yell of war cries and the dust of settling debris. He should have choked on the dust, if he was breathing. He didn't even know if he was breathing. And the room was not a room at all. It was a tomb; a future mausoleum encased within the bowels of the earth and filled with fire. So much fire.
The power flowed like the sun. Like ten thousand suns, pouring through his body. His soul should have ripped apart, the physical body should have disintegrated long ago, but something sustained both.
The mist buffered him. It would buffer him until it was done, then let the suns consume him. It couldn't happen. Must not happen. He tried to focus on surviving. He had to outlast it. But the power was so painfully glorious. God himself would weep with it.
Then the world lurched. Like he had been hurling through the universe at light-speed only to slam upon a marble wall, shattering it with his body with the full-stop. The power was cut away, and whipped back upon him like a whip. He gasped at the sharpness of its sting cutting into his soul. A hand gripped him, and Nikolai groaned as though the gentle touch had slapped the burn of his right red arm.
Noises descended. Yells. A woman screaming. A throbbing pulse upon the air. The dust. The ceiling.
But the mist was gone. Its gone.
A turn of the head and he saw Marcus hovering. The bubbles and burns weeping from his skin turned Nikolai's stomach, but he focused on the whites of the other man's eyes. And a growl grew deep in his belly.
Regus.
Nikolai rolled to his stomach, arms and legs weak, body broken by the power that it had held. There was a snarl of madness on his lip as he beheld the back of the man.
"ARMANDE NICODEMUS,"
his voice thundered. With all his might, he clutched the barest tendrils of the power, a candleflame compared to the ten-thousand suns of before, and whips of Aether snagged the man like tentacles, wrenching him backward.
Nikolai would not be prone before the defiler of the Atharim. He would show the man just how insignificant he was. He would suffer as Nikolai suffered, for daring what he had dared. For daring to dethrone the god in the heart of his kingdom. This room would be Armande's tomb.
He staggered to one knee. Then the other, and heaved upright, unfolding himself. His legs were liquid, his eyes bottomless pits of darkness. The Regus of the Atharim was dragged before him, and Nikolai would look upon his face and watch with satisfaction as the life was drained away.
But something slammed into his chest. He yelled, staggered, then fell.
And laid beside Marcus, he saw his own blood spill out beneath him.
With his final moments of lucidity, he finally remembered to utter the command to activate help. "Zenith Advanced Reliancers engage."
((Ooc: Regus moded with permission. ))
His gun was pointed at the black man. The next thing Martin knew he was flying backwards and smashed into the wall behind him. There was no breath left in his lungs. The world was darkness. Martin saw everything flash before his eyes as he collapsed to the floor.
Small recollections of things came to Martin in his darkness. The girl speaking. The shrieks ending. It was a fog when Martin opened his eyes. He blinked and the scene didn't clear. Martin's hand hung limply and but he knew he had to do something. He was certain the Regus was in trouble. He could sense it, if he couldn't exactly see it clearly.
It took effort, more effort than it should have to reach for his gun. One was missing, fallen from the blast. But is second was where... where was it. He reached and found it. It was instinct.
Martin blinked his eyes again trying to clear the blur. He could see Ascendancy and the Regus. He fired at center mass. But Martin wasn't sure he hit anything at all, he fired again.
The Regus aimed the beam at Aria. Her hope dashed the moment the waves laid onto her skin. Aria closed her eyes and waited. There was nothing but pain. And not just hers.
But this was not like anything Aria had ever endured, the pain of a gun shot, it felt more like the Bannak had engulfed her instead of just burnt her hands. Aria could feel the leather grip of her sword heating against the metal of her sword. Aria gripped it tighter. It was her life in that sword. As long as she held it, she would survive.
Aria felt Borovsky wake. Then the pain stopped. How long had it stopped? A gun shot fired and Aria's eyes shot open. The pain and the anger were all she felt. The bite of the leather against her skin as the swords metal no longer being super heated.
A second shot fired. Aria found the source - Martin taking aim at Ascendancy. She didn't see Regus nearby. Where had he gone? But there was no hesitation as the darkness consumed Aria. She let it take her. The man before her was going to kill her. But not before she put her sword through his gut.
Aria squeezed the hilt tighter as she took the first painful step towards Borovsky. Another and the pain seared her legs and the air she breathed. But she relished the pain, drank it down in the darkness. He didn't even turn to look at her as she slid her sword through his rib cage with all the force she had left in her. Her sword sank to the hilt into the body of her handler. Aria sneered as she fell against his back.
"I got you first."
Aria twisted her blade as his body fell to the side and she collapsed with him.
Edited by
Aria, Sep 14 2016, 07:48 PM.
Armande snarled with righteous satisfaction as this...creature was buffeted by the radiation. She would burn too. All of them would. All would be cast into Gehenna. Burned alive. This....thing who had been by his side, allowed to live among them.
Again and again, the universe made it clear.
He.Was.Right. He had always been right. Inhuman creatures- anything that was not normal- were a cancer. Demon cells on the body humanity. Liars. Fakes. Impostors. Lissandra's face came to him, superimposed over the sentient. Anger turned to rage. It stormed around him, buffeted him. He would purge them from the earth. All of them. Brandon. DuBois. Aria. All of them.
Suddenly he was yanked off his feet to the floor, the chunks of wall and twisted exposed rebar approaching him rapidly. He barely saw that the Ijiraq was not there. Instead, an unsteady Apollyon on his feet, face a mass of burns, that damn metal crown he wore surrounded by burned and smoking flesh, faced him....
....and Armande felt anger grow. He would not go in fear. He would not die a coward. Evil incarnate was before him. As he was dragged by invisible bonds across the rubble he felt tearing at his clothes, his armor, his body. His left arm dragged across a jagged piece of rebar, deep down this forearm, across his ouroboros.
The pain fueled his anger, as he drew closer to the maw. His heart screamed defiance as death approach, the Atharii saying ripping from his throat with a roar.
"Till hope is gone, till all has gone to dust, screaming defiance alone in the dark, we go to spit into death's eye!!!"
He struggled violently, fighting with ever fiber of his being, ignoring the pains that ripped across his body as death approached, his eyes glued to the demon that would be king.
And suddenly his bonds disappeared as blood fountained from his chest and Nikolai Brandon dropped to the floor. Dead. At last. Relief ripped through him. He turned his face to see Barovsky with his gun, just as the sentient stabbed him through the chest, her face ecstatic as he died, and then fell to the floor.
Armande felt a stab of grief at the loss of Metatron. His friend. But now was not the time for it and he pushed it away. The sentient still lived. And he needed to make sure Apollyon was dead. And his Sigma.
He struggled to get up. He weakly got to his knees and his head swam for a moment, but he tried to push through the light-headedness. he still had a job to do. He ignored the pain that pulsed through him, his shoulder, his arm, his ribs, his legs all vying for his attention.
The dust and smoke hung in the air as he got up and stumbled to find a weapon.
At that moment, he heard the sound of an alarm, of doors up the stairs. Too late. Guards were coming. Looking back over the scene with a grimace-
He had to be dead!- he took off, shouldering his pack. Leaving Martin behind was unfortunate. But he was a soldier. They all were. But at least it was over now.
If she had not died, the girl would. Never again. Never again would the Atharim tolerate traitors like that in their ranks. Over and over again, it churned in his mind as he made his way down the tunnel. Never again. He would cleanse the Atharim in blood and fire.
Weakened from the loss of blood, flesh torn, bones broken, head spinning, The Regus Armande Nicodemus disappeared into the night, fat moon hanging low in the dark sky. Resolve burned like a fire within him, a furnace. The war had begun. The king was dead. Now for the others.
Edited by
Regus, Sep 15 2016, 03:38 PM.
Sergeant Amadei Kalinowski followed swift on the heels of two operators, hefting his gear as they descended the final stairs and emerged into the hallway that led to the private residence of the Ascendancy. Having been recruited from Assault Team Vega to the Zenith Avanced Reliancers two years prior, he was a bastion of calm focus, even as the two leading operators swept the scene beyond for threats.
"Clear,"
one voice echoed down the hall. A second confirmed it, "Clear!"
Two years ago he never would have imagined himself in the bowels of the Kremlin, but what man ever did? Even hailing from a long line of servicemen devoted to the Pontifical Swiss Guard, the men that protected His Holiness the Pope over the centuries, he did not expect to be entrusted with such a responsibility for the Ascendancy.
With the assurance of safety, Amadei honed his focus on the task at hand, shifting his thoughts from his weapon to the medic gear on his person, and rounded the corner. The rest of the team followed behind.
One of the initial operators led him to their man. Amadei's gaze quickly assessed the surrounding room as picked his way across the rubble: two wounded, and with a raise of the brows for the man with a sword thrust through his chest, one likely dead. Burns, lots of burns. They were secondary for now. There was one priority in this room, and he quickly knelt alongside the prone body of the Ascendancy. He was vaguely aware of one of his fellow operators calling the official all-clear, and another on communications requesting evacuation to be at the ready, but it was background noise. As far as Amadei was concerned, he was not going to leave his man until one of them was dead. It was his team's job to make sure he didn't take a bullet to the skull before then.
He first pulled shears and stripped away the Ascendancy's blood-soaked shirt. Body armor went next, sliced off the man's torso with heavier-duty tactical shears. Blood obscured most of the gunshot's exit wound on the back. His voice lifted an order high, he was in charge now. "Gunshot wound, upper right thorax. Arzt, prepare to roll him over."
One of the intial operators knelt opposite where he worked. Even as he spoke, a dressing was made ready, and experienced eyes pressed it exactly in place, taping it down. "On my mark, roll my way. Three. Two. One. Roll."
The two men hefted the Ascendancy supine. His arm flopped limp at his side, his head rolled. Pink bubbles ringed the entrance wound on the right side of the chest, which meant he was breathing. The bullet could not have hit the heart then. He would have been DOA otherwise.
A second dressing was pressed to the entrance wound, but not taped down so air could escape the injured lung within. Quickly, a stethescope came out next, and he checked lung sounds, confirming what he already knew. Hemopneumothorax. He readied a chest tube while he quickly surveyed the rest of the man's body for fatal injuries. More burn marks, like the previous female and male. His arms and stomach were red with blisters, third degree in some places, second degree in most others. The skin around a wrist watch was charred through the dermis almost as if he had caught on fire there. His hair was scorched around the metal band ringing his skull, but none of these injuries warranted attention at the moment.
He knelt to get the right angle, aiming for just under the twelth rib, when a shadow fell across his line of sight.
"Step the hell away!"
He barked at the operator that came up to watch from behind. The shadow quickly moved, and Amadei growled annoyance before going back to the chest tube. Elegant hands expertly inserted it, piercing the pleural space as he listened with the stethescope for sound changes. The Ascendancy didn't move with the procedure, he was hell out then. Blood flowed out, and Amadei knew he was in the right spot, draining the lung. Good. It was quickly taped in place and followed with more barked orders. "Get the back board ready."
As Arzt was unfolding the board, Amadei started an IV with a quick dose of lactated ringers solution to replenish electrolytes, and held the bag up, "keep this held high, above the heart."
A third operator, he didn't see which one, took it. "On my mark, ready to transfer. Three. Two. One. Transfer,"
he and Arzt lifted the Ascendancy to the board, strapped him down and readied for the hand off to evac. Before they did, he gave the man a dose of Trapanal to sedate him. It was an old drug, but the best at quick coma induction. He intubated him, and hooked the airway to a manual oxygenator bag until it was taken over by evac.
With the hand off to evac after a brief consult with Amadei on the patient's condition and treatment, he was relieved of duty for their priority. Now, he was able to turn his attentions to the others in the room as their man was hurried out.
He went to the young male next, the one laying near where the Ascendancy had been. A quick assessment found only burn marks, to a greater degree and covering a greater percentage of the body than the Ascendancy. As he did before, Amadei again stripped the man's shirt and assessed the torso. Nothing was the obvious cause for his comatose state, and burns, even third degree burns splitting the skin on his face, did not account for it either, He carefully listened to heart and lung sounds. Breathing was unobstructed, but slow and fluid, almost like he had pneumonia. The heart was sluggish, as though the man's blood pressure was off the charts, but again, no obvious electrical dysfunction.
"Back board him and hand off to evac,"
Amadei ordered and picked his way back toward the hallway, changing gloves as he did, discarding them on the floor.
He passed by the man with a sword jutting out of his chest. Another piece of debris appeared to be lodged in his back. There was no point checking him until last. He was long gone. The girl nearby, however, was covered in blood, and he wondered how much of it was the man's.
Like the young man that evac was hauling away, the young woman was covered in burns, albeit to a lesser degree than the others, but nothing that accounted for loss of consciousness. The shears cut her outer clothing and armor away. She was more heavily armored than the Ascendancy, that was for sure.
He listened to her heart and lungs, and did a quick assessment of her thorax. Like the previous male, she sounded as though she had pneumonia and off the charts hypertension. Bruising on the left was indicative of rib injuries, and he was careful to listen to all the quadrants of the lung on that side. Despite the diminished lung sounds, she was stable. "Back board and prepare for evac,"
he ordered.
***
Nikolai was taken by Kremlin helicopter to
Central Clinical Hospital, the closest and most prestigious hospital in the Dominance, if not the entire CCD. The heavily guarded facility was located seven miles northwest of the Kremlin in an exclusive, wooded suburban area known as Kuntsovo. While the hospital was open to the public and anyone may theoretically be admitted and treated there, its fees and charges were well beyond the means of most in order to retain its elitist image.
Marcus and Aria were taken to the same hospital by ambulance. While news of the Ascendancy's condition would be kept secret, there was no denying the fact that two ambulances carried someone.