NewU Pt. 23

"Evie...? What... What are you doing here? Where is...?"

My mind swirled around inside my head, a million different thoughts all fighting to be heard over each other. I took a few staggered steps backward under the shock of what my eyes were seeing.

"I don't understand," Jeeves's disembodied voice almost whispered inside my ear. "She... She shouldn't be here. She should be at home. I... I don't... Something is wrong.

To my perception of the passage of time, it had been years since I had seen Evie, even if it had only been a few weeks to her. Her fabulously mysterious mind had been one of the things that had drawn me so strongly toward her, how different she was from every other human I had ever met. But these differences had made her very hard to track with the computer software. It had regularly mistaken her for an Inquisitor. She had also proven incredibly difficult to read without being in direct physical contact. But still, Jeeves had been certain, absolutely certain, that she was safe at home.

"I don't know; I don't know," Jeeves intoned to himself as he frantically tried to get a handle on the maelstrom of thoughts swirling around him. "No, I couldn't read her, but we have been watching her house. She hasn't left there all day. No Inquisitor teams came for her, and she didn't leave... she shouldn't be here! What IS she doing here? And where is Becky??"

Her eyes were looking at me wildly, her face streaked with tears, her hair was messed up, and the gag that had been tied around her head and pulled tight into her mouth was chafing the skin of her cheeks. Her eyes looked hollow and gaunt, filled with panicked fear and, oddly, suspicion.

Her eyes widened as I tentatively reached forward, untying the gag from around her head and letting it fall loose. "Pete, behind you!" She almost screamed.

I spun around in time to catch the metal bar being swung at the back of my head. My fist clamped onto it tightly as I glared at the man holding it. The sadistic, evil, self-congratulatory grin on his face quickly faded as my fingers squeezed, crushing and bending the hollow metal scaffolding pole like it was a paper straw. A flick of my other hand released the bindings that had tied Evie to the chair, and she scrambled to her feet, cowering fearfully for protection behind me.

"Jean-Pierre Toussant, I presume," I growled at him, my voice, once again, layering over itself as I stepped forward, forcing him to stumble backward a little.

"Abomination," he snarled in return as I started to effortlessly push him back.

By this time, the fire burning above us was now raging completely out of control. The entire roof of the warehouse was on fire, and pieces of burning wood, thermal insulation, shards of broken roof tile, and chunks of masonry were raining down around the room like a downpour of molten flame. The air was thick with acrid smoke, and the heat of the room, even without my input, was starting to rise to dangerous levels.

The concrete that wrapped around the support columns was starting to crack under the heat, and the entire building groaned against the loss of its structural integrity. But Becky was still here; I could feel her, and there was no way I was leaving without her!

With a simple twist of my wrist, the bar that both Jean-Pierre and I were holding swung around like a gate on a post. The man lost his grip on the end of it as the centrifugal force launched him into one of the support columns. I was on him in a heartbeat. His feet had never resumed their contact with the ground, and the law of gravity seemed to cease applying to me as I threw myself across the room and drove the scaffolding pole through his shoulder. Pinning him to the pillar several feet above the ground. There was no cry or howl of pain, not even a grunt out of the Inquisitor, he just kept growling at me, leaning forward to get his face as close to mine as he could reach.

His eyes burned with hatred; mine burned with fire! I barely registered the gasp of fear from Evie as my pupils erupted into the same searing hot flame that the beast had hunted me in my dreams. This was a man who was convinced that I was the devil incarnate; well, I would show him the beast that he had created. Gone was my restraint, gone was my concern, and gone was the last shred of my mercy and decency. There was only fury! Faye's death had crushed me, but even I could appreciate that she wasn't the main target, that her life ended for the same reasons as so many others had; she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was different! These animals had specifically and intentionally targeted people with no involvement in this life or with this war, and they had done it just to get to me... There was not a single cell or neuron in my body that even considered showing mercy anymore.

"Yes, Hellspawn! Show me your true form!" The man yelled above the roar of the inferno around us, almost gleefully goading and stoking the fires of my anger. Spittle shot from his lips with each enunciated word. "You will never find her in time; she will pay for your crimes! She will be purified by God's holy fire, and her involvement in your sins will be cleansed from her soul before she is sent to the Almighty for judgment!"

"WHERE IS SHE?!?" I roared at him with such force that the column against which he was pinned cracked violently behind him.

He just laughed. Unlike his now-dead colleague, there was no involuntary flick of his eyes. There was only his determination to win this battle of wills between us.

Evie was trying her best to cross the gauntlet of falling, burning debris that rained down from the fiery rafters, trying her hardest to get to me. The building was coming apart. Parts of the roof caved in on the left side of the room, the parts of the wall that had been blown away by the energy bolt were starting to collapse inward, and the collum opposite the one I had pinned Toussant to cracked in half and started to disintegrate under the weight and heat forced onto it.

She screamed as a few tonnes of rubble crashed into the ground next to her. "You have twenty seconds to tell me what I want to know, or you will be subjected to a pain you can scarcely imagine!" I growled at Toussant before leaping down onto the ground. Evie shrieked again as she saw me land in front of her, her eyes locked onto the flaming orbs that had replaced mine. "What... What are you?" she asked with a trembling voice.

"Running out of time," I snapped back. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into my arms before running for the exit. Jeeves seemed to understand what I was doing, and my telekinetic powers batted away any falling debris that threatened to hit us. In only a few seconds, we were outside.

"Stay here, don't move!" I barked at her, waiting for her to nod mutely before turning back to the warehouse. I had to take a moment as my eyes wandered quickly over the blazing inferno in front of me. The building was not going to last long, and Becky was still inside. There was no way that Toussant was going to tell me what I needed to know. I needed to find her myself.

I launched myself forward, the power-infused muscles in my legs carrying me as fast as they could through the flames and the smoke of the burning building. I picked up Becky's mind immediately; she was deeper into the structure. I couldn't feel any difference in her elevation compared to me, so I doubted she was on the upper floor. I just ran. I covered the few hundred yards between the buckling double doors to the corridor, where the men had been crushed by the catwalk, in a matter of seconds.

"Still ahead. Run. Faster."

The soles of my sneakers were starting to melt as the heat of the fire started to burn into the ground beneath my feet, I could feel the clothes on my back smoldering as I charged headlong through the flames.

"Still ahead."

Fuck, the warehouse was enormous. Had they had more men and more time, the Inquisitors could have turned this whole building into a labyrinth of blocked-off rooms and dead ends. They could have made it impossible for me to find either of them.

Something sparked in the back of my mind. Evie had been very easy to find.

"Deal with it later. Keep fucking moving!"

I could feel her mind drifting to my left, her bearing changing as I got closer. I shifted my direction to charge toward my captive blonde nurse only to find a solid wall in front of me... A swing of my wrist and another energy bolt smashed a hole through it, my body following only a few seconds later, and only a moment before the ceiling that the wall had been holding up started to cave in.

In every direction were fire and destruction. The dilapidated building, long abandoned to any form of modern fire-safety law, allowed the fairly contained flames from the front hall to spread to the rest of the structure with blistering, terrifying speed. It had been less than ten minutes since I had ignited the inferno, and already, the building was beyond saving.

Another wall appeared in front of me. This one, luckily, had a door in it, but it was locked. Another flick of my wrist turned it into a hail of splinters before I charged through.

Suddenly, she was there. Another long and cavernous storage area yawned out into the distance. Sealed from the rest of the building, it had been spared from the spread of the fire, but there was an unhealthy amount of smoke pouring in through the ventilation system and the smashed windows. Unlike Evie, Becky was neither hooded nor gagged. Her head shot up at the sound of the door exploding in and the sight of me stepping through its wreckage.

"Pete, help me, please!" She screamed. I could feel the questions in her mind. What was I doing here? What was all of this about? She had heard Philippa talking to the men who had taken her and had made out my name more than once, but none of it made sense to her. All she knew was that she was terrified and confused, and I had come to rescue her.

She could only assume that the smoke and the dust clouding her vision explained the speed at which I seemed to cross the expanse towards her.

She was strung up, her hands attached to chains that were hung from the ceiling, but both of her legs were badly broken.. Intentionally so. This meant that all of her weight was hanging by her wrists, and her legs were buckled painfully beneath her. She was standing with her arms stretched above her, and a pair of ancient-looking manacles were clamped tightly around her wrists. I could see where the steel had dug into her skin. It was hardly surprising, given that all of her weight was being held up by these cuffs. Blood was trickling down her arm, and I could see where the muscles were cramping painfully under her skin. There was a nasty-looking cut above her right eye. She would have to be carried out.

I was about to rip the manacles apart. There was a short chain holding them together, which in turn was looped around the chain hanging her from the ceiling. My hands were already on the chain, ready to rip the links open, when Jeeves' voice urgently sounded in my head.

"STOP!"

"Huh? Jeeves, this building is about to come down on our heads; I have to get her out of here. What's wrong?"

"Look, Sir."

With an impatient huff, I looked a little closer to the spot where Jeeves was directing my attention. A thin red wire was entwined around the chain that linked the manacles; it also snaked between the first few links of the chain hanging from the ceiling. I froze.

Becky saw the look on my face. "Pete? What is it?"

I took a deep breath and cast a glance at her, swallowing hard as I ran my hands slowly and gently down her arms, tracing the wires under her sleeves. I already had an idea of what was coming, but I was hoping against hope that I was wrong.

Finally, I started to unzip her jacket, then froze again. Another wire was looped through the hole in her zipper and was being pulled taut as I dragged it down her body. I already knew I was dealing with a bomb.

"Jeeves, is there any way to see what I am dealing with here?"

"Yes, Sir. I can activate the ability for your eyes to emit x-rays. Unfortunately, seeing through clothes is a fantasy."

"X-Ray vision. Jesus, I am not ever going to get used to this. Alright, do it."

I took a few steps backward, letting my eyes take in the mass of wires tucked under her clothes. There was absolutely no doubt about it; this was a bomb. And a pretty big one at that.

"Jeeves?"

"Downloading bomb disposal knowledge now, sir."

In only a few seconds, the mass of unintelligible wires started to make a lot more sense. That was where the good news ended. This explosive ladened vest was designed not only to do an incredible amount of damage but to detonate at the slightest sign of tampering. The number of booby traps, backups, and fail-safes was mind-boggling.

When you boil it down to basics, a bomb is made up of three main components. The explosive charge, the trigger or detonator, and the power source. All three are needed for the bomb to explode. Disconnect any one of those three components, and the bomb would become a glorified paperweight.

The problem, in this case, was that the number of fail-safes and booby traps made even getting to those components almost impossible. For example, there wasn't just one trigger; there were several. The primary was a timer, set to detonate at five minutes past midnight. But that could be deactivated or detonated early with some sort of remote. More than that, a charge was being sent through a series of wires that ran around her body. If the wire around the zipper loop, or the chains, were broken, for example, the circuit would be broken, and the bomb would blow, and they were set up in a way that only a moderate amount of force was required to break their connection. The same could be said for the unseen wires wrapped around her wrists and her waist, not to mention the clips that held the vest in place. Try to remove her jacket or the vest, and the circuit would be cut... And the bomb would blow.

"No prizes for guessing who had the remote."

Time was running out in more ways than one. While I was checking out the bomb, Becky was watching the flames as they burned their way into the room. She cleared her throat to direct my attention to them, and I cast a quick look over my shoulder.

"Fuck, at this rate, she will already have died from smoke inhalation or have been burned to death before the bomb goes off. I need to get her the fuck out of here. Okay, forget the bomb; how do I get her out of the building?"

My eyes scanned the wires once more... there was nothing I could do about them. But the loop of wire that snaked between the links of the chain holding her to the ceiling only extended a few links above where they held the manacles.

"Bex, baby," I said as calmly and reassuringly as I could manage. "I am going to break the chain, I will catch you before you fall, but then we need to get the hell out of here. Are you ready?"

"But... How are...?"

"Bex! There is no time. We need to move... Now! Are you ready? I can't promise that this won't hurt."

She took a deep breath before trying to put some weight onto one of her broken legs, wincing and crying out loudly. "I don't think I can. You won't be able to carry me."

"Wanna bet?"

I grabbed hold of the chain a foot above the last booby-trapped link and yanked hard. The chain snapped like it was as brittle as a pencil core. Shards and splinters of metal rained down on both of us as Becky's weight dropped. My other hand moved in an instant to wrap around her and lift her into me, both arms scooping her up and cradling her to my body.

Becky looked up at me with a mix of surprise, awe, and for the first time since I had burst into the room, hope. "How are you doing this? It's not...."

"I will explain it all later, I promise." I smiled. I took a deep breath and turned toward the door. The airflow in this room, with its shattered windows, was feeding fuel to the fire at a terrifying rate. The flames billowing through the doorway were no longer like those of a normal fire but more like those of a furnace. The sound and the heat coming off it were incredible.

For a moment, I considered blasting another hole in the outer wall and escaping outside, but Toussant was still pinned to the column in the main area. Alive or dead, he had the remote. That was the only way I was going to be able to disarm the bomb in the few minutes I had left until the timer ran out.

I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and ran.

I burst through the flames of the doorway like an Olympic sprinter playing in fast forward. Hurtling through the smoke and the licking flames as I retraced my route as best I could back toward the main hall. Some of the corridors I had used were now burning piles of rubble, but just as many walls had collapsed to create new paths.

My ankles twisted more times than I could count as my footing was obstructed by the debris covering the floor. But Jeeves would instantly send a jolt of power through my bones to steady them, adjusting my balance and allowing my ankle to turn at inhuman and unnatural angles before righting themselves. Anyone paying close attention would have been able to tell that there was nothing human about the way my feet moved over the wreckage littering the ground.

What would have taken a normal person half an hour to walk was covered in less than three minutes. But those were three minutes I didn't have. Finally, I skidded to a halt in front of the half-burned but amazingly still-alive Jean-Pierre Toussant. Flames were reaching out like elemental fingers to grab at his legs, and his pants had long since burned away. The skin on the bottom of his legs was blackened and blistered, peeling away from the flesh beneath. He was growling to himself against the pain as he was slowly being burned alive.

"There had to be some sort of irony there, not only from the repeated references to fire and burning he had threatened me with in his letter but from the fact that this was exactly the type of execution his order was historically famous for."

I set Becky down in the center of the room, propping her up against the rubble that had caved in from the collapsed ceiling. With a gaping, yawning hole above her head, there was no chance of anything else falling on her while I negotiated for her life. I gave her a nod, turned, and stepped closer to Toussant.

"Have you come to gloat over your victory?" he panted against the pains of the fires. "You are not going to hear me scream, or beg, or renounce my faith."

"We both know I haven't won," I said, trying to take the edge of disgust out of my throat.

"Ah, you found it, clever man," he laughed out a few pained breaths before gasping in pain again. "I suppose you are here to make me disarm the device."

"Make you, no. I don't think I could make you if I wanted to. But if you allow this to happen, it's murder. Cold-blooded, irredeemable murder." I replied calmly. "Killing me may be part of God's plan. I don't know; perhaps you are right. But she is not. She is innocent. Something that neither of us can claim to be. No matter how you dress it up, if she dies, then you burn in hell with me."

"I think that perhaps you and I understand each other a little better, Evo." Toussant laughed. "I have always considered myself a man of faith. The death of innocents is something that one should always strive to avoid. I don't know what awaits me in the afterlife, but I will accept my judgement. Can you say the same?"

I cast a look back at Becky. This was taking much longer than I had hoped. "I have always tried to be a good man. I have probably failed miserably. But I refuse to believe that a merciful God would judge me by the circumstances of my birth and not by the nature of my actions. If I am wrong, so be it. If I am judged to be evil, then I will burn in hell, just like you predicted. All I can do is live my life according to my conscience and in the best way that I know how."