NewU Pt. 23

Toussant nodded. "We are warriors, you and I," he panted. "That is never a destiny that easily follows the path of righteousness. Thou shalt not kill, but what if you kill to protect the weak and the innocent?"

"What do you think I was doing at the party?"

He nodded again. "Perhaps I was too quick to judge, too ready to follow the commands of my King. I can see that, for you, you were attacked by strangers and did what you thought was right to defend your loved ones."

"And that is all I am doing now." I clapped my hands together. The loud crack was instantly replaced by the powerful blast of air that blew out the flames licking at Toussant's legs. "All I want is for her to be safe. I don't want death, I don't want revenge, I have no desire for destruction... All that matters is her life."

Toussant sighed deeply as the fires receded, then craned his neck to look at Becky. "Even if her safety, the saving of her life, means sacrificing your own?"

"If that is what it takes, then yes."

He nodded slowly. "Then do it. Kill yourself now."

We held each other's gaze for a few seconds before the facade broke, and his lips curled into a malicious grin. I immediately felt my heart drop into my chest. "I just wanted to waste your time and hopefully see the look on your face when you realized there was no hope." He nodded to the remains of melted plastic and burned out circuit board on the floor at the base of his pillar. "Any chance of saving her died as soon as you left this room."

My wide-eyed glance flicked over to Becky. She saw the look on my face. She recognized it in a heartbeat. The slight slump of her shoulders was contrasted by a soft, beautiful, reassuring smile that pulled at her lips. "It's okay, baby. You tried. But now it's time to leave. There is no point in this thing killing both of us. I love you, Pete. Thank you for trying so hard. You are my hero."

"Fuck that. I'm going nowhere. I have not finished with this piece of shit yet!" I reached down and picked up the remains of the smashed remote. "Jeeves. Is there anything we can do with this?"

"Possibly, sir... If I may."

"Do what you have to."

My hands, under Jeeve's deft control, danced over the circuitry of the remote, tracing the lines of the circuit board and checking their integrity. "Yes, the power source is intact, and so are the transmitter and all the connections. If we can just activate the relays, then we should be able to transmit the shut-off command. We need to find a nail, or a screw, or some other type of long, sharp conductive metal to press into the..."

The timer on Becky's vest started to beep.

"Time is up." Toussant sneered gleefully.

"NOOO!... NONONONONONO!" I raced toward Becky. I didn't know what was left to do. I didn't know if I could transfer some of my power to her, make her skin as impenetrable as mine. Time slowed down as the dozen or so feet between us blurred under the speed I was traveling.

I watched her eyes close in surrender.

The explosion ripped through the room with as much power as you would expect from several pounds of plastic explosives. The force of the blast smashed into me. I could feel my body being lifted off the ground and tossed across the room. I could feel my skin being peppered with shrapnel and tiny shreds of Becky's vaporized body. I hit the wall hard enough to shatter the concrete as deep as the reinforcing rebar. There was no way that I would have survived if it wasn't for my powers. The blast impact alone would have blown me to pieces, along with my love. Toussant only survived because most of his body was shielded by the column. But Becky was gone in the blink of an eye. There was no dramatic disintegration of her body. There was no blood or gore or body parts. She was just gone.

All that remained of the point on which she had been sat was a thick cloud of swirling dust and a scorch mark.

My heart felt like it had stopped. My mind scrambled for an explanation; anything, a shred of something that would allow this to be explained as anything other than what it was. To explain how none of this was real, none of this had happened, and that Becky was at home, safely tucked into bed after another long shift.

I was under attack by another Sterling. This was all a delusion. It had to be... it needed it to be. She was fine. She was alive. She had to be; because the alternative was that I had just sentenced a beautiful, brilliant, amazing young woman to death for the crime of knowing me.

I could feel the last glimmers of my humanity break away into nothingness inside me.

I stoodup, my eyes locked onto the blackened blast mark seared onto the ground. "And now you know the fury of his divine will!" Toussant had been screaming some kind of religious shit at me since the blast. I just hadn't heard it. I turned to point my haunted, hollowed eyes at him. "Now you see what is waiting for...." He choked violently, his eyes widened, and a bubble of blood burst from his lips as his vocal cords were ripped loose with a twitch of my finger.

Without a word, without a change of expression, I stalked over to him and yanked the scaffolding pole out of his shoulder. His legs were in no condition to hold his weight; he just blinked up at me in shock after he crumbled to the floor. For the tiniest, briefest of moments, his confused eyes told me that he thought that I might have been letting him go. That thought was shattered when I roughly grabbed hold of his hair and dragged him out of the warehouse after me.

"Do not think this a mercy," I said quietly as he struggled vainly and silently against my grip. "I am not going to kill you. I am going to dedicate my foreseeable future to breaking you. I am going to peel open your mind and destroy you from the inside out. And then, once I have filled you with my will, I am going to turn you loose on your Order. I hope your god has mercy on your soul, because I promise you, I will have none!"

I could see his eyes widen out of the corner of mine. He understood what this meant, and in some small way, he grasped the hellhe would be subjected to before it happened.

Evie was still waiting for me at the car. "Pete? Did you find..." The sunken, broken, harrowed look on my face answered her question before she finished it. "Oh, Jesus. I am so sorry. I..."

"Get in the car," I said simply and without emotion.

She blinked at me. "But... we need to call the police and fire department..." She looked down at the half-burned body of my captive. "... and an ambulance."

I didn't answer. I just dragged Toussant around to the back of the car, popped open the trunk, and roughly stuffed him into it. She was standing next to me by the time I slammed down the lid. I sniffed as I looked at her. "Becky was a nurse," I said softly. "She was a hero in every way a person can be one. She saved lives for a living. She saved me, in more ways than most people will ever be able to understand. They killed her just because she knew me. They dragged her out of her home, beat her unconscious, broke her legs, strapped a bomb to her chest, dragged her to the furthest part of the building, where it would take me the longest to find her, and then strung her up like an animal to die."

Evie's face paled.

"On the other hand, there is not a mark on you," I went on. "They managed to get past all of my security that was watching your house without being seen. Snatch you, and then make their way past hundreds of security cameras without being spotted on a single one of them, neither them nor you, to get you here. Yet, here you are. They tied you nice and gently to a comfortable chair, put a hood over your head, put you in the closest room they possibly could, and simply closed the door. Why do you think they didn't strap a bomb on you too? Why didn't they hurt you like they hurt her? Why is your mind so different from any other human's? And why does that suddenly seem extremely important?"

"Pete, I don't know what you're saying," She said slowly as she started to back away.

"Yes, Evie. You do," I said coldly and levelly. "Now get in the fucking car!"