In a moment, they are upon her. She cannot think what to do. Within, she feels the mounting pressure of her welling power, but she isn’t sure it will come to her in time. It requires some measure of concentration, and right now she has none. She might as easily kill these murderous fiends or blow out the entire side of the building, possibly killing Jonathan in the process.
Something luminous flashes brightly between Cassie and the zombies coming from the way she had been going. A clear pane of energy materializes inside the corridor. These rushing zombies crash into it and disappear from the hallway. One moment they are there, the next this energy swallows them up and departs with them.
Behind Cassie, the onrushing horde has caught up to her. Several leap for her where she stands frozen with terror against the wall. An arc of white hot fire cuts the air, dividing the bodies of the leaping zombies before they can touch her. Again and again, the bar of light sweeps the way between her and her attackers, cutting them down with its every turn.
A man in dark clothing, wearing a coat more akin to a cape than anything currently in style, wields this energy with steely grace, defending her from those who are trying to destroy everything in their path. Cassie finds that she cannot tear her eyes away from the spectacle he weaves. Then, he throws his hands out in a desperate move that brings with it a thunderclap and telekinetic energy enough to pummel to the ground most of the remaining zombies.
Still, Cassie finds there are more coming through to replace those who have fallen. She wants to scream at them. They never stop coming.
The man turns suddenly and grabs her by the arm. Cassie feels a tingle of energy, sees a brief flash that blinds her momentarily, and then realizes the zombies in the corridor are all gone.
No.
She realizes this is not the same corridor she was just standing in. The man has somehow teleported them both away from the danger. She just can’t understand how.
Cassie attempts to catch her breath. It feels as though all of the air has been somehow sucked out of her lungs in that moment of transport. “What happened?” she gasps.
But the man is already dragging her away from the place where they materialized. “It’s not safe here,” he says.
The voice is smooth but completely foreign to her. He pulls her after, and, despite the strangeness of the entire situation, she follows dumbly along.
“We have to find your brother,” the man says as they round another corner.
“Wait!”
Cassie jerks her hand away, halting their advance down the corridor. “I don’t have a brother! And who are you, anyway? I feel that I should know because I’ve seen you in my dreams, but I don’t know and I’m not taking another step until I find out.”
Finding no immediate threat present with them, the older man turns to her. Cassie is surprised to see him wearing a bit of a smirk on his face.
“You’ve seen me in your dreams?” he asks, not sounding entirely surprised by the revelation.
Cassie looks at him with a puzzled expression. She has no idea what to make of the man. Obviously, he is very powerful…but a powerful what she cannot decide.
“Interesting,” he says, turning to scan the corridor ahead of them.
“Who are you?” she asks less severely this time.
He turns to her with a gentle smile. “I’ve often wondered what I would say when this moment came,” he says. “I have a hundred well-thought phrases, but they all escape me at the moment.” He sighs. “There’s just no easy way, I suppose.”
Cassie waits, mystified, looking up into his kind eyes.
“I’m your grandfather,” he says. “My name is Brody West.”
Cassie’s face goes slack with shock. She suddenly feels that breathless sensation again. “My grandfather?”
“Well, great grandfather, actually,” he amends. “But there’s no time to explain right now. We have to find your brother before these plague victims get to him.”
Cassie stammers, still reeling from the news the mysterious Brody West has delivered. “But I have no brother,” she says through her bewilderment.
“Perhaps not that you knew of, but believe me when I tell you it’s true,” Brody says. “And we have to get to him now.”
A scream erupts from Cassie when she sees several zombies leaping at them from the corridor ahead. Her great grandfather, if she can believe such a thing to be true, does not realize the creature is about to pounce upon them. Without consciously deciding to do so, she acts.
An explosion bursts in the hallway between them and the attacking zombies, hurling the ragged creatures away while also setting them ablaze. The concussive wave from the blasts also sends her and Brody smashing into another wall together, leaving them in a heap upon the floor. The plague victims screech through their last breaths and subside among the flames created by Cassie’s panicked thoughts.
Brody extricates himself from their tangle first and then offers his hand to her, pulling Cassie to her feet again. He examines the damaged scene briefly before commenting. “Well, you certainly are my granddaughter,” he says. He turns back to her, grinning. “We’ll have to work on control when we have the time.”
Malakov’s team emerges in the dimly lit subbasement of the GCHQ. The portal delivering them snaps shut like a light winking out. Immediately, Malakov and his men set to work, some securing the area while others plant remote charges upon the gas lines feeding the complex. Wordlessly, Malakov controls his team with subtle hand signals.
Their actions are decisive and quick. There is no wasted motion. In moments, their work is done and Malakov is leading them up the nearby stairwell marked with an emergency sign above the push-door. The door closes behind them, leaving only dim lighting and the blinking red LED indicators on their C4 detonators.
They climb stairs, ascending in near darkness with only emergency lamps to punctuate each flight. Malakov knows exactly where he is going. The Syndicate has access to nearly every surveillance camera on the planet; at least the ones that still have power. In the GCHQ, cameras identified the place where Jonathan Parks was taken when he was shot with a tranquilizer upon his earlier escape. No less than three cameras are watching him every moment in his new cell.
When the team reaches level three, they hear the unmistakable sounds of panicked flight. Malakov and his team are well aware of the situation here at the Doughnut. An unrelenting horde of zombie plague victims have breached the perimeter defense of the GCHQ and now its very walls. These terrified individuals, coming haphazardly down the stairs above, are undoubtedly attempting to flee the zombies before they can be infected or consumed.
Malakov pauses momentarily, his team halting in the darkness behind him. A group of people—three men and five women—come racing down the steps heedless to any dangers waiting for them below. They never even get a good look at the shadowy agents before it’s too late.
The Russian surges forward, his person taking on the characteristic blur of an object moving too fast for human eyes to follow. There comes after him two leading members of his team and then the cracking of bone and the popping of torn sinew. All eight bodies are lobbed over the railing. They fall in rapid succession to the concrete floor at the very bottom of the stairwell. All of them are quite dead before they ever hit the ground. Malakov and his team move quickly on.
He anticipates some zombies managing to push through the crossbar activated exit doors, but by the time his team reaches the fourth floor none have emerged. Most of the action appears to be on the lower second and third floors which suits Malakov just fine. The less resistance to his team’s activities the better.
It’s not that Malakov and his soldiers fear the plague victims. In truth, they are very slow to his preternatural perception—almost as slow as normal humans. If not for their overwhelming numbers, they would be no threat to him or any other Descendants. Unfortunately, the newer manifestations, following metamorphosis, are not nearly so easy to deal with.
The team reaches th
e fourth floor access door and pauses. Malakov peers back into the darkness at his men, grinning despite himself. He could have easily opened a portal directly into Jonathan Park’s cell from the basement after their charges were placed. However, these missions being fewer in number and frequency than he likes, Malakov prefers the more visceral approach, prowling through the op and taking down whatever threats present themselves.
For all their modern ways and technology, he and his kind still thrill at the hunt. Even after millennia, the old instinct still drives the Breed. Malakov can only assume a similar yet uncontrollable urge rages within the plague victims, forcing them beyond inhibition to do unspeakable things to their fellow man.
He draws in air through his nose, sniffing what scents may be had near the door. Malakov discerns at least half a dozen humans beyond in the corridor. Jonathan Park’s cell is the only reason any of them are up here. Otherwise, this floor is now only being used for a supply store.
The Russian opens the door quickly and moves out of the stairwell with his men following. The soldiers in the corridor beyond are only just beginning to react to the door opening when Malakov reaches the first and snaps his neck. Seven persons remain, which he leaves to his own men following after.
These humans appear so slow in their movements. He is reminded of an American movie where the protagonist dodged bullets by moving at a higher rate of speed. He and the others of his kind move much faster than humans, seeming to become little more than shadows in their sight. In the tick of a single second, all eight human soldiers lie dead on the tiled floor.
Malakov places his hand upon the reinforced door. Even the walls have steel plate on them. Evidently, Angela Sayers learned not to underestimate the boy’s strength. She’s leaving nothing to chance. Malakov isn’t quite sure how strong the boy actually is, but his master suspects he would be even stronger than a Breed warrior, which is considerable—something to do with Jonathan’s parentage though Malakov was not given those details.
Still, he has no need of extraordinary strength in order to deal with this prison cell. Malakov opens a portal where the wall is and then closes it again. This section of wall has been teleported to a location outside in the GCHQ parking lot.
Inside the cell, Jonathan is still out cold under sedation. Malakov smiles. There is no guard inside with him. He motions his men forward as he walks inside.
Malakov opens another portal inside the cell as two of his Breed soldiers heft the boy off the mattress, supporting him under his arms on either side. The others come through the hole in the cell wall…all except for the last man, Thomas, who stands in the corridor with blood seeping from a fresh wound in the middle of his chest.
Confrontation
Garth and Holly move quickly through the corridors, Garth sensing his way toward Cassie, dispatching zombies as necessary. He has been able to seek her out every since the girl arrived in the Tombs laboratory complex. Not having many other specials to interact with, he can only assume that it has something to do with their powers since Cassie is able to search him out as well.
Something else is there also, something he has sensed before. He can’t place it exactly. He pauses momentarily in the corridor, hesitating, unable to figure out which way to go.
Holly pauses just ahead. “Are you okay?”
“Something isn’t right,” Garth replies. “It’s Cassie, she’s nearby, but something or someone is also here.”
“Jonathan?” she asks hopefully.
“I’ve never been able to sense Jonathan,” he says, considering the matter.
Holly touches his arm. “We don’t have time to delay. Whatever it is, we’ll find out when we find her.”
Garth nods and then hurries past her. Holly follows behind, a pistol in her pocket and a submachine gun cradled in her hands, taken from a fallen soldier. They move upward swiftly and silently but encounter no other zombies on their way.
Garth leads the way onto the floor down a short corridor. He stops cold in front of her, obscuring Holly’s view of what lies ahead of them. Then she hears Cassie’s voice calling out to them.
When Holly looks past Garth, she finds Cassie in the corridor, looking disheveled and frightened. However, this is not the most shocking thing she sees. A man is standing just beyond the girl, holding a sword with a polished mercurial blade. This blade is currently thrust through the back of another man wearing what appears to be black combat fatigues.
Holly does not know the man with Cassie, but Garth reacts almost immediately, rushing forward in a rage, drawing his katana, screaming at the stranger. Holly raises her pistol, perceiving the man as a clear threat based upon Garth’s reaction. Cassie leaps away from the stranger as he is forced to pull his weapon from the now dead soldier in the black fatigues in order to defend himself against Garth’s attack.
He tries to speak, to appease Garth, but the young man strikes nonetheless. When the two swords clash together, the sound reverberates like a cracked bell. The concussive wave that results knocks down every individual in the corridor. Holly blacks out, her last image of Garth, Cassie, and the stranger falling around her.
Brody hits the wall hard as Malak-esh rebounds from the boy’s sword. Had Garth’s weapon been a normal katana, Malak-esh would have sliced cleanly through, but that is not the case. The boy holds a particular and special sword, and Malak-esh cannot destroy itself.
Garth is thrown away from him when the swords clash together, Brody merely attempting to defend himself from the boy’s raging attack. Undoubtedly, he is reacting to seeing an unknown armed man with Cassie, but there are many things still to tell these youths. Whether they realize it or not, Brody is not the enemy here.
Unfortunately, there is no time for explanations just yet. The building is under siege, and Jonathan is being taken from the GCHQ by a contingent of soldiers sent by an unknown agency. Brody hadn’t realized anyone else was coming for him. This was going to be a simple matter of extracting all three youths himself, but things just got a lot more complicated.
A portal shimmers with power inside the cell where Jonathan has been kept unconscious. These are not covert operatives of the purely human kind at all. Superomancy is involved, which means Descendants.
One of the soldiers stares at Brody as he attempts to stand, pushing his weight against the wall in order to slide his way up to his feet. Malak-esh vibrates in his hand. His entire arm dangles numbly at his side, tingling from the release of energy a moment ago. He attempts to raise the sword, but his arm feels like an angry swarm of ants, and the limb will not obey.
Soldiers carrying Jonathan have already stepped through. None of the others in the hall with him have gained their feet yet, not that they would stand much chance against this Descendant force. Cassie and Garth are young and lack formal training. They have never encountered Descendants other than the brief glimpses of him he has allowed. The woman with them is merely human.
It’s up to him and he can barely stand. Still, the final soldier waits and watches as Brody tries to compose himself and intervene. It’s the kind of thing only a leader would risk; someone who is confident enough not to attack. The other soldiers, including the one he just ran through with Malak-esh, wear dark glasses, something meant to hide their identity, possibly. However, this soldier’s eyes are visible, glittering with delight as Brody attempts to stand and come after him. Despite the increasing glow surrounding Malak-esh, as he finds his strength again, this man stands grinning.
Brody tries to seize the soldier with his mind to keep him from passing through the portal and getting away with Jonathan. A brief struggle ensues—a moment when they are locked together like two wrestlers grappling for dominance. They pull against one another and Brody can sense the man’s power. He is definitely a Superomancer of some degree, but both of them quickly realize Brody is stronger. This man may be powerful, but he is not one of the Sons of Anarchy as Brody is, being born directly in the line of the mad god, Southresh.
The soldier’s
smile vanishes in that moment when he understands he will quickly be overtaken by his opponent’s greater ability. Brody’s pained expression begins to be replaced, stealing his adversary’s grin from him when they both understand he will prevent the soldier’s escape. His only recourse will be to close the portal despite not getting away himself. Realizing this, Brody sends out a pulse of energy to follow the path of that portal to its destination and return unto him the knowledge just as if he had created the gateway himself.
It is a technique Oliver never taught him. Still, it had seemed a possibility to him and he had been pleasantly surprised to find that it worked when he tried. Even vampires, who normally did not possess Superomantic ability of their own, could access the trace elements of portals and reactivate them. As long as those trace energies were not too degraded, the Breed were able to follow their Superomantic prey through complex escapes.
A split second into their duel, at precisely the moment when Brody overcomes his opponent, Garth finds his feet and attacks. The boy launches at him. He has no choice.
Brody releases his hold on the soldier. The man’s surprise crosses his face in that moment of realization just before he nearly stumbles back through the portal of his own making and disappears. Fortunately, Brody’s energy trace has successfully told him where the portal leads. He can only hope the soldiers do not employ one of his own tactics, using a multiplied portal construct that will reroute them again and again before finally delivering them to their true destination. His trace would not have been able to follow such a construct to its end and back again. Still, he might have other methods to track Jonathan.
As the soldier vanishes from the cell, Brody gives his full attention to Garth. Malak-esh dematerializes from Brody’s hand as he thrusts out toward the boy, pummeling him with force that hurls him backward onto the ground. No use trying to engage him with Malak-esh since his weapon and the one Garth wields will only cancel out one another’s power and render them both dazed and confused again.