ADAM

 

Wednesday January 15 - 0226 PST

Four minutes until Turbocharger activates

 

Sliding across the metal deck I saw the unforgiving wall of the Stadium coming right at me and there wasn't much I could do to stop our inevitable meet up.

CRUNCH.

I was pretty sure that was my bones making that sound and not the wall. Either way I hurt too much to really notice if something had cracked. There was a ladder nearby that I briefly thought about climbing to get away from danger, but danger wasn't in the mood to let me get away. I wasn't even all the way up on my feet when Lucius came hurdling over a pallet of unused pipes like he was a track star half his age. But his race to the finish line of our fight was cut short when he skidded to a halt a few feet away.

It didn't occur to me why he put on the brakes until I saw the blue light reflecting from his eyes. His eyes were locked onto my hands. Seemingly of their own volition, my hands started arcing blue lightning. The one power of mine that was so useful always seemed to slip my mind in a fight. Granted, I was usually more worried about surviving than what cool magic tricks I could do with electricity. But something about it seemed to spook Lucius, so I held up my hands in what I thought was a good martial arts stance would look like and hoped it fooled him.

The sparks didn't stop shooting from my fingers as Lucius slowly circled around me like a shark near its prey. As he walked about he twirled the folding knife in his hands with practiced ease. "I've been waiting a long time to do this."

I snorted. "How could you? We just met."

I felt smug with my witty comeback but he just snorted back at me. "Not you, imbecile. You're just a passenger. I'm talking to the real power behind you."

And like that he deflated my ego like a worn out balloon. "What do you mean?"

"You Cohered are all the same. Ready to throw your lives away for a cause and you have no clue what that cause even is. Could you be any more sad and pathetic?"

There was that word again. Cohered. Why was it that only evil, demonic forces told me about it and never someone I trusted? "If I'm so sad and pathetic you won't have a problem coming over here and telling me to my face."

I waggled my fingers in a "come here" gesture sending a few blue sparks skittering across the metal deck. My words conveyed more courage than I actually felt. I wished that kind of bravado came naturally, but I knew showing weakness in front of this a-hole would only make him pounce. And frankly, I wasn't sure I could beat him.

More of that evil purple light swirled in the air above us as whatever was going on inside the glass dome was coming to a climax. It was icing on the cake of doom that was being served up to me. Not only did it look like Lucius was going to win our duel, but my friends would be turned into sock puppets for demons and then would be used to conquer the world. My outlook didn't look particularly rosy.

Before he could answer a gun shot split the air. It was Kuzmin's rifle and it came from the deck above us. Right by where Grider had gone. For an infinitesimally tiny fraction of a second my eyes gazed upward at the sound. Had it lasted any longer I would have cursed my stupidity but I didn't even have time to do that before Lucius lunged at me with the knife.

His movements were so fast and fluid he was almost a blur. Even my own enhanced speed barely kept up. By the time I could even get my hands moving to intercept his stab at my jugular he had already crossed the twenty feet between us and was slicing through the air. Through sheer blind luck I caught his wrist and gave it enough of a bump to alter the trajectory of his slice to avoid my throat. Instead of taking a chunk out of one of my veins it tore a hole in my flight suit along with my shoulder just above the collar bone. Before I got in some vengeance he was twirling away and out of reach of my sparking hands.

A new ember of pain added itself to the inferno that was racking my body. Lucius snarled in delight at my plight and played with the knife in his hands. That blade was covered in a thin layer of my blood. He licked it clean and gave me a wicked smirk. "It's a little on the weak side, but still delicious."

All I could do was grit my teeth. If he kept up the speed like that I wouldn't be able to stop him from just leaping in, taking a chunk out of me, and flying off. He would take me apart slowly, one knick at a time. The proverbial death by a thousand cuts. He knew it, I knew it, a Martian with a strong enough telescope knew it.

What I needed was a little divine intervention, because this was beyond me.

BANG!

I wasn't going to be foolish and look away at the sound of the gun shot this time. But as it turned out, I didn't need to. Lucius's body twitched as a rifle round passed through his torso further ruining his expensive suit. He was really fast but apparently not fast enough to evade a bullet. Two more bullets came raining down on him, but he was gone by the time they arrived. He wasn't going to stand still any longer and make himself an easy target.

More shots came and I risked a glance to see who it was. Men in camouflage with NVGs attached to their helmets were firing down from the deck above us. They wore US flag patches. I couldn't help but grin. Our guys had won their battle in the warehouse and now they had come to join mine.

Standing around grinning wasn't going to help us win, so I poured on the speed and chased after him screaming like a wild man. Just before he ducked behind a half-finished wall with a big "Hard Hat Area" sign on it, I caught a hasty glance from him. He looked worried. Not terrorized or panicky, but just the smallest hint of anxiety because things weren't going as he had hoped. It got my blood pumping even harder.

But something else was going on in my mind that was taming that feral desire to hunt a dangerous foe. It was barely a whisper telling me "Don't do it". A momentary image of Lucius standing behind the wall with weapons at the ready flashed before my eyes. I knew that instinct was right. He would be waiting for me to foolishly bumble into his trap. What I needed was some way of pressing the attack that didn't involve me walking into his knife's blade.

And that solution was sitting on the deck beside me.

A couple of big transport barrels filled with construction bolts sat on a pallet at my feet. As I grabbed hold of one I could feel the absolutely ponderous mass of all that metal. Now I wasn't sure what was inside that wall that Lucius was hiding behind but if it wasn't concrete filled with rebar then I would have a chance. I started a slow spin with the barrel in a two-hand grip that eventually became a very fast spin. My head began to swim with dizziness from all the spinning. Then like I was in some crazy Olympic event I tossed that friggin' barrel right through the wall and its nagging sign.

It wasn't filled with concrete or rebar and collapsed like a cardboard box getting hit with a brick.

There was a pained grunt on the other side followed by the clatter of a thousand construction bolts hitting the metal deck. I didn't wait to give Lucius a chance to recover. It would probably be the last time I surprised him.

He was pulling himself out from under the barrel when I got around to him but with his weight on both hands he couldn't bring either weapon he held to bear. That's right, he now had a pistol in addition to the knife.

I got a hand on each elbow to keep his weapons out of play and pulled him up off the floor so he couldn't use his feet for leverage. Unfortunately, that's where my grand plan ended. Now that I had him I wasn't exactly sure what to do with him. It's not like I had years of martial arts experience to fall back on.

Lucius bared his teeth and struggled but I had the advantage in position this time. With him hanging like he was he wouldn't be able to use his speed and he knew it too. Now I'm not sure if it was just my imagination or all the strange purple and pink lights flooding the air that made me see what happened next. But I swear it looked like Lucius was growing fangs and his eyes were going darker on me. My immediate urge was to drop him like he was a snake. And I mean a literal snake because there was no doubt that he was a figurative snake.

Being dropped was what he wanted me to do so I did the only other thing to come to mind. I rammed my helmet into his mouth. There was a crack and one of his elongated teeth came loose. He slammed a foot into my thigh though I think he was aiming for the groin. Lucius was getting brutal. This fight was coming to a close and he knew it. The only thing left undecided was who was walking away.

Just like before I got an image flashing before my eyes like my subconscious was trying to get my less intelligent conscious mind to realize something. In that image I saw electricity arcing from one hand to another with Lucius caught in the middle. It was one of those "ah-hah!" moments where you realize the answer was in your hands the whole time. In my case it was quite literal.

I poured all the juice I could muster into creating that lightning arc between my left and right hands. There was enough amperage there to light up a small city or barbecue a herd of elephants. Lucius simply groaned as his clothes caught fire.

It was disheartening to say the least that this guy was so impossibly hard to kill. Even after all that had been done to his body I needed more and the first thing that caught my eye was a big antenna sticking out of the side of one of the pylons that was channeling purple energy into the air. What the antenna was for I couldn't tell you, but it was just at the right height for what I wanted.

I pushed forward with Lucius struggling against me and then hung him on the antenna like a side of beef on a meat hook. That purplish-pink geyser of supernatural power welling up out of the earth and through the pylon did something unexpected. It tore at me the way a current tries to pull you along. Only this wasn't a physical tugging. It felt more like it was grabbing at my soul and trying to pull it free, and I desperately wanted to get away from it.

As I stumbled back I watched as Lucius frantically tried to pull himself off of the antenna he was impaled on. This time his look of abject terror was real. Whatever soul tearing effect that flood of light had was working on him too and he wanted nothing more than to get away from it.

He may have been fast on the ground but he wasn't fast enough on that spike to survive the purple storm. Something dark and formless drew up out of Lucius. It clung to his body and shifted like it was fighting to keep hold just as hard as Lucius was struggling to get off the impaling antenna. But the current was too strong. The dark form was swept away and into the night.

As the last of the inky black mist pulled away I saw a change in Lucius. His face was a lot paler than it was a moment ago and those eyes were now filled with sorrow and remorse. He said something but I didn't understand the words. "Bitte verzeih mir…"

I'll never know what else he wanted to say but the look in his eyes was nothing short of shame. I was left speechless at the scene because the last thing I expected from him was remorse. My inner musings were violently interrupted by the sound of a gun shot.

BANG!

Thankfully it wasn't aimed at me, but it was coming from where Grider and Kuzmin were in a duel to the death. One of my teammates was in trouble and I had to go help him. I just hoped we could win this battle before it was too late.