CONTAINS CONTENT:
Mild language, threat, violence.
{{Unedited}}
When Vincent left, he was promptly shoved against the wall by Austin who immediately had a finger in his face. “What do you want, Austin?” Vincent growled.
“I want you to promise me…”
Vincent shoved his hands in his slack pockets and shrugged, shaking his head. “Promise you what, Austin?”
“You’re a coward. You want to use everyone else to do your dirty work so that you can ride off into the sunset with Marielle. How many people have to die because of you and your selfish decisions?” Austin’s face momentarily contorted, but he cleared it just as soon as it started to morph. “Tala… Sasha?” He bit back tears, “K-Kirra,” he whispered. “Who else?”
Vincent sighed, leaned back against Marielle’s office door, raised a brow, and looked down. “I don’t want anyone else to die.”
“Can you promise me that Marielle will be safe?” Austin growled through gritted teeth. Vincent looked like he was thinking for a moment; perhaps uncertain. “You know, Chamber talks a lot about fate… do you ever think that maybe- just maybe… she’s meant to die?” Vincent crossed his arms and set his jaw, his eyes becoming dark; rage brimming just below the surface. “What happens for either of us, Vincent? What happens if she’s just destined to die?”
“I went to over thirty worlds in my two years floundering… She was dead in many of them but still alive in six.”
“Yeah, except now they’re all dead, too.” Austin bit back, flexing the fingers on his right hand.
“Except one of them,” Vincent corrected. Then he gestured behind him with his head, “and this one… which tells me that fate can be changed.”
“Is that what you’re hoping to accomplish, here? Change fate? Make sure that she ends up with you and not me?”
Vincent’s voice became quiet, distant. “I just want her to love me, Austin. That’s all that I’ve ever wanted.”
“You think you’re so smooth.”
Vincent ran his fingertips across the bottom of his chin. “I did shave earlier…”
“Ha… a little Chamber coming back out, there,” Austin said with a snarl. “Listen to me, as I said earlier, we both know that I’m on a tight leash, here… but if she dies on this mission? I will kill you,” he growled, then he turned and walked away, presumably leaving Valorant because he got in the elevator.
Vincent didn’t see him again, and after a minute of thinking things over, he returned to the lab, once again giving Marielle her space.
Marielle sat for a few moments, rubbing her temples with her fingertips and trying not to drown in the information, the thoughts and feelings, the trauma of the last several weeks, and the distortion and fog that all of it had created in her thought process.
She couldn’t hear Austin’s thoughts, so she assumed that he’d left Valorant, maybe for the day. She couldn’t blame him; every bit of the last month made her heart ache for him. Their affair, her indecision at just letting him be, the trip they’d just taken and her insistence that she was done and everything else in between.
There were moments where all that she wanted to do was run to him, say “screw everything,” fall into his arms, and into his deep, possessive kisses and allow him to whisk her away to wherever he had planned for them. And yet, she knew in her heart, mind, and spirit that it just wasn’t the time and like their affair, their shared moments in New York, and as the New Year slowly marched toward them, she realized that the problem was time and the fact that they simply did not have it. She couldn’t gamble the rest of her life on him and his inability to control himself when things got hard for him.
Whatever the thing was that he was meant to do which would show that he’d really and truly crossed the barrier into change, she hadn’t seen it yet. Or maybe it was a set of things? She wasn’t sure. All that she knew was that there was still a core of darkness in him, and that darkness would continue to consume him without him managing and healing on his own.
She wasn’t sure how but before she knew it, six o’clock had come with a meeting with Han. The Korean woman finally admitted that her and Jamie were slowly showing more interest in one another. In her own words, “Not quite crushing hard, but it’s fun.” Marielle encouraged that, she knew that they were good friends and commented that this was always a good place to start a loving relationship.
“Yeah,” Han hinted. “Yeah, it is.”
“Why are you so pro-Austin?”
Han shrugged. “I think for the same reasons that you are, Scarlet. You know that ultimately the two of you will have a deeper, more passionate, more fulfilling relationship.”
Marielle crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her, playfully. “Okay, Dr. Han, and you don’t think that I can have that with Vincent?”
“I think it’s different.”
“I know it’s different,” Marielle challenged. Both women narrowed their eyes at one another, playfully.
“I think Austin is your match.”
“I can’t deal with some of him right now.”
“Why? Did he do something?”
“No…” Marielle swiveled and looked out the window for a few moments, then turned back Han. “I love him.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You don’t know what it’s like… no one does…” Marielle shook her head slowly from side to side. “I can feel what he feels sometimes… I can see his past sometimes? It bothers me.”
Han nodded, as if trying to understand. “That must be hard.”
“It’s one thing to know about someone’s history, but just knowing about it makes it easier to move on, you know? Experiencing it? That’s, like- an entirely new level of hardship.”
Han winced and brushed some of her white hair back from her face. “How often does that happen?”
Marielle screwed her eyes up as if thinking. “Actually, it doesn’t really happen… I – he … he had a dream while we were in New York?” She stammered. Han cocked her head at her. “We also ran into someone he’d been with,” Marielle sighed, pushing her fingertips into her eyebrows and rubbing.
“So- so…” Han jerked her face back and looked up. “He… let me see if I understand this; he had a dream, but generally speaking he doesn’t… do that?” Han lifted both hands as if to shrug.
Marielle glared at her for a moment, trying to make a face that expressed that she understood what Han was getting at, but failing. “That’s not all there is to it, Han,” she explained twiddling her thumbs against her chest. “I can’t explain it all, and frankly, I don’t want to try. We’re just… we’re locked together in this bond that we can’t break and it’s – I don’t know – in a weird way it’s kind of like a prison. I didn’t ask to be in it, and neither did he. He’s seen things about me… personal things.”
“Like you boinking Vincent?”
Marielle turned beet red and caged her face. “Yeah, that,” she deadpanned.
“Okay, I can imagine how that would be embarrassing… and creepy. Does he like watch you two or-”
Marielle cut her off, “I don’t think so. I think because he can see my thoughts sometimes that just sneaks in. I actually think he stops watching. He’s implied as much to give me my privacy and space but-” she shook her head incredulously, “-it’s too much.”
“I understand.” She tucked her hands into her sweatshirt sleeves so there were just holes at the end of them and bounced them a few times. “I don’t like it, but I understand,” she offered Marielle a tremulous smile. “I feel horrible for him.”
Marielle felt tears rim her eyes. “I do, too.” She shook her head. “I did this to him. I wasn’t trying, I didn’t know. I don’t know why or how it’s possible and has only happened with him,-”
Han cut her short again, “because he’s your soulmate. Didn’t you tell me when you were in Kingdom – that – I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you relive this, Marielle, but didn’t you say that the only thing that their readouts could get was that you were in love?” Marielle shuddered and looked down. “That’s the answer. You love him. You love him with abandon. It’s not something that you’re ready to face, you’ve never been ready to face it, which is why Tala and I-” Han paused a moment when she said her friend’s name, and a wave of confused emotions seemed to pass over her expression, “-that’s why we tried to push you two together that night. You have never been ready to accept or face this. Austin makes you feel out of control and you’re scared of what happens if you lose that control. He makes you feel things that no one has ever made you feel before, that’s not hard to see. You’re free with him. He provides a space for you to be free. That’s scary, Masin. It’s like that first moment when a mother bird pushes her baby from the nest, not knowing whether the baby’s instincts will kick in and they’ll fly, or fall. But he gives you the ability to use your wings.”
Marielle thought this was ironic considering that it was Vincent who’d given her literal silver tipped wings on her back. “What does Vincent do?” Marielle whispered to the ceiling.
“Helps you feel safe, protected, and loved. And you love him, and he loves you, but you’ll never grow with him. You’ll always just be…safe.” Han replied. Then she stood, and grabbed her bag from the couch. “I have to meet up with Jamie. We’re going to a football game tonight,” she said with a smile. “We’re also taking things really slowly. I knew that’s what you’d suggest.”
“So you haven’t boinked him, yet?”
Han gave her a soft smile, but left not answering the question. In truth, Marielle couldn’t tell if that was a yes or no.
She finished straightening some paperwork and filing it, grabbed her coat, fought the urge to text Austin, and headed for the elevator.
When the doors opened, she was surprised to see Chamber in the car. He blinked at her a few times before giving her a small bow and she stepped in, feeling awkward. Had Vincent already talked to him about the ideas about him helping her to get pregnant? One look at him and she knew that he had.
“I was going to the bottom floor to join the group that’s headed to-,” Chamber whispered, gesturing to the buttons with his head.
“-Sabine called it Abyss,” Marielle replied with a wan smile.
“We’ll go all the way down,” she replied, quietly. “Then I’ll go back up.”
He nodded once. “Okay.” He pressed the buttons, and clasped his hands around a tin that she’d just noticed. It looked like cookies.
She glanced at the wall and noted him looking at her from the corner of his eye. Feeling that bravery inching up the back of her spine, she realized that she couldn’t stop herself. “Are you in love with me?”
A soft, abashed smile spread across his handsome face, but he remained well composed. “Oui,” he whispered. Then he rubbed his fingertips under his chin and over it before he dropped his hand. “I am, Masin.” The doors opened and he left. That was the end of that conversation and she pressed the button and went back down, went to her car, and left.
Silent tears fell as she turned the radio on to classical music, piano.
When she was home, she fed Felix, threw her clothes off, slipped into some sweats, and sat on her couch with some hot tea. She remembered that Vincent was always painting and made another feeble effort to search the apartment for wherever he was hiding that picture. She couldn’t find it and gave up quickly in a frustrated flurry as she stormed to her bedroom with Felix hot on her tail.
She went to the bed and sat on it uncomfortably, opening her laptop and noting immediately that Austin was on chat. All that she typed to him was, “thank you for talking today.”
He saw the message but didn’t reply. This wasn’t like him and for a moment, she was frightened. Then she reminded herself that she had to stop allowing those kinds of emotions dictate the way she felt about him. If he didn’t reply, he didn’t reply, and she had to leave it at that. So, she absently opened a web browser and decided to scroll social media for a while. A good thirty minutes must have passed before the chat window dinged. “You’re welcome, Marielle.” Sighing with relief, she nodded and closed the chat, deciding that that was it. She wasn’t going to speak with him anymore despite all temptation to do so.
He made her feel too much like a crazy teenager and the desire to start flirting, start putting asterisks around ideas, and start leading those ideas toward the bedroom was too great. She resisted. To be sure of it, she signed out of the chat service altogether and went back to mindlessly scrolling social media.
Her fingers however, led her to one of Austin’s many social media profiles. The one that she’d been to a few times had clearly been set up for anyone from Valorant who might go poking around to look for him. She guessed that in Austin’s line of work he wasn’t allowed to just post on social media often. This profile had been created July 31st and his profile picture – his oh, so beautiful profile picture – was a side shot of him at the beach. He was shirtless, but it was only from his shoulders up, and a pair of black sunglasses was holding his raven hair back as a perfect smile carved lines into his handsome face. She’d stared at this photo before, dreamily. She didn’t know what he was looking at, who took this photo, or why he was smiling, but it reminded her of the photo that Vincent had once told her was of the three of them at the beach in his dimension. “You are so damn beautiful, Austin,” she whispered, lifting a finger and trailing it across his sharp jawline and tracing his stretched lips, desperately wanting to relive the kisses that had been so long ago. Tears flooded her eyes. “My ice king,” she breathed.
Going under her bed, she pulled out the gift that he’d given her for their birthday, flicked the bedroom lights off, set it in the middle of the mattress and turned it on, watching the oranges, yellows, reds, and hints of blue twirl and spin across the ceiling. She lay there, deep in thought as she watched Felix flick his head left and right as he observed the lights, his tail whipping back and forth. Then she exhaled raggedly and forced out the words that she didn’t want to say. “I have to let you go, now. Completely.” Her face soaked itself as she spoke silently. “I love you more than I love living and I hate how you consume me, and I love how you consume me, and I can’t stand the thought of being without you. But it’s time for me to move on. I started something with Vincent and I intend to see it through, and my feelings for you are just… we just needed more time, my love… My darling…” she whispered and the words physically hurt her chest. “My life.” Her lungs felt like they were collapsing and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. “I’ll be okay,” she was quietly telling herself. “I’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. This decision is final.” She stood, and went to her drawer, opened it, and found the hidden spot where she opened it up and took out the ring from Vincent. She slipped it on her finger. “Done.” She slowly went to her mirror and looked herself and the ring over. “I’ll be Mrs. Fabron.” For a moment, everything hurt and she shakily went to her knees and sobbed, feeling herself letting go of Austin bit by bit, piece by piece, as if he were a half-finished puzzle that she was slowly taking apart; that image of him on the beach melting away. There went a bit of his hair, his eye, the gorgeous lines in his face, his smile. He was gone, only one piece remained. After a moment of sobbing, she stood on her feet and straightened, forcing the tears to stop. Then she grinned. This was her decision, and she was happy with it. She was starting to imagine the wedding dress that she’d pick out as soon as they were back from their final mission to Vincent’s dimension.
She knew that this meant that she was not having children naturally with him. She knew that this meant that they were probably leaving and spending their lives in a little town in France, she knew that her life would more than likely be quiet. But thank God. She needed quiet for a while, maybe forever, and she could do quiet in Vincent’s strong arms and against his strong heartbeat. She’d never have to guess if he was going to run off with some other woman, or sneak away with the boys. He’d be with her, protecting her, keeping her safe… and maybe she’d eventually change her mind about artificial insemination.
She curled up in bed with Austin’s gift running and dreamily watched it with different eyes and thoughts. It was beautiful. She’d never forget him when he was gone, and she’d move on somehow. She fell asleep in peace.
***
Sabine checked the clip in her pistol, before turning to John. She gave him a wan smile, sensing that he was smiling back underneath his hood as he checked his own weapon.
“What are we doing?” Han asked with a heavy sigh.
“We’re going to go get her before they do,” Sabine replied, straightening her back. She briefly looked to Chamber who was leaning against the lockers already looking at her with a deadly seductive smirk, his left hand was flicking one of his gadget cards around.
Rolling her eyes, she looked away, and put on her gloves.
“Right,” Han growled, throwing a look to Amir who shrugged, and stuffed something into a duffle bag.
“Let me get this straight,-” Kiritani’s voice broke in. “-You locked Jeanine away in Abyss…” He flicked his gaze from the blue Oni mask in his hands to Sabine. “Why?”
Sabine paused, her gaze downcast. “She was becoming something that no one could control anymore.”
“You do realize that Jeanine is a person, right? Despite the fact that she-”
“I didn’t know what to do!” Sabine raged, silencing the room. Moments passed and no one moved except Chamber, lifting his card, and flicking it back to the ground to see Trademark land, and spin. He drew it back into his arm.
Amir stood back and stared, waiting for Sabine to continue. “I didn’t know what to do,” she whispered, distantly, her green eyes pricking with tears. “No one did. Not me, not Marielle, not Han. So, I locked her in there and told everyone that she died,” she growled under her breath. She met eyes with Kiritani. “We tried to help her. Marielle tried to talk to her, reason with her.” She gestured to Han. “Han tried to train her, tried to get her to hone her abilities and see things more… I don’t know, reasonably. It was no use. The radianite-” Sabine shook her head, trailing off again, “-it doesn’t matter now,” she said, slamming some coiled rope into the bag. “None of it matters. All that matters is that Cory will be after her and her powers. So, we have to try and get her before he does.”
“And-” Chamber came off the wall, “-are we supposed to just… keep quiet about the fact that you betrayed her?” he asked. A deep silence fell over the entire room for a moment. “Does she know?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t stop anyone in this room from telling her,” she said looking to each of them with pleading eyes. “But if we want to have a chance, let me tell her in my own time. She thinks that the Scions of Hourglass put her in there! Let her believe that for now, the betrayal is too great. Maybe she’ll even do something about them, finally.” She stuffed more rope into her bag. “She knew John, too.” Sabine cut her gaze to him. “He won’t remember her, but she’ll remember him. Her and I saved the world once, together… I’ll appeal to her with that.”
“And, if it doesn’t work?” Amir broke in.
“Then it doesn’t work!” Sabine spit. “We have to try something.”
Chamber shook his head, tsking the entire situation. “So many bad decisions, Sabine,” he whispered, leering over her left shoulder as she stuffed more things into her duffle. “I’d be bitter, too.” He smirked and went to speak to Amir.
Sabine looked to John, her eyes glittering. John straightened his cowl, and teleported from his locker to her side. “Don’t let him get to you,” John said in his low growl.
Sabine cut her eyes to him, then looked away. “There isn’t a lot that gets to me anymore, you know that.” She stroked his masked face with her hand.
“I know you, and I know that you pretend. He just likes to push your buttons.” She nodded as her lip curled in disgust.
Chamber popped back in between them with a box of… what looked to be homemade cookies. He was offering them to them.
John dipped his head at them, but lifted his gaze to Chamber who had one hanging out of his mouth. “Chamber, I told you; I can not eat your cooking…”
Chamber’s eyes fell. “You do not fear the enemy, but you fear butter,” Chamber growled. Then he walked away muttering, “unbelievable.”
Sabine who hadn’t looked at him again smirked and gazed adoringly at John. “I love you,” she mouthed.
He bowed just a touch in response as no one could see his face.
Han stuck her hand right into the box of cookies and snagged two, shoving both into her mouth as she bent and tied her shoe.
Jamie knocked on the doorframe and gazed in at her. “I’d be going if it weren’t for this,” he growled, gesturing to his phone. Han knew what he was getting at; there had been a small family crisis and he needed to go to them for a short time.
“I get you. I don’t think this is going to be an easy run, though,” Han said, mouth full.
He came in and put his arms around her. “Aye, I have every confidence in you,” he explained with a small smile. He gestured with his head at John, Sabine, and the others. “And them,” he added.
She held him tightly, and the two were silent for a moment. Everyone knew that for better or worse they were falling in love. “Do you think that you can help her?” He whispered. Han took in a deep pull of air and let it out slowly; raggedly. “I know you tried once before.”
“Jeanine was…” Her voice trailed off, and she flicked her gaze to Sabine to be sure that she wasn’t listening. She didn’t seem to be; she was whispering something to John. “Jeanine was becoming evil. She was a monster, Jamie. The vendettas that she had against certain people-“
“So, basically… if she actually ever does find out that it was Sabine and not The Scions of Hourglass that trapped her, we could all really be hopping out of the frying pan and into the fire, here.”
“Yeah,” Han sighed. “That’s a good way of putting it. Let’s worry about that later. For now, let’s just keep our mouths shut.”
Liam came into the room, and drew everyone’s attention. “Okay, you all wanted to see it, follow me,” he said with a jerk of his head out toward the back and the grassy knolls where an enormous black jet rested ready to carry them all away. Liam smiled and looked to Sabine. “Good thing I know how to fly it, eh?”
Sabine nodded once and after a quick glance at everyone in the group, they embarked, luggage and all.
Liam had lead air strikes in another life, long ago and before Valorant.
He buckled himself into the cockpit, adjusted some buttons on the panel in front of him, and looked over his right shoulder at the party now sitting in the cabin. “Everyone buckled in?”
There were nods and thumbs up.
Chamber was playing with one of his cards and was strangely silent. His inner monologue seemed to tell everyone that he knew or perceived something that maybe the rest didn’t. No one spoke to him, however.
The flight was long and mostly silent. Kiritani slept the time off and Amir was crowding a space in the back secretively, faced away from the others.
John laced his fingers with Sabine and she looked down at their intertwined hands. “You knew her,” he whispered.
“You did, too,” she said with a hard swallow. She’d brought a small bottle of vodka onto the flight and drank it in one large gulp. “Jeanine was always difficult,” Sabine chuckled as she leaned her forehead on the cool glass, watching clouds roll by. “Maybe that’s why we got along. Somewhere in her difficult manner, we understood each other. We became friends in college about two years after Marielle and I had met. When she was exposed to radianite, and started manifesting her abilities, nothing seemed too out of sorts at first,” Sabine sighed long and hard.
“But over time, she became something more,” John finished for her.
Sabine looked to John as if she was trying to hide tears. “Yes.” She wiped her face. “She and I did something together that saved the world, Marielle helped in the background. We created a new kind of metal that gave several countries new technology and the ability to protect when wars were raging. Heh, some of the armor used in Italy when the wars had broken out was a result of Jeanine’s discoveries.” She grew silent, lost in some memory. “But she wanted more. More power, more control. I could see what was happening to her. She wanted to destroy things that she saw as imperfect. And that included some of us,” she whispered, and now John was certain; Sabine was crying. “She was ruthless, uncontrollable. She didn’t want to take directions, guidance. I tested her one time, it was the radianite. I’ve never seen it do something like that to a person. Somehow, it made her more aggressive, full of rage, and conviction in her own beliefs.”
“So, you stopped her?”
“I did. I locked her away in there…” she turned him, her eyes red, her face pale. “Cryo-freeze, and just walked away. I prayed that she’d just be stuck in there forever.” She looked down shamefully. “I didn’t know what else to do. She’d become unmanageable, she wouldn’t listen… she was unhinged. We called her Vyse.” Sabine sighed, heavily. “I don’t have any evidence of such a thing, but I believe that Cory and his beloved sister might experience radianite in a similar way. I think it makes some people more villainous.”
“So, why are we going after her?”
“Because Cory knows about her now and is going after her as well,-” Sabine’s face twisted in agony, “-and because she didn’t deserve that no matter how bad she was getting. I should have found another way.” She cut her eyes to him again. “She knew you, John. She always liked you. I have a feeling that-”
John squeezed her hand. “If I can, I’ll speak with her,” he said, reassuringly.
She drew the back of her hand slowly down the side of his face and gave her an adoring smile before he pulled his hood over his head, masking himself.
Much of the rest of the flight was in silence for the entire plane.
When they landed, Han stood and stretched having barely fallen asleep.
Liam put the jet down in what seemed to be a field, and they all checked their weapons, holstered them, and shambled out.
Liam gestured forward, and to everyone’s astonishment – except Sabine, who had been there many times – enormous valleys and waterfalls lay before them.
One of the valleys created a deep well into the earth that was swallowed by darkness the further down it went, and across the chasm, water poured down into the space and vanished.
“The lab is down there,” Sabine gestured.
“Y’all couldn’t have come up with something a little more difficult?” Kiritani scoffed, running a hand through his blue hair, and glancing at Amir.
Amir crossed his arms and shook his head, “this is going to be fun,” he mused.
“If you say so,” Chamber replied with a shrug.
“It wasn’t my choice to put the labs down there,” Sabine explained, leading the party away from the ledge of the drop off and toward stone pillars in the near distance. “It was just one of the places where the radianite that we were studying in this part of the world was the richest, and we all felt that being underground was important for hiding.”
“There’s a whole world down there,” Liam said with a scoff as he followed her closely.
Once they reached the stone pillars – one of them lopsidedly sticking out of the earth – they discovered stone steps winding down into the gulf, closing hugging the chasm walls.
As they stepped on, Chamber brought up the end of the line, glanced around, and flung his Trademark up onto the pillar on the left. The camera settled, and spun, searching the area. “That’s a good spot,” he whispered, continuing behind the others. Then he whistled “The Ants go Marching” for a good three hundred feet. Amir shook his head, stifling a chuckle. Kiritani turned, glaring at him. Chamber shrugged and pocketed his hands. “How far do we have to go?” he asked. The entire space echoed, and the wind coming up from the chasm was destroying anyone with a hairstyle’s good day.
“It’s there,” Sabine pointed ahead.
The path looked vaguely similar to the area that they’d already covered; more stone steps, more markings on the abyss wall.
Liam shrugged his pack further up his back and readjusted the straps.
After several long minutes, they rounded part of the cut and there was a metal door cut into the side of the cliff.
Sabine bent and looked at a control panel with a heavy sigh. “I put the codes in,” she punched in a few numbers. “And it would seem that Cory has already been here,” she said dejectedly, glancing down at an obvious shoeprint in the dirt.
“That’s a shoeprint,” Han said, unimpressed.
“Correct. And when I locked Jeanine in here, the winds of the season hadn’t risen, yet. This shoeprint is recent,” Sabine replied, pushing the metal door open. She stood against it, and gestured them in. “This way,” Sabine stated, imperiously.
“In we go,” Chamber said, under his breath.
Once the party filed into the darkness before them, Sabine found a light, and the space flickered and hummed with electricity; a green glow covering the room that they now occupied.
There were giant glass tubes housing dead plants and what looked to be silvery roses, and tables full of rusting machinery and tools, abandoned long ago.
Amir was already placing cameras at the door. “This goes here,” he said under his breath. “That goes there.”
“Can you really see with those?” Kiritani asked, stroking his chin.
“Can you really use a magic mask to teleport?” Amir shot back, glaring at him with white eyes from under his own mask.
Kiritani shrugged and ran a hand through his blue hair. “I guess you’ll find out,” he scoffed.
Amir turned his attention to the tables and the bits and pieces strewn about each that most of them didn’t understand. “Hmm, implants. I need those,” he whispered, swiping some of them off the end of one of the tables and patting the pocket he’d placed them in.
Liam shook his head. “Spread out, or-?”
“Stay together. I have no idea what we’re walking into,” Sabine sighed, shrugging her pack back up her shoulders, and gesturing onward with her head.
She led them through a hall with more rooms on either side, and a glowing floor with an occasional section darkened by a dead lightbulb underneath. The air was old and musty and there was a scent wafting through the space that smelled like decay.
“What is that?” Kiritani asked, an arm across his nose.
Han gagged, her eyes bulging.
“My guess? Experiments gone wrong,” Sabine replied, ignoring all of them with John close behind.
It was only at this point that they seemed to register that there were large, human sized tubes on either side of the walls and some contained looked to be people. Dead, and rotting.
Chamber lurched back a moment, glaring at them all. Amir put a hand to his shoulder. “With me, Chamber. Your eyes, my camera. We make a good team,” he said with a pat as he urged Chamber along.
Chamber adjusted his glasses and followed, ignoring the tubes.
Kiritani produced his blue teleportation orb in his hand and rolled it across the floor out into what seemed to be a large open space that sat in the middle of the chasm. It truly was an abyss. To their left, they looked down into a vast room with tubing, and abandoned tables and machinery and what seemed to be a silver…rose? Under glass.
Sabine glanced at it, and shook her head, drawing her attention to something off in the distance that seemed to be standing on its own. It looked like a giant prismed hourglass, but one side was smashed in leaving a jagged hole. “Keep up,” she said, her voice trembling a little.
Han and Kiritani exchanged the kind of looks that asked if either had seen how Sabine reacted to that, and both nodded.
The rest had crossed a threshold into another open space, but without warning something vast, metal, and silver shot up in front of Han and Kiritani, trapping them back from the others.
“No!” Sabine cried, reaching for them. But she was blinded by a brilliant flash of purple light as was everyone else.
Guns were drawn, bullets were ready.
A low, grumbling, cruel laugh echoed through the space. “Sabine,” it taunted as visions started to clear. “Oh, Sabine.” It seemed to be coming from everywhere. “I always thought that you’d come back for me.” Sabine was readying her weapon, and placing herself against the wall as her vision slowly came back to her. She glanced down, breathing hard and noted Kiritani’s orb. She looked to it, trying to tell John not to worry.
The entire party rested against the wall together, waiting.
Around the bend where they were standing, there was another open space, and several drop offs into the chasm below.
“Who built this place?” Chamber growled; Headhunter pointed down as he waited.
“I dreamt of it,” the voice continued. “For years.”
“Where are you, Jeanine? I want to talk.”
“No talking for us,” the voice barked back. “But incidentally, how is Marielle? I’ve heard a lot about her recently.”
Sabine sighed and looked to Liam. He looked back, noting that behind him was a ledge that he’d be able to throw a grappling hook and rope over, and he and Chamber might actually have a shot at sneaking in around the woman.
Chamber seemed to pick up on this plan, and he was nodding his head in approval, using a single finger to push his glasses back up his nose.
Liam rolled his hand, a clear note to Sabine, “keep talking.”
Sabine had already bent and was taking her ropes out of her bag and handing them to Liam. She smiled, softly at him telling him good luck with her eyes, and stood back against the wall again with John.
Liam was already fixing and rope and climbing up it, with Chamber right on his tail.
When they reached the top, they were startled to find bookshelves filled with ancient texts, and stones in the wall that had markings that neither of them could interpret.
Liam gestured forward, and Chamber followed.
“She’s not so well. But I’m assuming that you’re not so well, either.”
“Oh? Not so well, is she? Pity,” the voice replied, cruelly. “Why don’t you come around the corner, I’d like to speak with you,” she added. Sabine glanced at the others. “Your friends can stay there!” She barked.
“Watch out for them,” Sabine stated, gesturing to Kiritani, and Han who had just flown up over the silver wall, and was now floating back down to earth; knives already out and floating around her, ready to strike. No targets presented themselves, so Han collected them up again as her feet settled down.
“Don’t go,” John insisted, grabbing Sabine’s hand. “Wife,” he begged.
“I’ll be okay.”
“If you are not, there is no world for me.”
Her face contorted a little, revealing that part of her that she always tried so desperately to keep hidden. “I know, love. Come in after me in a moment if you suspect anything,” she explained.
He nodded, slowly from underneath the mask and let go of her.
She took a few brave steps forward, putting herself in the open and everyone held their breath as Han slid in by Amir, who was setting up another camera behind all of them in the corner that Chamber had just vanished into.
Kiritani appeared over his orb and let out a sigh of relief as he drew it back into his body. He nodded to their left where there was a lookout nest; that was, a staircase that led to a small, raised room that had a view of exactly where Sabine was headed.
Kiritani looked to Amir who back tracked, silently going to the staircase, and slowly making his way up it, sniper in hand. He’d wait there until further notice. From that angle it was easier to see everything and some of the wall left him mostly undetectable to the others.
For a moment, Sabine stood looking the space over, the walkway that she’d have to cross to even see Jeanine.
She crossed the walkway, staying away from the drop on both sides and once at the end, she spotted the familiar woman standing on top of a large, abandoned crate. She was standing; legs slightly apart. Her face was hidden by a black biker helmet with slitted yellow eyes and either long bat ears, or horns, Sabine wasn’t sure which.
Once Sabine cleared the catwalk, she glanced back as if reconsidering, but turned once more to face the woman. “Take your helmet off, I want to see your face,” Sabine said.
The other woman chuckled, but reached up, pulling her helmet off. This revealed pale skin, short, pixie cut pink hair, vibrant eyes, a smattering of freckles, and a piercing dangling from the woman’s left ear.
“Why did you leave me here, Sabine?” She growled, bending down, her gloved hands dangling between her bent knees as she stared down at Sabine.
“You weren’t safe anymore.”
Jeanine glared down at her with hazel eyes, and laughed, heartily. “I wasn’t safe anymore.” She stood and began to pace a little, revealing that she also had a gun in her right hand against her leg. “I wasn’t safe anymore? Coming from the woman who shoots poisonous gas from her fingertips and is involved with a mysterious group of people who all have powers and abilities that they can used in any way they want against humanity, and I’m not safe?” she scoffed, narrowing her eyes at Sabine. Then she stood, towering over the other woman. “Why did you come here?” She asked, crossing her hands behind her back, and beginning to slowly pace; her glare locked on Sabine, unblinking.
Kiritani was pulling his mask from the back of his blue jacket and looking to the others as if telling them what he was about to do. Once he put it over his face, he vanished and during this timeframe he was able to move around the entirety of the space for a period of a few seconds before the ability stopped working and he reappeared.
He ran across the walkway, peeking around boxes and making sure that Jeanine was alone.
“I wanted to come back for you, Jeanine,” Sabine explained. “I know that all of this was wrong.”
“I spent many years dreaming of being rescued…frozen, and alone, Sabine. I spent many years dreaming,-” she paused and tilted her head down, “-of you.” There was an eerie pause. Sabine felt something sweep behind her that made her bristle, and she knew that Kiritani was running around. Jeanine smirked, “One of your little friends?” She asked. Sabine didn’t reply.
Kiritani made it back to the others and reappeared. “I’m back,” he whispered glancing to Amir who gave him a firm nod. Kiritani spoke into his ear piece. “Liam, Chamber, watch out, there are a few men back there waiting, I can’t tell you who they are, they’re masked.”
“Copy that,” Liam replied.
“Of course, you’ll have a hard time sneaking up on them,-” Kiritani said with a wrinkle of his nose, “-I can smell Chamber’s cologne from here.”
Chamber shook his head, and stuck his nose into his shoulder, sniffing. He gave Liam a questioning look and Liam shrugged as if he didn’t agree. “Whatever that was about,” Chamber growled, under his breath as the two moved through bookshelves and the maze that lead back around to the other side where Jeanine and Sabine were talking.
Chamber poked his head around a corner, and spotted one of the men that Kiritani warned them about in the wait. He gestured to Liam and Liam held up a hand as if to say, “wait here.” Chamber acknowledged this, and Liam crept up behind the guy, put him in a hold, and strangled him with his bare hands. Then he lay the body out on the ground and took his gun before whipping the man’s mask off.
“Guys, we just took one of the men down. It was a Varun double, be careful. There are others with abilities here, and we don’t know where Cory and his sister might be, now.” Liam said into the earpiece as he checked the clip in the gun. It was fully loaded. Liam blew out through rounded lips, and gestured with the tip of the weapon toward a small staircase that looked like it would bring them back around to Jeanine.
Chamber followed.
“We’re surrounded by my friends,” Sabine said after a beat.
“Funny. We’re surrounded by mine,” she growled.
“Whatever you think, Jeanine-”
“Stop calling me Jeanine! That person is dead. I’m Vyse, now.” And with that, she put her helmet back on, hiding her face and expression from Sabine.
Sabine swallowed. “We need you to come back with us,” Sabine said, straightening her spine.
Vyse chuckled and shook her head. “Oh, Sabine. I’m so beyond you and all of that.” She stood still like a statue, the helmet changing her voice so that it sounded distance and slightly warped; not that unlike Sabine’s when she wore her own mask. “You see, I’ve already spoken to Cory.” Sabine could see shadows moving out of the corner of her eye to the right and up. She instinctively knew it was Liam and Chamber. “You tricked me, and left me in here. You let me believe that the Scions of Hourglass were after me, but it was you,” she growled. “You were afraid that I was a monster before…” Han and Kiritani were making their way slowly over the catwalk while they thought that Vyse was distracted. When both came around the back of Vyse, waiting to attack, they noted that the space where they both stood was narrow, and behind them both was a massive drop; neither could even see the bottom. From his vantage point, Amir could hardly see them if they were closer to the edge. “Now, you’re going to see what monster you created,” Vyse finished, and she whirled, and jumped, landing with Kiritani and Han.
Both had tried to be ready for her, but a brilliant flash of pink and purple light from Vyse blinded them.
Sabine drew her gun, dashing around the crate toward her and the other two just in time to see Vyse push both over the edge.
Han could fly, so the moment that she felt herself go airborne, she thrashed, and floated upward, darting away until her vision cleared.
Kiritani was falling, arms flailing and reaching for the ledge.
Thinking quickly, he produced his orb, threw it, it landed, and he vanished, and reappeared near Sabine.
He took hold of her, whirling Sabine away from Vyse who had lifted her pistol and was shooting at them. “Cory’s story is a whole lot more convincing than whatever bull Vincent has been spoon-feeding you.”
“I know all about Vincent and what he is!” Sabine shot back. “This whole thing turned into a mess that he never intended. All that he wanted was Marielle back!”
“Ah yes, poor innocent Marielle.”
Sabine sighed, “You were always jealous of her because you could never keep anything from her.”
Vyse snickered, “Still sharp, Sabine. But that doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not the woman that I used to be.”
“Yeah, we know!” Han cried from a perch high above as she tried to get a bead on Vyse.
There was a loud crack splitting the scene.
Vyse took a bullet to the right arm, but after she jerked back examining it, it was clear that she’d only been grazed and she looked up in time to see Amir ducking away from her view with the smoking rifle.
She fired something back that landed where he’d been standing and the object became invisible.
“I can’t cross it, it hurts, whatever it is,” Amir said into ear pieces.
Jacket now ruined, she went to the other side of the crate, away from Sabine and Kiritani, and out of Amir’s view.
Chamber and Liam were almost to the ledge where they could see her, and once there, Liam jumped down to wait for her to come back around and hopefully catch her. Chamber was stopped by a man who appeared around the corner and the two began hand to hand combat with Chamber gaining the upper hand with his powerful arms.
Vyse peeked around the corner where Liam was waiting and shot at him. He ducked, and returned fire, both missing as he backed up to join Kiritani and Sabine.
“You’re surrounded and outnumbered, Jeanine. You have nowhere to go!”
“You think so?” Vyse taunted back. “You think that you can use me to straighten your path?” Vyse returned to the top of the box and lifted her arms, then made a tearing motion with them. “You can’t do that. All paths end with me!”
The entire team glared in horror as thorny, metallic vines wrapped around them and their weapons, rendering their guns useless.
Vyse tilted her head back, watching all of them become engulfed by her ability. At that moment, John materialized behind her. “Jeanine,” he whispered, and she jerked back, having not sensed his presence. “Let’s talk…”
She tilted her head at him. “John?”
“What’s left of me.”
For a moment, Vyse seemed as if she was considering. Then she shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “I have no time for this,” and she raised her pistol, aiming it at John’s face.
“No!” Sabine shrieked, but John had already teleported away from any damage. Where to? She couldn’t see, but she let out a relieved sigh, knowing that he was safe.
At that moment, Chamber, having won the fight, fell to his knees at the high point of the area, and looked down at the mess of people trying to hide while their guns were thorn jammed.
Vyse saw movement and looked up at him. “Oh good, you brought the gun obsessed valet.”
Chamber smirked, knowingly, and gave her a small bow, keeping the high ground, as he produced Tour De Force from his arm.
No one could see Vyse’s face, but the look might have been horror as she realized that apparently, her ultimate ability didn’t work on Chamber, and with a sound that broke the night in two, Chamber fired a shot.
Vyse had just barely realized that she couldn’t control him and jumped down again.
When Vyse’s ability began to wear off, the entire party rushed the area, only to find her… gone. Where? They didn’t know.
They all regrouped and spent hours searching the facility, but there was no sign of her and after night had passed, they boarded the plane again, and flew home.