Chapter Forty-Eight

Aaron

Having made it back around the factory, to where they started, Aaron feels like going back to the bridge. He’s so mad, all he can think to do is start tearing random people apart until the rats go and bring Valerie to him them damn selves. Suddenly, he stops moving at the faint sound of a man’s scream.

He hurries along in its direction, continuing to listen for it under the ambient drone of machinery. When it happens again, he jolts upright. It doesn’t sound like it could’ve come from Marco, but it was close by. He and Arma sprint between the shadows to where it came, making sure to not give themselves up just because they’re in a hurry. Arma is still doing as she was told and stays in the darkness as best she can. Even when she is in the light, she could still be confused with being a shadow herself.

He pots two men on a small concrete path leading to an underground stairwell. One is crawling on their hands and knees towards another who is sprawled out cold on his back. The way the two are dressed, they clearly don’t work there, they are rats, and he’s found their hideout.

The sounds of a woman shouting and screaming from inside launches him into a frantic run for the stairwell. He passes between the two men without even looking down at them. Before he even reaches the door, he hears the slide of an automatic pistol jacking a round into the chamber behind him. Instead of a bang, he hears a “thunk” and a pitiful wail come from the man. He doesn’t have to look back to know what Arma’s done with them.

He only pauses until she is right behind him, and then he yanks the door open as fast as he can. A man is standing right there with his back turned to him. He’s holding a pistol and appears to be guarding the door against someone trying to escape.

Before the man can turn, he punches him in the middle of the back as hard as he can. There’s a popping feeling that resonates up his arm when the man’s spine breaks apart in multiple places. No one inside seems to even notice when the man’s folded body plops down on the floor. The whole place is in an uproar.

He and Arma stand in the doorway facing a scene that looks much like a stereotypical bar fight. Everyone inside is brawling and throwing stuff. It all must have just gotten started because no one has even had the chance to grab any of the other guns leaning up against the wall. The second the two of them are noticed, everyone stops what they’re doing and gapes at them, everyone but the woman caught in the middle of it all. He focuses on her in confusion. With long blonde hair and such pure white skin, she’s clearly not Valerie.

The woman’s big back and shoulder muscles are rippled as she presses one of the shorter men up over her head by his hair and the crotch of his pants. From the look on his face, she has hold of more than just his pants though. She only pauses for a second, seeing that everyone else has frozen before she finishes throwing him down onto another man who is skittering backward on the floor away from her.

The woman turns to face him when she hears Arma softly step in by his side. She looks up at her too, with incredulous eyes, as if she were some kind of powerful deity. A drop of blood falls off the tip of Arma’s knife, and every head in the room watches it land on the floor.

“Are we going to kill all of ‘em this time Aaron? What about this one?” Arma looks down at the blonde and then to him.

He can tell by her voice, that she wants to spare the woman. He pauses for a moment, but to everyone else, it’s only a fraction of a second. He looks down at her, wondering if he’s been led to the completely wrong woman. “Do you know where my Valerie is, or who she is?”

The woman drops to her knees, exhausted and badly beaten. Hardly able to hold herself up, she puts her palms down on the floor and shakes her head no. Large bruises are already turning red on her arms, neck, back, and legs. Two of the men inside are still holding onto chairs that are missing a few legs while others have taken up the remaining pieces. The sight of her brings forth the memory of his death, and all the other times he’s been ganged up on.

When he steps forward at her side, he raises his fists and glares around at everyone in the room. He hates every single face he sees. They’re nothing but a bunch of stupid heathens that have no place in the world. Arma crouches down and holds her hand out to the woman. When she takes it, she quickly slides her across the floor behind herself and then backs him up.

“Keep her safe, Arma.”

“The others?”

“Not so much.”

Someone in the room shouts “ROBOTS” as if more people in the back are supposed to hear and come rushing in.

Aaron takes a deep breath and then dashes for the man closest to him, the one with the busted chair in his hands. Another man bolts for the guns, grabbing a short-barreled shotgun. They pump a shell into the chamber and turn to him.

He could never have imagined being able to move so quickly. With the speed of his mind being so much faster than before, everyone around him is comparatively moving in slow motion. Even against so many, he already knows not one of them has a chance. Everyone in the room leaps into action, scrambling for any weapon they can reach.

He grabs the first man by the throat and uses him as a human shield. Before the second man with the shotgun can even draw it up on him they panic and pull the trigger. The round goes off while the barrel is still pointing too low, blowing a crater in the concrete floor. Even though he had previously fantasized about taking his time with everyone who abducted Valerie, he doesn’t. He systematically takes them all down, one-by-one, and with efficiency. He hits them hard, and where it counts.

Screams are ringing out everywhere as he crushes the guy with the shotgun against the wall with the body of the first guy. He grabs the man’s face and smashes his skull into the others with all of his weight behind it. There’s a lot of blood, and there’s no need to make sure they are dead before moving on.

As he lurches for the next person who’s holding a pistol, he slams his forearm across the neck of another man who’s already within reach. Their head kinks over at a strange angle and stays that way. Before he can reach for the pistol, another person swings a knifepoint at him. He kicks them across their knees, hyperextending both of them. While they spin forward, up off the ground, he slams their body back down to the floor with an elbow to their spine. The man lands on his face, almost upside down, forcing a sharp involuntary grunt out of him.

When he reaches the man with the pistol, they’re already unloading it at him. They have it raised to his face, for a headshot. Each time the trigger is being pulled, he can see it happening and reacts before the round is fired. He watches the hack sights on top of the slide and keeps himself out of the line of fire by ducking and dodging. After three rounds end up in other men behind himself, he swats the automatic out of the man’s hands and punches him in the sternum with alarming aggression.

Every single move he makes is intended to kill. The recoil of the man’s body against his fist is delayed by its static momentum. He can feel their flesh wrap around the front of his fist on impact. Their upper rib cage collapses inward and everyone in the room hears it. It causes a sudden shift in the dynamic of the room.

Instead of fighting, the rest of the group starts trying to escape instead. The two that are foolish enough to try running past Arma to the door, are sent down with swift deep chops from her knife. The only three that aren’t dead, sprawl onto the floor with their hands over their heads. They know it’s either surrender or surely be killed.

Despite what they’ve done, and what he’s already done, he can’t be so cold as to pull them up off the floor and kill them. No matter how hard it is to control such an intense rage, he won’t kill them after they’ve given up. Instead, he grabs one of them around their collarbone and squeezes down until they squeal in pain.

His voice is low, calm, and shows how upset he is. “Where are Valerie and Marco?”

Though the person is in almost too much pain to move, they shakily hold their other arm out and point to the closed metal door in the back of the room. “In there, they’re in there.”

As he looks to the door, it opens on its own. There’s a narrow hallway behind it, leading to what looks like a few other small bunk rooms. It looks like a locker room, but the old grey cabinets are all full of circuit breakers. When he lets go of the man and stands up, two people jerkily stagger through the door. It’s Marco, and one of the zealots behind him. Their arm is wrapped around his neck and they’re holding what looks like a dead-man switch in their other hand.

In his arms, Marco is carrying a heavy-looking cylinder with something mounted to the end of it. He has no idea what the thing is, but the wiring on it looks like an array for precision detonator timing. The device looks big enough to turn the entire building into a crater. He doesn’t see Valerie anywhere and calls out for her, but gets no answer. He calls out again, but there’s still no answer. There’s not even a single peep from anyone.

He looks right at Marco, who’s in pretty rough shape. “Where is Valerie Marco? What have they done with her?”

Marco only manages to open his mouth before the man tightens his arm around his neck to stop him. Marco can only shake his head. Tears roll down his face when he looks down in despair. Aaron feels like his very soul has just left him. If it had remained with him for Valerie, it is now gone.

His hate falls away into a chasm of hopelessness. For a second, he remembers her soft touch on his chest and the way she used to look up at him with her soft light brown eyes. He can’t bear to lose her, not now. The thought of going on without her suddenly makes living forever feel like a burden. He shouts for her, even louder, one last time. His voice trails off at the end when he succumbs to loss.

When the man holding onto Marco sees how many bodies are lying on the floor, he knows it’s all over. He flips the safety cover off the switch and starts to say his stupid last words to them. Before he has a chance to push down on the thumb button, Marco spins around and wraps his arms around the man, pressing the bomb between their bodies. In a knee jerk reaction, the man squeezes down on the trigger, setting the thing off.

The explosion rips both of them into nothing but chunks and sends them flying all over the room. The remaining men who were cowering on the floor are captured in the immediate vicinity of the explosion as well. Their bodies get crushed to the floor under the blast and slung into the corners of the room.

Aaron’s vision goes bright, and whites out completely. He feels like he’s been struck by lightning as he’s thrown to the ground by the percussion of the blast. For a short moment, he is completely incoherent, can’t think for himself, but yet his mind has gone into overload. For a fraction of a second, he recalls every one of his memories, all at the same time and in one loud clamor. As quickly as it came, the surge leaves him. There’s nothing but darkness left for him now. He’s been stripped of everything yet again.

For some reason, he chuckles at the irony of death having still reached out where it shouldn't be able to see and found him again. Cynically, he hopes that it’s finally claimed him for good this time. It occurs to him that he never did recall being dead the first time around. It was like he just woke up on the floor somewhere else right after being shot.

He’d been expecting that dark beast he’s always imagined to come for him, but it never did. It’s supposed to be here and tear him apart like in his dreams, but the only thing here is empty encapsulating darkness.

After contemplating the condition of his end for a long, but timeless while, he hears Arma quietly say his name from within the darkness. “Aaron, where are you?”

He belts out a laugh, not knowing what to think of it all. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you even get here?” He didn’t expect they could end up in the same hell together. He wonders if maybe they’re in a special place for people that’ve tried to escape before. “Well, it’s just you and me now babe… how about that.” He chuckles again.

She looks through the darkness in his direction, a little surprised at what he just called her. “Yeah, I guess it is, huh. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to save Marco.” She feels kind of bad saying it like that. “We still need to find Valerie.”

Before he starts to explain that the two of them are a bit past that point, a faint shimmering in the darkness catches his attention. It’s kind of fine sparkling light, seeming to shift about in front of him. He reaches out for it and sees the faint silhouette of his hand. He moves it back and forth a couple of times, and then he reaches for his face, wondering if it’s just a trick of the mind. When his hand touches his face, he gasps.

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the slightly lighter square of dark blue light coming in from the stairwell door to his left. He’s simply been lying flat on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. They’re not dead, it’s just that the lights are out and the room has gone dark. He rolls over and sits up, but doesn’t know or care what will happen now. Both Valerie and Marco are dead. No one will be bringing anyone back, and he might as well have stayed dead the first time. He’d at least not have to suffer through what few days he has left ahead.