To Save the Worlds

Chapter 5

Being on the top floor, the girders supporting the roof left a space higher than the rooms on the floors below. As a result, the ceiling that was suspended from the girders was almost two feet below them. Blankets laid over the straps they had strung to make hammocks allowed them to create a rather cozy hideout. The battery-operated lantern hung before them changed what would have been an oppressive cave-like atmosphere into something approaching a sleep-over.

While they waited for sounds that would signal that searchers had entered the building, they lay quietly for a while. But nature abhors a vacuum and the analogy holds true for individuals who are drawn to each other.

“Do you think that we can get away with this?” Harmony asked, keeping her voice just above a whisper.

“I don’t know. But this is the best way we can go about hiding from them since we cannot leave the building. All we can do is hope. I just wish I had moved us out of here last night.” Some unconscious feeling had inspired her to hide them in the ceiling. It had been the same feeling she had experienced the previous evening that had instructed Stoddard to change cars after leaving the airport. It would have been nice if the spidey-sense was more consistent. They could have used some kind of warning last night.

“We haven’t had much of a chance to plan or even think ahead about our situation. I sympathize with you about being trapped though. I’d rather be home in Iowa than dealing with this.”

“You’re from Iowa? I grew up in Minnesota, but that was a long time ago and a long way from here.”

“We’re practically neighbors,” Harmony said excitedly. She started asking Alexa questions about her home town and what it had been like growing up. Most of her answers were drawn from her memories of Michael, but she had to rely upon Alexa’s as well.

Eventually, fatigue caught up with them.

“Let’s get some sleep,” Alexa suggested. “I think that we will hear them coming, so we shouldn’t need to take turns sleeping.” Harmony nodded in agreement and they both put their heads down.

Walking. Always walking. Everywhere she looked, she saw ashes and death. Even the air itself was completely
still. Any fires that had burned had long ago used up their fuel. The only smell in the air was of soot and dirt.
What structures still existed were burned out skeletons of their former glory. Nothing stood intact for as far as
she could see. Typical of the destruction wrought by man’s most powerful weapons. How could things have
come to this end?

The scene blurred for a moment and she found herself looking at a different scene. She stood in a long, high
room. A meeting room or a formal dining room. Harmony was at the other end, bound and gagged in a chair.
Her expression was one of fear and worry. Then Harmony’s eyes widened in horror as a long knife or spear flew
into sight and impaled her chest with an audible impact.

Having had so many nightmares over the years, Alexa knew it was a dream, but watching Harmony die sent an electric shock through her and she jerked awake. "I hate nightmares," she grumbled.

Harmony lay beside her, coming awake because of Alexa’s sudden movements. "I know what you mean. Mine always seem to be about some kind of failure in negotiation. It always hurts."

They were interrupted by the sounds of people on the floor below. This must be what had somehow filtered into her dream. The intruders must have been in the building for quite a while to have reached the second floor. Would they be dealing with the thugs like the ones she had dealt with at the airport or would they be soldiers from the base? She was only concerned about whether they would be facing guns or not. Hand-to-hand combat in the confined spaces of the rooms in the barracks would give her a decided advantage, but projectile weapons would mean that people could attack from a distance.

The more Alexa considered the situation they might be facing, she realized that the people searching for them wanted, no needed, them alive. That meant that the most they would be facing would be bladed weapons of some sort. She needed to stay between Harmony and their attackers.

Her biggest fear was that someone would get past her and hurt Harmony. That possibility worried her more than anything. Having finally met Harmony and spent time talking with her, any injury to her would hurt her more than it did Harmony.

At some point, Harmony changed position so that she was looking back at Alexa. Quietly, she said, “I know that it sounds silly, but I could feel you looking at me.”

Alexa returned her smile and replied, “Well, I wasn’t looking hard enough to set your hair on fire.”

“I really could tell that you were looking at me, Alexa,” Harmony said. “I don’t know why or how.”

“I know what you mean. It’s kind of a nice feeling though.”

Their tentative conversation was interrupted by the sounds of doors being slammed open further down the hallway. Then there was the closer sound of the stairwell at their end of hallway.

“Nothing like advertising your presence,” Alexa muttered. There was no immediate danger of being heard as the door to the apartment was still closed.

Harmony just snorted a brief laugh in response.

It was only a matter of minutes before the hallway door was slammed open below them and there was the sound of a couple of men entering the room. Their search only took moments to see that the room was empty. There was some indistinct talk between them that Alexa could not make out, even though they were right above them. Then they were gone again, closing the door as they went. The sound of opening doors continued on down the corridor.

Eventually, sounds of doors being forced open faded away as the intruders left the floor. They both listened, barely breathing, for any sign that someone was in the room or in the hall outside. After several minutes of waiting, Alexa decided that it was safe to move about and begin planning their next step.

Out of an abundance of caution, Alexa carefully removed the ceiling tile below her.

“Stay here while I have a look around, “she whispered. Using the increased agility that War had gifted her, she levered herself out of the harness and dropped quietly to the floor.

The room was as empty as when the two of them had gone into the ceiling. She listened at the corridor door and at the door to the lavatory. She could hear nothing. Carefully opening the lavatory door, she saw nothing out of the ordinary.

In the ceiling, Harmony had shifted her position so that she could see what Alexa was doing. Alexa waved up at her to stay where she was and that everything was okay.

Moving to the door to the hallway, she listened intently for any activity outside. While she could hear nothing, it seemed too quiet. The sixth sense she had felt at the airport had helped her to identify her opponents was growing stronger now. Regardless of the silence outside, she knew that there were at least four men outside. By somehow stretching her senses, she knew that they were essentially surrounded.

She stood back to think. They were faced with the situation where their pursuers were sure that they were somewhere in the building. The odds were that there were people present on the other floors, waiting to see if it was true. She only had two choices. One was to return to the rafters and hope to wait them out. The other option was to confront those individuals outside the door and hope that they were spread out enough to allow them to escape. Whether they stayed in hiding or made the first move, they were going to have to fight their way out.

She had not really thought through the whole situation she and Harmony were in, this was shaping up to be an utter fiasco. Why the blazes had L sent a single person to act as Harmony’s protection and one who was really not ready for it? The longer she stood there, the more negative thoughts ran through her mind. Maybe she should have just escorted Harmony to the first flight out of Heathrow and on to America instead of staying in Britain. If she had done that, would their plane have been shot down on takeoff? Just like in Africa? Did she have the ability to escape from the trap they now found themselves in?

Alexa almost seemed paralyzed below her, which began to concern Harmony. She hissed at Alexa, trying to keep from making too much noise, but there was no response. She tapped lightly on one of the ceiling tiles, causing Alexa to look for where the noise came from. Unfortunately, that little bit of noise seemed to be enough to alert the men who must have been stationed right outside of the room.

The hallway door almost exploded inward and three men came crashing into the room. More figures could be seen outside but they could not get at her because of the doorway. Alexa found herself too busy to think about what-ifs and maybes. The doorway and the battle that immediately ensued was enough of a bottleneck to save her from fighting all of them at once.

The three in the room may have had the element of surprise, but it did them no good because they faced an experienced soldier who was quite competent at hand-to-hand combat. Her combat batons were in her hands and the leading man went down with a blow to the head while the man behind him suffered a fractured arm and leg, leaving him screaming in pain. The bodies slowed down the entry of the rest and Alexa had enough time to reset her position and take out the third man with blows to the collar bones on both sides of his body, incapacitating him as well.

All three of them had been armed with either clubs or batons of their own, telling Alexa in her combat-heightened state of mind that she had little to worry about from guns. She pushed past the three men who had become non-combatants to take the battle out to the corridor. She found herself facing four more thugs, not soldiers, who had arranged themselves on either side of the door. Instead of allowing them to attack her from both sides, she charged one pair, fighting as if she had taken lessons from a master martial artist. In Alexa’s state, she could have given lessons to that master.

She quickly found herself facing a single man and she was out of position such that he was between her and the apartment she had come charging out of. To her consternation, this man had learned from the mistakes his comrades had made and did not charge at her. Instead, he drew a gun from a shoulder holster and took aim at her.

She froze. The end of the gun’s barrel looked impossibly large. She already knew that the apartment doors near her were too far away to reach without getting a bullet in the back. The thug sneered at her as he took aim. As Alexa prepared to throw one of her batons at him to interrupt his aim, Harmony appeared behind him. She swung a club taken from one of the first combatants to go down, laying him out with a single strike to the head. The gun barked regardless and her shoulder went numb with the impact of the bullet.

Alexa fell back to the floor at the shock caused by the passage of the slug. The sharp smell of gun smoke filled the hallway. She lay still for a moment, surprised that she was still conscious and breathing. She was quite familiar with the damage a bullet could do at the distance she had been from the gun.

As she reached over to check the damage, Harmony was there gently touching her side as tears streamed down her face. “Please don’t die,’ she begged.

“I won’t,” Alexa responded shakily. Her hand found the point of entry and came away slick with blood. Despite reassuring Harmony that she would be okay, she did not feel like it. A quick self-assessment told her that she was still in better shape than she thought she should be. Instead of going into shock, she was alert and focused.

She looked up at Harmony and said, “We need to get out of this hallway. That gunshot will have people running up here in no time.” As she gathered her batons from the floor, doors all along the corridor opened and armed men stood ready to attack. A tall, athletic-looking blonde woman pushed men out of the way before they realized she was there and the rest crowded out of her path. She was beautiful, but her eyes gave the impression of being as cold as ice. Her bearing made it obvious that they faced one of the goddesses of Chaos.

“Hello, Major,” she sneered. “I was sure that you had not gone far, so we decided to wait for you to show yourselves.”

“Which one are you?” Alexa asked. She made no move as Harmony had been grabbed by the men who had appeared. The most she did was sit up a bit straighter, while she made sure her weapons remained out of sight. All she could do was bide her time and look for a chance to fight back.

“I am the goddess Erebus,” the cold blonde replied haughtily. “We are going to bring about a new world.” Her arms spread wide as she indicated their plans.

“You’re no goddess. You are as mortal as the rest of us,” Alexa said. “You just have some cute magic tricks to impress people. All you are going to do is bring about the deaths of millions of people.” It was fool hardy to bait Erebus, but she and Harmony had little to lose. Getting people angry meant that they might make mistakes she could take advantage of though.

Erebus narrowed her eyes as Alexa’s gibe hit home.

“True,” she said. “We are not powerful in this form, but that will change as our divinity is restored. Then we will mold the universe to our desires.” The men standing around them exhibited no concern about what Erebus was saying. They obviously had no idea of what Nyx and Erebus had planned. They were only content to do what they were told to do and be paid for it.

“So, what happens now?” Alexa asked. Hopefully, she would be locked up with a smaller number of guards than she faced right now and take them out. Then things would get interesting.

“You are going nowhere, my dear. Your friend is coming with me for a little ceremony my sister and I have planned,” she smiled coldly down at Alexa. Then she turned to the men holding Harmony and said, “Take her outside.” About a dozen men took Harmony out in a group. Only a couple actually held her between them, but the rest of them were around them and Harmony had no hope of breaking free and escaping.

Once Harmony and her guards were gone, Erebus nudged the man Harmony had knocked out back from the center of the corridor and looked over at another of her minions and said, “Kill them.” She turned away and did not look back. Most of the men followed her out the door, leaving half a dozen to deal with Alexa.

Once Erebus and her team was out of sight, Alexa shifted to get to her feet. Six men stood no chance against her. Before she could make her move, they turned as a group to her. Blows rained down on her head and body. As her sight faded to black, shots rang out and then she knew nothing.

* * * * *

Pain. The throbbing across her head overrode any coherent thought she could form. All she could do was lie still and keep from moving. That kept the pain from getting worse. When a pair of hands rolled her onto her back, all she could do was arch her back in a soundless scream of pain. Now her entire body hurt. Her head felt like it had been beaten from every direction and where she had been shot burned dully.

She did not want to open her eyes when the hands started patting her face and then becoming increasingly sharper slaps.

“Come on, Major! I don’t have much time!” a man said. The voice sounded like Stoddard, but it was hoarse and had a liquid quality to it.

Hands on her head intensified the pain for a few moments before the throbbing started to recede. A hand moved to her shoulder and the dead feeling there lessened as well. After a few moments, she was able to blink her eyes open somewhat to see Stoddard leaning over her. His appearance was no better than how she herself must look. His entire face was a mass of bruised flesh and dried blood. He could only open one eye because the other was swollen so badly.

“Stoddard! You don’t look too good,” Alexa mumbled. Her strength was returning slowly, but she could barely move.

“I’m not, Major,” Stoddard replied. “I don’t have much time left, so please listen.” He waited a moment to make sure that she was actually paying attention before he continued. “I’m operating on borrowed time. Erebus and her men grabbed me this morning and beat everything out of me. They left me here for dead when they took Harmony Moon away.”

That got Alexa’s attention as he reawakened the memories of the past day. She tried to get to a better sitting position, but sank back down when she found that she did not have enough strength for that yet. Looking past Stoddard, she saw bodies lining the corridor all the way to the exit. It appeared that Erebus had ordered the elimination of the men that had been incapacitated rather than help them away.

Her eyes snapped back to Stoddard. “What’s happened?” she asked urgently.

“They either killed everyone outright or they left them for dead. You are the only one they left alive.” Stoddard dropped back from his position over her to fall against the wall. “Major, I’m dying and I need to tell you things.”

He had Alexa’s undivided attention again. She had experience with the dead and dying. But she had never been confronted with cold-blooded murder before.

Stoddard paused to gather himself before speaking. “Erebus and her men thought that I was dead. If they had known that I was still alive, I would probably gotten a bullet myself. As it is, I was very close to being gone when L reached out to me. He was able to give me enough life to get down the hall to you and speak.”

Alexa looked closely at him and could see that Stoddard was looking very pale. “What did he say?” she asked.

“He says that Nyx and Erebus are here on the base and they have only just reached the location where they plan on killing Harmony. The ritual that I heard Erebus talking about is not necessary to their plans, so you do not have much time. L says that you will be unable to control yourself if they execute Harmony Moon. You need to embrace being War’s avatar before you do not have Harmony’s influence to help you.”

His voice had gotten weaker as he spoke and he almost looked like he was deflating. Alexa had been regaining her strength at the same time. Seeing him weaken and approach death left her feeling helpless and angry with herself. If she had thought ahead, she might have been able to prevent at least this tragedy.

She got to her feet, breathing heavily with tears in her eyes. Looking down at a soldier who had offered his life while helping her and remembering the security team who had been protecting Harmony distressed her even more. They were all military professionals who did not know why they were fighting or defending. They only knew that they were doing what had to be done. Frustration at the whole situation and the waste of lives strengthened her resolve, leaving her trembling in anger.

As Michael, he had fought battles and had killed more than a few of his enemies. But he had always made sure that combat and death were necessary. He treated his teams as people and with respect. That was why he had been liked and considered an officer people wanted to be assigned to serve.

Alexa literally saw red as she contemplated what the world would be like if Nyx and Erebus succeeded with their plans. The thought that she would be responsible for uncountable atrocities was horrifying. She straightened with resolve as she knew that there was only one way to prevent these things from happening. She looked down at Stoddard who was gasping out his final breaths. A sense of power spread through her.

Charged with purpose, she reached down to take Stoddard by the shoulder. Her voice was strong and loud as she said, “You are a soldier. I accept you from L and you are mine.” As she spoke, life flowed into the captain to push back the death that sought to claim him. His breathing grew deeper and his color darkened. Within moments, he was blinking his eyes and looking around.

He got to his feet and nodded his head to Alexa. “Thank you, ma’am. They have taken over the armory on the west side of the base. From what L told me, they will not have been there very long.”

Alexa’s hold over the power within her continued to grow as she became the avatar she had agreed to be instead of just playing at it. She nodded at the news and said, “The base will have gone on lockdown by now. This building will be one of the places they come to first because of the gunfire. Leave the base if you can. Hide if you must. You will be contacted when this is over.”

“Yes, ma’am. But won’t you need help?”

“No,” she replied firmly. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on something in the distance. “This will either be settled quickly and happily or not all. Either way, you cannot help me with what I must do.” The tone of her voice was devoid of emotion but conveyed a coldness that scared Stoddard to even hear it. She looked down at him for a moment and smiled. The stern look on her face just moments ago made the smile unexpected and somewhat out of place. Then she was gone.

War itself walked the earth again.

* * * * *

Conflict. In opening herself to the powers of War, she had also become sensitive to every instance of discord on the planet. The conversation she and War had had concerning the difference between War and Peace came back to her and she could see the truth in what he had told her. The intensity of argument or disagreement communicated itself as a form of force or disturbance in the world, so she found that she could filter out low-level disputes. Once she did that, it was easy to identify where her targets were. Distance meant nothing to her. She was wherever conflict existed, so it only required that she focus her awareness where she wanted to be.

What seemed like a single step from the barracks corridor delivered her onto an open field of what could only be the armory. It was a hulking building half buried in the soil of the field. A high fence surrounded the area and a variety of jeeps and trucks were arrayed in front. Soldiers crouched behind the vehicles as automatic gunfire passed overhead.

A brief sensation that began as a tightening in her middle that then spread over her body replaced the bloodied and torn clothing with well worn fatigues. Her disheveled hair formed itself into a long shining braid that coiled onto her shoulder.

The main doors to the armory stood open where a pair of large trucks were stopped. There were gunmen concealed behind the trucks who were firing an almost constant spray of bullets at the men outside. The air was filled with the deafening sound of gunfire and the acrid smell of gunpowder. Alexa found the scene intoxicating, which was alarming. If she allowed Harmony to die, this was what she had to look forward to for the rest of her life.

She was quite some distance behind the line of men facing away from her, with some of the bullets being fired at them whizzing past her. One bullet struck her shoulder but it stopped as it made impact. She barely felt it.

She could see that there were a few men who had been hit and lay off to one side, at least one of them was obviously beyond help. Medical assistance had not arrived as yet, though she could hear sirens in the distance. From the sound of it, more than just paramedics were on the way. Alexa suspected that the field would be filled with even more security, firemen, and medical personnel than the field could hold.

She walked over to where the wounded men lay and knelt between them. Each had been hit multiple times and it was a marvel that they were still living. She placed a hand on each of them and closed her eyes for a moment. The power within her flowed again and she opened her eyes to watch them heal. Bullet slugs rolled off their bodies as they were pushed out of closing wounds. Neither returned to full health, but they were no longer in danger of dying.

She looked to the man she could not help and tears filled her eyes. She was fully capable of taking a life when it was necessary, but any loss of life saddened. Being War's avatar did not mean that she could not mourn the suffering of others or treasure their lives.

"Thank you for whatever you did, ma'am," one of the wounded men said.

Alexa glanced down for a moment and allowed a slight smile to cross her face. "You're welcome, soldier. You won't be fit to return to duty for a while, but you aren't going to die."

"You should keep your head down, ma'am," he said. "They are shooting at anything that moves. When I got hit, they kept shooting at me. I'm lucky that they didn't hit me more than they did."

Her expression darkened. Combat meant that people died, but killing was just blood sport. She looked back down at them and said, "This battle is about to end. Rest and recover." They watched as she turned away to walk toward the men taking cover behind their vehicles.

She was torn between the need to break down and cry and a desire to scream in rage and frustration at the men defending Nyx and Erebus. Her head snapped up, her expression determined. At the same time, she surrounded herself with a shield. The gunmen could shoot at her all they wanted and they would not be able to reach her. There were benefits of acting for War.

The two groups exchanging gunfire were focused upon each other, so they only noticed her when she crossed between two trucks and onto the killing field. Her senses told her that Harmony was inside the bunker and that she was still alive and healthy. She could tell that either Nyx or Erebus were in there as well. She didn't know where the other one was, but she was sure that she couldn't be far off. Logic said that Harmony's well-being was directly related to her own ability to control the anger and desire to destroy that accompanied the power that came from War. That anger reinforced her shield as multiple gunmen concentrated their firing upon her.

As she became visible to more of the base personnel, their firing upon the men in the armory died away. That did nothing to abate the assault upon her. As bullets impacted her shield, there was a flash of light. It made her look like the center of a fireworks display. Instead of ricocheting away, the slugs halted in mid-air and dropped to the ground.

It only took moments for her to walk between the opposing lines, even though it was a respectable distance. Her path was littered with the slugs that had been fired at her. As she reached the trucks blocking the doors into the armory, the gunfire died away as they could no longer see her to shoot at.