Chapter:4

October 29, 1994

Out of the Fire...

Béla slid behind the wheel of her exciting little red Viper after reconnecting the car battery. She glared at Frank, annoyed by his rather controlling attitude and his safety instructions. He folded his arms and glared back at her. It was after two a.m. in the morning and she was fed up with all those military types and the way they lurked around her like she was some kind of freak.

"Fasten it!" Frank insisted. Béla stuck her tongue out at him and clipped her seat belt to the console that separated the bucket seats. With a satisfied look on his face, Frank turned and began walking back to the others, missing the smarky kiss that she blew at him.

Béla turned the ignition key on the steering column. Suddenly she was looking at inside roof of the car from only an inch away. It was very brightly lit. Then the roof blew off, gyrating away and upward into the darkness. A beautiful red and orange fireball rose up over her head, lighting up the night sky as it dissipated above her. She thought it was incredibly fascinating with all the bright colors – orange and blue and red – burnt orange, brown. Burnt? Then she noticed that the army shirt she had borrowed was on fire.

Béla tried to leap out of her seat only to discover that the seat belt worked just fine. Frustrated, she squinted down through the bright, searing flames to locate that damned seat belt latch. She could barely see it through the wavering heat of the superheated air. As she reached down to unlatch it, her hand actually ignited and burst into flames! She realized with a shock that she was in real trouble as she fascinatedly watched the skin on her hand curl and blacken.

She didn't know about the little canister of jet fuel that had been attached to the explosive underneath her car. In the initial explosion, it had ruptured as it traveled upward through the floor of the car, spraying the insides of the car and Béla with its contents.

Dazed, she looked out and saw Frank lying on the ground next to the car. His shirt was on fire.

"Frank! Wake up! You're on fire!" she screamed, pounding her burning hands on the window to get his attention. The car door had been warped in the explosion and was jammed shut. She couldn't open it. She drew in a breath to shout again. The superheated air painfully scorched her mouth and throat, blackening the insides of her lungs in an instant. She could feel her body rapidly regenerating her lungs, using itself up to keep her alive.

She could feel her face scorching, and her arms, breasts and her right side, as well. The pain was too much. She screamed. Then Jake was there, standing next to her, pounding on the car, trying to get the door open. He was catching on fire too!

"No! Get out!" Béla screamed as she saw his shirt ignite and flare up. "Get away!"

She screamed in agony after drawing another breath. Then Jake was gone. Someone's hands had reached into the fire and pulled him away from her.

She screamed again in agony and growing terror, her tortured lungs regenerating in spite of each scorching breath she took. She was out of ideas on how to escape. Terrified beyond reason, she kicked and clawed at anything she could reach in her frantic, terrorized efforts to get out of the car! Somehow! Throwing her shoulders back, she shoved her wings up above the blazing frame of the once sporty little Viper, tearing them into flaming shreds as she tried to fly out, and screamed again as her thinly stretched and torn wings vaporized into the air like living confetti. Insane with pain and terror, Béla screamed again, her mind no longer functioning, then her lungs exploded, her boiling blood no longer capable of regeneration.

Blackness and burning pain and the smell of her burning flesh surrounded her and filled her senses. She was no longer aware of anything except the feel of her flesh turning to charcoal. Even her terror was gone now, and she found that the pain was receding. She knew that when the pain was gone, she'd be dead; free at last of this dying agony.

She thought she had passed out for a moment, but she couldn't be sure. She seemed to be floating above the fiercely burning little sports car, somehow freed from it after all. Movement nearby attracted her attention and Béla became aware of Tanya and Frank - Tanya bending over Frank and crying hysterically, her hands and face scorched from the fire. Jake was a few feet away, being looked at by a medic, his clothes scorched and smoking. Directly below, two soldiers ran up and began spraying her flaming car with foam.

'Enchi! I must be dead!' she suddenly realized, and began to panic again as she realized, 'I don't have a body!!!'

'Be at peace, child, ' a soothing voice spoke inside her mind. 'You are a part of me, now.'

'Praetor?' Béla queried, recognizing the mental touch of that artificial intelligence, 'Help me! I think I died!'

Images flooded her mind. The Praetor was rescuing her; joining her with her brother and sisters whom it had absorbed over the centuries.

'I have a brother?' she inquired, still feeling detached, but mildly curious. 'What happened to him?' The images changed to answer her question.

'What happens now?' Béla asked the Praetor. 'How do I get back?'

'Be at peace, daughter of Sibilius, ' the Praetor told her, 'you are with me.'

Béla wasn't at peace. She didn't like the way 'peace' sounded. 'And who is Sibilius?'

She was suddenly surrounded by brilliant white light.

'What's happening? she screamed in her mind.

'I am informing your creator of the circumstances of your demise, ' the Praetor said to her.

'Will you tell him I'm here?' she asked anxiously. 'He will help me, I'm sure of it!'

'You are a part of me, now, and I will care for you, ' the Praetor informed her. 'You will not need any other assistance.'

Béla was now definitely feeling panicked. She was trapped in a ball of white light inside a living machine, which evidently believed it now owned her outright. It was her own fault, she knew. She had allowed the Praetor to pull that part of her that was conscious inside of itself to save her, believing it to be her ally.

As she expanded her awareness into her new prison, she came into contact with the numbed minds of her siblings. They were trapped in a dream-like state, being fed images by the Praetor so they would continue to create life-energy, which the Praetor absorbed and somehow made its own.

Béla realized, with a cold sort of terror deep inside her soul, that she, too, was now a source of life energy for the Praetor. She and her siblings were the actual life-energy that made up this evil living machine. As the Praetor slowly froze her soul, she knew with a cold dreaded certainty that it did not intend to release her.

The brilliant white light surrounding her gradually became less painful, more dull, eventually turning toward blackness – a total absence of light; an absence of ... everything. Her terror, her death, her thoughts; fear, anger, anxiety at finding her way back to her friends – back to Jake – even her ability to remain conscious faded away, into complete and utter darkness.