Chapter 24

Bullets, for the uninitiated, are noisy little fuckers. I don’t mean their explosive expulsion from the barrel of a rifle. Technically, that is the casing and the explosive charge contained within. But an actual bullet racing past your ear at a few multiples of the speed of sound makes a pretty unique “zipping” effect.

The physics of this noise is fairly complex, but it essentially boils down to the angle of your eardrums in relation to the corona of mini sonic booms being created behind the bullet as it rips through the air. There are lots of other factors as well: the size and density of the bullet, its velocity, the ambient air pressure, the direction of any wind, how near or far away from your ears it flies, and, oddly, the direction you are facing when it passes. There is even a position that, if you are facing away at a certain angle, you wouldn’t be able to hear it at all. It’s all very complicated.

There are, however, a few commonly understood truths. The one that seemed the most apt in my current predicament was the one that said, “If you heard the shot, the bullet wasn’t meant for you.” I mean, assuming that bullet actually hit you and hit you somewhere important enough to kill you outright, that is actually true. The bullet flies faster than the sound of the explosion that fired it, so it hits you before the sound wave of the gunshot would. It sounds pretty in a movie, but instant kill shots are actually pretty rare; a direct hit to the heart, the brain stem, or a few parts of the brain itself (and even that last one isn’t a technical guarantee). Unfortunately, being shot in the vast majority of places in the body leads to a delay of death for either a mercifully short time or a brutally long one...

If you were ever going to be killed by a bullet, then the fabled “being dead before you felt a thing” was what you would be hoping for. Most people didn’t get that wish fulfilled.

I suppose it would depend on where you were hit that would determine the amount of pain you would feel during that delay ... the very lucky got very little pain for only a few seconds. The very unlucky would feel the most acute of agonies for a pretty long time before their body finally gave up, dying of blood loss or shock rather than the damage to internal organs caused by the bullet. The majority of people fell somewhere on the scale between. And all of that is assuming the bullet actually kills you. The pain of being shot and surviving is arguably more horrific than being killed outright.

It is odd the things that pop into your mind when people are shooting at you.

The zips of bullets shot through the air around my head as I ducked back down behind the wall, the cracks of the gunshot arriving a split second later as our assailants opened fire on us from three sides. The fourth side was, predictably, the only wall in the building left fully intact, meaning it cut off that vector as a means of escape. We were in an expertly orchestrated kill zone. Even though the bullets being shot at me were either sailing over or thudding into the cover that I was crouching behind, that cover did nothing for the men on the opposite side of the room, whose cover protected them from the opposite direction and left the wide open to the attackers on my side of the building. Conversely, the bullets being shot at them were starting to skip off the floor and slam into the pillars around me.

My eyes were still on Henry as the echo of my warning was swallowed up by the deafening cacophony of our attack. I could almost see the surprise on his face as our predicament dawned on him, but his reflexive training was already kicking in, and his body dropped to the ground in a heartbeat.

“Return fire!” he yelled out, his voice as deep and authoritative as it always had been despite the obvious tension etched into his face. This was not his first rodeo, but that didn’t make each new rodeo equally as terrifying. Familiarity didn’t breed complacency here, or contempt, just experience, and dread, both of which were telling Henry and every one of the rest of us that we didn’t want to be here. “Conserve ammo and pick your targets!”

The question as to my skill was answered in short order. I had downloaded everything I needed to know from Henry and the rest of our escort, but whether that translated into theoretical knowledge or into actual combat proficiency was hitherto a mystery. But it was a question that was answered quickly as I rose, leveled my rifle at the muzzle flashes in the darkness across the plaza outside the building, and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle kicked back into the firm grip I had on it, jolting sharply backward into my shoulder with each of the three shots I sent downrange to the enemy positions. I had absolutely no idea if they hit anything or not. I was firing blind.

Jeeves was already working, filtering the parts of my “red alert” program which crossed the line into overt use of my powers. I could very easily reach for the enemy soldiers’ minds, find out exactly where our attackers were hiding, and send my rounds out with pinpoint, even guided precision. Hell, I could make each one of them stand up, step out of cover, and start line dancing in the middle of the plaza. Or ... you know ... just use that energy ball thing. But if the enemy had a way of tracking the use of our powers, as Jeeves and Jerry suspected, then that would be a good way to set many alarm bells ringing. Instead, I could only use the powers that altered something in me. My bulletproof skin was a good example and was as active as ever; it was going a long way to smothering that ball of abject panic that was throbbing in the pit of my stomach. My ability to hear the thoughts of others was obviously working, too, although it was doing nothing to help me pinpoint the source of those thoughts. Both of those powers, however, did nothing to the outside world; they were entirely contained within me and, at least according to Jeeves’ reasoning, could not be detected by anyone outside of my own skull.

There were other powers that Jeeves was adding on the fly, though. A new one called “cat eye” allowed me to see in the dark. Not the same as I could in the cold light of day, it was almost like the low light setting on a camera, but with a bluish tint to it. It at least allowed me to see our assailants firing from cover in some abandoned buildings directly opposite us. Another he called “snapshot.” That one drastically improved my shooting reflexes and made compensating for things like the need to lead a moving target almost instinctual.

Henry crawled his way back to cover as another few bullets skipped off the ground around him. The way he just fixed his sight onto a spot on the wall that Jerry and I were using for cover and not flinching away from the little kicks of dust as the bullets landed close to him as he moved was practically fucking heroic. Without my bulletproof skin, I would be absolutely shitting myself in the position I was in at that moment, let alone his.

I must have raised and fired another half a dozen times before he made it to the safety of cover. I was just firing the last of a five-round series of shots as he pulled himself up to a crouch, looking over the wall just as I crouched back behind it. “Good, keep them pinned. You may not hit much, but if you are able to keep them distracted, it will stop them mounting a charge or even being accurate with their own shots.” He pressed his fingers to the comms switch on his throat. “Six, how are you doing?” he barked into the mic. Six was the shorthand callsign for Hans.

“Holding them off, sir, but things are looking a little hairy for two; he’s on his own.” Two was Jakob.

Henry nodded, although Hans would never have seen that, before shouting into the mic again. “Two, how’s it looking?”

There was a pause before Jakob answered, the rattle of almost a full mag being fired on auto reverberating through the foyer before the breathless voice almost yelled into our earpieces. “Fubar! The fuck d’you go? I’m not gonna be able to hold these bastards for long. I need another gun.”

Henry flashed me a look. “I’m on my way, two. Thirty seconds.”

Jakob didn’t answer, but the sounds of gunfire restarted from the part of the building he was defending. “Keep it up, guys,” Henry nodded to Jerry and me as Jerry launched a few more rounds at our targets. “If you start running low on ammo, call it in, and we will fall back to the stairs and one of the upper floors.”

“Got it,” Jerry called back.

I stood up again, watching as one soldier tried to move out from the blasted building and make a run to one of the concrete and marble flower beds that lined this once picturesque plaza. He must have been one of those guys who played too much Call of Duty because he was making no attempt to stay low or to avoid being spotted. I zeroed in on him and put three bullets into his center mass. A geyser of blood erupted from his coughing lips as his back hit the ground. I turned around in time to watch a wide-eyed Bob appear from the doorway to the stairs. Henry spotted him too.

“Sir, stay where you are and cover our fallback vector!” Henry barked into the radio. Bob’s eyes scanned the foyer, found Henry, gave him a short nod, raised his rifle at something straight ahead of him - or to our left - and started opening fire.

Henry took a deep breath, patted my shoulder, and darted in a low stoop toward the opposite side of the building.

He made it about twenty feet when a bullet tore through his throat.

He crumpled to the ground, clutching at his neck, gasping for air, and kicking his feet out frantically.

“Fuck, one is down, one is down!” A voice yelled through the comms, although I didn’t have the first idea of who it belonged to.

“We’ve got him!” I called back. “Keep firing!”

I looked at Jerry. Jerry looked back at me. He knew what I was telling him to do even if the words had never left my lips. I could see the conflict wash over his face. A lifetime of wanting to see every inquisitor, and everyone who worked for them dead, coupled with the fact that using his powers to heal Henry, or at least keep him alive, potentially bringing more trouble onto our heads, was a hard reflex to overcome. But overcome it, he did. He gave me a nod and looked back into the foyer.

The rules had changed; Jerry knew it, and I knew it. We may not have been able to go all out in the use of our powers, but Jerry didn’t have bulletproof skin, and neither did any of the others. I could have stood up and started yelling out quotes from The Simpsons and would have been absolutely fine, but the chances of anyone else surviving this were growing slimmer by the moment. If we had any chance of more than me walking out of this alive, then I would need to tip the balance in our favor.

Jerry darted across the room, skidding to the ground next to Henry in a move that would have made those Call of Duty players swoon, and immediately ripped Henry’s hands off his jagged wound and replaced them with his own. I got a distinct impression - although I have no idea why - that I was the only one in our group who could see the yellowish glow from Jerry’s hands as he used his powers to stitch Henry back together as best he could. I’m not sure if Jerry could see the glowing orange shield that I put up around them to keep the bullets away either, but he certainly noticed every time a round bounced harmlessly off it.

“Bob!” I barked into the mic, my eyes fixed on the older man watching in horror from the doorway to the stairs. “BOB!” His eyes snapped to mine. “Did you find what you needed?”

He hesitated for a second and then nodded. I didn’t need to be able to read his mind to translate that as a “Not as much as I would have liked, but I found something. And enough to justify getting the fuck out of here!”

I nodded back, then clamped onto the mic again. I was starting to sense movement from the other side of the barrier, nobody had shot at that particular group of soldiers in a little while, and they were getting ballsy. “Jerry, how’s he doing?”

Jerry used his own powers to press the toggle switch on his own comms before he spoke. “He took a nasty hit, man. I don’t know. I’m doing what I can.”

“Can you move him?”

“Not if you want him to live!”

“Fuck, alright!” I popped my head back up over the cover and unloaded on the group of men working their way toward us. Six of them were on the deck with new holes in parts of their bodies that shouldn’t be exposed to fresh air before the rest of them scurried back to cover.

“Sir...” Jeeves said from inside my head. “Jakob is going to be overrun if this situation is allowed to continue.”

I didn’t acknowledge him, but Jeeves was right. I could feel the soldiers on that side of the building creeping forward, splitting into two groups. One moved from cover to cover and drew Jakob’s fire while the other arced around to the right to flank the lone Pole.

I couldn’t be in two places at once. I couldn’t hold my own position at the same time as I could support Jakob, and leaving either position to fall would spell disaster for our entire group. It only took a quick glance around for me to size up the position we were in.

One of the hardest moves for any strategist to understand is the tactical retreat. Giving up ground to save your army to fight another day. Nobody wants to flee the field; it makes it feel like you have lost. It may not be a defeat in the strictest terms, but it sure as shit feels like one. But an intact fighting force is almost always more valuable than the ground you lost. This is what Xerxes failed to appreciate at Thermopylae. The hot gates was not the only route into Greece, but Leonidas had hurt his pride; taking that piece of ground became a matter of principle, and he destroyed his army’s morale in the process of claiming it. More than that, the enormous numbers of men he lost on that ego trip could have been the difference between victory or defeat at the later battle of Platea.

The decision was made.

“Bob! Cover Jakob,” I yelled into the radio. Bob looked over to me, nodded, reorientated himself, and started firing over Jakob’s head and out into the darkness. “Jakob, err two, pull back to the stairs. Everyone else, fold in as soon as he is clear.”

There was a series of affirmative responses over the comm.

“Jerry, is Henry conscious?”

“Barely.”

Good, this may take some explaining if he was.

“What’s the plan, eight?” A voice came through my earpiece, although, again, I had no idea whose. My mind was a little preoccupied with other things, including the few seconds it took for me to recognize that they were talking to me.

“I am preparing a surprise for our guests,” I answered sharply and cryptically.

And the less you know, the better, I think. Knowledge isn’t power here. It’s dangerous.

The answer seemed to be good enough for the team, though, because Bob lifted his weapon a few moments later to make room for Jakob to pass him and dart into the stairwell, although not before giving the writhing Henry a glance that bordered on panicked concern.

Hans and Antoni were next, followed by Karl and Gabriel. All of them gave the same look to Henry while Jerry kept working frantically to heal him. It should be remembered that Jerry was nowhere near as powerful as I was, and so the amount of energy needed just to keep Henry breathing and keep his blood inside him where it belonged was taking a significant amount of effort. It was a drain on his power that couldn’t be maintained indefinitely. I needed to clear the field, give us some breathing room and then get us the fuck out of here before the rest of the enemy showed up in response to the burst of power that this field-clearing effort would take.

I looked back at the others. Bullets were starting to ding off the shield around Henry and Jerry, thud off my bulletproof skin, and crunch into the wall around the stairwell entrance with alarming regularity. Under normal conditions, I would have been killed a few times over by now, Jerry too, and probably Henry as well, but fortunately, these were not normal conditions. “Get inside!” I barked at the team. Jakob and Hans, who had been laying down sheets of fire at the oncoming enemy, nodded and grabbed Bob, pulling the older man back into the cover over the stairwell as I put myself between Jerry and our enemy and turned to face our attackers.

They were practically right on top of us. The side that Jakob had been covering had already been overrun. Soldiers were inside the foyer. On the other two sides, they had already made it to the cover that we had been using, leaning over it to fire futilely at us.

That was good; I wanted them to see. I don’t know why; I couldn’t even begin to understand the motivation behind wanting them to bear witness to their own doom, but the urge was marrow deep. It was primal. It was ancient. It was the thing that the mythologies of long-dead civilizations were made of. What I was about to do was as much about displaying my power and sending a message as it was about saving our lives.

For the briefest of moments, I could understand exactly how ancient Evos used their powers to dominate the lesser humans around them. How easy it would be, how effortless the expenditure of energy, and how profound the results would be. A display on the scale of what I was about to provide would be enough to have whole cultures bending the knee before me.

I could almost see them: the supplicating, fawning masses.

A bullet smashed into my cheek, another hit my right arm, two more hit different points of my ribs, and another hit my thigh. All of them fell harmlessly to the floor, clattering against the dusty concrete and rolling against my foot. But it was enough to snap me out of my distraction.

I took a deep breath ... and the world turned white.

From my perspective, that is all that happened. There was a blinding light, a sort of whooshing sound, and lots of heat. But then we have discussed the importance of perspective before. From the point of view of the soldiers attacking me, the ones wondering what sort of body armor I was wearing to make their bullets so ineffective, the experience was a little different.

My eyes glowed white for a fraction of a second before a corona of fire erupted around me. A wall of burning air, a perfect firestorm, swept outwards in every direction except the one that would have washed the flame into the stairwell. The concrete floor blackened and scorched in an instant, the little remaining furniture in the foyer ignited under the relentless heat, and men desperately tried to scramble backward away from the advancing death. But that death was too fast for them. Traveling at something close to a hundred miles per hour, the soldiers closest to me barely had time to register what was happening before they were engulfed in the inferno.

This wasn’t just fire. This was to fire what a raindrop was to the oceans. This was pure rageful will. This was the use of fire to scour the enemy from existence. And memories of a half-remembered dream, of burning my enemies to ash, throbbed through my mind.

The men further away got to watch as their comrades were immolated alive. Screams were cut terrifyingly short as open lips allowed the remorseless heat inside the body, scouring the lungs and the throat of the ability to make a sound. A few of the men further away managed to dive behind fallen concrete pillars and raised marble flowerbeds in hopes of finding cover, but their efforts were in vain. Each of them was incinerated.

Even the few who found cover suitable enough to allow them to escape the onrush of flames were not spared. The air around them jumped from the ambient winter temperature of maybe two degrees Celsius to something that could be compared to the surface conditions of the sun.

Everything burns under those conditions. Even oxygen will ignite if its temperature is raised high enough. The soldiers were forced to just stand there and accept their fate, albeit briefly, as their clothing burst into flame along with their hair, their skin blistered, started to melt, and then ran down their bones like a macabre form of candle wax, eyeballs boiled and melted, so did the blood in their veins, their lungs turned to ash, and their brains were subjected to their skulls turning into an oven.

Of course, the shock alone had killed them long before they felt most of these things. The human body is only capable of surviving so much, and that limit was passed long before those men were subjected to the full measure of my fury.

In only a few seconds, it was over. Any semblance of moisture had been boiled out of the bodies of our attackers. A few charred bones clattered to the ground, but most had just been reduced to ash. Heavy smoke hung in the air, the smell of burned flesh and singed hair was everywhere, and twisted and warped rifles lay scattered on the ground next to the scorched outlines of their former owners.