Annihilation: Love Conquers All (20 page)

Eric said, “This is a game called pool. It was recently discovered in some digs by archaeological students at the ancient site of Chicago. The thing that made the discovery so great was that a book describing the games you can play was under the table and preserved. Come on, I’ll teach you how to play.”

So they watched while Eric explained how you break, then use the white ball to knock the others into the pockets. “You keep shooting until you miss,” he said. “I’ll go first.” Eric then set the balls in a triangle and then used a stick to hit the white ball into them. The balls scattered across the table and one went in a pocket. “Rapture,” said Eric. “Leila and I are ahead of you two one to zip.” He missed his next shot and said, “Okay, who’s next?”

“Go ahead, Danielle,” Tag said.

Danielle took the stick and started to pick up the white ball when Eric said, “No! You have to hit it where it stops. The only time you can move it is when you knock the white ball into a pocket.”

“Okay,” Danielle said. The she tried to hit a ball in, but there just wasn’t a good shot for her. She missed and said, “This is not easy.”

“Leila’s turn,” Eric said. Leila managed to hit a ball in that was right next to a pocket, and then she missed her next attempt.

“Two to zip, you guys are going down. Step up and give it a shot, Tag.”

Tag stepped up to the table, and he immediately saw the relationship between all the balls and the lines he needed to follow to knock them in. He lined up his first shot and the ball went in a side pocket. The white ball spun back and stopped in front of a ball at the corner pocket. Tag then hit that ball into the pocket, and the white ball traveled down the table and stopped with another ball lined up.

Danielle watched Tag clear the table of the remaining balls. That was amazing to her, but she also noticed he was shooting with both his right and left hands. He didn’t miss with either. She could not stop the thought of two knives thrown into a target the size of a dime with the left and right hands. “Tag, are you left-handed or right-handed?” she asked.

Eric answered for him: “I don’t think he knows, Danielle. He’s always been able to use both hands equally, the bum. You’ve played this before!”

“No I haven’t, Eric. It’s not that hard a game.”

“Right, oh great hand and eye coordinator. You’re showing me up in front of these lovely ladies.”

“Eric, that’s impossible,” Tag replied.

Danielle said, “Let’s play darts.” She wanted to see Tag throw at a target.

Eric said, “No way. Tag can hit the bull’s-eye with either hand from halfway across the room.”

“Superman!” Danielle’s mind screamed. “Tag is our Superman.” Then she saw how she had not been allowing herself to go there. She cared deeply for Tag and didn’t want to believe it, so she blinded herself to seeing it. There was enough evidence now to show he had the physical skills to make those knife throws, but she knew that proving anything else was going to be next to impossible. That sense of hers that always showed her things others couldn’t see was going off like an alarm. She knew with a certainty that she had been right; Tag could do all the things she suspected. Later that evening when they had gotten away from Eric, she said, “Tag, I need to talk with you and I’d like to do it privately. Where around here can we go?”

Tag smiled and said, “There is a place outside just down the street next to a small pond.”

“Let’s go there,” she said.

They walked hand-in-hand to a small pond that was set back off the street in a small natural area. Danielle said, “There are not many lights here.”

“No, this is an area that the city tries to keep as natural as possible. It’s a great place for children to come play during the day. Not many people come here at night.”

She looked in his eyes and said, “Tag, there’s something that I need ask you and to tell you. I hope it doesn’t make a difference in our relationship, but I’ll understand if you feel differently.”

“What are you trying to say?” Tag said, and then suddenly he turned around and pushed Danielle behind him. “Don’t move; be still,” he said in a quiet voice.

“What’s wrong?” Danielle whispered.

“Someone is watching us and they are not alone.”

Danielle looked and saw no one. She started to tell him there was no one there when she saw movement directly in front of them.

“Stay behind me,” Tag said.

Then she saw them. Three men were approaching them. They had spread out so there was no escaping. Something about the man in the middle seemed familiar, but she could not remember where she had seen him. She noticed that two of them had long, bladed knives in their hands.

The man on the left said, “Well look what we have here; two lovebirds no less, just waiting to be plucked.” Then he looked beyond Tag at Danielle and said, “We ought to have fun with that one, mates.”

“I’m first,” said the one on the right. “Now we make this easy or we can make it hard.”

Danielle noticed that Tag ignored the two on each side and had all his focus on the big man in the middle. Then Tag said, “I think whatever we do it’s going to be the hard way. You’ve let us see your faces, so there is no way you’re going to let us go. Is there any way we can leave here safely?” Tag asked the man in the center. Before he could respond, Tag said, “I know, I know, if we let you cut out our eyes so we can’t identify you later you might consider it.”

Then Danielle knew where she had seen the man before. She saw his eyes get big and he said, “It’s you!” Danielle could see fear in his face; he placed a hand on each of the two men beside him and said, “Let’s get out of here now! We don’t want to stay here.”

The one on the left said, “Are you crazy? We have two birds here for the taking, and one of them is a real looker.”

“Do you want to live to see another day?” the center man asked. “If you do, we need to run. This boy will kill you.”

The two men on the outside looked at each other and understanding passed between them. Then the one on the right said, “You go ahead and run if you want.” Then they suddenly leaped forward with their long knives slashing at Tag.

Danielle pressed the crystal on her com; she hoped help wouldn’t take too long getting there.

Tag saw that the two were going to attack, with the one on the left being slightly quicker than the one on the right. They both had knives that looked like small swords, and they used them to thrust at their target. Once again, everything turned to slow motion for Tag. He stepped inside the man’s thrust from the left, grabbed his wrist, and swung him into the path of the attacker on the right. The thrust aimed at Tag penetrated the first attacker’s chest and went into his heart. Tag took the blade from the hand of the impaled attacker and cut the second one’s Achilles tendon on his left leg as he rolled by and slashed the arm holding the knife, which fell to the ground. The attacker screamed and fell to the ground, yelling, “My leg! My leg!” Tag came out of his roll immediately, holding the big knife directly in front of the big man. Once again it had happened too fast for the big man to even have time to move, and now, once again, the big man was face-to-face with this living nightmare that was holding the long knife in his face.

Danielle couldn’t believe her eyes. Tag was standing there one moment, and then almost faster that her eyes could follow, the two criminals were down and he was confronting the remaining attacker. The speed with which he took out the first two attackers was absolutely incredible. Then she heard Tag say, “I don’t have it in me to deliberately hurt anyone, but if I did you would be the one. You prey on innocent people and I believe you should die for your actions, but I don’t want to be the one that does it. Now I ask you again, what do we do now?”

The big man was trembling and Tag could sense his fear. Then the man said, “This is the last time I’ll ever try to hurt someone. I should have learned the lesson last time but I didn’t. I’ve tried to justify this by saying it’s to support and protect my family from these men, but in my heart I know that’s not a good reason.” The big man dropped his knife, backed away three steps, and then turned and ran.

“Danielle, are you okay?” Tag went to her and held her close.

“Tag, listen to me, there’s not much time.”

He stepped back from her and said, “What do you mean, Danielle?”

“I was trying to tell you before this attack took place that I’m not who you think I am. My real name is Danielle Ash; I’m an associate inspector with the security enforcement committee. I have been looking to find you since the four men were killed who attacked you and your theft of the test booklet. I’m nineteen years old and have been undercover as a student in your school. I knew when Eric told me about your dart prowess that you were the one my department has been looking for. I came out here to warn you and tell you who I am.”

Tag was stunned. He was speechless; all he could do was look at her.

“Listen to me, Tag. Focus. I wasn’t going to turn you in. But when the three men attacked you I electronically called for help. They will be here in less than a minute. They are going to see what you did to those two criminals and they know who I was out with tonight, so they’ll know that you are the Superman we’ve been searching for. If you’re still around, they will arrest you; you have to run.”

Tag pulled her close and kissed her hard, and all at once he could feel what was in her heart, and what was even more remarkable was that she could see into his. They broke the kiss and Danielle said, “Now you know; I love you and I always will.”

He turned to run and saw a psychic field that surrounded Danielle. “She has a gift too,” he thought. He yelled back at her, “Danielle, you are and always will be ‘it.’” Then he disappeared as the first security floater arrived.

T
ag left the area of the pond, quickly moving through shadows to insure that he wouldn’t be seen. He didn’t know where he should go, but he knew for certain that he couldn’t go home. That would be the first place they would look. He had no idea how he was going to hide once security started looking for him in earnest. As he ran quickly, staying in psychic shadows to avoid being seen by the surveillance cameras, he saw the big man running towards the buildings north of the entertainment area and he thought, “He’s been hiding effectively.” So he turned and began following as the big man ran north. He noticed that there were no shadows around the big man so the cameras were manually following him. “How does he avoid getting captured?” Tag wondered. There were plenty of shadows that allowed Tag to follow him without being seen. He took off his green jacket and stuffed it under his shirt. He didn’t want to match any description that might be given about his appearance. He had to give the big guy credit; he was moving fast and appeared to be headed towards a door on the south end of the building ahead, so Tag moved towards the next door north of the same building. The man was moving quickly, but he was trying to use obstacles such as trees, parked floaters, and shrubbery to mask him from the cameras. Tag could have told him that it was a waste of time once the cameras locked on you. He actually got to the north door at the same time the big man entered the door to the south.

The building’s corridor was filled with people leaving their jobs and headed home. Tag saw the big man duck down like he was tying his shoes, then move quickly through the crowd, bent over so he was lower than everyone else. Tag stayed ahead of him and watched until the big man was covered in shadows. “That’s how he loses them,” Tag said to himself. “The cameras can’t see him in the crowd.” Then he noticed that the man was moving through the crowd to the side of the corridor he was walking on. He stayed low, and Tag could see that he was headed towards the door of a cinema. As the big man got there he waited for the camera to turn away; then he walked past the ticket counter and punched a ticket he already had into the entrance computer. Tag got behind a woman who walked up after the big man entered and went in with her after she inserted her ticket. He was surprised how easy it was to stay in the shadows and not be seen. He thought that there would be a lot more camera activity looking for the big man. Then he noticed that all the cameras were pointed out into the corridor. Even an amateur would only have to watch for the cameras to swing away and then enter the cinema entrance to avoid being seen.

Tag followed his quarry into a cinema that he knew had awful ratings for a movie that lasted over five hours. It was some sort of history about a country that was called the United States. It was supposed to be about the time before the third world war when that country was supposed to be the dominant nation. If he remembered right, it was supposed to be a love story where a couple was trying to get together while nuclear weapons were exploding in every major city. As he entered, he noticed that the cinema was already playing and the theater was dark. The big man moved to the far right side and went to the second row from the front. “The worst seat in the house,” Tag thought. He stayed in the shadows and moved to a seat where he could observe what the big man was doing. Tag noticed that he bent over and pulled out a backpack from under the seat in the front row. They were the only two in the cinema. The big man then changed his clothes and put his old ones in the backpack. He put on a pair of glasses and a hat, and then stood up and straightened his shirt. Tag immediately noticed that he looked twenty-five pounds lighter. He must have had something on to make him look fat, Tag realized. Even his cheeks were thinner. The man then went to the back of the theater, entered the concession booth, and came back to his seat with popcorn and a drink. He sat back down and watched the cinema while he ate his popcorn.