Authors: David Clarkson
When the fist connected with the side of
his face it was like being hit with a jackhammer. This time when he hit the
floor, he knew he would not be getting up. The Chinese man knelt beside him and
Esteban assumed he would go for his throat, but he was wrong. Instead, the man
placed the palm of his hand on Esteban’s chest, directly over his heart. The
two acts of teleportation had weakened him. He needed to replenish his
energy-matter.
Esteban had no idea what was coming, but
it made no difference either way – he was beaten. The strength and even the
will to resist had deserted him. His head lolled to one side and as it did so,
he saw feet pounding the floor ahead of him at speed. The monks all wore
sandals, but these feet were covered with hiking boots.
Jimmy had come back for him.
The kid was not strong, but he did have
the element of surprise and he knew exactly where to place his kick. The result
was not to inflict maximum damage, but it achieved just the right angle to
knock the assailant off his feet and away from Esteban. Jimmy was not a fighter
and as such, it was the Chinese man who was to respond first. He unleashed a
series of short, staccato jabs at the young Australian, but not one of them
connected. The psychic reflex was too strong.
As Jimmy continued to dance and dodge around
the fists of his attacker, Esteban was able to get to his feet. It was clear
that Jimmy was leading his opponent back towards the food hall, but to what
ends? Ultimately, as Jimmy tired, the other man’s greater strength and stamina
would win through. Esteban had no option other than to get back into the fight.
His gun was on the floor where it had fallen. He picked it up and moved as
quickly as his weakened muscles would allow.
The combatants were now in the food hall.
The monks cleared out of the way and upon seeing the unnatural ferocity of the
intruder, they were reluctant to interfere in the fight. The two men moved at
an almost incomprehensible speed. As the weaker of the two used his psychic
reflexes to stay out of harm’s way by rolling and sliding over and under the
tables, the larger man simply smashed through the furniture as if it was
comprised of nothing more substantial than
papier
-
mâché
.
As Esteban had expected, Jimmy was
starting to show signs of fatigue. He could not dodge his opponent forever.
Sooner or later the intruder’s fist would connect. Just one punch and it would
be over. Esteban raised the gun, but he did not have a clear line of sight. The
risk of hitting Jimmy was too great. Instead of going for a kill shot, he fired
into the air.
Both fighting men paused when they heard
the warning shot echo throughout the chamber. Jimmy was so exhausted by his
other-worldly acrobatics, that the interruption was enough to disconnect his
adrenalin rush.
He fell to his knees.
Defeated.
The Chinese man did not waste any time.
He grabbed hold of the young psychic, pulling Jimmy in front of himself to use
as a human shield, creating a diversion that enabled him to buy the time needed
to replenish his life energy.
‘Stop!’
All three men directed their eyes toward
the speaker. It was Emmy.
‘It’s me you want. Let them go, please.’
The soldier tilted his head so that he
could look the scientist up and down. Once he realised who she was he threw
Jimmy aside like a piece of garbage. He then stared at Emmy as if he was locked
in a trance-like state. All the aggression left his features placing him in
what appeared to be a moment of pure bliss.
He was far from at peace, however. As he
continued to focus his full attention on the scientist his skin started to glow
like there was a fire burning underneath its surface. Cracks appeared all over
his body, allowing a brilliant light to escape.
Emmy had witnessed this once before. It
was in her dream when her grandfather had literally self destructed. He had blown
himself up right in front of her. The unknown assailant was about to do the
same and in doing so he would take the entire monastery with him. She could not
allow this to happen.
Esteban fired into the soldier’s chest.
He emptied what was left of his penultimate magazine, but to no effect. This
was no longer a human being he was dealing with. The man’s molecules had become
so excited that his torso was now composed of plasma. He had super-heated
himself in readiness for his imminent detonation, placing him beyond the
effects of conventional weaponry. The only person that could stop him now was
Emmy.
She noticed the soldier was standing
directly in front of a large window, which with a storm raging outside, cast very
little light into the room. Without hesitation, she ran towards him, propelling
herself onward into a dive as she neared, sending them both crashing through
the glass and into the void beyond.
There was no time for Esteban, Jimmy or
anyone else to intervene. They could only watch on with impotent horror as the enemy
soldier and the scientist disappeared into the storm outside. All the while,
the fire within the Chinese man’s soul continued to grow ever stronger and
increasingly unstable.
The mountainside fell away at a sheer
angle as the pair plummeted before vaporising in an explosive release of pure
energy. The foundations of the monastery shook, tearing cracks into the walls
and ceilings, but the integrity of the building stood firm against the blast.
Esteban and Jimmy looked to one other
from either side of the destroyed window. Neither could fully take in what they
had witnessed, leaving them both at a complete loss for words. Emmy was gone.
The general had astral scouts patrolling
the base of the mountain. He deemed it too risky for them to actually breach
the monastery so he watched Jing Fan’s incursion via a live satellite feed. In
this instance he was not too concerned about what mystery weapons Dr Rayne
could improvise in retaliation. All Jing Fan had to do was establish visual
confirmation of the target and the Australian would be taken care of –
permanently.
The explosion briefly caused the feed to
white out. When the visual was restored, the general could see that the
structure built into the side of the mountain was still intact. Something had
gone wrong.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘I do not know,’ replied Major Heng. ‘The
detonation could only have come about at Jing Fan’s doing. Perhaps the target
attempted to flee?’
‘Maybe he listened to his conscience,’
suggested Charlie, whose interruption greatly irked General Tao. ‘We have no
idea how many monks are in residence. Would you have preferred it if he had
exterminated countless innocents in order to eliminate one individual?’
‘There are no innocents on that
mountain,’ replied the general. ‘I may yet see fit to purge that place. Anybody
who has come into contact with Dr Rayne is a threat. You are proof of that, Dr
Nguyen.’
‘My friendship with Emmy has nothing to
do with any of this. You do not have China’s best interests at heart – you’re
crazy. The minute Beijing learns of what you are doing here they will shut you
down and place you under immediate arrest.’
‘By the time Beijing learns anything,
victory over our enemies will be assured. The only traitor here is you, Dr
Nguyen, and I grow tired of your insolence.’ He raised his hand to a pair of
guards assigned to watch over Charlie. ‘Take him to his cell. If he offers any
kind of resistance – you are authorised to use whatever force necessary to
bring him under control.’
Charlie offered no such resistance as he
was escorted away. This time he was handcuffed to the bed and the guards stayed
with him. One was posted inside of the cell and the other outside - guarding
the door.
‘What are your orders, General?’ asked
Major Heng, once the only dissident voice in the camp had been removed.
‘We will proceed as planned. No matter
the fate of Dr Rayne, I regard this mission as a success. We have eight bombs
remaining. Our enemies will not know what hit them.’
***
Esteban and Jimmy had not spoken a word to
one another since seeing Emmy throw herself out of the window, taking the enemy
soldier with her. Jimmy was puzzled as to why he had not foreseen such an
important event and Esteban was just trying to make sense of what had actually
happened.
The way the attacker had fought was in
keeping with the reports he had read on Jackson Fox towards the end. Superhuman
strength, impossible reflexes and the ability to teleport at will. And there
was more, too. The guy had literally exploded. Esteban wanted to believe that
this was an accident, an unwanted side effect of whatever crazy experiment had
produced this monster, but something told him otherwise. He suspected the man
had been intended as a suicide bomber.
The monks worked quickly and efficiently
in patching over the broken window. Esteban thought it best not to interfere.
They had shown nothing but kindness and expected nothing in return, yet all the
destruction from the two attacks on the monastery had been brought about
because of him and his friends. When he saw Yonten enter, the soldier decided
that he should say something.
‘I’m sorry we brought this on you,’ he
said.
‘No apology is necessary,’ replied
Yonten. ‘Nothing has been lost. Where you see death, I see only rebirth.’
‘Forgive me if I take little consolation
from that. I was sent here for a purpose and without Emmy, I can no longer
fulfil my obligation.’
‘I am sure she can still help you.’
‘You can contact her?’
He thought back to the murals Emmy had
shown him earlier. Like her, were the monks able to exercise powers beyond ordinary
human comprehension?
‘We shall go to her now,’ said Yonten.
‘She has exerted herself, but the greater her mastery of her power, the more
quickly she will recover.’
‘Recover – from death?’
The monk offered him a puzzled look.
‘From her meditations. I was with her
when she repelled the invader. She is a remarkable woman. To affect such
control over a tulpa requires the greatest purity of mind.’
‘She’s alive?’
‘More so than you or I could possibly
imagine.’
Jimmy overheard the two men talking. As
soon as he became aware that Emmy was alive he was given one of his unique
glimpses into the near future. Computer monitors took the place of the food
hall benches. It reminded him of the laboratory back in Australia. Emmy and
Esteban were with him along with an Asian man whom he thought he recognised
from Jackson’s Hill. He assumed this was Charlie.
‘It’s over,’ he heard Emmy’s former lab
partner say.
‘We can’t just give up,’ she replied.
‘What else can we do? There are eight
human bombs out there and we have no way to pinpoint their exact locations.
It’s too late. General Tao will have his war and he will win.’
‘There has to be a way.’
Jimmy saw a ghostly image of his future
self entering the scene. He heard just two words and then the vision
dissipated. He was back in the food hall. Esteban and Yonten were still in
dialogue, completely oblivious to his foresight. They broke away from their
conversation when he approached.
‘What’s wrong, Jimmy?’ asked Esteban.
‘You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.’
‘I always see ghosts,’ he replied. ‘Isn’t
that why you brought me here?’
‘So what’ve you seen this time?’
‘The soldier who attacked the base;
there’re eight more like him.’
‘Eight?’ Esteban thought back to how
close they had come to being defeated by just one. ‘We stop them though –
right?’
‘I don’t know.’
Both men searched the other’s eyes,
hoping to find any sign of hope. Neither was successful.
Time was up and there was still no word
from the team in Tibet. The politicians were determined to press ahead with the
planned drone attack. By flying low and staying below the mountain peaks, it
would be able to stay off the Chinese radar. Whether it would go undetected by
their other form of defence was another matter entirely. Either way, the
mission was now out of Colonel Rodman’s hands.
The soldier had no desire to witness
whatever tragedy was sure to follow this latest course of action. He had seen
enough of death during his long and distinguished career.
After reporting the launch to James Earl
in Washington, he tidied his desk, put on his medals, then pressed the nub of
his standard issue service pistol to his temple and squeezed the trigger.
His life did not flash before his eyes.
It was the lives of others that were to
be the image he would leave the world with. The face of every man and woman to
die under his command briefly raced through his thoughts.
Having overseen the latter stages of
Operation Sleepwalker, he thought he had a good idea of what to expect in the
moments after the bullet carved its fatal path through his cerebral cortex.
He was wrong.
The sensation was so slight as to barely
qualify as an experience at all. All of his feelings, his passions and his
desires died with his body. He took his memories with him, but without a brain
to process the information, he no longer had access to them. All that now
mattered was a single overriding purpose.
As his flesh began to rot, what remained
of his life’s energy left the closed confines of the base and was drawn as if by
an invisible magnet to the closest, similar, newly released essence of a human
being that was no more. When the two energies converged they opened up a
wormhole in space and time. What passed through was not the disembodied
consciousness of Colonel Rodman, but merely recycled energy. In accordance with
the laws of thermodynamics, nothing is ever lost. It simply changes form. Human
experience has a beginning and an end, but the energy is eternal.