Keepers: Blood of The Fallen (11 page)

VII

1

After a horrible night of restless sleep, it was time to fulfill my promise. We had to go get Lizzy and end a fight, before it really started. My plan was simple: Kill Kneulton…and Cilandria…if I had to. I knew Asia wouldn’t stand for it, but it was obvious that all of the High Order had to die, in order for the rest of us to live. Cilandria may not have agreed with Kneulton’s attitude towards Navariums, but she didn’t disagree with his opinion. They wanted to end their Navarium problem by killing all of them.

“You don’t have to come, Asia. If and when things get rough in there, I can’t ask you to go against Cilandria.”

“I’m coming. If it comes down to us against her, I guess I’ll be losing a good friend. I can do this,” she responded, confidently.

With her word, I gathered the rest of the team in our little hotel room. I didn’t want to take a large team with us, because in the worst-case scenario, we would lose all of the humans that were left. I had already accepted what had to happen after we finished the fight and returned to Earth: we somehow had to repopulate. It was an undying urge, and I’m sure, the Navarium in me. Considering we only had about sixty or seventy people who were young enough to actually repopulate, we had to be careful about who we took to the fight. After I counted, I saw that we had twenty-three women and thirty-four guys that actually wanted to fight. I chose to take four men and two women, in addition to Asia and myself. I figured five men and three women could handle the job we had to do.

Most noticeably, Berni begged to go back. She felt as responsible as Asia did, and I wasn’t going to tell her no. She had the extra emotion and drive we needed. During the night, I managed to think up a plan for entry into the temple. I would walk in through the front door with the rest of the men. The ladies would go through the vents again and meet us where Santana was being held before. I knew that we would be caught, no matter what we tried, so I decided to just walk in and start fighting. I knew the only way to beat the guards was to pass them. My abilities were gone, but I knew we could take them down, together. To be eating mush, the guys looked to be in pretty good shape.

We were getting ready to head to the city hall building, when Santana came out of her room. She looked as though she had gained fifty pounds overnight. She was even more beautiful than before all of that started. She looked at us with a look of confusion but with a smile. “Where are you guys going? Mo, Asia, are you going back for Lizzy?”

We just stared at her.

“Come on guys, it’s me. I’ve put on a little weight, but it’s me, I promise.” She laughed nervously, as we stared at her like she was a Disney princess in real life. Standing there in her all white button top pajamas and smiling, she really had a wonderful glow about her. “Guys, you’re freaking me out. If you’re going back right now, you should hear what I have to say first. All of you. Let me change, then I’ll talk with you.”

She went back inside of her room, and I turned to Asia. I just stared at her, with my jaw hanging. She looked at me and smiled. The rest of the people were confused, but Berni, like Asia and I, knew that we were witnessing something amazing. She came back out of the door, holding her cellphone. “I’ve only got about three percent of battery left, but I want you to see this. It’s a video of what they’re trying to do in the temple.” She played the video and I could tell she recorded the video from the floor. “They’re trying to create somebody in there. The old guy kept saying that I wasn’t the right one. Cilandria…sorry Asia…” she scrunched up her face like she was in pain, “kept telling him to keep trying. He wanted to stop and let me go. She wouldn’t let him.”

Towards the end of the video, a man fell out of the box—the one with the mold in it—and quickly seemed to suffocate and die. He seemed to suffer immensely. Her phone died immediately afterwards. She didn’t know the purpose for this being they were trying to bring to life, but she saw it happen repeatedly. Sometimes the person would walk out of the box, then deteriorate right in front of her, like a statue falling apart. There was only one time that they felt as though they had succeeded. The person stepped out of the box and said, “Cilandria…finally…” before deteriorating. Each time, the being looked the exact same way; he just never managed to survive.

Tana also told us that Kneulton had a friend in the basement of the temple. She found out the hard way when she tried to use one of her powers, and it failed. She told us that she was fighting a big guard in the entrance of the temple grounds. He didn’t seem like he wanted to fight her, but he said he had orders. After I told her his name was Brama and what he did for us, she hung her head, because she was ashamed of what she thought about him. I told her it wasn’t her fault, and I was sure that Brama had been killed.

“Santana, do you know about Earth?” Asia asked.

“Unfortunately…” she responded. “I had thought the worst of you two as well…”

We didn’t say anything for a moment, but then Tana decided that she was going to go with us. I didn’t like the idea, because I didn’t think she had enough strength to go. She told us that she was more than capable and that she felt perfectly fine; she was just hungry. After giving her some disappointing but apparently healthy broth, she was ready to go. She looked at me and smiled. She was back, and I was very glad. We went to the town hall building and grabbed weapons. I was shocked that Leader wasn’t back, but I was also glad he wasn’t. Had he been there, he would’ve had to step aside or get dealt with.

I made sure we all grabbed utility belts, so that we could load them up. I felt like Bruce Wayne, for a second. I grabbed three daggers, all of them about six inches long. I figured I could throw the rusty one and just come out swinging with the other two nicer ones. I watched Tana pick up a sword and make a face of approval. I saw Asia pick up a mace. I thought it was a little too heavy for her, but she seemed to be able to swing it with ease. We all loaded the smaller pockets with tiny smoke bombs and vials of acid. The acid was a suggestion made by Hank, the older guy. We all walked over to the table that was full of guns and walked away from it. We knew that bullets would do us no good. We had to fight up close, and unless we could shoot them in the head, at point blank range, we were not going to need guns.

We all had blades and hammers. We all knew what we were walking into. Without saying a word, we left. We stuck to my original plan, just with Santana added to the women. We walked to the building—a walk that had become so simple, as it was only about twenty minutes—and as soon as the women disappeared from sight around the building, we pushed the doors open. The hallway that Brama used to be in was pitch black. We couldn’t see a thing, and we had no clue if there were any guards in there. “Hank, you brought a flashlight right?”

Hank turned on the light and tried to shine it around the hall. The light shined from the flashlight, but the darkness kind of swallowed the light. There was no way for us to see more than a foot in front of us, and that meant we were in trouble already. One of the guys, James, went back to the door and tried to pull them open. They wouldn’t move. “Ok guys, stay close,” I said. That’s when we heard a grunt come from near the door. It sounded like a grunt out of pain. Then we heard someone fall to the ground. “James? Are you ok?” I got no answer.

James and Hank were cousins; they were the only family they had. Hank threw the flashlight in the direction of James. When the flashlight hit the floor, it landed right next to his face. James’ eyes were fixed on us, but he was surely dead. In a panic, Hank ran to James, but he never made it there. He yelled for his life, then we heard a rip, and his body hit the floor. The last three of us stood back to back. We were undoubtedly scared. We weren’t prepared for darkness that could swallow light. It was like standing in a black hole.

I heard footsteps quickly stop right in front of me. Then I felt a burn across my chest. I started to yell, but instead, I grabbed one of the daggers from my belt and sliced upward as hard as I could. The candles on the walls lit up immediately. Standing in front of me was a strange looking man who looked similar to Quazo. I managed to hit him with the blade, right across the face. With a huge gash in his face, he didn’t seem so tough anymore. I kicked him in his stomach and he fell to the floor, on his back. He whispered to me, “Finish it.” I was happy to oblige. I stomped on his chest repeatedly, until I heard a crack. Then, I stomped a few more times, to make myself feel better.

After it was done, I looked down at my chest and saw three scratch marks that had steam coming from them. His nails were very sharp and hot, apparently. I turned to check on the others, and saw they were sitting with the ones we lost. “If you guys want to go back, I understand. This won’t get easier.” They looked at me and nodded. Then they closed their friends’ eyes and walked up to me. They both gave a swift kick to our dead attacker. They continued on with me. It was by no means a good thing that we lost two guys, but as far as the mission went, it was good for the two remaining guys that those guys died. It gave them a little extra motivation to finish the job.

I was sure that we were going to meet a much bigger problem soon after, because there were no guards in the hall, where the guards should’ve been. Even the empty suits were gone. I had a bad feeling that they had filled those suits with bodies. We went through the newly installed doors at the end of the hall. Then we went to the big golden doors of the temple. Just then, storm clouds up above the temple grounds started to poor rain on us. Thunder cracked the sky up above us. I looked up into the rain to see how bad the storm actually was—it was a habit I couldn’t break, being Cherokee and all—and it looked awful.

With one quick flash, a lightning bolt shot across the sky, and that part of the sky opened up, like a rip in a blanket. We looked up into what seemed to be a portal opening in the sky above us. There was no rain falling from the growing black hole, but, just like a black hole, it took all the light out of the area. I didn’t want to stay outside to see what was coming; we had already lost people to something in the darkness. I pushed the big, heavy, and golden doors open. It was the first time I actually noticed the hieroglyphs on the door. They looked Egyptian. That was an eerie feeling. It instantly struck me as the doors to a pharaoh’s tomb. I couldn’t remember which one, but I know I had seen those doors before. I did enjoy Egyptian history, just not as much as Greek not-so-mythology.

We walked into the temple, not knowing what awaited us. We still implemented my plan. Not the plan I told them about, but the one I had been devising in my mind during the ongoing mission. I wanted my power back, before I faced Kneulton. I sent Xavier downstairs to the basement to find the one who had been blocking our abilities. I told him to kill whomever he came across that he didn’t know. That way, I could at least know that he would get the right one. Xavier was a really big guy, so I was sure he could handle himself, at least just as good as I could. I would have gone with him, but I didn’t want to lose anytime on meeting up with the women.

Tyler and I kept going upstairs until we got to the door that opened up to the hall where the ladies would emerge from the vent. I cracked the door open slightly to peak out into the hall, and I didn’t see anyone there. I opened the door and told Tyler to follow me into the hall. We went to the vent, next to the room where Tana was imprisoned. The vent was to the left of the room, as Berni repeated to herself as we walked there. When we got to the vent, we saw that the door to it had been ripped off. Even the hinges were torn from the wall.

That sent chills down my spine. It looked awful, and I wasn’t sure if it was already that way before. Asia never told me. I didn’t know if I should wait or go looking for them. That’s when I heard a voice come from the vent. “Hey,” they whispered.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me. Lizzy.”

“Lizzy?!” I had to cover my mouth. “Come out, it’s safe.”

She came out of the vent. Her clothes were torn, and she was filthy. Her hair was frizzy. Her eyes were bloodshot. She hadn’t slept since she was left in the temple the day before. She had no idea where the other women were. She had gotten lost, because she couldn’t remember the way out of the vents. She was seen and even caught, but she managed to get away by slamming the vent door down on someone’s hand and crawling into a heating duct. She was far too afraid and tired to stay with us. I handed her the scrap of paper with Berni’s map of the vents on it and sent her on her way.

I told Tyler that the rest of the way would be far more dangerous than it had been so far, but he didn’t care. He wanted to finish the job. I assumed that the women had already gotten out of the vent and couldn’t wait for us. We kept walking down the hall, until we came to the hallway that the source chamber was on. Lying in that hallway, was Berni. She was still barely holding on to her life. I ran over to her and knelt down beside her.

I picked her head up in my hand and noticed she was bleeding from multiple places. She had been severely injured from head to toe. “Who did this to you?” She couldn’t speak. She just stared at me, and her eyes started tearing up. I felt like she was asking me if Lizzy was ok. “We found Lizzy. I gave her your map. She’s on her way back home. Just like you’ll be in just a bit. Look, Tyler’s with me. The other guys are downstairs looking for you.” I tried to muster a laugh. “Guess they won’t find you, huh? Look. Look. I’m going to have Tyler take you home. You’ll get to go home with Lizzy. Oh, get this, she was just lost. She was in the vents, and she made a wrong turn at Albuquerque.” I tried to laugh again. “You’re going to be fine.” I noticed her eyes gloss over, and then her head fell over, in my hand. “Berni. Berni. This isn’t for nothing… I promise, we’ll win this. For you. For Hank and James. For everybody.”