But there wasn’t time for this.
“You will stand down!” the young soldier suddenly shouted with halfhearted conviction.
At this, Ethan took a big step forward until the rifle’s muzzle was inches from his chest. Quickly, he grasped the rifle midway down its barrel with a single hand.
The soldier was stunned momentarily, but then tightened his two-handed grip on the weapon as if preparing to wrestle for control of it. His finger touched the trigger . . .
Ethan smiled lopsidedly at the boy. Then he squeezed.
The black metal crumpled in his hand like putty. When he let go, the front end of the barrel looked as though it had melted, bent in a smooth arc toward the ground.
Safeties were clicked off from the other soldiers’ weapons, and every gun was trained on Ethan.
Yen Xue stepped forward from the group, which was situated more than fifty feet behind Ethan. She approached quickly yet walking with grace and dignity.
As Ethan continued to stare down the Israeli soldiers, Xue extended her right hand in their direction, the nearby wildfire glinting off something on one of her fingers.
The soldier on the far right end of the barricade gasped. His rifle had flown free from his grip, whirling through the air until Xue caught it lengthwise in her right hand as if it were a baseball flying into a mitt. A moment later, twenty-three more rifles wrenched themselves from their wielders’ grasps and flew at the rifle Xue still held in the air as if a powerful magnet.
A few of the dazed soldiers recovered quickly and tried pulling out long bowie knives, but it was a futile gesture. Soon these too were soaring through the air until they clung stubbornly to Xue’s rifle, held aloft in her hand as if it were nothing more than a feather.
“My friend has a way with metal,” Ethan remarked. He turned and pointed behind him at Sergeant Tucker, who stood at the edge of the crowd. “
He
has a way with . . . well, you’re happier not knowing. Time to give it up, fellas.”
The officer up front, the one who’d first targeted Ethan, motioned to his men. As one, they stood at ease.
Ethan glanced back at the group and they soon joined him. As the others were walking past these depowered military men, Ethan looked once more at the young man in charge.
“Also . . . We’re taking your truck. We need it to save the world. You understand.”
Fifteen miles southeast of Tel Aviv, not far from the West Bank border, the group split into two teams.
Payton, Alex, and the old man waited atop a small dune, fairly close to—of all things—a nice, not entirely unmodern housing development that did not match anyone’s expectations of what might be found in a Middle Eastern country. Alex and Payton both knelt low, staring through binoculars in a northwesterly direction. Alex traded hers frequently back and forth with the old man.
A mile to the south, the others huddled by their commandeered truck parked between a row of tall, dying trees near a main northbound road. The trees seemed out of place amid the arid landscape, but there was a small village behind them; apparently the trees had been transplanted here as part of some sort of planned community. Ethan and Tucker hid behind tree trunks, scanning the northwestern horizon, also with binoculars. Xue stood nearby, listening and watching.
But even with Ethan, Xue, and Tucker now wearing Rings, they were still dangerously outnumbered. Aside from the Secretum of Six members still at his side, Oblivion would have by now drawn all the remaining Ringwearers under his thrall to him as well—all 277 of them.
Still following the news reports wherever possible, they’d discovered that Oblivion had led his people south through Syria and Beirut, and he was still going. Oblivion’s march continued along the Mediterranean shoreline, so the group deduced together that after Tel Aviv, they knew where he was headed.
A journey by Conveyor guaranteed they’d arrive before him, and hopefully they could stop his army before he ever reached his target. But their plan was a perilous gamble. Placing themselves here, between Oblivion and his final destination, made them prime targets, since Oblivion had displayed a penchant for annihilating anything and everything in his path. Or they could be wrong, and Oblivion might continue south and make for another destination, such as Cairo or something even farther away like Marrakech.
“I got ’em,” Payton announced into the walkie-talkie at Ethan’s side. “Approaching precisely due northeast, as expected. Oblivion is still in the lead.”
He tacked on that last part after a moment’s pause, and Ethan thought he detected a hint of hunger in Payton’s voice.
Payton had always been a remarkably single-minded individual. Capable of intense focus where others’ attention spans drifted, he could sit and maintain a thought vigil on the same topic for hours.
It was a useful trait for an assassin. He found it particularly useful today, watching the slow but steady approach of Oblivion, followed by two Jeeps carrying the Secretum members, and the enslaved Loci behind that, nearly three hundred in number. Impressive, considering there were less than two dozen of them who’d left the underground city with Oblivion back at the beginning. It was exactly as he’d predicted: The Loci, all around the world, were drawn to Oblivion. They couldn’t stop themselves from venturing to wherever he was. Soon, all of them would help him destroy what was left of the world.
Unless Payton acted. Now.
“I can see Nora,” Ethan whispered through his walkie-talkie. “Mrs. Edeson is near the front of the line, not far from Oblivion. Haven’t spotted Hector yet . . . the line is so long . . . Yeah, that’s definitely Nora, pulling up the rear, kind of on her own.”
“Perfect,” Alex replied into the walkie that the old man held close to her mouth. “You grab Nora. We’ll get closer to Mrs. Edeson, see if we can get her.”
“Copy that,” Ethan replied.
Alex switched off the walkie and carefully rose to a crouch. She watched the tiny figures just coming into view on the horizon, knowing the thing living in Grant’s body was right there at the front.
Her thoughts lingered on him for a moment, trying for the hundredth time to think of something—anything—she could do to try to bring Grant back. She wouldn’t believe he was really beyond hope. She
would not
. Grant touched the supernatural daily with his awesome powers, so why should he be irretrievable from the mortal grave?
“You ready?” Payton asked, standing.
“Absolutely,” she replied.
“Good. Wait here.”
She turned— And Payton was gone in a blur.
No!
She knew exactly what he was going to attempt, just like she knew there was no way to stop him. She’d been afraid of this.
He’d played her—played all of them—all this time, back at his home. Agreeing to their plans, putting up just enough of a fuss that they wouldn’t question it when he finally agreed to do things her way . . .
She cursed his lone-wolf tendencies. He was going to get himself killed, and he was going to do it now, when they needed him most.
But Payton was here for one reason, and one reason only.
Ethan and Sergeant Tucker were crawling as low to the ground as they could, approaching the back of the line. Xue stood watch at the tree line behind them, ready to come to their aid if needed.
“Don’t let Nora see you, no matter what,” Ethan advised.
“Why?” Tucker replied.
“She could wipe clean every memory engram in your brain.”
“You’re joking.”
“We’ve got to do this from behind. Cut her shoulder or something and press the Stone into the wound.”
“And all this without her seeing us, or alerting anyone else,” Tucker said. It was nearly a question.
“Yeah,” replied Ethan, pulling out his gun. “My strength isn’t going to help either. Stealth is the key here. And it has to be done
fast,
or . . .”
The two men cautiously ran up behind the long, single-file line of men and women walking upon the black soil, holding their guns low and hoping to never have to use them. The DarkWorld’s properties were working in their favor, masking their approach. They wore black jumpsuits like the ones Payton preferred, and they’d painted their faces with dark grease, so they blended in easily with the ground and the sky above.
“So, uh . . . what will she do, exactly, if she sees us?” Tucker asked in a hushed tone as they neared her position by less than fifty feet.
“About five seconds after she sees us, we’ll forget who we are, why we’re here, how to speak, chew food, and lose all motor coordination we were trained with as infants. Then Oblivion will come and separate our bodies’ molecules.”
“All you had to say was ‘we’d be dead,’ man,” Tucker replied. “That’s all I needed to know.”
Daniel watched Lisa from the tree he hid behind. She was crouching behind another tree herself, her head peeking out from one side. Ethan and Tucker had left their binoculars behind, and she’d picked them up to look through. Xue’s keen eyes traced them from her position behind a tree twenty feet away.
With a deep gulp, Daniel carefully, cautiously left his hiding place and slid over next to Lisa. She didn’t notice his approach, her peripheral vision cut off by the binoculars pressed against her face. Daniel bit his lip as he awkwardly extended his right arm and placed it around her shoulders.
Lisa reacted only slightly, the binoculars pulling away from her face by an inch. She realized it was Daniel without looking directly at him, smiled to herself, and then replaced the lenses at her eyes.
Daniel knew her well enough to know that a wild assortment of happy thoughts were thundering through her overactive brain right about now, but he had to hand it to her for playing it remarkably cool. He hadn’t expected that. Maybe this wouldn’t be so uncomfortable after all.
“What do you see?” he whispered, strengthening his hold on her slightly.
“They’re almost there.”
“What about Payton and Alex?”
She turned. “Let’s see . . . There’s Mrs. Edeson, still marching in the procession. But if the two of them are anywhere near her, I can’t see ’em . . . no, wait, I see Payton, he’s . . . what is he
doing
?”
With a sharp nod at Sergeant Tucker, Ethan sprinted for Nora.
But Tucker was the faster man and got to her a second before Ethan could reach her, tackling her limp, weary body onto the ground.
Oblivion stopped.
He turned.
He’d felt it. One of his Ringwearers had been shoved to the ground.
With a fleeting thought, he awakened twelve other Ringwearers in her vicinity.
Tucker was sitting on top of Nora, where she’d fallen face-down onto the black ground. He held her arms behind her back. She was writhing about with surprising strength.
But no, that’s not her strength,
Ethan reminded himself.
That’s Oblivion.
“I think we woke the neighbors,” Tucker whispered, looking around warily.
Ethan dropped to his knees and slid the last foot or so until he was able to touch Nora. He holstered his gun. The Stone fragment was in his left hand; he reached into a pants pocket with his right, only to find it empty.
“I didn’t think to bring a knife!”
“Well
I
don’t have one, man!” Tucker replied as Nora nearly bucked him off her back.
Looking around for anything sharp, he had to find something he could use to pierce her skin just enough to get the Stone to touch her bloodstream . . . He glanced up just long enough to see about a dozen Loci walking toward them robotically from all directions, like zombies that would arrive much faster than it seemed they could . . .
The rocks on the ground were craggy yet too small to cut human flesh. Maybe he could just slash at her with the Stone fragment itself? But this piece was flat and dull, not nearly as sharp as some of the others . . .
Ringwearers were coming; he had to do something!
He was still thinking hard and searching the ground around him frantically when a gunshot went off. The blast was so close, his ears started ringing.
Nora’s hand had a disgusting, bloody, burned hole going straight through the center of her palm. Tucker held his sidearm tight with one hand, its muzzle still smoking.
“Do it!” he shouted, nodding at Nora’s hand.
Ethan pressed the Stone into the hole, and Nora went limp almost immediately.
Tucker climbed off, Ethan hefted Nora easily with both arms, and the two men ran. No good going back to the trees now; that would give the others away.
Ethan surveyed their surroundings. They weren’t far from the small housing community he’d seen earlier, and it looked like it had lots of places where they might hide.
“This way!” he shouted.
“Daniel,” Lisa whispered. “Look.”
Daniel stole his view away from what Payton was doing to see that Hector was walking alone, less than thirty feet away. Daniel glanced about and saw that other Ringwearers were scattered across the plain in every direction; it appeared that Oblivion had split them up, sending his army out to search for others who might be here with Ethan and Tucker. It was a stroke of luck that Hector had ventured so close to them.
“What do you think?” Lisa whispered, clutching a Stone fragment tightly in her right hand.
She clearly wanted to go for it, and he was leaning toward agreeing with her. He whirled around to get Xue’s attention, but she was looking the wrong way, still following Ethan’s and Tucker’s movements.
“Come on, he’s
right there
—we’ll never get a better chance!” Lisa whispered again.
Without waiting for him, she jumped out from behind her tree and entered a dead sprint toward Hector, who was facing away from her.
Daniel took off behind her, but she had a ten-foot head start on him, and he couldn’t run with his permanently damaged ankle. The best he could manage was a fast limp, leaning on his aluminum cane for leverage.
As she was nearing Hector, the gigantic man turned at the sound of her running footsteps. He stuck out a hand and grabbed her by the neck just as she came into view. His enormous arm lifted her off the ground easily, and Daniel struggled to reach them as Lisa’s features contorted into anguish. She couldn’t breathe, but that wasn’t the worst of it.