Previously:
Between bouts of seasickness, Abel looked out on the ocean deep in thought as the boat drifted toward their destination. It had been very nice to see Seth, and he lamented the shortness of the visit. Still he had things to do with 01 on the loose. Deep down, he knew that 01 had survived…that he was still out there, but it was still shocking to hear. How was he to beat such a foe? Could he really bring himself to kill his own brother? Again? Shadows crossed his wintery blue eyes.
01 had taken everything from him and he threatened the world. How could he play Lillith's part and protect humanity when he couldn't even protect the one he loved most? How would he even do it this time? The airlock had not worked the last time. What would work? Christ! He was thinking about murdering his own brother! He really was a monster. His thoughts returned to Seth and her proposal. She had wanted him to stay. He didn't blame her. Even with the Methuseluh she trusted, she had to be lonely.
But no.
He didn't deserve it. He was a sinner and sinners shouldn't have a life of luxury. Not after what he did. He still needed to get by and allowed himself friends and enough to sustain himself, but not much more. He thought about all the lives he extinguished and how every one of them was priceless. He had taken it all away from them – everything. He remembered that feeling when he had lost Lillith and knew he had caused others that horrible pain. It was terrible of him and he cursed his past self for not listening to Lillith. "She would forgive you, I know she would!" Seth exclaimed. Abel believed Lillith would…perhaps others might too. He had responded "Even if everybody reached out and forgave me, I cannot forgive myself." He was too much of a monster – he was beyond forgiveness and he would not let himself forget that. He should not have been created. His stomach did a slow flip.
His thoughts returned to what to do about 01. It was simple where to start. If 01 was about, he would probably start looking for lost technologies to empower himself. Abel's purpose was clear – he needed to visit as many of the old UN bases that he could and remove or destroy any technologies left. His stomach turned again. Humanity didn't need it now. They would only find themselves in trouble with it later if they had it. It was better that it was destroyed. It was better for humanity to live simply and within its means than to experiment with technology that threatened its own survival. He thought about their immediate destination. If they didn't make the train station on time today, he would have time to slip away – his stomach turned violently, and he dashed to the head before he could complete the thought.
Esther sighed as she leaned on the rail of the ship. She was going to miss Ion and Astha. She hoped she would see them again, someday. They had shown her that real peace was possible between Methuselah and human. If she, a former vampire hater, could learn that those hatreds were just huge misunderstandings. Then hopefully lasting peace could be possible with the Methuselah empire. At the thought of the empire, she thought about Seth and recognized that it went both ways. The methuselah also had to recognize the humanity in Terrans. Seth was - "Eeestheeerr…" can we please buy some sweets when the cart comes by?" the disheveled Father begged. A crease of annoyance lined Esther's face as she responded, "Father, there is a reason why Lady Caterina put me in charge of the finances of this trip. Besides, you are just going to throw it up anyways." The Father looked crestfallen as though he was denied the only thing he ever wanted. He gave a slight whimper and his stomach growled (she swore he could do it on cue). "Oh all right father, as long as you don't spend more than 5 dinars." His expression brightened, "Thank you Esther! I am in your debt" throwing his arms around the small girl in a hug. As she outwardly groaned and pushed him away she smiled – she often saw the father's demons when he thought nobody was looking and she was glad she could make him happy about some small thing.
As the wind buffeted the sails of the ship, Esther sat idly scanning a book that Ion had gifted her before their parting. The Father had enjoyed his sweets, but now claimed to be sicker than ever. She felt like rolling her eyes internally but the sweets were honestly such a small thing. He never understood why people gave him such a hard time about his 13 cubes of sugar or cookies every day. There were much worse vices like abusing drugs or drinking until one was ill. He was even thin, so what did they have to complain about? The call to disembark was made, but the Father looked like he was in no condition to finish his prayer to the porcelain goddess. At this rate they were going to miss their train to Istvan. She guessed she did have something to complain about after all.
After Abel had completed his prayers, they disembarked only to find they had indeed missed the train to Istvan. Esther sighed reminding herself that arriving the next day would not be a problem. She looked through brochures in the train station for a hotel and found one that was located within walking distance. Turning around she found the Father indiscreetly leering at a busty woman buying tickets. Grumbling, she hustled the Father out of the station and hurried to the hotel.
Abel unpacked a few small items from his suitcase at the hotel. He had remembered a small UN base nearby that Tres gathered intelligence on. It was abandoned to all appearences, but a sinister feeling permeated him. He decided to check things out anyways. With the afternoon ahead of him, he had time for a small excursion to investigate.
Abel knocked on Esther's door and the small nun appeared. "Esther, I'm going to be gone for a few hours, so would you please not venture too far from the hotel." An eyebrow raised, "Father, let me go with you this time." Abel smiled "Miss Esther, you would probably be bored if you went with me, so why don't you rest up for our meeting with our super scary boss tomorrow?"
A crease of annoyance began to work its way into Esther's face and she responded "Father, I want to go with you. You always leave me behind. Besides, didn't you say you were in my debt this morning?" casting him an impertinent look. "But-" "Honestly Father, it's an abandoned base, I want to stretch my legs, and the worst thing that we will encounter are probably rats and birds – which I swear, you have worse encounters with than I do." Abel considered, "Alright Miss Esther, as long as you pledge to run at the first sign of trouble. I'll wait at the hotel entrance for you." She brightened and he stepped back tripping on an uneven floorboard nearly sending him sprawling down the stairs. As he righted himself, she commented, "Father you should be more careful and watch where you are going." Couldn't he catch a break?
They walked to the edge of town and then paid for a cart ride to an empty field three miles out of town. The road was rough and bumpy, and the Father claimed he knew where they were going. However, she wasn't sure he was paying attention as he spent most of the time leaning over the edge of the cart vomiting from motion sickness. The cart driver looked disgusted and Esther tried to lighten his mood by smiling at him. Abruptly the Father looked up and said "we'll get off here. Please meet us at this spot in two hours." Esther was confused. There was just field all around. The father tried to hop out of the back of the cart but tripped and ended up falling flat on his face. The driver didn't look sympathetic and helped Esther out of the cart.
The cart rolled off into the distance kicking up a trail of dirt and dust while the yellow grain swayed around the priest and the nun in the wind. The father rubbed his nose and gestured for Esther to follow him. They walked for a ways through the field and Esther felt the tall grains brush along her arms and legs breaking and making her itch as she walked. She was going to have to change and clean her habit when she got back. Abruptly the father tripped falling forward onto the ground. Esther also tripped as her foot caught on the half buried broken up asphalt. She got up, and dusted off her scraping her hand.
"Ah, it seems we have found the road." The father said rubbing the nose that he had fallen on. They picked the way along the cracked and broken pavement of the 'road' for around a half hour. Just when Esther was beginning to doubt that they were going to find anything, the "road" abruptly ended giving way to a large area of cracked and broken concrete mostly buried in the grass. She would have said there used to be a large building here, but there was too little left to say for sure.
"How do you know to find these things, Father?" Esther asked. "Oh, well, you see…. I didn't have enough money for the train when I was going back to Rome, so I had to walk." Somehow, Esther didn't think that was entirely unbelievable. "It was so cold and starting to snow…. I thought I was going to die if I didn't find shelter…." He was searching around on the ground for something. "Anyway it was really, really cold and I found…." He suddenly spotted what he was looking for and reached down to the ground to tug on a –"a door leading underground out of the cold. So I stayed at this old military base for the night. They sure knew how to build them."
Esther was skeptical of the story, but she kept her silence as he heaved the old heavy rusty door open. There were stairs that descended into darkness. The father descended down the steps into the darkness and Esther attempted to follow wishing she had vision as good as the Father's.
"Hold on a second, Miss Esther and let me find the – ah! Here it is." There was a loud grinding and the world suddenly became brighter as a power generator was flipped on. The room was extremely dirty and a few broken rusty tools were lying to the side near a concrete wall. There was a large door with a rectangular pad of numbers next to it. The Father regarded the pad of numbers warily and began to try to pry off the casing. There was a maze of wires underneath and she watched in amazement as he delicately sorted through the wires rearranging them until – the large door opened - and then closed scraping and grinding as it did so, the noise booming in the otherwise abandoned base. The door continued to do this on a short interval, so The Father fidgeted with the pad until finally shocking himself and yelping. "Well, it seems that this the best I can do for now – come on." The grinding of the door was loud and unsettling compared to the former silence, but there was no helping it so she followed the Father, skipping nimbly through the door before it closed on her.
Abel crept forward through the dimly lit and dusty hall with Esther trailing behind. The scraping and grinding of the door heightened his tension as he picked through the rubble down the hall. Despite the lighting, the darkness was oppressive. He hoped Esther didn't notice the occasional rust assault rifle and empty ammunition clip lining the edge of the hall. It had been quite a fight the last time he had visited the base, at least for the Terrans.
When they had reached the end of the hall, the lights suddenly flickered and the door grinded shut – not opening again. They were trapped inside. The now still door was suddenly ominous and the silence portentous. Abel's brow furrowed and he couldn't hear anything beyond the now still door. "Father-" Esther drew close.
"Come on, stay close. My hearing is pretty good and I can't hear anything on the other side. These things can happen," Abel offered reassuringly. What he didn't say was that the doors were partially soundproof and that the lights should have ceased with the doors. It was unsettling.
They advanced through the dimly lit base. The dust was thick on the floors and sections of the walls were missing revealing offices that used to have chairs, computers, and people. He hoped that Esther wasn't looking closely enough, but the people were still here, or what was left of them after the base had been initially destroyed – he pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind. They walked down corridor after corridor turning left, right, going forward, walking back. He was sure Esther was thoroughly lost by now and hoped she wouldn't have to find her way out by herself.
"What are we looking for Father?" She asked looking uncertain. "The Professor was interested in some electronics from the machinery in the back. I agreed to take a look for him, if I had the chance."
The lights suddenly flickered and slowly dimed to nothingness. The darkness was total and the silence deafening. He strained his hearing, but heard nothing. After a few long moments, he could see Esther's outline clearly.
"Miss Esther, " he whispered, suddenly unsure at why he was whispering "I think I can find some small lights to light our way." "How….?" Esther whispered in an equally low and almost frightened voice. He touched her arm and took her hand leading her down the black corridor. The clicking of Esther's boots suddenly seemed very loud to the both of them. He moved down the passage and turned only to find a dead end on his left. A distant creak sounded and the hair raised on the back of his neck. He backtracked down the hall and then turned right down a different hallway. He paused at a metal door at the hallway's end and pushed it open slowly as it creaked.
There were guns in the room, lots of them. Moving over to a bench, he raised the dusty lid coughing and sneezing as he opened it. He reached in and rummaged eventually finding a cylinder in the bottom. Why are there no rodents here? There should at least be rodents. His unease increased and he suddenly regretted allowing Esther to come.
He twisted and bent the cylinder activating the gel within. An extremely pale green light illuminated - "AAUUUGGHH" Esther screamed stumbling back. Abel spun reaching for his gun, expecting – a dusty skull. Esther had been facing it when he activated the cylinder. Esther caught her breath "Sorry Father, I didn't mean to scare you." "Aren't I the scariest thing in this room?" Abel's expression suddenly darkened and Esther scowled "I thought I made my thoughts clear about THAT – don't do that Father."
He suddenly heard a faint clicking sound in the distance. Was it a mouse knocking something aside? Esther reached over and pulled a gun out of the rack. "Come on Father, we don't have all day to dally." She walked out of the room. They advanced further into the base weaving up and down corridors and suddenly, Abel saw what he dreaded – footprints. He halted suddenly gesturing to Esther for silence and pointing down at the floor at the footprints. The footprints originated from a corridor that faded to blackness. The darkness down that hall was ominous and foreboding. However, as he glanced at the ceiling the pipes lining it gave him hope. It was a power conduit.
The footprints in the floor followed the path of the power conduit in the ceiling and they eventually found themselves in an open room with doors on all sides. The pipes in the ceiling turned towards the door on the left. The footprints took the same path. He murmered lowly, "Be alert." He reached behind him for his gun and they slowly advanced noiselessly. After a few turns, the corridor began to brighten.
Esther followed the Father quietly as the corridor brightened. This was an unexpectedly creepy place, and she wondered if all the Father's side trips were this unnerving. He always returned unharmed. Mostly. Once he had come back with a long cut on his jacket and on the sleeve of his arm. He had laughed it off attributing his torn clothing to his clumsiness.
They advanced into a room with a console at the end of it, a wall of bright multicolored lights on one side, which turned on and off intermittently, changing position, color and shape. A plain silver wall with a gold circle in the middle was opposite the kinetically colorful wall. A console with blinking lights and buttons stood between the walls. The clean floor in the room contrasted sharply with that of the dusty corridor. Esther looked around warily as the Father approached the console. She watched the dark corridor for a few minutes as the Father studied the console and then began to type.
She tried to be wary, but the colored wall took her attention. The colors shifted and changed blinking on and off as she approached. The bottom left side of the wall lit more brightly as she approached in an ovular shape similar to her body size. She studied it for a moment and raised her hand near the wall. Colors, shapes, and lights changed to outline the path of her hand. The energetic colors were sickening to look at, so she turned away. As she turned back to survey the Father and the dark corridor, movement along a high catwalk near the top of the high room, caught her eye.
Dark shapes moved in the dim light. "Well if it isn't my dearest Esther," a boyish voice called out. "Dietrich!" Esther's hands tightened around her gun and a scowl stained her face. Behind Dietrich appeared a tall man with long black hair. There were autojagers and a couple others she didn't recognize. "What purposes have you twisted this technology towards, Magician?" Father Nightroad questioned the dark haired man. The Magician responded lightly, "If I told you our plans, then Mein Herr would surely be upset and we can't have that." He paused dramatically then snapped his fingers "Take them."
Two of the figures at the Magician's side disappeared, and Father Nightroad's gun went off catching one of the men in the shoulder as they hit the floor in front of Nightroad. The casing of the bullet bounced off a button on the panel and the pattern on the colorful wall changed. Esther fired on the other Methuselah, but he disappeared before the shotgun spray found their target. The methusalah appeared suddenly behind Esther knocking her to the ground and her weapon out of reach before she could react.
Father Nightroad fired on a descending autojager and its head exploded like a melon. A second autojager appeared on the floor and hefted an axe towards Father Nightroad. He dodged to the side and started mumbling as he hit the floor. The axe lodged into the wall above the console spilling rubble down over the console.
Esther kicked at the vampire holding her down eventually landing a blow between his legs and then crawled for her gun. Behind her, Father Nightroad's wintry eyes turned red and his silver hair flew up behind him. She reached for the gun, but was pulled back by the Methuselah. She tried to turn herself over so she could kick or punch the Methuselah dragging her back, but a sudden blow to her head sent her sprawling to the floor.
White spots danced in her vision and she saw Father Nightroad swing a black scythe at the autojager, but the scythe caught on something. She moved to try and help the Father, but the Methuselah held her to the ground. Dietrich approached the Father slowly and laughed as he released more of his strings immobilizing the Father. The Father screamed suddenly releasing a discharge of electricity breaking the strings and zapping the console behind him and the Puppetmaster in front of him.
The gold cylinder on the wall suddenly rotated and the colored wall mimicked the pattern of the wall with the golden cylinder. The Magician's face filled with concern and he yelled at Dietrich to deal with console. Before Dietrich could reach the console, a white beam shot from the gold cylinder as a red beam shot from the cylinder on the opposite colored wall. The methuselah who held Esther released her and made for the dark corridor, but as he approached the corridor, the beams met and sent out a shockwave. Unfortunately, the fleeing methuselah was the closest to the shock wave and Esther saw in slow motion the skin peel back and dematerialize exposing muscle as it touched the shockwave. The muscle was peeled back exposing bone, and the bone was then dematerialized. All this happened in the blink of an eye and Esther screamed in terror as the shockwave came for her. "Esth-!" she heard as the bright light of the shockwave overcame her.
She was traveling quickly through a twisting and turning tunnel of interwoven lightbeams. The beams became windows of light scrolling past as she twisted and somersaulted down. She heard voices all around loud and soft. Suddenly she was jerked to the side saw a vision of St. Matthias church slide past. Next, a distorted image of a methuselah with dark hair and violet eyes reached out for her while a tinny version of the Lady Bishop's voice called her name. She was then thrown back and the visions receded into the horizon. A black angel with red eyes confronted her as she turned and she reached out for it calling a name. She fell forward twisting and turning faster and faster from the colorful path into darkness until the darkness abruptly shattered into a shockwave around her. A solid floor rose up to greet her and she heard the sounds of shattering glass as she hit the floor. Dizzy, disoriented, and in pain, she retched on the floor and then felt the world tilt beneath her as she lost consciousness.
When she awoke later, it was dark and cold. The floor was dirty and the smell musty. Her ears rang and the ringing faded as she slowly sat up coughing. The walls had holes in them exposing the insulation and wooden supports underneath. There were stains on the hard concrete floor and some shattered bottles and crushed cans near the entrance of the room. A long window, or the shattered remains of it lined the upper half of the wall on the other side of the room. Sounds of horns honking and sirens wailing greeted her as she slowly climbed to her feet. Her right ankle ached – she must have injured it in the fall. This was strange. She was just in an abandoned lab wasn't she? As she limped over to the shattered remains of the window, her breath caught in her throat as she stared out over buildings - tall buildings. She stepped back realizing she was at least 20 floors up. She wasn't in the abandoned base any more. Where is this? She couldn't remember any cities like this.
