King's Cross
London, England
January 2nd
2023 A.D.
Lincoln came running out of the portal first, followed closely by James, then Scorpius, then Lynx. Everyone on the muggle side of the platform where already on the ground, cowering in fear of the armed gunmen that had just torn through the place.
"WHERE?! WHERE?!" Lincoln yelled as a few terrified people pointed towards the end of the platform.
The four of them bolted towards the direction they had been given. At the very end of the platform, four men in police uniforms where dragging Hugo away. He was kicking and punching wildly at them like some kind of rabid animal, giving them way more trouble than they were expecting.
They shot towards him as quickly as possible but were forced to take cover as gunfire connected with the walls. People screamed as they decked behind a bench before Lincoln stood and took aim while bullets passed harmlessly through his body.
He fired and blood shot out from the neck of one of the men before he collapsed onto the floor. They others continued to pull the crazed Weasley away.
They immediately gave pursuit and charged through the entrance to the platforms, heading into the ticket sales area.
Again, gunfire erupted but this time not at them. The armed men that had taken Hugo were being fired at by police, real police. The armed men returned fire causing the police to take cover while dozens of people screamed and ran for cover.
"HOLD YOUR FIRE! THEY HAVE A HOSTAGE!" Lincoln roared.
The kidnappers dragged Hugo towards an exit to street level as Lincoln and the others continued to follow them.
They had come prepared. Outside a large silver four by four was waiting with a driver. They forced Hugo into the back before pilling inside and tearing away as quickly as possible.
Lincoln and the others got to street level just in time to see them shoot off down the street, smashing their way through barriers and stationary cars. He ran out into the street and over to a parked Humvee with soldiers that had been patrolling the area. By some form of incredible luck, the keys were in the ignition.
"Get in!"
They jumped inside the army vehicle and screeched away from the station.
"Amelia! Do you copy?"
Her voice came over the headset, "Yeah, stations secure!"
"They took Hugo! They're in a silver Land Rover, heading north!" Lincoln yelled as he wildly tried to avoid hitting other cars.
"I'm on my way!"
The cars around them beeped their horns in anger.
"Do not loose them!" Scorpius growled.
"I'm not gonna!"
"You loose them, he's dead!"
"I'm not gonna loose them!" Lincoln yelled.
The dimensions of the Humvee was making it difficult to weave in and out of the others cars that even now, seemed oblivious to what was happening until Lincoln was forced to knock them out of the way.
The Land Rover cut left down Euston Road, heading towards the A5. They could still see Hugo, thrashing around like a wild animal, kicking, punching and probably biting anyone in the back of the car. Suddenly he kicked out one of the windows with his foot causing glass to fly everywhere.
Both vehicles were running every red light and causing startled pedestrians to jump out of the way as they torn down the street.
The car in front suddenly shot across the lanes and cut right, turning onto the A5.
"Amelia, they just turned onto the A5!" Lincoln reported.
"They're heading for the M1!" Lynx shouted.
"What time is it?" Lincoln asked urgently.
"Ten past eleven."
"Shit! The roads will be clear!"
He shifted gears and put his foot down, trying to catch up to them. Sparks exploded off the side of the Humvee as Lincoln scrapped his way past another car.
Just as they turned onto the A5, the back window exploded and that heavy quick pang of bullets hitting the frame echoed around the vehicle. They ducked down as quickly as they could only managing to catch a glimpse of the car behind them and the man hanging out of the passenger window with a machine gun in his hands.
"Where the hell did they come from?!" James yelled.
More bullets struck the Humvee as Lincoln started weaving wildly trying to avoid them.
Scorpius peaked over the back seat. His eyes went wide as he saw a huge eighteen wheeler semi-trailer coming onto the road from a turn off. It simply smashed the tiny cars out of it's way as it joined the pursuing car. He could see the three men in the cab were all armed, including the driver.
"We're in trouble!" Scorpius yelped.
The kidnappers car started to swerve violently and Lincoln could see why. Hugo had somehow broken free from the back seat and appeared to actually be strangling the driver while the others tried desperately to pull him away. Even now, the men in the car ahead of them hadn't managed to get him under control.
"Incoming fire."
They all ducked instinctively before realizing that none of them had actually said anything. Just as bullets hit the car again they realized where that voice had come from.
"Athena?!"
"I'm watching you, do exactly as I say." her voice was coming through the sat-nav box on the dash board. "Albus is on his way, he'll be there in...five minutes."
Lincoln realized that she must have somehow hooked into the traffic cameras. She could have probably used a satellite if the cloud cover wasn't so dense.
"Can you shut their vehicles down?" Scorpius called out.
"No, they don't have any receivers in their cars."
They had obviously been expecting her to join this fight at some point.
"Oh no!" Lynx gasped.
Despite the fact that they were still be shot at, they stared with horror as Hugo was now hanging out of the open back door on the left side while grappling with one of the men. If he even got close to another car on the road it would take his head off.
Then something even worse happened.
Suddenly Hugo, the man and the entire door left the car behind. They had crashed down onto the road and where rolling forwards uncontrollably. Lincoln swerved in a desperate bid not to hit Hugo but he didn't even get the chance.
A loud roar signaled the arrival of a black bullet that was actually Amelia on a stolen motorbike. She shot past them with her arm outstretched and hooked Hugo. She spun and flung him onto the bike behind her as if he were as light a Chihuahua. Hugo seemed heavily dazed but not badly injured.
Amelia took off chasing the car that had taken Hugo. She outstretched her other arm but this time with a wand in it.
"Get in the right lane!" Athena's voice commanded. Lincoln obeyed.
As soon as she was along side the car, Amelia shot out a bolt of red light at the front wheel axle. The car buckled and flipped sending it into a violent death roll, shedding parts all over the road. Athena had been correct, the out of control mass first rolled into the right lane but then bounced off the divider and fell back into the middle. The Humvee skimmed passed it and carried on.
Up ahead of them, a group of traffic lights suddenly turned from red to green. Athena didn't want to cause some kind of pile up just to stop them.
There was an almighty smash from behind them as the eighteen wheeler blasted it's way through the wreckage of the other car.
Amelia drifted the bike into the right lane just as they were coming up to a bridge. She suddenly jumped over the divider into the on coming traffic on the other side of the street. Smoke bellowed from her back wheel as she spun the bike around and shot off in the opposite direction.
The Humvee gave a huge lurch as the semi hit them in the back. Bullets ricocheted off the metal as the second car came up along side them. There was another lurch but this one hadn't come from the truck, it was from the tire that they had just shot out.
Lincoln struggled to keep control of the wheel as the busted tire started to drag them to the right. The truck came in again at ramming speed and struck the back of the Humvee. Then it suddenly dropped back and wobbled slightly.
They looked behind them to see Amelia coming up behind the trailer blasting out wheels as she did. This time the driver stuck his head out the window and let an Uzi go wild while pointed at her. She put up a shield in front of her causing the bullets to bounce off while another man took over driver inside the cab.
"Lynx, can you drive?!" Lincoln asked suddenly.
"A little, I don't have my license yet!" she said quickly and nervously.
"Climb into the drivers seat!"
"What?! Where the hell are you going?!" she shrieked.
"I'm stepping outside!" he said simply, making it sound like he was going for a coffee.
Lynx awkwardly shuffled around putting her legs through first then sliding into Lincolns lap.
"Ready?"
"Yeah." she didn't sound ready.
Lincoln phased and simply shot through the car like smoke caught in a breeze. James and Scorpius watched as the wispy form suddenly rematerialized. Lincoln was now latching onto the huge grill of the eighteen wheeler like a human hood ornament.
Amelia accelerated past the trailer and up to the car which was getting dangerously close to the Humvee. It got to about a foot from the windows just as one of the men leaned out with a shot gun in his hand, aim at Lynx's head.
"Lynx!" James shouted as he raised his weapon.
Rapid fire erupted inside the Humvee causing Lynx to scream and loose control.
James had sprayed the other car with bullets just as the man had blown out the windscreen of the Humvee. The car bounced off the larger army vehicle and flipped off the divider and smashed back into the road.
At the same time, Lincoln jammed his weapon against the windscreen of the truck and let it rip.
Amelia and Hugo dived off the motorbike just seconds before it rammed straight into the mangled car. They rolled along the street before stopping and looking up to see the monstrous metal trailer skidding out of control and heading straight for them.
Hugo suddenly lunched himself at Amelia, throwing her out the way and at the same time, sent a stunner straight at the front tire of the cab. The speed, weight and busted tire caused the rig to collapse, followed quickly by the links that connected the twenty five tonne trailer to the back of it.
Hugo and Amelia hit the deck and Lincoln phased as the enormous mass hit the ground and bounced over them, missing them by inches.
Hugo wheeled around and looked up just in time to watch in suspended horror as the out of the control steel container flipped and rolled it's way straight towards the Humvee that had struck the divider up ahead and wasn't moving.
"GET OUT OF THERE!" he screamed praying that he'd seem them run to safety.
The giant metal boulder continued to cascade towards the Humvee with such momentum that it almost seemed alive.
Hugo could do nothing but squeeze his eyes shut and grit his teeth.
Then, what sounded like the worlds biggest gong struck all around him. He couldn't bare to look. He couldn't even think about who might have been inside that Humvee. How could he have been so stupid as to let himself get taken?
This was his fault.
"What do you people do when I'm not around?"
That voice made him open his eyes wider than ever before. Albus was standing only a few feet away from him with his arm out stretched at the trailer which had frozen in mid air just in front of the Humvee. He was certainly good a making a well timed entrance.
"You all right Hugo?" he asked quickly.
"What?" Hugo didn't seem to know what 'all right' was at that moment. He was shaking uncontrollably and was pale white.
Albus pointed to his own forehead.
Hugo reached up and stroked his brow and when his hand came back into view it was covered in blood. He had pretty impressive gash across his left eye brow, a slice on his nose and nasty graze on his cheek. His arms had taken similar punishment through this but he couldn't seem to feel pain at that moment. He was still in shock.
Very carefully, Albus lowered the trailer back to the ground then let his arm relax.
"Amelia, you okay?"
Amelia simply nodded her head silently and gave a very tired thumbs up.
"Where's Aurora?"
"Back at the station, she fine. The place was clear when I left." she sounded exhausted.
Albus charged over to the Humvee as Lincoln walked up behind his sister and wrapped his arms around her. They had been in some seriously tight spots before but it was obvious that it never got any easier. They didn't say anything to each other. Just nodded that they were both okay. She stood up and walked over to Hugo.
For a second she examined the cut on his eye brow then, without warning, she jerked him closer to her, pressed her lips against his and gave his one hell of a kiss. Lincoln couldn't help but chuckle while Hugo seemed to dazed to do anything but go along with it. After a few seconds she pulled away from him.
"You earned that." she stated before walking off towards the Humvee.
Hugo seemed even more shocked than before but now he had an oddly little crooked grin on his face. He actually looked like he'd just won a major drunken punch up. Then his knees turned to jelly and he collapsed.
"You all right there Hugo?" Lincoln asked, still finding it funny.
"Good...I'm good..." Hugo mumbled from the floor.
Albus simply ripped the door off the Humvee to look inside. James and Scorpius were both unconscious but okay. Lynx however was still gripping the steering wheel for dear life and seemed frozen in a kind of trance. She didn't seem to realized that it was over.
"Lynx...Lynx...LYNX!" the last one snapped her out of it.
"Yeah?" she whispered.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
He took her word for it. It would probably hit her a bit later and cause her to simply pass out from shock. Amelia and Albus carefully pulled Scorpius and James out of the Humvee and laid them down on the road. It was safe since the normal traffic had stopped about five hundred yards back when they seen the first wreck.
It only took a few seconds to revive them both.
Scorpius seemed to follow suite with Lynx and was acting so shocked that he was sure whether the entire car chase had actually just happened. James on the other hand, was waring the thousand yard stare with his mouth open. Albus crouched next to him.
"I killed him." he breathed.
"It was you or him James. It's okay." he rubbed the back of his brothers neck trying to show him that it wasn't his fault. James said nothing.
"Anybody else hear that?" Amelia asked absently.
She walked over the the smashed up trailer that was resting on it's side in the middle of the road. No one else seemed to have noticed the strange banging noise coming from inside. Then again, there were dozens of sirens in the distance that were only coming closer. She undid the latch that had miraculously managed to stay sealed through the whole thing and opened the door.
There was a man inside, blooded from being thrown all over the place with his mouth, hands and feet bound with tape. She grabbed him by his leg and dragged him out as carefully as possible. She gave him a quite look over to see if he had broken anything starting with his legs then moving up. She stopped when she got to his face.
Suddenly her eyes burned with rage. She was staring at the face she had wanted to see again for so many years.
Without hesitating she pulled her wand and pointed it straight at his heart.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The flash of emerald light collided with the trailer and bounced off into the air. Albus had grabbed her arm at the last second causing her to miss her target.
Amelia hissed at him and struggled to try again.
"Amelia!" Albus roared.
"This piece of shit killed my father!" she screamed.
"And he will pay for that! But I have a lot of questions that need answers!" he meant every word. He had no right to stop her from getting her vengeance, especially after how he'd gone about getting his, but there were much bigger issues at stake at that moment, "go help the others," he ordered.
Amelia shot a fierce and cold look at Albus before storming away. Albus turned and crouched next to the man with an evil grin on his face.
"Funny we keep running into each other, eh Mathis?"
The Cleric grunted something that sounded like: "Ahh shit!"