The Reapers of Shan Shen
Chapter 9-The Commander
Harry groaned as he was roughly thrown to the ground, a sharp kick to the gut knocking the air from his lungs. Li soon joined him on the floor, her face shoved uncaringly into the dirt.
Harry observed as seven armed soldiers moved about the small chamber they had been dragged into, setting up equipment and examining weapons. In any other situation, this fact would be met with resounding relief, but in light of current circumstances that was not to be. After all, when being chased by supernatural serial killers from another world, it didn't help that those in authority wanted you dead as well.
Not that they aren't taking their sweet time doing it. Harry grumbled internally, hissing as another sharp kick impacted his stomach. His first adventure through time and space was just going swell.
Harry was pulled from his musings as a heavy boot came down with a crunch inches from his face. Looking up, he was met with the massive, intimidating form of a heavily muscled soldier, looking down at him with a hard expression.
"Well, hello there, Short Round. Get separated from Doctor Jones?"
The brute grimaced, taking quick aim of Harry's face before punching him hard on the nose. The punch filled the air with a loud crack as Harry's skull banged against the ground. Harry was stunned by the blow for a few moments, twisting his jaw and now bleeding nose before releasing an indignant, "Ow!"
This seemed to egg the brute on, and Li began to cry when she realized the beast of a man was going to hit him again.
"That's enough!"
The brute paused and looked up, saluting as he noticed the imposing man standing behind them with a calculating look in his eyes. He was a tall man, aged and greying, but no less strong in body and carrying an air that demanded respect.
The soldier that had kicked Harry saluted the man and backed away, going to help the other soldiers in their tasks. The man watched him go, sighing through his nose before staring at the two children for a moment as he spoke.
"Hello, my name is Commander Chi Hong of the People's Security Force," The man offered as he sat down on an equipment case before the two children, "There, are our guests comfortable, hmm?"
"Smashing." Came a grumbled response. The Commander chuckled lightly.
"I'm sure, and I must say you've chosen an interesting place to go about doing that. Not to mention the toys you play with." He spoke casually, lifting up the perception device Harry had been using to pass as an adult, "Children your age getting into this amount of trouble? Tell me, why are you here?"
The question was met with silence.
"You know the usual point of an interrogation is for one person to ask questions and the other to answer," Hong stated off-handedly. When Harry still refused to answer, he was rewarded with a strong slap across the face.
"Of course, if this is more to your liking..." The man left the sentence hanging with an uncaring shrug of his shoulders. He raised his palm to strike again, but Harry's voice stayed his hand.
"I know what the shamans did," Harry stated, glancing up at the man through the fringes of his auburn hair.
The Commander lowered his hand, a brow raised in question. Harry nodded toward the adjacent wall, where the hieroglyphs told of the human sacrifices practiced by the magical natives of the planet. Getting up, Commander Hong stepped forward and studied the image for himself, taking a moment to appreciate the work put into it before speaking.
"This painting says it all, doesn't it?" Hong whispered, his eyes seeming far away as he studied the lines on the wall, "There was a time our kind never would have thought of committing the crimes forced upon us. And yet here we are."
"I'm sorry." Harry offered genuinely while Li looked between the two in confusion.
"I don't understand." She said, leaving the unspoken question hanging in the air.
"The shamans murdered thousands to enhance their powers, so your government retaliated by wiping them out. Now they're hunting down people like you to prevent it from happening again." Li stared at Harry with a horrified expression. Shaking his head he looked up at the Commander pleading, "But you don't have to do that! The old Orders are gone, their knowledge lost, you've seen to that! It's not the place of the young to pay for the sins of the elders."
"And what about tomorrow? What about in the years to come that these children grow to be even worse than those who came before? No." Hong shook his head definitely, conviction ringing in his voice. "I am thinking of the good of the community, the populous, the world. Compared to that, what is the death of a few?"
"And what of the people? What will they think of their government condoning genocide?" Harry questioned.
"If they knew the things your kind has done they'd call us heroes. But as it is…" Commander Hong paused, searching for the right words to say, "The people should not know such things exist. They shouldn't have to share in this burden. Only those who it is necessary to inform, and even then, they will have to live with what they must do."
There was a moment of silence between the two.
"And does that include the Shadow Proclamation? I'm sure they'd be interested in what you're doing here, seeing as this violates article 16 that prohibits the extermination of a species with 'unique' abilities without justifiable cause."
"I think their manipulation of our society, conspiring to make themselves our slavemasters counts as justifiable." The Commander pointed out.
"And does that include children, hmm? How can you justify the murder of children?" Harry asked with a slight edge to his voice, growing angry with the man.
"I justify it because it is right." The Commander replied simply.
"I fail to see how the murder of children benefits anyone." Harry bit out, having lost all sympathy he had for the man and his convictions.
"Of course not. You're the one who's going to die." With that he stood, turning to the nearest soldier that wasn't currently occupied with equipment. "Dispose of them."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Harry spoke up, causing the two men to turn to him in question.
"Oh? And why is that?" Hong asked, his eyebrow quirked into his hairline in amusement.
"The virus, of course."
All humor left the Commander's eyes in an instant, stepping forward menacingly, "What?" He bit out.
Harry laughed, "Did you think that the sickness plaguing the city a coincidence? Did you think the deaths in any way natural? Heavens no, we needed to test it first to learn if there were any faults when interacting with the body's natural defenses."
"And why is that relevant?"
The boy's cruel smile grew wider as he took in the officer's thinly veiled anxiety. "Because beneath this monastery lies a device that we have developed that will disperse a plague upon this world that will finally rid the shamans of your kind, once and for all."
The Commander frowned. "Then why tell me?"
"The runic arrays haven't been configured. It won't discriminate between us and you. I may not like you, but I won't risk my kind just to be rid of you and the other muggle filth."
Li's eyes widened at the acid dripping in Harry's voice, quickly snapping her attention to the Commander to see what his response would be. The officer narrowed his eyes dangerously, "You're lying."
"Do you want to take that risk?" Harry asked, a smirk rising from his bloody lips, "The clock is ticking. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock."
The Commander's demeanor shifted instantly. With reflexes quicker than they could react to, he backhanded Harry across the face, the sound of flesh against flesh echoing throughout the chamber. The young timelord took a moment to register what happened, turning to glare defiantly at the man as he spat out a glob of blood and spittle, even as the bruise on his cheek healed before the Commander's eyes.
"Feel better?"
-/ↀ\-
Harry and Li led the Commander and his men through the twisting maze of the crypt, motivated by the guns pointed directly at their backs. The fact that there was no doubt in their minds that the soldiers wouldn't hesitate to gun down a pair of children settled heavily upon their minds. That they might even enjoy doing it didn't help to ease them, either. However, Harry was not idle.
While they were forced through the catacombs, Harry kept his eyes focused on the walls, spending every crucial moment to study and understand the story of the shaman people. As they traversed deeper and deeper, the events surrounding the emergence of the Reapers became clearer, and with it, he began to formulate a solution to deal with them.
It was as they were reaching a spiral staircase leading deeper underground that Harry stumbled upon a reference to a 'tear of light', with further study suggesting that it was in fact a rip in the fabric of space-time. It seemed that in their arrogance, the shamans had dabbled in human sacrifice in order to experiment with what the Time Lords had mastered billions of years before. Only, instead of opening a pathway to travel the flow of time, they had released something from outside this dimensional plane.
It was then that Harry began to plan, his highly evolved brain working far beyond what would have been possible if he were still human. He concluded that the solution to their problem concerning the genocidal locals could be solved simply enough. The Reapers, not so much. He had lied quite convincingly to leer them into what he hoped would be an effective trap, but it was troubling him on how to deal with the Tear.
Harry knew for a fact from the hieroglyphs that the fissure itself had been created by an arithmetic sequence etched into the walls of the chamber that it resided in. Apparently, the designer of the sequence had died along with several others when they first opened the tear. If there was one language he could unravel and bend to his will no matter the situation, it was the language of numbers, and if he could just gain a few minutes to study and understand the pattern, he could easily find a way to close the fissure for good.
However, temporal fissures were always tricky things to deal with, even more so seeing as this one seemed to be the result of magical interference. What's worse, he didn't know the first thing about ritual magic or runic configuration. If he was to reverse what the shamans had done, he needed to study the sequence thoroughly, and if it turned out to be a bust he would have to either learn on the fly or just wing it.
Harry took a moment to look between a series of tunnels that appeared in their path, making it seem as though he were determining which way to go next, taking discrete glances back at the soldiers following close behind. There wasn't much to note about their equipment, as it was the standard-issued stuff that was typical of this period. However, there was one thing that caught his eye. Hiding a smirk he looked over to Li, he was standing as close to him as she could, clearly shaken up by their previous and current treatment.
"Li, I have a plan," Harry whispered, keeping his voice low so as to not be overheard by the others.
"What?" The girl said, startled by his address, noticing that his injuries earned from the brute soldier and the Commander had healed to the point that they were now nonexistent.
"Shhh!" Harry hissed, glancing back quickly, sighing in relief that the soldiers still hadn't noticed them speaking. "I've been studying the wall hieroglyphs. I think I know how to fix this whole mess, but I need you to do exactly what I tell you. Can you do that?"
Li hesitated, fearing that whatever mad scheme the boy had come up with would get them killed. However, seeing as they were probably going to be killed anyway, she found herself nodding her head, deciding a gamble was better than nothing.
Harry smiled and nodded his head, turning back he pointed to one of the soldiers, "You! Come up here!"
"Why should I?" The grunt sneered, glaring at the timelord with contempt.
"I need a light to see. There's a junction of tunnels and I need to be able to read the hieroglyphs carefully or we'll all get lost."
The young soldier frowned and looked to the Commander, who after a moment nodded his head and gestured him to go ahead. The young man grunted but obeyed, stepping forward as requested.
When he reached Harry, the boy held out his hand expectantly, raising an eyebrow in challenge when the soldier looked as though he was about to refuse. Growling, he reached into his duffle bag and handed the flashlight to Harry, smirking when the metal device smacked painfully into the boy's hands.
"Thank you." Harry bit out sarcastically, glaring at the man before fiddling with the device to turn it on. He made a show of looking down the tunnels, dispite already knowing which way they needed to go. When he figured that he had stalled long enough, he turned the flashlight off.
"Right this should be the way." Nodding to himself, Harry turned to hand the flashlight back when his foot snagged on a stone, stumbling against the soldier causing them both to fall to the floor.
"Sorry!" Harry offered quickly, nervously brushing the soldier off of dirt as the man angrily hoisted himself off the ground.
"Get off me, you damn fool!" The soldier shouted angrily as he shoved the redhead to the side, glaring at him with hate before he turned around and stocked off.
"And a howdo-youdo to you as well," Harry muttered, sending a smirk toward Li whose eyes widened at the belt of grenades he held discreetly in front of himself, keeping it out of sight of the Commander and his men.
"Well, let's get a move on, shall we?" Harry said loud enough for the others to hear though his eyes were gazing into Li's pointedly. After a moment and a sudden way of determination, the girl nodded to him.
"Spleaded." Harry's smile grew mischievous as put his hand on her arm and walked forward, entering the tunnel with a grenade held firmly in his grasp.
"When I press the detonator, run." He muttered into her ear, his eyes picking an alcove in the wall of the tunnel that was structurally weaker than the rest, perfect to place the explosive.
Harry guided them both through and slowed their pace, waiting for the Commander and his men to enter with them. With any luck, he might be able to take them out in the process. As the last soldier walked through the tunnel's mouth, the two children had passed the alcove, where Harry pressed the detonator and threw the grenade inside.
"Move!" He shouted, rushing forward as Li quickly followed behind. The Commander angrily shouted for his men to chase after them, only to cry out in surprise when, just as the first two soldiers had rushed forward after their prisoners, the wall exploded in dirt and debris.
The whole tunnel shook from the explosion, rippling throughout the endless caverns with a loud rumbling echo. Harry and Li ran as fast as they could, not daring to stop as the roof of the tunnel began to cave in, quickly collapsing toward them. In a panic and a strange sense of curiosity, Li began to turn to look behind her.
"Run! Don't look back! Just run!" Harry screamed at her, seeing the tunnel opening up ahead. Li snapped her attention back toward what was in front of her, both kids sprinting as the tunnel's collapse began to snap at their heels.
"AHH!" Harry and Li cried out together as they jumped the final distance, rolling forward as dust and rocks flew out of the tunnel exit behind them. Both children fell to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of them, landing on their stomachs with a resounding Oof!
As the dust settled around them, Harry opened his eyes and looked around, sighing that his plan had worked. The tunnel had opened up into a cavern lit by bioluminescent moss that grew on the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, basking them in soft colors of orange, blue, and green. Further ahead the cave broke off into several man-made passageways carved into the rock.
Li sturred beside him, growling as she rolled over.
"In the future, remind me to ignore your plans, seeing as they almost got us killed!" Li bit out angrily, clearly her normally quiet demeanor gone after what they had just experienced.
"You didn't voice any objection before when you saw me holding the grenades." Harry pointed out.
"I thought you were going to threaten them, not try to blow us up!" Li snapped.
"It got us away from Hong and his men, didn't it?" Harry offered in return, holding out his hand for Li to hold onto. Huffing, the girl accepted his help, rising up to stand and dust herself off before looking around.
"So, what now?" Li asked, taking a moment to study her new surroundings.
"We stick to what we were doing before our little… interruption. Follow the walls and find the center then look for the others. Then we can figure out what to do next." Harry nodded to one of the archways up ahead, "This way.
And so the two children, both alien to ourselves yet so much like us, marched into the deep unknown, ready to face whatever might await them. One went with a hesitant drive to move forward, wanting to face what had stolen what remained of her family from her. The other, who had never known family, marched on longing to be reunited with the closest thing to that he had ever found, the only person he had ever met to think of him as an equal. His first friend.
He just hoped that she was alright. And God help this pathetic planet if she wasn't.
-/ↀ\-
Author's Note: Soooo, new chapter! Yay! I know in the update I said at most this would be out sometime in February, but it started to get so long that I had to split it into two parts. Hopefully, the next chapter won't take forever. Good news is that we're almost at the finish! Even better news is that it won't be the end of the story! I've been getting the plot outline finalized for the sequel, so that will be fun to preview at the end of this.
In other news, I've been debating writing a side-project to the Potter Series. My idea is a Star Wars/Harry Potter crossover where Harry is trained as a jedi by Qui-Gon and grew up alongside Anakin. Seeing as I can't decide if this is a good idea or not, I'm going to put it up to a vote! So leave a comment to let me know what you think.