Prometheus
Chapter 1
Crawford's Premonition
"We are the bringers of fire. We are the source of life. You owe all to us. We are Prometheus. Return to our folds or be burned."
The world was barren. The amber sky and the russet ground crashed together violently at a horizon that was as sharp as a guillotine. An arid wind raced across the dusty earth hurling displaced particles of dirt at anything that stood in its path. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing. At first.
At the farthest edge of the horizon, four faceless figures appeared. They move forward with an unreal speed, faster, faster, until they were but blurs flying towards the center of nowhere.
"Weiss, its Weiss..."
Brad Crawford couldn't move. His feet were rooted to the spot. The air left his lungs and he suddenly forgot how to breathe. Terror pounded in his ears and his mouth was suddenly as dry as the dust beneath his feet. It was like a nightmare...it was a nightmare...
A vision...he thought with a relieved exhalation of breath. Only a vision... Then realization hit him.
"Prometheus has Weiss!?"
The four figures came to an abrupt and seemingly bone-jarring stop a few feet from the shaking American. The figures remained faceless, but Crawford recognized the stances and outlines of the assassin team that he and the rest of Schwartz had fought on several occasions. One, the leader, whom Crawford knew only as Abyssinian, slowly extended a shadowed hand and spoke in a deep, commanding voice.
"Return to us."
Finally gaining control of his legs, Crawford took a quick step back.
"Never."
"You misunderstand."
Brad shook his head violently and retreated a few more steps. He struggled to keep the fear out of his voice and yelled, "I understand perfectly! I'm not going back! Ever!"
"You do not have a choice."
Crawford turned to make a mad dash for freedom, only to find his way already blocked by two of the Weiss members. He glanced over his shoulder at the faceless figure of Abyssinian and desperately tried to push past the two shadows. Suddenly, a powerful shock of psychic energy burst through his body, numbing all of his nerves and causing his sight to blacken. All of the strength in his legs left him, and he slowly sank to his knees. A sudden wind seemed to pluck his breath from his throat and he helplessly gasped for air.
"Find the others. If they do not come willingly, take appropriate action."
The three faceless assassins nodded silently and sped off in three separate directions. Only the leader, Abyssinian, remained. He calmly studied the incapacitated Crawford and the shadows on his face shifted into a cold, sinister grin.
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Bradley Crawford jerked awake, panting, sweaty, and terrified.
:Schuldich...:
No answer.
:Schuldich.:
:Go 'way, I'm sleepin'.:
Crawford's thoughts were tinged with panic.
:Schuldich!:
Dammit! Schuldich thought as he reluctantly pulled himself from sleep. He's had himself one whopper of a vision, and not a very pleasant one, I'll bet.
Luckily for Schuldich, Crawford rarely had his premonitions at night. However, when he did, they were more often than not mingled with nightmares, and sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between what was vision and what was dream. Not that, in most cases, one was better than the other.
Groaning and tumbling out of his messy bed, Schuldich stretched and made his way out of his cluttered room. Dirty and clean clothes mingled with eachother on the floor while various fashionable accessories crowded any empty space. The off-white walls were bare save for a crookedly tacked poster of a semi-popular German rock band. Schuldich absentmindedly considered turning on the only light in the room, a neon blue lava lamp, then decided against it. If I'm lucky, I'll be back in bed asleep in ten minutes anyway. He yawned and ambled down the hall, his bare feet making a soft slapping noise on the tile floor.
"Damn fucking premonitions in the middle of the night," he grumbled. "Ruins my beauty sleep. He should find someone else to cling to, but no, I have be the only sane adult around..."
:Schuldich...get your German ass in here!:
:Yeah, yeah, keep your pants on.:
Pushing the door open with another yawn, Schuldich peered into the darkened room. Crawford was leaning back against the headboard, one trembling hand covering his eyes while the other clutched the wrinkled blankets as if they were his lifeline to the real world. With his hair mussed from sleep and his glasses missing, he looked more human...he looked...vulnerable.
Schuldich felt a welling of unease. This had been a bad one.
"You can come in, you know."
Here he is, at his weakest moment, with the same cold, sarcastic voice. Schuldich snickered inwardly.
"So?" The young German sneered, "What is it?"
Crawford squinted and groped around the night table in search of his glasses. Placing them on his face and running his fingers through his hair to straighten it, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a moment, studying the blue carpet.
"Well?" Schuldich was getting impatient. There was nothing he wanted more at that moment than to go back to bed. He stifled yet another yawn and attempted a glare.
"We have trouble." Crawford pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand and squeezed his eyes shut as if he suffered from a massive headache. He took a few deep breaths to steady his nerves. Abruptly, he stood and walked stiffly to the small window. Pulling the blinds up with a jerk, he gazed down at the empty street. A lone car drove past, its struggling motor emitting a bored hollow sound that echoed through the many-storied building. Still standing near the door, Schuldich's unease tripled. It was rare, extremely rare, to see his leader acting so disheveled. Closing the blinds again, the American turned back to Schuldich.
"Serious trouble."
"I gathered that," Schuldich muttered, sarcasm edging its way into his voice, "But what, if I may be so forward to ask," he grinned ferally, "exactly is our trouble?"
"It appears that, unless we take immediate action, we will be recaptured by Prometheus."
"What?!" Schuldich felt panic rush through his veins. I'm not going back! Never, I'll die first! His fists clenched and his eyes gained a hunted look. His lips curled back in a feral grimace. "How do we change this? What do we have to do? We have to get out of here! I'll go get Nagi and Farfarello up and ready to go..."
Schuldich turned and headed for the door, escape first and foremost in his mind. Anticipating his move, Crawford reached out and grabbed his arm. He swung him around and looked him in the eye.
"It won't work that way. Not this time."
Schuldich's breathing was harsh and his panic-tinged emerald eyes darted around the room as if he expected Readers to suddenly come pouring out of the walls and rip his soul from his body. Brad gave him a little shake to draw his attention back to him.
"Listen! Calm down. I need you to get it together."
Crawford watched as the young German took a few steady breaths and visibly gained control of his emotions. The look of panic was quickly replaced by a sour, irritated expression. One would think that he was just facing a minor inconvenience, but Crawford knew better. Inside, Schuldich was barely holding on to his sanity. Brad knew, despite his calm exterior, he felt the same way
"So, fearless leader, how do we get out of this one?"
Satisfied that he was back in control, Crawford released Schuldich.
"Go and wake up Nagi and Farfarello," he said, "Tell them to get dressed as fast as possible and meet us in the conference room. We need to go over our options and find a way to fix this mess."
Schuldich nodded, threw Crawford a wise-ass grin, and strode confidently out of the room.
***************************************
The late afternoon sun danced happily over the streets of Tokyo. School had just been let out for the day, and the streets bustled with people of all ages. A mother and her two daughters sat on a bench eating ice cream while a small group of teenage boys loudly argued about a recent soccer game. Down the street, a vendor was selling some of his questionable wares to an unsuspecting pair of young women. A suit clad businessman took a very late lunch on one of the outdoor tables of a small English styled café. He shouted into a cell phone while rifling through some papers in a briefcase. Bicycles darted everywhere, and countless cars bumped and snorted their way through the rush hour traffic.
Standing quietly amid the bustle, Meng Siu watched everything with an almost obsessive interest. This is what he had missed. The people, the energy, the movement. But now, he found them all the more fascinating. His thoughts leaped from mind to mind, sensing every aura, and gauging the HPF level of everyone he saw. In the year and a half he had spent with the Prometheus Foundation, most of that unwillingly, he had been unable to step outside its walls. He knew he had missed the outside world, but until this moment, he had not quite realized just how much he had missed it.
He would not miss it again. He would see an end to the Foundation, if it took every last living fiber in his body.
A loud noise caused Siu to jerk his head around in alarm and tense his muscles. He quickly located the source of the noise, and relaxed. One of the little girls had dropped her ice cream, and was now wailing to her mother. He briefly smiled to himself, but the soft grin was quickly replaced by a nervous expression. He ran a shaking hand through his hair and his fingers twitched in longing for a cigarette. Cigarettes. Another freedom that had been denied him at the Foundation. Not that he smoked regularly, but right now he really needed something to calm his nerves, and alcohol was out of the question.
On a sudden inspiration, Siu walked to the ice cream parlor where earlier he had watched the mother and her two children buy ice cream. Taking out a wallet he had "borrowed" from a rude pedestrian, he bought a double scoop of chocolate ice cream. He walked back to his quiet corner and proceeded to devour the cold treat as quickly as possible.
Yes, he had definitely missed this.
As he licked up his ice cream, his thoughts turned to the night before. He knew the reporter was dead, he had felt his life end as he raced away from certain capture. No doubt the papers were destroyed as well. Siu felt a sudden surge of guilt. He should never have gone to the newsman. Or maybe, he should have met with him in a very public place, where the Readers wouldn't dare to go. It was his fault the man was dead, as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
He finished the cone with an audible crunch, and decided to move on. He couldn't stay in any one place for too long, it would make the job of pinpointing his location all too easy. As he walked briskly down the crowded street, he noticed a group of three schoolgirls giggling over some joke. With a pang, he finally acknowledged the terrible emptiness in his soul. The one that should have been filled with his team members.
He would go back for them. They deserved this as much as him. More, because they were just victims, while he had been as guilty as Sugimoto himself. Yes, he would find a way to free them. Colleen, Yves, and even that jerk Jasiri-ini.
He should never have left them in the first place.
***************************************
"They found us again!?" Nagi's horrified whisper shattered the uncomfortable silence that had followed Crawford's statement that they would have to deal with the Foundation again. The four members of Schwartz, formerly known as the Alpha Quad, had gathered in the room that Crawford had affectionately dubbed "the conference room." In reality, it closely resembled a rec room that had been stripped of its pool table and dart board and had instead been fully equipped with two couches facing eachother over a coffee table and a softly humming computer snuggled against one wall.
Brad sighed and slowly shook his head back and forth.
"They have not found us yet, but I assure you, they will."
"I don't want to run anymore," Nagi said desperately. "I thought they had forgotten about us."
Schuldich chuckled harshly and growled, "Obviously the bastards haven't forgotten, and we have no fucking choice but to run."
Sitting comfortably on the couch, Farfarello ignored the conversation. All of his attention was focused on the knife he was using to slowly whittle the coffee table into a pile of tinder, which, with luck, he would then light on fire. Maybe, if he was really lucky, Crawford would give him some marshmallows to burn over the fire. That would be almost as fun as putting them in the microwave and watching them explode...
"Schuldich."
The telepath snapped his head towards the sound of his name and raised his eyebrows.
Crawford was staring off into space, his look thoughtful. "Is it possible for you to tell me what exactly our good friends Weiss are doing right at this moment?"
"Of course I can, but why the hell-"
"Just do it."
Scowling in irritation, Schuldich plopped down on the couch. He resisted the urge to just read Crawford's thoughts. Brad would know he was doing it and there would be hell to pay. Best to just do what he asked and hope for an explanation afterward. His eyes slowly lost focus and in the following silence, Crawford gazed heavily at concentrating telepath, while Nagi fidgeted nervously and Farfarello calmly carved up the coffee table.
Schuldich's eyes suddenly came in to focus, and he sighed and rubbed his head. Shit. He was going to develop one hell of a headache from that little endeavor. Crawford's irritated voice broke the silence. "Well?"
He stretched languidly and said, "Claw-boy is watching a soccer game, dart-boy is sleeping, katana-boy is feeling depressed over his sister and trying to fall asleep, and wire-boy is at a bar trying to get laid. A very typical Weiss night, if you ask me."
Nagi looked at Crawford with a curious expression on his face. "Why did you want to know about Weiss?"
"Because Prometheus is going to get them. I wanted to make sure that they hadn't gotten them already."
Both Schuldich's and Nagi's eyes widened in surprise, and even Farfarello turned to listen. Brad sighed and tapped his fingers on his leg, a sure sign to the others that he was upset.
"If Prometheus gets Weiss, they will make them into another quad. And, if my vision is right, and they usually are, a Weiss with newly acquired psychic powers will be sent after us with the sole purpose of bringing us back. And if that happens, I don't think we will have a hope to escape."
Brad Crawford pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and closely watched the reactions of his team mates. Farfarello thoughtfully returned to his slow but steady destruction of the coffee table. Nagi looked slightly confused, and also thoughtful. Schuldich looked as if he had eaten something sour. Suddenly, the German slammed his fist against the coffee table.
"I know how to fix this!" he said.
"How?" Nagi asked.
A menacing grin spread across Schuldich's face. "We find Weiss faster than Prometheus," he spat the name, "and before they become a threat, we kill them."
***************************************
To be continued in Chapter 2: Ken's Encounter
So, did you like it? Arg, its shorter than the prologue!! Oh well. Weiss finally shows up in the next chapter. I hope its not too OOC, and I hope you don't mind all of the original characters. '^_^' Anyway, I'm off to work on Chapter 2!