Disclaimer: Kay, Paige, Sate, Jacob, and Curtis are mine.
Black Ice
By Be Boring
Chapter 16: End of the Line
Sate gazed up distastefully at his former home in Terminal City. No one had ever bothered to go near it after his true identity was discovered, as though worried more familiars were hiding inside waiting to attack. As much as he had struggled to make it a comfortable place to live, he could never get it to change from what it really was, a prison. He had found his mission exciting, but after a while it had started to feel like the transgenic stench in the air had him in a chokehold. He wasn't supposed to leave the city, so his only company was the freaks that he had grown to despise. Naturally, the psy-ops gravitated towards him because he wasn't intimidated in the least by the not-so-normal-looking residents of the city. For being a crowd of mind readers, they sure were gullible. This house was the last place he had ever wanted to return to. Still, it was safer than anywhere else at the moment. Who would be able to follow their trail? What would bring anyone to this forsaken scrap of land?
Despite her own pain, Kay noticed Sate's reluctance as he lifted her out of the car, even though she had no idea where they were. Every muscle in his torso was tensed against her side and his footsteps were much slower than usual. A light breeze played over her face, bringing a welcome relief from the stifling heat inside the car. She felt like she had been sitting in a sauna for a several hours, although she knew that she hadn't been in that car any longer than a half hour. When Sate entered the house, he promptly dumped her onto the couch and started to walk throughout the house, double-checking that all the windows and doors were locked. Even though that wouldn't hold back a familiar or transgenic for long, it would ensure that he would hear them coming for him.
The couch was the softest thing Kay had laid on all week, so it didn't take too long for her to doze off. It also didn't take too long for her exhausted mind to run away with her.
"Sate, please stop!" she shrieked as Paige went whizzing past her head again. She hardly recognized her own daughter anymore, it was only the mournful wails of her tortured child that seemed familiar. She was standing in the very center of a white room that was spattered with blood on every surface, making it look like a butcher's shop. Although Sate wasn't anywhere in sight, she instinctively knew that he was nearby controlling this cruelty. "Sate, let her go, she's just a baby!" Kay cried pitifully as Paige dropped limply to the floor, only to soar back up and collide abruptly with the ceiling for what felt like the millionth time. How long had this been going on? She wasn't sure anymore.
Suddenly, Paige dropped to the floor again, but she didn't come back up. The cold energy that had been present in the air had disappeared now. As Kay stood in horrified silence, Paige's squealing screams rose into the air. Kay started to take a step towards her daughter, but all of a sudden Ben appeared in the far corner of the room. He held up a hand that faced in her direction, although he never actually looked at her, and suddenly her body stopped moving. He walked towards Paige and lifted her gently, paternally into his arms. He smiled sweetly down at her and trailed his fingers over her face, somehow erasing the blood marring her features as he did so. Soon, she looked just as she had the last time Kay had seen her.
"Is she all right?" she asked frantically. "Will she be okay?"
Still not looking in her direction, Ben gave a rather odd smile, as though someone had just whispered a cruel joke in his ear. "Of course she will be," he replied softly, staring lovingly down into Paige's face. "I'll take such good care of her, she'll never have to worry about pain like this again."
"What do you mean, you'll take care of her? Give her to me!"
Finally, he looked up at her, but his cold gaze made her stomach drop straight down to her knees. "No, because if I give her to you, it will only be a matter of time before something like this happens again. Don't you understand why you keep seeing me? You could be seeing anyone else from your past, but you choose to see me, even though you chose to leave me. You still haven't discovered why?"
Kay didn't understand what he was getting at, but she couldn't bring herself to say anything. Instead, she waited impatiently for him to answer his own question. "It's because I symbolize the pain you are capable of causing. You hurt me more than even you know, so you are trying to prevent yourself from doing the same thing to your daughter. Your own subconscious has been trying to tell you that you need to push away your daughter the same way you pushed me away so that you don't cause the same pain to her. You knew before she was even born that her life would be difficult, especially with you and your miserable karma as her sole caregiver, so you've been trying to convince yourself to let her go. Although this hasn't happened to her yet," he gestured around at the blood-splattered room, "you know that it's very possible. At first you tried to scare yourself into stopping the pregnancy by dreaming about a mutilated baby, but after you discovered that I really did have her, you started to dream about this." Once again, he motioned his hand towards one of the white walls. As he watched her face, he held Paige out for her to see clearly. "It's better this way, you have to understand that. Who better to take care of your daughter than me? You ruined me, and you still hold the potential to destroy your child, so why not let us move on with our damaged lives together? It's a sacrifice you'll have to make if you want Paige to be happy."
Kay shook her head furiously. "No, you're wrong. I didn't ruin your life, you chose to let it fall apart! And as for Paige, I realize I wasn't the best mother in the world, but I was doing my best, which I happen to think is pretty considerable. Just because I won't be able to shelter her from every terrible thing doesn't mean she'll be miserable. She could end up being very happy."
"No, you mean you will end up being very happy. Don't you think you're being a little selfish?"
Kay jerked awake as Sate slammed the front door, bringing in some food from the car. That was the first time that one of her dreams hadn't managed to finish, and now she wished she knew how it turned out. It was also the first time that her mind came straight out and told her why it was torturing her like this. As much as she didn't want to admit it, it wasn't really Ben saying those words, those were her own thoughts. Was that really how she secretly felt? Did she think that Paige would be better off without her? No, Paige is my daughter. I have every right to be with her. Don't I? Her subconscious mind was right, she did have an incredible gift for causing pain, and there was plenty of potential for Paige to suffer the worst from it.
"What is that smell?" she heard Sate grumble from another room, which happened to be the kitchen. "My house never smelled like this before."
His house? Are we in Terminal City? As she listened to his refrigerator door open, her stomach rumbled so loudly that she even felt the skin on her belly vibrate. Wow, I didn't realize I was that hungry. Suddenly, she felt something land in her lap. When her fingers finally came into contact with it, she realized it was something enveloped in plastic wrap. "Eat it, it's just a sandwich," Sate snapped, and she clearly heard him take a bite out of his sandwich. "Why do I still smell it?" he complained again, pacing back into the kitchen. Kay had no clue what he was talking about, but she was ravenous. It took her a little while to find an edge of the plastic wrap so she could peal it off, but she eventually finished unwrapping it. Despite its utter lack of flavor, at least it filled up some of the seemingly bottomless pit that was currently taking the role of her stomach.
Alistair, Michael, and Jacob never really knew what hit them when Brin and Zack opened fire on them. It only took a few well-aimed shots to take care of them, and soon their blood was quickly adding to Kay's dried streaks on the floor. Zack knew that one of these men had been the one to stop Sate's attack on Kay, but in the long run he was still a familiar, and therefore still the enemy.
"How many other people do you think are still here?" Brin asked as they entered the main body of the college.
"Not many, that's for sure," he commented as he strained his ears to hear any movement near them. As far as he could tell, no one was around for over a hundred feet. Of course, he wouldn't be making much noise either if he had just overheard the gunfire in the garage. "If anyone is here, we'll have to hurry, because I'm sure they heard our little display of gun power."
They each took a side of the hall and started opening doors, even though they weren't quite sure what they needed to be looking for. Refrigeration equipment? Brin didn't have the slightest idea, but as she opened the eleventh door down the west side of the hall, a loud bang resonated through the air. She cried out in surprise as a bullet tore through her left bicep, immediately resulting in the warmth of her blood pouring down her arm. She fired her gun right back, sending it straight into the kneecap of a man she didn't recognize. He wasn't particularly tall, but he was exceedingly burly with short, dirty blonde hair. As though he hadn't even felt the bullet wound in his knee, he shot back at her, but she was prepared this time. She darted into the room and to the side, out of the path of the bullet. Before he could shoot again, she kicked the gun out of his heavily bandaged hands and backhanded him as hard as she could across the face.
Zack didn't even have time to make it into the room. Before he knew it, Brin was dragging out some strange man by the hair and dropping him on the floor at Zack's feet. He couldn't believe the man had managed to pull the trigger, he looked like his arms and hands were enclosed in styrofoam. Something must have been broken pretty badly in order for him to be bandaged like that. "Okay," he said carefully, looking the other man over, "I think it's fair enough to ask who you are."
"None of your damn business," the man growled in reply, swinging out one of his casts to try and strike Zack in the legs. He jumped deftly over the arm and responded with a kick to the ribs.
"Fine, I don't really need to know. What I do need to know, however, is if there are any surrogates around. So, are there?"
"Once again," the man spat, "that's none of your damn business."
Zack stared grimly down at one of the casts and promptly stomped on it without hesitating to use all of his weight. He smiled with satisfaction when the man screamed in agony, he had succeeded in snapping the cast in half and pounding all of his weight down onto the broken arm. "So, have you changed your mind about what is my business and what isn't?" he asked in a mockingly warm voice. "That must have hurt an awful lot, I'd hate to have to do that to your other arm. Maybe I can break your legs in the same way, wouldn't that be fun?"
Curtis pulled himself into a sitting position, panting brokenly in pain. He held his exposed arm against his body protectively as he instinctively leaned away from the X5s. "The surrogates haven't been brought in yet. They were going to start that stuff next week."
"Where are the eggs?"
"I don't know, I'm not part of that. Look, I'm just a scientist here, and obstetrics wasn't my area of specialty. They never told me where they were storing those genetic travesties waiting to grow."
Zack sighed and immediately put a bullet through the center of Curtis's forehead. "We've found out what we wanted to, there's no surrogates here. That means the only people that might be in the building are familiars, and they're expendable. I say we just blow the place up."
Brin winced as she tightened a self-made tourniquet with her teeth and opposite hand around her upper arm. "Is that your answer to everything?" she asked when she was sure it was on tight enough.
Zack nodded as he walked over and made sure the tourniquet was secure. "It doesn't really tend to leave anything behind, so yeah, I guess I prefer exploding things. I've got enough stuff in my bag, and we can always run back to Logan's house if we need more. I have enough explosives to send this place to Portland."
Once inside Terminal City, Jondy and Ben immediately abandoned the car and set off on foot. They already knew which general direction they were going. "What's the name of the street that the psy-ops lived on again?" Ben asked as they trudged along, passing several buildings that had been deserted in favor of the suddenly accepting outside world.
"I think it was Elm Street," Jondy replied, looking at signs as they passed. "All I know is that it had a tree name, just like the X5s' section, and it was the eastern end of Terminal City. Not many of us came this way, Oak Street is a little closer to the northern end. We generally preferred to leave the psy-ops alone. It shouldn't be too hard to find his place, I don't think any psy-ops are still in this area, so his will be the only one that's occupied. Besides, you'll be able to smell which one they're in."
She was right, he'd be able to scent out the house easily. The perfume of Kay's heat cycle grew stronger with every step, even with the car exhaust that it had blended with. He knew now that it was only a matter of time before they found Kay. The only part he didn't like was that Jondy would have to carry her all the way back to the car. He couldn't very well carry her, otherwise Jondy would have a whole other job on her hands. They also couldn't drive the car here because Sate would hear that coming before they were halfway to him. With the city so empty, there were hardly any sounds. A car would stick out almost embarrassingly.
It seemed to take forever to reach Elm Street, but with Ben following his nose, it was an easy enough undertaking. Jondy's eyes swept up the street and suddenly, for no apparent reason, she chuckled. "Do you think something about this is funny?" Ben asked curiously as he stared down at his grinning sister.
"Well, it's not really funny, but do you suppose he lives in that one?" She pointed to a house at the end of the street, where the address on the side clearly read 666. Ben smirked at the unoriginality of the concept.
"The least he could have done was give us a challenge," he observed quietly, smiling slightly in spite of himself. "Okay, let's get this over with."
They approached the house quietly, moving around it to see which room Sate was in. It was somewhat difficult to see through the red glass of Sate's windows, but they eventually found him in what appeared to be the kitchen. He was unpacking things from a cooler and moving them to the refrigerator. "Okay," Ben whispered as they ducked down below the window, "you're going to go around and find where Kay is. Situate yourself as close to her as you can manage, and then we'll make our move. My aim has been off since I was shot, so I can't guarantee I'll kill him with the first shot. I may end up fighting him, but I don't want you to come back for me. Just take Kay and get out of here."
Jondy didn't like the thought of leaving him alone with Sate, but she didn't have much choice. She just wished Zack and Brin would call to find out where they were so they could help. She would feel so much better if Zack and Brin were helping Ben out. Reluctantly following Ben's orders, she circled the house until she spotted Kay in the living room, then moved to the closest window. She gave one sharp whistle to signal that she was ready, and then the attack was on.
Sate had heard the whistle, but he didn't have time to gather himself before a bullet drove into his left shoulder. It wasn't that he had moved to avoid Ben, it was more the fact that Ben hadn't appreciated just how tall he was until he actually fired. Sate whipped back around and shattered the window with his arm as he grabbed Ben around the neck and pulled him in. He glared at him suspiciously as he dropped him to the floor. He knew him from somewhere, but he couldn't place him. Ben really didn't give him much time, instead he kicked out and struck Sate in the shin, resulting in a loud crack and Sate joining him on the floor. Sate's eyes sent Ben sliding backwards across the floor, which gave him time to look into the living room. His attacker was a transgenic, which clearly meant that he wasn't the real objective here.
Kay jumped when she heard a window near her head smash apart. It didn't quite smother the sound of the gunshot, but at least that sounded like it came from the kitchen. Suddenly, a hand was on her shoulder pulling her up into a sitting position. "Who are you?" she asked quickly.
Jondy hesitated and waved her hand in front of Kay's face. "Are you blind?" she asked in shock.
"Jondy?"
"Yeah, it's me. Come on, I don't think Ben killed Sate. We've got to get moving."
Kay wrapped an arm around Jondy's shoulder as she hoisted her up, but suddenly both women went flying into the nearest wall. Kay grunted in pain as her head bounced off the wall. That was the last thing she needed right now. Jondy didn't have much choice but to let go of Kay as she started to slide again. Sate wasn't aiming to add Kay to this, it was just the fact that Jondy had been holding onto her, but it was obvious that Kay couldn't handle much more violence. The small of her back connected forcefully with the doorknob as he sent her into the door. She gasped in pain and pushed herself away from the door right away, only to be shoved back into it. Sate pushed himself to his feet and ran into the living room. He didn't have much time before Ben was up again, and he knew the X5 was considerably faster than him. Jondy struggled to pull herself away from the door, but she couldn't move any more than an inch. Sate came to a halt just in front of her, glowering down into her face.
"I don't really appreciate uninvited guests," he growled, grabbing her hair in one hand and pulling her up to his eye level, which meant her feet were dangling about a foot and a half above the ground.
"Really? Well, I don't exactly appreciate having my personal space invaded by an inbred freak of nature," she spat back, throwing out her leg while his eyes weren't holding it still and driving her knee into his stomach. He didn't even react, he simply threw her into Kay, who had managed to stay standing after her collision with the wall, but now was forced to drop back to the ground.
Everyone jumped as Ben fired again from the entranceway to the kitchen, this time hitting Sate in the other shoulder. Sate rolled his eyes and dragged the gun out of Ben's hands without moving a muscle. "Why do you insist on irritating me?" he snapped in frustration. "The least you could do is kill me the first time."
As Ben ran forward, Jondy picked Kay up awkwardly and headed for the kitchen. She just started to feel the pull of Sate's eyes when she turned the corner. She sighed with relief as she braced Kay against a counter and opened the back door. She hated it when Sate used his telekinesis on her. It was the strangest thing she had ever experienced. Kay listened to her open the door, but she still didn't feel quite secure. She could hear Ben still fighting with Sate in the other room, and if she had to guess, she would say that Ben was losing. Her fingers slid over the drawers behind her until they connected with a handle. She pulled it open and dug around inside, cringing slightly when her hand brushed roughly against a knife. She wrapped her fingers around the handle and pulled it out, feeling slightly safer with the cool blade resting against her back.
Just as Jondy carried Kay around the side of the house, Ben came flying out the same window that she had gone in through. She had to stop short to avoid running into him. She didn't even have time to start moving again before Sate grabbed her from behind, pinning her against him as he used one arm to push Kay out of hers. "Nice try," he murmured next to her ear, just before he threw her into the side of his house. Ben was still lying on his back, struggling to catch his breath and regain his bearings, so Sate didn't even come across any interference as he picked Kay up and took off down the street. He sidestepped into an alley so he could readjust Kay's weight on his shoulder. "Maybe I should find wherever they came from so I can pick up your daughter. That man back there is the one taking care of her, isn't he? Well, who's watching her now?"
Kay gritted her teeth and slipped the knife out of her sleeve. He couldn't see anything she was doing because the top half of her body was behind his back, so he never had a chance to prepare himself for when she plunged the blade in between his ribs. Taken completely by surprise, he stumbled and dropped her on the ground, reaching behind his back for the knife. Kay knew she must have punctured one of his lungs, judging by his suddenly raspy breath. With the sudden rush of having the upper hand, she shakily pushed herself to her feet and reached out in his direction, latching firmly onto his arm when it bumped into her hands. He tried to brush her off absent-mindedly, but her fingers had already found the handle of the knife again. She jumped up and wrapped her arms around his neck, fastening herself firmly to his back, and reached in front of him to drive the knife into his chest. He threw his weight backwards, crushing her against the side of another house, but it didn't slow her down. As though she was doing it against her will, she continuously pulled the knife out and pushed it back in as fast as she could, which wasn't very impressive currently, but it was doing damage all the same. Sate managed to block a lot of her attacks, but that first, unexpected stab had done enough damage to prevent him from simply tossing her aside, as he normally would have done.
It seemed to take forever before Kay felt him collapse beneath her, and by then she was almost completely winded. She couldn't believe she had actually had the strength for that, but the energy that had rushed through her was now rapidly draining away. She rolled away from him wearily, smiling in relief as she heard his raspy breathing finally come to an end. As her exhaustion finally took over, she found comfort in the thought that this whole nightmare might be over now.
Jondy groaned as she headed towards Ben, who still hadn't moved from his spot on the ground. She hadn't expected anything of that magnitude when she came here. Ben was supposed to be the one doing all the fighting right now, not her. She kneeled down next to him and tilted his head to the side gently, cringing when she saw the deep gash across his temple. She hadn't noticed all the blood before, but now she could see why he hadn't gotten up right away. "Can you get up?" she asked nervously, her stomach tightening in panic as blood gushed out of the wound.
"I don't know, I'm not sure I should do anything physical until we get this to stop bleeding," he replied blearily. Sate had banged his head off a few of the counters in the kitchen, so his migraine had returned in full force. Every little movement, flash of light, and sound made him feel like someone was pounding a rock against the side of his head. It was going to take him a while to recover from this fight.
Suddenly, Zack's car pulled up outside Sate's house, followed closely by Max's and Alec's motorcycles. Jondy smiled in relief when Alec leapt off his motorcycle and ran towards her, pulling her tightly against him the moment he reached her. "Did you really have to go out on a rescue mission the moment that I wasn't around to watch over you?"
She smiled against his chest, thankful for the warm stability it offered. "I don't need you to watch over me, I can do just fine on my own." She leaned back and looked up at him curiously. "How did you know we were here?"
Zack slowed near them as he headed for Ben. "The same way you guys got here, we followed our noses. Brin and I went back to Logan's house to pick up some explosives, and it turned out that Max and Alec were waiting for us. Max had called to find out how our scouting mission went and became worried when no one answered. They both knew what we must have done, so they came back and waited around for us. They helped us set up the charges, I'm really surprised you didn't hear that college blow sky high."
"I don't think we could have heard much with all the banging going on in that house."
Zack glanced at the house, taking in all the broken glass around it. "What happened here? Did you get Kay?"
Jondy shook her head. "Sate ran off with her again. They were on foot, so I don't know how far he really could have gotten, but he is dead set on keeping her."
Max had just swung her leg off her motorcycle, but as soon as she heard Jondy's words, she slid back on. "Well then, there's no way he can outrun me on this. Anyone coming with me?"
Brin climbed out of the car and headed for her. "Yeah, I'll come. We can't let any guys go, and as long as I can get a clear shot, Sate doesn't really stand a chance." She fingered the gun at her hip threateningly. She was only waiting for another opportunity to use it again. Her trigger hand was still just fine, and absolutely nothing was wrong with her aim. She jumped onto Alec's motorcycle and called out, "Hey, you don't mind if I use this, do you?"
He turned back to her and rolled his eyes, always keeping one protective hand on Jondy. "Do I have a choice?" he replied. She smiled and started it up, taking off after Max. The strange thing was that they hadn't even been driving for thirty seconds when Max squealed to a stop. She ran for a nearby alley and disappeared inside as Brin stopped Alec's motorcycle and got off. Before she even had a chance to reach the alley, Max came back out with an unconscious Kay in her arms. Brin gasped in horror and clapped a hand over her mouth in shock. Although Jondy had told her what Sate had done in the garage, she couldn't have prepared herself for the way her sister looked right now. It looked as though Kay had undergone the ultimate beating.
"Why does she look like this?" Max asked in a panic. "What happened? You only told me that Sate had kidnapped her from the familiars, you never mentioned anything about this."
"That's the reason we actually started the rescue mission. It wasn't until we showed up at the college to get her out of there that we discovered Sate had taken her. Sate really let loose on her, you would never believe how much blood was in that garage by the time he was through with her. Hey, if you found her in there, then where is he?"
Max glanced uncomfortably back into the alley. "Well, he's in there too, but it looks like Kay got her hands on a knife. She took care of him for us. It must have completely worn her out, because I think all she's doing right now is sleeping. It's a pretty deep sleep, but I think that's all she's doing. Come on, let's get her back to the car."
Ben had already been situated comfortably in the front seat of the car when Max and Brin came back. The scent of Kay's heat cycle immediately assaulted him when they opened the back door, but it was pushed completely out of his mind when Max shut the door again and he turned to see Kay flopped out over the back seat. How could anyone look like that and still be alive? She looked as though she had gone through a paper shredder, or at least her clothes had. It didn't make much difference though, her flesh was too torn up to be revealing. She made a faint, hardly audible noise in the back of her throat and twisted sharply on the seat. Her eyes were darting back and forth wildly beneath her closed eyelids, and the sudden increase in her breathing rate made it fairly obvious that she was having a nightmare. Her arm snapped up and landed on the counsel between his and the driver's seat. Her hand continually clenched and unclenched as her nightmare gathered momentum, and, without thinking, he reached out and placed his hand in hers. As soon as her fingers closed around his, her body relaxed and her eyes stopped moving. The only thing that didn't loosen up was her hand's grip on his, which remained as strong as before, although it didn't seem quite as tense. Her breathing slowed until he knew she was back to a regular deep sleep again.
Jondy opened the driver's door and sat down, sighing with relief as her body sank into the seat. "God, I can't wait to just go home and get some sleep," she declared gratefully. She started up the car and grinned when she glanced in the rearview mirror. "There's going to be a big fight back there, because Max and Alec both want to drive their own motorcycles, but neither Brin or Zack want to ride with Alec." She continued to muse on what could break out behind them, never noticing the way Ben was staring down at his own hand clasped firmly in Kay's. Did she even know whose hand she was holding? He doubted it, but the thought wouldn't leave his mind. He took a deep breath and turned to look out the window, never pulling his hand away from its current resting place. It was all over, and now at least everyone could get the whole story. He didn't know if that was good or bad, all he knew was that everyone needed the closure.
Author's Note: As always, please read and review!