Chapter VI: Unintended Casualty
Ottawa, Canada. Inside the International Airport, a longhaired man with a large forehead and a hairline that started almost at his ears, hidden behind a hat was checking his passport. The girl at it stared at the photograph then stared at him. He smiled stupidly and she grinned out of compromise in return. She handed it back to him.
"Thank you, Mr. Van Haard. Next!"
Van Haard took his passport and headed out of the airport. He tucked the passport inside the coat of his sports suit and got into a taxi. He gave an address and laid back to stare through the window.
Frank Van Haard was an alias. His true name was Katana. He had been born 600 years ago in the village of Zeist, in the Netherlands. He had been a general, a very good general. However, as it happens to everyone who experiences the taste of power, he wanted more. A couple of lifetimes after his mortal death in a senseless war, he overthrew the local governors and became dictator of Zeist. However, things did not were as simple. Especially when it had been lust for power what moved him, and when there had been other immortals nearby.
By then, the now wormfood Methos was in the area, and he made up a little resistance cell. Katana defied him but the other refused and rode away to return some months later with two other immortals: one was Katana's old friend Juan Sanchez Villalobos Ramirez, the other was the one everyone had great hopes on to defeat the Kurgan: the Highlander Connor MacLeod.
Friendships never meant much to Katana, let alone in times of war. Ramirez appointed MacLeod as the leader of the attack. They failed miserably. Ramirez and MacLeod were the sole survivors of the massacre. However, Katana's apprentices, Corda and Reno, lost their heads against the Highlander and the Spaniard. Not that they had been very good anyway.
Despite being the ruler, Katana had appointed a tribunal of priests to decide on disputes. The war was considered a matter within the tribunal's scope. Katana wanted their heads, but the tribunal ruled that they were banished, and sent back to wherever they came from. Shortly after that, his own men overthrew Katana, believing him to be weak enough to abide by the tribunal's decision. Maybe he had been, but too weak to be unable to endure the desire for more power than the one he had.
Now he was in America. He had felt this need, so irresistible, so tempting, to travel to the other big continent. He knew what that meant. Ramirez had explained it too well. The legendary pull indicating the time of the Gathering, when the remaining immortals would battle to the last. If Katana won, he would get the Prize. But the only Prize he wanted was to remain in Zeist, now a commune, one where he stayed a lifetime every century. A place he had been forced to left, and where he longed to return. He wondered who were the other lucky ones that had gone so far, especially with the Watchers hunting them...
-----
Connor MacLeod woke up in the mattress he slept on, inside of what had been his bedroom. He had felt a quickening nearby. More than that, he had sensed the cry of the soul of the dead immortal erupting from the dead body, rising as part of the quickening into the air to find someone fit enough to dwell in and had gone away to where all lost quickenings go, having been unable to find a breathing resting place.
He grasped his katana as he felt another quickening, this one much dimmer, not belonging to an immortal, not even to someone meant to be immortal. Connor went to the closed door of the devastated room he slept in and placed his hand on it. He felt the heartbeat of the person on the other side. It was slow and calm without flaws. A young person indeed. He opened the door.
"Connor MacLeod?" the question was asked as if they were at a hotel and Connor was opening the door, rather than a derelict and fallen-to-pieces house into which the Highlander was the only one supposed to be in.
He stared reluctantly at the woman in front of him. A pretty shorthaired girl wearing a neat suit, her eyes behind a pair of slim glasses. He felt again her quickening, and not a single trace of deceit in her.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Amy Thomas... you met my father."
"I don't remember." He closed the door curtly, but she put her shoe in the way and pushed open.
"Old, bearded, carrying a cane. He took you out of the Sanctuary."
"Come in." Connor said, checking if there was someone else around. He closed the door and locked it. "It's dangerous these days to come visit me." He spoke tauntingly.
"Why, Highlander? You are going to rape me?" she replied as she smiled calmly.
"I might..." he defied gaily.
"No, you wouldn't. That would make you the Kurgan and me..."
"I got your point!" Connor halted her. "How did you find me?"
"Where else would you stay?"
"What do you want?" Again, a stiff, cut-off question.
"I want to help you make up a resistance team. The Watchers have gone too far."
"No way. Now get out." He barked, always the gentleman.
"My father died to save you, Connor. You owe him at least that."
"That's why I refuse. You will die if you oppose them."
"Then what are you doing here?" she asked perplexed.
"The time of the Gathering has come. Unfortunately, chances are there will be no one left after these..."
"There's still hope." She tossed a cane to him. He stared at it intrigued. "Twist the handle. Like a sword cane." Connor did so and the handle loosened. He removed it and he took from inside the cane a large paper. There were names and locations scribbled on it. "If you want to take them down, those are the powerful jerks that must fall."
"Oh..." Connor halted, his head receiving warning signs. Minor quickenings gathered at the door, now scattering inside the building. He grabbed his coat and produced his katana.
"What is it?"
"You were followed." Connor replied distantly glancing at the door. "They're already here. Stay hidden."
No sooner did he speak than the door was kicked open. Three gunmen walked in, all wearing the black and blue outfit of the IPS. Connor lunged at one of them and slashed his throat. The second one fired and missed, unlike MacLeod who stabbed him quickly enough to have time to dispatch the third one with a vertical slice that killed the man.
"Oh my...!" Amy cried, ghastly eyeing the blood-dripping blade.
"Come, we're moving."
They left the room into what had been Connor's treasures room. He sensed at least three people on the left, where the stairs were, and three more on the right, where the rear door was. He heard a shotgun being loaded and turned panicky. Amy was holding one of the shotguns in his hand. He stared in surprise.
"I promised him I would help you however I could..."
Connor was gripped by the peculiar sensation of owing his life to someone he had never truly met. He wondered how good this man must have been to save Connor's life and lose his own in the meantime. Someone like that was worth meeting. And he did not even know his name.
To their left, three soldiers appeared. Amy fired at one and hit. The other succeeded in shooting Connor in the shoulder. The Highlander gasped as he stormed forward and sliced him. Behind him, Amy was finishing the third one with a shot that blew the man's brains out, staining the walls with red.
"Damn!" Connor swore holding his wounded shoulder, from which blood erupted abundantly. "Let's move."
Then he heard a gunshot and a dim cry behind him. He turned. Amy was falling over him, mortally wounded by a bullet in her heart. He gazed into her eyes, moist with pain and fulfilment. The author of the shot had been a man that survived his slice. She managed to smile before passing. Connor left her and kicked the man's face so hard that the soon-to-be corpse's jaw dislodged completely. He grabbed a shotgun and stormed away through the stairs. Oddly enough, there were no guards on that exit. He fled away without a fixed destination, but now with a purpose: avenge the strangers that had died to save him.
-----
Eric Garfield and John Stern eyed the corpse of Amy Thomas, the mortal woman that had been killed. They recognised the Watcher tattoo. Garfield shook his head as Stern breathed heavily out. The other IPS members were awaiting their leaders inside the squad van.
"This is it, man." Garfield said angrily. "This has gone too far."
"There's nothing we can do about it." the reply was low-voiced, coarse by the influx of cigarette.
"Yes, we can." He pointed emphatically at the tattoo. "If at least one of them thought they were wrong, then this might indeed be a serious mistake. I never truly believe in the pile of lies they sold the world."
"Yeah." Stern lit up a cigarette. "None makes up a so damn ing perfect plan. Not even immortals."
"We are two then. But the question is: what are we gonna do 'bout it?"
