Chapter 32- Apologies
Drake retraced his steps to the place where he had first seen the fiends fight amongst themselves. Here he sat down next to the wall. Though the cloak kept him warm, it could not ward off the despair.
Where are they? Drake thought. Did the fiends get them? At the moment, Flynn and Julie stumbled around the corner. Keith was nowhere to be seen. Drake jumped up and ran over to them. As he drew closer the light came back and the cold vanished. "Guys!"
"Oh, Drake, there you are!" Flynn said.
"We're sorry, Drake…" Julie said. She still sounded weak but was at least standing on her own two feet. "We should have listened to you…"
"What happened?"
"Well, after you walked off, we went on the path that Keith had originally suggested." Flynn said. "A while along it we hit an ambush of fiends. Keith took a shot, and, without enough firepower to defend ourselves, we ran. There were so many… almost 125 of them, I would guess. We watched some of them drag Keith off while we were defending ourselves from the advancing horde."
"So they have Keith?" Drake asked.
"That would be a reasonable assumption. Unless Keith got heroic and saved himself by some miracle, which, I suppose, is possible. But I don't think that's likely. They had beaten him unconscious before we had gotten away."
"We're sorry, Drake…" Julie said again.
"For what? If I were you, I doubt I would have listened to me either. No hard feelings."
"You look sick. What's down there?" Sarge asked.
Drake remembered the sickening images he had seen down the other prison hallway and retched. "Ugh, I don't even want to think about it. There were some things down that hallway that I never want to see again."
"And where did you get that white cloak?" Julie asked.
"…I'm not sure. That voice spoke to me again. This place has a terrible power… when someone is alone in the Shadow Realm, it gets dark, cold, and miserable. I would guess that if left in such conditions long enough, a person would get miserable enough to be suicidal. It was starting to get that way for me, then the voice spoke to me and told me to go find you guys. Then this cloak appeared."
"It looks… familiar." Julie said. "I think I've seen it recently."
"What? How is that?" Flynn said. "I don't remember anything like it anytime recently."
"Wait a second… wasn't that Matt-spirit wearing something like it?" Drake said.
"Yeah! But how did he give it physical form? And wouldn't that confirm…" Julie choked on her words, unable to face that kind of reality.
"I guess this is all we have left." Flynn said. "They'll have taken Keith's soul by now, and this does seem to confirm that Matt is gone forever, if his spirit flying around everywhere. Only three left… this has gotten very bad, very quickly." There was a long pause as everyone contemplated the horrible fates of two of their companions. Finally, Sarge took charge. "Let's go."
"Where to?" Drake asked.
"The way you came from."
"Oh. I… I don't think you want to go down there."
"Why not?" Drake flicked his eyes toward Julie, who still looked very weak. Flynn looked confused.
"It's nasty down there and I don't want to make her sick on top of being severely weakened by the Shadow Games." Drake supplied.
"We have to go that way. The fiends have that hall blocked." Flynn said, indicating the hallway that they had just come from.
"Fine then." They all began to walk down the hall that Drake had come from, Drake leading, Julie walking along slowly at the back. They encountered no fiends, as a matter of fact, all the bodies of the fiends that Drake had killed earlier had vanished. Drake led them to the secret wall-door and pushed it open.
"Neat." Julie said. Drake smiled a little and walked farther in.
"Don't look into the cells. If you do, you'll end up scarred for life." He said. A fiend had appeared at the end of the hall and was readying his AK-47. Drake whipped out his AK-74 SU and shot him once in the head. Miraculously the fiend survived. Drake shot him again for surviving- and again, and again, and again. Meanwhile, Flynn and Julie had ducked into the door frames for cover.
"Why won't you die?!?" Drake said, flicked his 74 to auto, and unloaded the entire clip into the fiend's head. It finally died. Flynn and Julie popped out of their respective alcoves. Julie took one look at the horribly mutilated fiend and stuck her head back behind the wall. Drake heard her throw up again. Drake turned to Flynn. "Why the hell wouldn't this thing die? I shot it three times in the freakin' head!"
"I don't know." Flynn said, and crouched down next to the lifeless body. "Hmm… maybe…"
"What?" Julie asked, rejoining them.
"Maybe… because we have been obsessed with ammo conservation lately, and have been going for head shots, maybe the fiends have developed so that they are no longer as vulnerable to head shots." Flynn suggested.
"You know, under normal circumstances, I would say you must be crazy, but at the moment, I wouldn't doubt that." Drake said. "So now how do we kill them?"
"Shoot them in the stomach." Julie suggested.
"We might as well try." Sarge said. "We're not going to last long shooting them in the head, and we can't afford to waste ammo doing that anyway." He pulled the clips from the fiend's dead carcass and stood up. "Let's get moving again." They continued walking down the hall. As Drake had already been this way once before, there were no more fiends. Immediately after the surgery room the hall ended. Drake felt the wall, but it wouldn't budge.
"This one seems to not move…" he said. Flynn checked the wall.
"Hey, there's something written down here…" Flynn said, running his finger under it.
"What does it say?" Julie asked.
"I don't know. It's written in some kind of cryptic language I can't begin to comprehend."
"Let me see." Julie crouched down next to Flynn. "Aren't those Egyptian hieroglyphics?"
"Well, I don't know how to read Egyptian. Do you?"
"A little." Julie admitted. "But this is beyond my ability." Drake joined them.
"I have a feeling that I've seen them before." He said. "This exact series of hieroglyphics."
"Where?" Flynn asked.
"It was on some tomb in Egypt. I was watching some T.V. show and I think I saw this in the background. But what does it mean?" They all scratched their heads contemplatively.
"It's too bad Matt isn't here." Julie said. "I bet he'd know."
"But I am here." The voice made them all jump up and spin around, quickly drawing their weapons. Approaching them from behind was the Matt-spirit that Drake and Julie had seen during their earlier Shadow Games.
"What the heck?!? Don't do that, you nearly gave me a heart attack!" Drake said. Matt inclined his head.
"I am sorry. I forget things like that sometimes. What is your dilemma?" They all stared at him for a moment.
"Are you… dead?" Julie asked finally.
"Not exactly. I can not explain these things here. My time is limited. Again, I ask, what is your dilemma?" He said.
"Do you know what this says?" Flynn asked. Matt walked closer and crouched next to the wall. He ran his hand along the writing and, for a minute, it glowed brighter.
"I can. Would you like to know what it says?"
"Yes." Drake said impatiently. "Why else would we ask?"
"I am, again, sorry. It speaks of the way to get through this door. It is, indeed, a door, but it requires tribute to open. In order to pass through this door, you must sacrifice a single human soul to it. You can do such a thing by killing someone while they are in contact with the door. Only then will this door open to you."
"That's sick! You can't expect us to pay such a price!" Drake shouted. The Matt-spirit closed its eyes, then slowly opened them again.
"I realize that. It is a terrible price. I can not make this decision for you. My time already grows short. You must decide- will you sacrifice a member of your group in order to pass through this door or will you opt for the long route? That is the choice that is before you. The easy route requires only one soul to be destroyed. The long, hard route will take you past many other obstacles in which you will risk your own lives- yes, your very lives."
"Great." Flynn said.
"Matt…" Julie began.
"Yes, Julie? What is it?"
"Will we see you again?"
Matt smiled. It was a warm smile, quite unlike the strange smile that Matt had once had. It actually made him look human. "I can not answer that. I do not know. It all depends on your future actions… you might, you might not. But now I must go."
"Wait!" Drake shouted, but the Matt-spirit vanished, once again, as if blown away by the wind. Drake turned to Flynn and asked his signature question. "So, now what do we do?"
"Well, the easy way is right before us…" Flynn scratched his chin. "But is it a price we are willing to pay?" Slowly, and with a sort of grim determination in her eyes, Julie walked to the wall and placed her hand on it. Drake had a terrible suspicion of what she wanted, but he didn't want to think about it.
"Do it." She said."If you can get out of here, it will be well worth it."
"What the hell are you thinking?!?" Drake said.
"I've only been a hindrance to you, ever since I met you. I lost my first duel that you saw, and, without Matt, I'd be long dead from these Shadow Games."
Drake stared at Flynn in utter disbelief. Flynn stared back. "You can't be serious…"
"Please… this way at least I'm of some use to you. I don't want you guys to have to risk your lives by taking the long route… look what already happened to Keith. So, please, just do it and move on." She looked strangely at peace for someone who was volunteering to be killed.
Drake still had his gun drawn. The thoughts running through his mind were many and contradictory. His self-preservation instinct told him to shoot her and be done with it, that this was the easiest way to get out alive, but his heart was shouting at him not to do it. His gun was up, aimed at Julie's heart, his finger on the trigger. He stood there, his gun held loosely, for what felt like an eternity. Flynn stood there, seemingly determined to be a non-participant in this decision. Do it, you fool! Said one of the voices in Drake's head. Save your own skin!
Don't… came another. She's your friend, you can't kill her!
Damn it, said the first voice. The only one who matters here is you! And before the other voice could answer, the first voice took control, and pulled the trigger. A gunshot rang out through the hall. Julie fell to the ground, taking about three hours to finally hit the ground, curled up, her eyes closed. Drake stared at his hands, and the hot gun in his hands. He couldn't believe what he had just done.
Oh… no… he thought. I can't believe it… how could I have lost control? He let the gun fall from his hands. It hit the ground with a resounding thud. Drake fell to the ground, completely drained by his repulsive action. He heard bullets whizzing over his head, but he didn't care. He had just killed his friend. He could hear Flynn shouting something at him, but Drake couldn't make out the words. Drake sat still, and finally, at long last, the gunshots died away. Flynn grabbed him by the shoulders, looked him once in the eyes, and punched him in the jaw.
The random act of violence brought Drake mostly back to his senses. He again looked at Julie's body, still unmoving on the floor. "I… I killed her…"
"No you didn't, you complete idiot! But you almost got us all killed, losing it while those guys were shooting at us!" Flynn said. Sure enough, Drake could see the rise and fall of Julie's chest as she continued to draw breath.
"What happened?" Drake said, utterly bewildered. "I pulled the trigger!" Flynn picked up Drake's gun, aimed it at Drake and pulled the trigger three times. Nothing happened. Flynn tossed the gun back to Drake and Drake caught it.
"It's empty. You never reloaded after you shot that last fiend. You had no ammo with which to kill her. You pulled the trigger and by some miracle of anti-luck one of those guys shot at the same time. So, while you were despairing over the act you couldn't have committed, I had to cut them all down! And I would say that you are damn lucky you did not get hit by one of their shots."
"Oh." Drake turned away. He had been stupid to even consider shooting Julie just to make his life easier. He had also been stupid in allowing his feelings of self-importance to get control. He walked past Flynn and shook Julie awake.
"Wh… what happened?" she said. Drake, grateful to see her still alive, lost control of his emotions and hugged her.
"I'm sorry…" he said, and for no apparent reason, repeated it several times.
"For what…?" Julie seemed completely confused.
"For thinking about doing that…"
"I should be sorry… I shouldn't have put you in that situation."
"Don't take all the blame…"
Another gunshot cut into this lovely dialogue. Flynn was at it again, shooting down the fiends as the came through the door from the other room. "Come on! While you guys are having a nice emotional reunion, I'm having to protect you guys!"
"Oh, sorry!" Drake said. Get a grip, Drake Paul Stizen! He thought. He retrieved his AK-74 SU, locked and loaded another clip, and began firing down the hall. Julie, still too weak to fight, crawled behind a door frame and sat out the battle. It didn't last very long. The fiends were utterly defeated, bottlenecked by their own secret door. Flynn, thoroughly earning his nickname, took charge.
"Well, not that that little predicament is over, can we go? We need to find this long way that Matt was talking about… and find Keith, too, and perhaps Matt." Sarge said.
"But how are we going to do that?" said Julie. One of the metal doors on the side of the hallway slid open. There was another teleport pad in the center of the room.
"I think I know." Drake said, and stepped onto the pad.