Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!
Chapter Eleven: Dead Zone
2:45 pm
Leo woke up to a low dirt ceiling and an uncomfortable claustrophobic fear that he'd been buried alive. It only lasted for a second, of course, until the rest of the room came into focus. It was a bare dirt room supported with suspiciously rotted looking wooden supports and random rocks. There was a door, if you could truly call it that, as it was made of bits of castoff scrap metal kept in place by a heavy metal chain. The only other things in the room were the cot Leo found himself on and a lonely dented aluminum table.
The whole thing screamed bad to him, he couldn't exactly tell why in particular, as this whole timeline was screaming something similar, but he could tell that it probably wasn't wise for him to be here. He sat up and tensed his muscles, trying to orb out... and nothing happened.
"Oh! Morning sunshine!" The voice made Leo jump and stare as the tin door opened revealing probably the last person he'd ever expect to find in a cave. Ida McCaffey, the guidance counselor at the kids' high school. The memory brought Chris to mind and he cast a look around again, as if his son would appear simply by looking for him a second time. The room was still empty.
"Glad to see you're awake. I was beginning to think the kids whapped you on the head a little too hard." The woman chuckled and stepped inside, taking a moment to re-secure the door and lock the chain. Leo remembered this woman, tough but kind was the impression he'd got from her the last time he'd met her. He still watched her wryly, knowing better than to trust that anyone was the same in this timeline. She sent a sarcastic smile back at him, "You understand though. Can't be too careful."
"Where am I?" Leo cleared his throat quickly, shifting on the bed.
Ms McCaffey dropped the stack of papers in her arms onto the aluminum table before raising an eyebrow at him, "Ah, you're a clueless one are you?" A look of severe distaste invaded her expression, "Don't worry, I was the same before I got out. We all have to start somewhere. This..." She gestured grandly at the dank room, "This is the resistance, my boy. Don't worry, his royal pain in the ass can't find you here."
Leo nearly flinched at that, eyes going distant. Her words were an unexpected punch to the gut. As much as he knew that Wyatt was evil in this existence, as much as Chris had tried to impress how bad it was, it hadn't sunk in until that point, when he realized that these people were so frightened of his son, they were hiding underground. He didn't know what to say to that.
Ms. McCaffey, of course, took his silence for pure confusion.
"This is a magical dead zone." She supplied as if it would explain everything. It didn't. Ida was starting to stare at him as if he were dumb, eyebrows coming down in a look he recalled all three of his kids being scared witless of. "Well now, they scrubbed your mind good, didn't they?" The woman sighed, "Remember a while back, when we supposedly won the war back during that huge 'earthquake'? We 'won' it by the lot up in central doing some weird magic mumbo jumbo that brought hell to earth. Heck if I know how they did it, what I do know is that it caused a lot of destruction for a while and when the dust settled, the war was 'over'." She applied air quotes liberally to all of her statements, accompanying each with an eye roll.
"Anyway, whatever magic they did, they didn't do it right, because these dead zones showed up right after." She shrugged, "Living in a cave isn't exactly cozy, but it's safe. If any of them magic types try to get in here, they're as good as mortal. You can just take em out with a peashooter if you wanted to. They're all too scared to come down."
Leo gripped the edge of the mattress tight, barely listening anymore. Wyatt had joined the underworld with the normal world. He couldn't even conceive of a spell that powerful. The ramifications though... it would throw magic so out of balance that nothing would work right. He pressed a hand to his forehead trying to forcibly remind himself that this wasn't reality, that this could be changed. He just had to find Chris...
"The man I came here with," Leo looked up at the woman, not bothering to soften the question, "Where is he?"
Ms McCaffey's face darkened a little, her arms slowly coming up to cross, "Yeah," she said slowly, "I've been meaning to ask you about that. How well do you know that kid?"
Leo resisted the urge to tell the truth and sidestepped the question, "Why?"
Her expression became more guarded, "Why did he bring you down here?"
Despite popular belief, Leo did know how to lie. 90% of his career as a whitelighter was pretending to be someone else to get into his charge's lives. The skills were a little rusty, of course, he'd been human for a while now, and an elder before that, but they were still there. He dug down and thought quickly.
"The Mark," Leo latched onto the one thing Chris had told him, "I didn't have a choice. He took me down here."
"Ah," The woman softened somewhat, eyes flicking over to a wall, "Yeah... he's a good kid like that."
Leo couldn't help a sad smile at that, "Seems like it."
The woman looked down at her papers distractedly, almost looking a bit sad. She wavered for a minute, seeming like she was rolling some kind of decision over in her head, then, she turned back to him. "There's something you should probably know. His name's Chris, and before a little while ago, he used to be one of us. One of our best actually. We weren't exactly organized for a long time, all of us hopeless and homeless. Then Chris found the dead zones and little by little, he brought us here, he was really young back then, but he was one of the few that kept a head on his shoulders. Saved a lot of people." Her voice tapered off as she thought, eyes casting around the room until they rested on Leo again.
"He brought us here, taught us how to fight, taught us what we were up against. We don't have leaders, you see, but there isn't a single person in these tunnels that didn't have respect for the boy." She turned stiffly, "I'm not telling you this to sing his praises, I just need you to understand. We all loved that kid, and he betrayed us."
Leo had let himself fade into the story, finding it startlingly easy to imagine Chris doing this, mind casting back to all those years ago when he was so frustrated that the girls weren't listening to his orders. He was used to people wanting his opinion and then zapped himself back to a time when no one could give a damn, where he was just a neurotic whitelighter who couldn't even heal. Then the woman's last words filtered in and Leo snapped up to look at her.
"He what?" The disbelief in his voice was entirely real, and more than a little accusatory.
"Don't give me that tone, boy," The woman snapped right back, "I don't like it better than you do, but he did. He's a witch, you understand that? He's one of them."
Leo didn't know what to say to that, so he just closed his mouth.
"He shouldn't have come back." She shook her head, "When we found out, I convinced them to let him go. It was pretty much a death sentence anyway, but he's a tough kid, I figured he'd have a more of a chance up there than down here... He shouldn't have come back."
Leo stood up, not bothering to keep an semblance of amiability, "What are they doing to him?"
"You have to understand, these people don't react well to betrayal. I don't think the boy deserves the wrath that's going to come down in him now, but I don't think I can do a thing to stop it. They wouldn't let me anywhere near."
The only thing keeping Leo from doing something he'd sorely regret was the sudden glint he saw in her eye. She tilted her head to the side ever so slowly.
"You understand? There's nothing I can do." She intoned, "But if some damned fool wanted to, they'd want to head down that tunnel, take three rights and a left, and watch out for anyone with weaponry, you hear?"
The tension seeped out of Leo in a minute, eyes wide, "Thank you."
Ida McCaffey waved a hand, smirk returning, "I'd have to be a fool to not see the resemblance in you two, and I'd also have to be a fool to ask about it." She held up the key to the door, eyes softening, "He's a good kid."
"Yeah," Leo swallowed, taking the key, "Yeah he is."
3:00 pm
Hate they neighbor. It was practically a demonic commandment, especially if said demon was trying to compete with you for power... or anything else really. Bianca used the commandment liberally on the scarred demon walking in front of her. Rubiec was his name, she'd picked up that much when a lesser demon had shimmered in to offer a report, a report about Chris. It had taken a considerable amount of effort to keep herself from smirking as she listened in. Apparently Chris had more than raised hell on his way around, vanquishing more than his fair share of demons on the way and tearing up a city square before seeming to disappear in a city that had an anti orbing ward in its limits.
Rubiec, on the other hand, seemed a great deal less pleased, dividing his death glare evenly between the messenger and Bianca... which then made the words pop back into her head. 'If she hadn't failed in her mission to kill him...' She shook away a shudder at the thought, channeling it into further anger at the demon who so badly seemed to want her boyfriend dead. If there was one way to really set Bianca off these days, it was wishing harm on Chris. It was something she planned on advertising after all this was done. She was sick of the secrecy, and she wanted to let the demons downstairs know that if you messed with something she cared about, it had to be through her.
The idea cooled her nerves for a second. There was no way she would accept that contract, no matter what kind of messed up world this was. Chris still seemed to be on the side of good, she couldn't be all that different, right?
"Here we are," Rubiec announced in a bored tone, pushing open a double set of doors, depositing them into the entryway of the next room. Whatever it was she had been expecting, this was not it. It was probably the biggest room she'd ever seen, spiraling up so far that she could barely see the ceiling. The whole thing was built out of some kind of impressive looking pale rock she couldn't identify with veins of amethyst, quartz, and even more expensive looking glittery components types scaling the walls all the way to the top, faintly glowing. The rest of the walls were etched with what looked like spells in every language she could imagine, running along the banister of each floor. Most impressive of all, there, on a circular raised dais in the middle of the hall was a glowing triquetra.
"What in the," Wyatt whispered under his breath, forgetting to keep up his act until Bianca discreetly jabbed him in the side. He spared a second to glare at her before snapping back into an agitated pose more befitting of an evil overlord.
"It's some kind of spell," Bianca said distantly after waiting for Rubiec and his henchmen to wander further into the room. Wyatt nodded shortly, trying to intuit the thing's use. It was active, for sure, he could feel the magic on his skin, but he could also feel the wrongness. He looked across the massive triquetra and knew why.
"Yeah, an incomplete one," He mumbled back, nodding at the pattern. One third of the symbol was out of sync, slid outwards and away, keeping the three from interlocking properly. Bianca just nodded back quietly, brow pinching together.
"My King." A small voice rose from the small crowd milling around the building before a woman separated herself from the group, thin and weary looking. She stopped and bowed timidly, still a fair distance away. Wyatt just stared at her, muscles tense for a fight. He wasn't entirely sold on being able to fool anyone and if he had to fight his way out of there, he would. Bianca broke away from him slightly, circling around and making a good act out of being disinterested in the conversation even as she kept giving him meaningful looks behind the woman's back. Bianca arced an eyebrow and he mimicked the look at the woman, crossing his arms.
"Yes?" He said stiffly.
"Uh," The woman almost squeaked, "Everything is set for tonight, sir."
Bianca widened her eyes meaningfully, urging him on. Wyatt huffed and tilted his head, looking down at the woman like she was an idiot. The woman visibly shrank on the spot.
"I mean, um, the sigil, the spell to complete the sigil is going well. We merely have to wait for the correct time and then the Overworld will be forced to join us on this plane. The Elders won't be able to stop it like last time, this spell is much stronger."
Wyatt's blood nearly ran cold. They were doing what? "That's-" Bianca glared at him sharply and he pulled back on his outraged tone, clearing his throat, "That's good."
The woman seemed to ease up, happy that she wasn't being vanquished where she stood. "Yes it is! Then the war against good and evil will truly be over!" The woman skittered back to the edge of the hall to a small patch of what looked to be her demon coworkers leaving a quietly stunned Wyatt in her wake. Bianca slowly made her way to stand next to him, slight worry in her eyes.
"Well, that's not good." She sighed.
Wyatt could only nod.
3:15 pm
Rubiec had always prided himself on his intuition. Even in those cursed years locked in the deepest pits of the underworld, it was one of the things that kept him from perishing forever. That let him survive until the day the underworld had manifested itself topside and he was free. Well... free for a few minutes before he'd been forced into the servitude of the boy idiot who would be king, those first few minutes serving as nothing but a tease of what might be again when Wyatt dropped dead.
Until then, he'd serve. He didn't have a choice. He could say as much as he wanted about his new master inside his own mind, but, as powerful as Rubiec was, he wouldn't be able to actually beat him. Besides, Wyatt hadn't given him nothing. He'd amused himself the last few years by taking his revenge out on the descendants of those who locked him away in the first place. Those prideful, stubborn, Phoenixes.
They'd joined up with Wyatt at first, they'd proven moderately useful, until they buckled under the pressure to do things against their will. Even in the face of certain doom, they would all eventually find the captivity too much and rebel. One by one, they did, and when that happened, Wyatt tossed them to him. And he'd had so much fun with them.
Now there was only one left, and she was probably the worst. Rubiec glared at her from across the room, intuition flaring as he saw her and Wyatt speaking. Something was wrong, very, very wrong.
"Pardon me." A man appeared at his side, Rubiec's fingers were around his throat the second after he did, but the man kept smiling.
Rubiec leaned in and tightened his fingers far enough he could feel the man's pulse under his fingers, "Who are you?"
"A man," He croaked, Rubiec lightened his grip slightly, "-with information about the Phoenix."
A jagged smile split Rubiec's face, the scars creasing the skin grotesquely, "Is that so? Tell me..."
3:15 pm
The dead zone tunnel was a maze, a maze crowded with people with guns. Ida's rather simplistic instructions did help, but only in a very vague way, especially since the Resistance didn't see the need to light the oil lamps in the tunnels that weren't in use, and they certainly didn't seem to want anyone going in the direction he'd been told to go.
Leo had felt sorry for these people for only a moment. He understood the desperation these situations brought out in people, understood what fear of the unknown could do to the mind. Then he remembered Ms. McCaffey's ominous tones... and a lot of his sympathy went out the window. Chris had saved the people time and again and they were willing to do the worst to him simply because he had magic? The utter idiocy of it...
Leo pressed on down the hallway keeping quiet as he could as he felt down the wall for the next turn, ducking quietly against the walls as he heard footsteps pass in the opposite direction.
He could hate them, he supposed, but he wasn't ignorant of the nagging feeling in the back of his brain, the guilty question. Where had he been during all this? He just let his son hide away underground, keeping quiet while the people around him cursed all magic users to an early grave? No wonder Chris hadn't been exactly friendly back then...
The footsteps cleared and Leo continued on, counting off the last left and peering into the lit hallway. There was another tin door with two people standing outside of it. Oddly, neither of them were looking Leo's direction, they were both peering through the small window in the tin, listening the conversation inside the room.
"...look, I don't go digging around in that place without a good reason."
"I don't know, Micheal... that seems a little far fetched. Why would they hide it?"
"I checked the city records twice. It's not Chris Perry, it's Chris Halliwell! He's his brother. That's got to mean something... Remember? How those demons always seemed reluctant to kill him? We can use him against Wyatt!"
The two guards look at each other with wide eyes, seemingly amazed at the revelation, it was only then that they spotted Leo, seconds before he slammed the taller of the two against the wall and pulled the gun out of his slack hands.
"Open the door." Leo pointed the gun at the man, not really feeling all that pacifistic at the moment. The man obliged, opening the door to reveal two grizzled looking Resistance members, one of which he recognized. Micheal Calliger, the high school principal. Leo stared at him in mute disbelief, was everyone from the school here?
Beyond the two men, though, Chris was leaning against a wall, completely unconscious, hands tied together behind his back. He looked moderately unharmed, aside from the line of blood running from forehead to jawline. Leo still wasn't entirely relieved... he wasted no time in ordering the ex-principal and his friend to the opposite side of the room and moved over to Chris.
"Hey, c'mon buddy, time to get up," He murmured to him, checking the cut on his forehead and wishing he could heal. For a few seconds Chris didn't respond at all, then, slowly his breath hitched and his eyes opened, foggily concentrating on Leo.
"Dad?" He said, voice slightly confused, "The..." Chris squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, opening them to focus on the people behind Leo, "They're made at me aren't they..." He asked without really needing an answer.
Leo winced, "I'd say...yes...very yes."
"Ah damnit, I know what day it is now."
Calliger stepped up after finally gathering his courage, chest puffed out like an angry bird. "You just think we're going to let you walk out of here? We gave you one chance already and I didn't even want to give you that."
Chris centered a flatly unamused look at him, "Man, this is not the day to be a dick."
The man turned red, fists clenching, too entirely preoccupied to see the two women come up behind him until they'd already smashed the plate over his head. Calliger fell down, revealing, in a series of weird people to find in tunnels, probably the oddest one Leo had seen yet.
"What is this?" Freja asked with some humor, "Looks like we aren't needed for this rescue." The valkyrie sent a glare at the remaining resistance fighters in the room, who slunk out quietly. She rolled her eyes at them, "Cowards."
A/N:
I'm back! Sorry guys, I am on the last bit of my degree and it's getting insane. This quarter isn't going to be any different as I have to produce an animation, a full pre-production layout, along with my other classes. Eeps. Anyway, here you go!