Disclaimer: I don't own Blade or any of its characters. I do Max, Xavier, Rev, and Cam, so no stealing!

Chapter 13: End Game

That night, the three hunters sat in their separate rooms. Since the blow up downstairs and Whistler's fatherly confession, the three hadn't spoken. They simple wandered back to their rooms and did what they usually did: thought, long and hard.

Whistler was sitting on his cot, contemplating the tarnished wedding ring on his hand as he slowly spun it around his finger. His thoughts were on Abby and the Nightstalkers. He knew all about Max and King's relationship, and while he was happy for her he was worried as well. It was no secret that King wasn't the smartest man on the planet, much less the city, but he was a good man. He could take care of Max, and he'd been watching Abby's back for a while now. Abby was another problem on his mind. He didn't get to spend as much time with her as he'd like, but that was also a good thing. She was stubborn and headstrong, determined, just like him. That little fact was also the problem.

Whistler didn't want Abby to end up like him, fighting the war her whole life until she had nothing but the next battle.

Max was sitting on her own bed, the laptop Sommerfield had given her months ago lit up in front of her. Since she'd joined the Nightstalkers, Max had been given weapons and technical upgrades. While she still had her sword, she rarely used it anymore. King had gotten her hooked on the Sun Dogs and using guns. Years ago, she probably would've beaten the shit out of someone who fought the undead with guns, but Hedges and Sommerfield were geniuses and changed her mind. As she sat there, her fingers moved from the keyboard to the charm that Cam had worn. She'd torn it from his neck after he'd died and wore it at all times now. An Om medallion, she'd researched it. Her eyes drifted briefly away from the screen to the sword in the corner of her room, collecting dust.

She walked over and picked it up, and walked back over to her bed, setting the sword Snowman had given her next to her. With her attention back on the screen, she started to hack into whatever files she could of the biggest companies that she knew to be run by vampires. She was trying to find Xavier. Since their run in where he had practically hit on her and attempted to turn her, she had been searching through the use of technology instead of hard detective street work. She tried the latter for years, and it never amounted to any good. Wherever Xavier was, with this Marcus van Sciver vampire or elsewhere, she couldn't seem to find him. He was gone, again.

With a sigh, she let her hands fall into her hands and shook her head. King had been right, again. It was impossible. She hated it when he was right, and it seemed to be happening more often than not. Damn, when did he get so good?

Meanwhile, Blade was sitting before a small Buddhist shrine, meditating. Incense was burning, as it usually was at this time. His sword rested in a ceremonial holder in front of him as his eyes remained closed in concentration.

The near silence was suddenly punctuated by the intermittent ocean swell outside. Violent sounds were going in and out of his mind. Scream echoed and gunshots rang out steadily. These were what plagued Blade's thoughts. The inner demon he was constantly trying to tame, the vampire in him, the thirst. He tried to block out the sounds, but they simply wouldn't go away. Karen and Nyssa invaded his mind with a swell of regret and guilt of how things had ended on both counts. His mother Vanessa entered, but not as a vampire – as the human, mortal woman he never knew and barely remembered. All he had was that one picture of her, from when she was pregnant with him. He always kept it with him, underneath all of his body armor.

As he reminded himself that all three women were free and safe, he wondered if Max would end up the same, if Whistler would. With even more dark thoughts added to his generous supply, the sounds raging in his mind faded away and Blade opened his eyes. He listened closely to the air and water outside.

Something was wrong.

He crept into the outer room, sword drawn. He heard a shuffle behind him and turned to see Whistler standing in the shadows, clutching a handgun. Max soon exited her own room to stand in front of Blade, guns strapped to her thighs and her own sword drawn out. If this surprised Blade, he didn't show it.

"What's wrong?" she asked, seeing the solemn look on his face. Blade didn't answer, simply sighed quietly and look at the ground.

"What is it?" Whistler asked this time, holding his shotgun tighter in his hands.

"What you two were worried about," he told them, and all three stood stone still.

They listened, but all that was heard was the sound of the ocean swell. A window suddenly shattered from up above, and two armored S.W.A.T. agents lowered themselves in on rappelling lines. Two more agents crashed through a bank of windows on either side, swinging in and firing canisters of tear gas. As Blade and Max moved to engage them, Whistler turned the other way and rushed into the heart of the armory, but a reinforced door exploded inward and more agents stormed inside. From the water, a military Zodiac (inflatable boat) roared up one of the wooden boat ramps, laden with gun-toting agents, who jumped out and fanned all over the boathouse.

"On the floor," an agent ordered him, but Whistler ignored him. "ON THE FLOOR!" he repeated.

Whistler fired at them quickly and made a run for it as fast as he could, which wasn't very because of his limp. The agents returned fire, but Whistler ducked behind a concrete pillar, silently cursing himself. He knew then that they never would've been found unless one of them screwed up. Whistler knew in that moment that he and Max had been followed.

From the safety of a window, Max looked out into the night to check what was going on outside the boathouse. Cop cruisers, unmarked cars, and S.W.A.T. trucks swept in, sirens blaring, disgorging a small army of police and F.B.I. agents. Police boats were soon pulling up to the dock with Agents Cumberland and Hale emerging from one wearing bulletproof vests and brandishing firearms.

"Lock it down! Keep them contained!" Cumberland barked into a radio, looking to the rooftop, where various S.W.A.T. snipers had taken position.

"Shit!" Max cursed. "We were followed," she breathed, guilt filling up inside as she came to the same conclusion as Whistler.

She looked over the railing to see Blade brawling with a half-dozen agents, sending them flying in all directions. Even though he didn't need help, she decided to join the fight. Strapping her sword on her back like she used to, she quickly rain down the ramp just in time to see Blade grab one agent, head butt him, and throw him into the path of two others. As she began punching and dodging attacks, tripping up and kicking agents in their throats as they lay on the ground, Blade was reaching for another agent. He threw him through a window at the rear, and out into the river below.

While the two hunters were fighting the seemingly never ending hordes of agents, Whistler moved through the boathouse with increased urgency. Max had just grabbed onto a pipe above her and swung back and forth once, gaining speed. When an agent approached her, she kicked him in the jaw first and then his chest, sending him flying out a window. She looked around for Whistler and saw him struggling, and then at Blade who was handling things pretty well. As she dropped herself to the ground, she ran into the armor, arm shielding her as best it could.

The armory was filling up with tear gas, and hurried to a bank of computers, coughing and half-blind as he typed in a series of commands. The various monitors around him synched up, showing the same protocol message: Data protection routine enabled. Server 1 protection enabled. Server 2 protection enabled. In response, a rack of network storage equipment and removable hard drives exploded and a second rack of equipment followed the first's example.

"We got no time! Start fighting, Whistler," she told him, but he simply hit the computers.

Growling in frustration, Max picked up his shotgun, cocked it and started to shoot down agents trying to surround Blade. She knew that the agents outside would hear the explosions, and would learn what Whistler was doing, destroying their hard drives so the government wouldn't know about their future plans or what his next project was, or even about the vampires in their databank that they'd gotten from Cam before he died. More agents were going to be coming after them, and Blade was already had his hands full. Max and Whistler were on their own.

Max moved away from Whistler, going around the other side of the ramp. She continued shooting down agents as they came inside. Bodies were starting to pile up at the entrances, and she was starting to run low on ammunition. Meanwhile, behind her, Whistler kept moving until an agent got a clear shot at him and fired, hitting him in the chest.

"WHISTLER!" Max shouted, and shot the agent in the head, killing him instantly. Blade had seen Whistler take the hit, but he had been cut off from the old man as agents swarmed him. Max ran over to Whistler, who staggered as he kept moving, and threw one of his arms over her shoulder to help him keep moving. "You're too much trouble, old man," she joked, trying to hide the sadness in her voice.

"Yeah, I know," he hissed painfully as they made it to another bank of computers. "More trouble than I'm worth," he commented, and launched the same protocol.

On the monitors, the erasing information began purging themselves. The commands read: Workstation 1 protection enabled. Workstation 2 protection enabled. With each successive command, the workstations themselves begin self-destructing, exploding one after another. Another agent rounded the corner and got a bead on Whistler, firing a round into his thigh. As Whistler screamed and crumpled to the floor, Max turned and killed the agent.

Blade saw his mentor being slaughtered. He saw Max trying to protect him, save him, but both knew that it was in vain. In his anguish,he didn't notice the two agents rushing him, tackling him. As one, they fell backwards, into another bank of windows. CRASH! The three agents went flying down outside in a spray of glass, landing atop one of the police cruisers below. The roof buckled under their weight, the windows shattering

"Take him down," Cumberland ordered.

An F.B.I. agent raised a coda net gun atop his shoulder, taking aim and fired. Four projectiles expanded out from the barrel, carrying a steel net, which had been strung between them. The netting hit Blade, wrapping around him and restricting his movements. Immediately, a small army of agents dove on top of him, pummeling away, trying to beat him into submission.

Back inside, on the verge of losing consciousness, Whistler propped himself against a piece of machinery with Max's help. He was bleeding heavily from having been shot to hell as Max cried, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. One of his hands was closed, clutching something, but she didn't take notice as she applied pressure to the gunshot in his chest.

"Oh, shit!" she cursed, and turned to rip pieces off of the dead agent's clothing. "Whistler, you're…no, you're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay," she told him, but she was trying to assure herself more as she applied more pressure to his wounds. "I'm not losing you, too, Whistler," she vowed vehemently.

"Don't got much choice," he gasped, and grabbed her hands and forced her to stop and look him in the eyes. "Get out of here," he ordered.

"No way! Not without you," she argued tearfully, trying to get him to release her hands.

"Shut up and listen to me, Goddamn it!" he shouted at her, and she ceased her movements to look at him. "Get to the Hideout, get Abby and your little smart-ass boy toy King, and get in gear," he ordered firmly.

"What are you talking about?"

"You and Blade have to make it out of here alive," he said simply. "Blade'll get caught, 'cause he's too damn careless, but you gotta run and you gotta run now."

"You mean be a coward!" she retorted angrily. "What you're telling me to do is insane, Whistler! I'm not gonna leave you and Blade to…to…to die…"

"Don't worry about me, tree stump. I'm fine. I've accepted it," he assured her. "Besides, I'm tired," he reminded her with a sigh and released her hands, which moved away from his chest to sit limply at her sides. "I'm proud of you, Max," he told her, and she smiled at him before reached forward and kissing his forehead lovingly.

"Love you, old man. I'm gonna miss you, Whistler," she told him sincerely, her forehead rested against his.

She stayed there another moment before they heard footsteps coming towards them. She jumped away from Whistler and ran towards a window. She looked back briefly to Whistler and saw him nod for her to go. Max nodded back, tears running down her face, and she jumped out of the window, crashing into the water. Gunfire was muffled above her as she swam, but she soon saw bullets entered the water and barely missing her. As she continued to swim, she found herself hit by two sniper bullets, both grazing her in her arm and calf.

"Move a finger and you're dead," the agent warned as he and others warily closed in around Whistler, guns raised.

"How 'bout this one?" Whistler asked, flipping them off before letting his other hand uncurl. He had been holding a remote in his palm, with a tiny digital timer counting-down.

"He's got something in his –"

00:03.

00:02.

00:01.

00:00.

A series of explosion rocked the workshop, knocking the agents back. From outside, clouds of fire and flaming debris mushroomed, catching all unaware and sweeping them up off their feet with a hurricane force. In the midst of the conflagration, Blade briefly managed to tear free of his captors but the wall of fire and light was rushing onward, sweeping up everything in its path, turning the world to white.

From the other side of the boathouse, Max looked at the massive bonfire that was once her home from underneath the docks. She watched in the shadows as Blade was tranquilized and dragged off in the net, loaded into a truck and driven into the city. Cursing herself, Max slowly swam to the edge of the docks and pulled herself up as best she could with her undamaged arm. As she sat on the docks, she looked herself over and thought that it was going to be a long run to Abby and King.

P.S.: Four pages total.