His Son's Fate

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“I can smell my father’s blood on your hands, Sarah Scarlett Tanen, it’s like an odour that won’t go away.”

“What are you talking about, you cripple?! snarled Sarah. “He ruined you as he has ruined me. If only you knew.”

Adrien whistled. Two men entered the room, holding a chain. “Oh, don’t you worry, once you die, the necklace you wear will unlock. That will contain the clue to the final stone. Then all I need is the final two off Muhammad. With the power of the stones, I will become invincible!”

“That won’t happen!” said Sarah. “Only a mother’s...arrghhh.. gift can unlock it!” The men tightened the chains, twisting the skin on Sarah’s arms. The veins in her face began to show.

“But if the daughter is dead, there’s no mother’s gift. You will join her in hell where you belong.”

Sarah could only groan. A chain had been shoved into her mouth. She clenched her eyelids and shrieked in pain, as the cold, raw metal forced her mouth wide open.

“Now..” said Adrien. “You will die..” he smiled. Adrien started with Sarah’s locks. The flame touched Sarah’s hair. Sarah’s eyeballs tracked the flame as it trailed up above her eyebrows. It’s then that it hit her. The most unimaginable and unbearable pain. How could hell be any worse than this? she thought. It will be over soon. I will join my mother. We will watch Adrien burn. That’s all there was left for Sarah. It’s this.

“Hahah!” Adrien laughed as the last of Sarah’s hair, now ashes, fell onto the ground below her.

Suddenly, an extinguisher hit the fire on Sarah’s head. The smoke revealed a scarred, burnt and almost unrecognisable face. But Sarah still had some life in her.

“What have you done?!” Adrien screamed. “How hard is it to kill someone anymore?”

“We’re sorry, sir, there’s been a gas leak in our headquarters, we thought you were in danger.”

“What?! I heard no alarm!!” The men slowly began to back off, expecting an order to search the whole base. But they could sense what Adrien was about to do. Adrien pulled a handgun out of his pocket and aimed it at his men.

“It’s over for you!”

“NOOOOO!!!” Adrien toppled over from his wheelchair. Sarah had broken free, and despite her wounds, bound over onto Adrien like a tiger. Sarah held the wheelchair above her head, ready to strike the final blow against Adrien. The men stood there, confused. They had been saved by the nick of time. They were about to meet their doom from their master who they had pledged loyalty to and been promised a new world by. But they had been betrayed. Now he had been betrayed. But was this how it was? Should they still pledge the last of their loyalty to their master? But before they could make up their minds, a large metal piece of the wheelchair had knocked both of them out. Sarah began thrashing Adrien, but what she had was not enough to kill him with. She kicked him in the face one last time and started to think about escaping the room. She fell to her knees, and resorted to crawling out of the room. All of a sudden, it began to get misty. Sarah felt the virulence of the fumes in her throat. She coughed and held her throat, exhausted. She could feel danger closing in on her. Sarah passed out.

When Sarah woke, she found herself looking up at a white ceiling. Two men in front of her, wearing white hats and goggles, signalled a guard at the door. He held up a walkie-talkie. “We have an unidentified survivor from the Floor 32A incident. Repeat, an unidentified survivor from the Floor 302A incident.”

“Shall we keep him..her... restrained until Adrien is well enough to identify her?” one of the men asked the other, who nodded approvingly.

Sarah felt like a needle has just been dropped into her heart. He lived. Sarah tried to move, but felt only cramping, so just stared at the ceiling and drifted off.

Dream start...

Sarah entered the dream world, and once again saw red. This time it was blood. The blood of Ben Walden, the man she had killed. The criminal who took her whole family from her, who forcefully sacrificed what meant everything to her for his own lust and greed. It was night, the sky was starry. It seemed most inappropriate to carry out what she was doing, but done it had to be. She wished she were with her Aunty now, watching the baseball. She had the most special Aunty ever. Her Aunty was just one of many victims of the Hydra’s attack on her village many years ago. The village meant nothing to the Hydra but, it was there, so they destroyed it, because it was there. Minutes later, Sarah heard yelling from a nearby blood tree. Sarah shook the tree. What fell out, other than a parachute, was not just any man, it was a man who Sarah wanted alive but dead at the same time.

The man woke. “So... keeping to your Uncle’s promise then? You bitch, you bitch..”

“This will not justify what you deserve..you could’ve left us in peace.. you killed them all.. you raped her, then you killed her. How do you feel? How do you feel? This is for my Aunty, not her husband. I will not regret this. Now Ben, you will die.”

“You’re all as good as dead. You, Muhammad, that stupid friend and his idiotic friend, once they find those stones.. the WHOLE WORLD IS AS GOOD AS-” Sarah proceeded to slit his throat.

“No...no...”

The bright flash of the headlights startled Sarah. She didn’t let Ben go, though. She hadn’t finished with him. She saw her Uncle had pulled up, and ran out of the car towards her. “Sarah, don’t do it, Sarah...” “Uncle...” Suddenly Ben grabbed the knife out of Sarah’s hands at thrust it straight into her Uncle’s throat. Her only surviving relative. Dead. From the same murderer.

Sarah’s expression was of calm and clarity for the moment she saw her Uncle. It’s like she had got a glimpse of how her life was before Ben had burst into it. But then this feeling was sucked away, as she watched her Uncle fall. Sarah pulled out another even smaller knife from her pocket and gorged it into Ben’s throat. He was now dead. But so was her Uncle. Was this all worth it?

Dream end...

“Wake up...” Adrien spoke into her ear.

Almost superhumanly, Sarah sprung up from her bed, and hurled herself in the air and onto secure ground. The doctors around her tried to retain her, but she knocked them down with a sweep kick. “She won’t get far...” said Adrien, pressing the button on a controller on his lap. A large metal door sealed the room shut. One of the doctors who weren’t knocked down pulled out a switch and attempted to electrocute Sarah using wires that were attached to her earlier, but it didn’t work. Sarah ran for the open window, and without acknowledging she was going to fall 30 feet, she scooped up Adrien from his wheelchair, and sent them both airborne, out the window...

Ezra and Dane had received a tele-message from Agent Roberts from the Wyvern warehouse at Seattle. Ezra and Dane used the small amount of cash they had to take a taxi, and when they arrived, were greeted by Damon, Roberts, Verette, Pete and Ursula. They were all in crutches. This was an odd sight to Ezra, and he couldn’t help but feel guilty for being the one without crutches. Then again, he was Ezra. He was like no other. He had a spiritual guide, Tai Gohng, like no other, he had enemies like no other, but.. he also had friends like no other. Except he couldn’t recall any of this at the time. Feelings of friendship washed through Ezra as they all entered the warehouse and congregated. No one seemed to have a single idea of what was happening next, until one of the agents, who had brisk searched Ezra earlier, held up a small digital device.

“And what is that?” questioned Dane.

Suddenly, something sweet to the eyes appeared. It was a hologram. The only people who gasped were the Sphinx agents, and Dane and Ezra. The other agents didn’t seem surprised.

“This,” said the agent, taking off his shades, “is the plans for our new infrastructure. Built.. in collaboration with the US government.”

Ezra, still unsure of what was going on, began to feel a little uneasy. He knew his life was about to hit a curb and take him in a new direction. If only he could recall what actually lead to him being in a warehouse full of agents.

“Wait! He hasn’t said it’s gone public!” said one of the agents. “This is the US government! The government and the media are two evil forces, of course it’s going to go public..”

“We have to disband!” “I’m leaving now!”

“ORDER!” screamed Ursula. “I want to ask a question- can you get those devices in pink?”

Everybody stared blankly, then resumed bickering, until a black car bearing the American flag pulled up out the front of the warehouse, followed by two security cars. Ezra thought he could hear the American national anthem being played, but it was hard to concentrate, he felt as weak as a straw, and had to constantly be supported by Dane.

An important looking figure stepped out of the car. The figure was dark. The evening sky behind made him appear like a silhouette. Accompanied by two important looking guards in suits, the man entered the warehouse and stepped up to the head agent. Ezra’s eyes widened. It was the president of the United States, Barack Obama.

Sarah’s senses turned back in control one by one. Well, not exactly a control she wanted. All she could smell was the stench of garbage. Then she could taste nothing but raw blood. Adrien had punched her. Sarah was thrown around. Where was she?

“You will die where you belong!” Adrien scowled, crawling through the rubbish towards Sarah.

“No!! No!!!” Sarah used her feet and frog-kicked her way to the back of.. whatever she was stuck in. Adrien reached for her, and as he leant forward, was thrown straight into her as the brakes of the garbage truck stopped. The impact made both of them dizzy for the next few minutes. When Sarah regained her vision, all she could see was the scarred and hampered face of Adrien Walden. Pure evil. Sarah clenched both of her fists together, and swung her arms into him, thrashing him in the head. Adrien fell back, then, elastically, came up again, and countered her attack. He wrapped himself around her body and they rolled further into the trash. Scratching and punching uncontrollably, they couldn’t tell if they were hurting each other, but they used all the strength they could draw. Sarah tore a piece of Adrien’s lip off, as Adrien bit her nail off. The vicious fight intensified, as they clenched each other’s faces and squeezed. Sarah resisted screaming, and Adrien screamed in agony, eventually calling the attention of the driver. Sarah heard the driver calling, and, a rush of adrenaline fuelled her. She surfaced herself at the top of the rubbish pile, regaining her breath which she only just noticed had gone. She found a ladder, but as she reached for it, she felt two bony hands pound down on her shoulders and bring her further down into the rubbish again. Her face met an empty yoghurt packet. Sarah spluttered. Expecting another merciless blow following after that one, she was relieved Adrien had not yet struck her again. She dug deeper into the rubbish, almost swimming through the pit of material. Suddenly a small tidal wave of rubbish besieged her, as Adrien had body slammed with his full strength into the pile. Sarah once again climbed to the top, trying to find harder objects, particularly aluminium cans, to give her some hoist, and escape. A concept which only hours ago had completely slipped out of her preconceived reality.

Adrien hissed like a monster. Flapping his arms, it was hard for Sarah to view him as human anymore. He was a demented being that was meant to have been destroyed long ago. His one motive was to destroy and nothing more. He had only two usable limbs and a heart of dead blackness. Sarah’s mind was pacing like never before. Her eyes, blinded by rubbish, were unusable, she felt like an ant- all she could do was feel around. She reached up very high, and felt the touch of the ladder again. She grabbed onto it, but a mysterious figure spared her the effort and pulled her up into safety, from the depths of hell... it was the garbage collector.

“What on earth?” said the man. “I am about to incinerate the rubbish! You think I’m going to accept this freeganism?” “Please, please, spare me- I have a family to feed..” The man’s expression turned to sheer terror. “Oh my goodness, what has happened to you?” he stepped back, witnessing the now completely unrecognisable Sarah. She was bold, scarred, and covered in rubbish.

“Please just incinerate the rubbish! We can forgot about this!” “No- you-you need help!” The man run off. Sarah rolled her eyes, and climbed into the driver’s seat. She struggled as she sat down. Her legs were almost useless. If it weren’t for her hands and the rails helping her in she would be lying on the gravel below. She wedged a piece of wire into the keyhole of the dashboard, and pulled the incineration lever, closing her eyes as she heard Adrien’s final screams in the back of the truck. Sarah then began to black out.

Carver stepped out from behind the bush. He grabbed the closest person that came near him.

“Please don’t hurt me!!” said Henry. “Henry?” said Carver, surprised. “You-you’re a Wyvern agent!”

Carver pulled out a knife. “No! You don’t understand! I pledged loyalty to no one. I’m a freelance agent, I joined when there was a no-bind loyalty agreement. Since then I managed to evade the system. I am not a Wyvern.”

“Are you a Hydra?” Carver held the knife closer to his throat.

“W-what are you?!” asked Henry. “I’m a- Muhammad?” “Muhammad? What?”

“I-I don’t know! Dude, do you have a house I can stay at? I’ve been living out here for a week...”

Henry peeked behind the bush where Carver had stepped out from. He saw cans and old cartons of frozen food. And a cardboard box.

“Shouldn’t you... be back at college? It’s opened again,” said Henry.

“College? Ha? What are you talking about? I don’t need college.. I..I... I just need to find Muhammad!”

“Ah, I forgot, you’re another one of those people he promised a new world to as well? Ha ha. How wrong you are.”

Henry pulled out a gun and shot Carver. He then searched through his coat and pulled out a map of Papua New Guinea. Several red spots had been marked across the map. The ink had been smudged. He continued searching through his coat and found a walkie-talkie. But the batteries inside had melted. Henry looked up, his eyes fixed at the horizon ahead. It was time.