Unchanging

Read
The orange, glowing evening clouds slowly started to subside, blending into the night sky. The gap in the clouds cast an eery light upon a corpse that was lying, half buried, near an abandoned road in the north of Mongolia. A Jeep, missing both of its doors, pulled up on the opposite side of the road, or, what was left of it. A figure wearing a high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat, and large brown boots stepped over towards the corpse, which blended into the rest of the sand as the last of the sunlight faded into nothingness. He kicked the sand forward, revealing more of the corpse. He signalled someone else sitting in the car, a female figure, who brought over a flashlight. A light, this time a bright, white light cast upon the corpse. The man knelt down and turned it. It was Hectate Calder. The man gasped, and told the woman with him to return to his car. He immediately switched the flashlight off and turned to the car. But then he stopped and turned back, remembering something, then reached his hand into Hectate’s jacket and took out a note, sealed with a Hydra sticker. He sat back down in the driver’s seat the car with the woman.

“That’s Hectate, isn’t it?” the woman said somberly. “They actually killed her. They killed an innocent woman.”

“But the seed has been planted. Wherever they go, we’ll know about it.”

The woman sighed. “Are we going to tell Adrien about this?” she said.

The man focused on the road ahead, deciding on his next words. “Master Adrien wants to know what will bring him closer to the stone.”

“What is he trying to prove?! What are you trying to prove?”

The man sighed, rolling his eyes. “Steve,” she shook his shoulder. “Listen to me, why are we even in this Hydra business?”

Steve reacted violently, grabbing her by the throat. “It is not for you to question Master Adrien! He is doing us a favour, it’s more than we could ask for. He promises us a new world. A flawless world.”

“I don’t know what your idea of a-”

Steve pulled the car over, and locked the doors. He then ruffled through his bag. Verette, his estranged wife, froze in fear. He pulled out a handgun.

“One more word from you and I swear...”

Verette briskly pulled out a chain from under her seat, and swerved her body out of the way of the gun. Steve dropped the gun, as the chain wrapped around his neck before he could say a word out of his sailor mouth, and she started strangling him. Verette leaped over and on top of him, grasping him so he couldn’t fight back at all, and forcing his head further down into the seat. After a minute of struggling, Steve was motionless. He was dead. Verette stepped out of the car and held her hand over her face. A large vehicle pulled up on the other side of the street, and two of Tanen’s agents stepped out. They wore the crest of the Wyvern. They held their guns up, but put them down when they saw Verette was distressed and unarmed.

“I want to..” she huffed. “Join you.”

Back at Seattle...

The bus pulled into the mall’s large underground carpark. It was empty, and pieces of rubbish were lying all around the place. A few small flashing lights were seen around the place- what was left of the city’s backup power. Tanen pressed a switch and a wall in the underground carpark opened. Guards stepped outside of the bus to look around to check if anybody could see them entering their secret headquarters. Light from their headquarters filled up the carpark, it was like day. Marge, Sarah, Ezra, Dane, Henry, Brendan, Sam and the rest of the agents all worked orderly into the base. Inside, agents were monitoring the cameras of the college Ezra had been at. It had been vacated days ago, and it was trashed. In another room, agents were monitoring the local police’s progress, and demographical information, such as the whereabouts of people, what they had been staying and so on. Very little information could be retrieved on shops, as many were closed, broken into, and their systems were down.

“We’ve had no word from the power plant,” said Agent Marx to Marge.

“Mum.. I’m going to take a shower,” said Sarah.

“No, wait.. oh yeah, we still have water.”

Sarah walked off, but then came back a couple seconds later.

“Mum, do we have a backup water supply here as well?”

“Oh... no..” said Marge.

A breaking news report then came on the 50” TV they had hanging on the wall above.

“Rhett Ismir, the owner of Seattle’s power plant, has.. fizz... fizz....”

“What’s she saying?!” said Sarah.

“In other news.. fizz.. the water corp...fizz...”

The TV blacked out. The lights on the ceiling then began to flicker.

“Someone is interfering with the solar panels above!” said Agent Marx.

“What?! Send out the ninjas to check it at once.” Marge Tanen paced the room worryingly.

Ezra turned to Marge. “Could it be them?! Could they have found us?”

“God have mercy, I hope not. I hope it’s just a bunch of hooligans, playing around at the top level of the carpark.”

“But how can they have access to the panels? They’re blocked off..” said Agent Marx.

“Well, you know what kids are like these days..” Marge said nervously. She didn’t look very assuring.

At Khentii Falls...

Muhammad had managed to avoid burning to death by the fire. His clothes were shredded from rolling around several times, but no fire had completely obstructed his way. It looked hopeless, but just from a distance, once up closer to the flames it didn’t look so impossible to get around. Muhammad had made it to a cliff, with a fast, rushing stream below, which was connected to.. a waterfall that dropped down from further up the cliff. Muhammad couldn’t clearly make out just how far the fall would be, since he was about a quarter way down the waterfall, but it did not look survivable. He looked behind to see the fire closing in on him. Staring deeply into the flames, he was now facing death. Or, deaths. He could burn at the mercy of the destructive element, or, drown, or be crushed, in the stream below, which could be infested with rocks, and other kinds of flesh-eating creatures. Muhammad took baby steps towards the edge, and almost fell off when he began to feel the heat of the flames on his backside. He had to jump. There was no other way.

“Muhammad.. Muh-hammad.....” a faint voice called.

“So this is death,” Muhammad said to himself. He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he saw an image inside his head. The stone. His destiny. With all the energy and courage he could conjure, Muhammad leaped towards the falling water, instead of down into the stream. He imagined himself jumping into the hands of a god. He also imagined himself scraping his hands on rocks or whatever was behind the water, and being pushed down to a grisly death. But he leaped anyway. And he grabbed hold of something. A rope. Before he could thank nature, he found himself in a well-lit cave, completely soaked from the water, and standing in front of about 30 odd people. He had grabbed onto a rope and been pulled into a hidden cave behind the waterfall. Out of the 30 people, one seemed to stand out the most.

“Welcome,” said Carver, stepping out in front of the rest of the people. They stood there, huddled like penguins, wide-eyed and weary.

“This is Muhammad,” he announced to the others.

“And this is my fist.”