No Cure For The Sick

The Advisor’s mask covered his expression, but Hendrix could tell he was smiling through his eyes.

Hendrix grit his teeth, becoming more and more furious at the thought of the Advisor being happy at this moment.

“What are you smiling about?!” Hendrix yelled at the Advisor. He was as confused as he was frustrated.

“I see the will of god in you, boy. No wonder they wanted to capture you.” The Advisor’s words felt like a bullet to the chest.

“Will of god?! Capture me?! What is going on?!” Hendrix clutched his hair as he felt his world start to spin.

“Let’s test that will!” The Advisor leaped towards Hendrix, catching him off guard. He reeled his right arm back, balling his hand into a fist.

Hendrix was still trying to catch his balance, so he didn’t have time to react.

The Advisor landed a punch in the middle of Hendrix’s gut, sending him flying. He crashed into the nearby wall, crumbling concrete into dust.

“HENDRIX!” Bloom screamed from the other side of the cafeteria as she shot up from her knees.

She sprinted at the speed of light over to the Advisor, who had already predicted this outcome.

“You’re not a priority.” The Advisor opened his hand as blood began to levitate from the mutilated corpse of Milo. The head of Milo moved to give way for the blood floating under it, making Bloom stop in her tracks, frozen in shock.

“STOP!” Bloom covered her mouth with her hands as she tried not to vomit.

The blood gathered in the Advisor’s hand, making a long blade.

As the dust settled, Hendrix got up from the rubble of the wall he had collided with. He had covered his torso in his strings to lessen the impact, but the power of the strike was too much to cover altogether.

Hendrix coughed as blood leaked from his lip. He looked at the Advisor through the dust with those same shellshocked eyes he had before he got punched in the gut. He saw the blood-fueled weapon in the Advisor’s hand, immediately connecting where the blood had come from.

Hendrix felt like his chest was about to explode with fury. His grit his teeth with so much force that his teeth felt like they were about to crack.

“SHOW ME! SHOW ME THE WILL OF GOD!” The Advisor screamed through the rubble as he pointed his blade at the now standing Hendrix.

Hendrix didn’t respond. He swayed right to left, trying to calm himself down. His eyes were covered by his overgrown pink hair.

Eventually, his strings burst from his arms, exploding through the dust. They twisted around each other making two spinning drills, headed right for the Advisor.

The Advisor jumped into the air to dodge them, but he was followed upward by the spinning spears.

“YES!” The Advisor screamed in glee as the blade in his hand began to form into a shield. The blood that made up the shield seemed to clot, making a solid surface for the strings to charge into.

The drills clashed against the shield, sending a screeching sound through the air.

The Advisor stood on his own shield as he looked down at Hendrix.

“He’s still wide eyed and crying in the heat of battle. You’ll shed those weak emotions soon enough, disciple of god.” The Advisor jumped off his shield and towards Hendrix. His shield turned into liquid blood once again, following the now falling Advisor.

The Advisor opened his hand as the blood formed back into a sword in his clutch.

Hendrix looked up to see the Advisor in a full dive towards him. He had enough time to reel his strings back in, but he didn’t have enough time to manifest them again.

As his strings disappeared into his arms, he instinctively pulled the guitar on his back forward to block the incoming attack.

His fingers, which were still focusing Spirit, glided against the strings like muscle memory forcing him to use his guitar as an instrument instead of a shield. The sound resonated more than a usual unplugged electric guitar would, surprising Hendrix.

A wall of black Spirit in the form of soundwaves travelled upwards towards the Advisor.

The soundwaves hit the Advisor like a brick wall, smashing into his face like a large fist.

The Advisor flailed through the air with no control over his direction, landing a few feet away from the frozen Bloom, who was still staring at the now drained body of Milo.

“For a second there… For a second there I could feel the Spirit of god!” The Advisor started to laugh gleefully, enraging Hendrix once again.

Hendrix felt anger towards the Advisor’s burst of laughter, but at the same time he felt shock towards the wall of visible soundwaves that expelled from his guitar.

“Is this… Is this the power that the masked guy was talking about?!” Hendrix thought back to the dream he had at the top of the glass tower that day.

As the guitar settled into a playing position, he strummed it once again with his fingers.

That wall of black Spirit-soundwaves expelled from the guitar once again, heading straight for the Advisor’s chest.

His eyes smiled once again as the wall of noise moved towards him.

He looked to his left as he saw the shocked and frozen Bloom, still staring at the bloodless corpse of Milo.

The blood-sword puddled, then rose into a rope.

The Advisor formed the end of the rope into a lasso, promptly throwing it at the still frozen Bloom.

With all of her attention on the corpse in front of her, she didn’t have time to react to the lasso made of the corpse’s blood wrapping around her.

The Advisor pulled the shell-shocked Bloom in front of him, right in the way of the incoming soundwaves.

Bloom screamed as she realized the situation she was in. She tried to struggle out of the bloody rope but it seemed too tightly wrapped around her arms and stomach.

Hendrix’s eyes widened as he recognized the danger he had put Bloom into.

Right before the soundwaves hit Bloom, the Advisor released the lasso’s grip on her.

The wall of noise hit the already crying Bloom, sending her flying back to Alex, who had been trying to get to the other side of the cafeteria this entire time. Her eyes widened as she saw her love get tossed through the air back towards her.

Alex tried to move to the location where Bloom was going to fall, holding her arms out in an attempt to catch her.

As she got closer to the ground, Alex leaped forward to catch the falling Bloom.

Alex’s arms wrapped around Bloom just in time to soften her fall. Alex kneeled over the now laying Bloom.

She was unconscious. Alex didn’t think Hendrix’s strike could have been powerful enough to concuss someone with no additional impact.

“How violent could Hendrix’s attack have been?! Bloom isn’t just some kid… She wouldn’t be knocked out by just any hit…” Alex thought.

Hendrix grew wide eyed once again.

“Show me the will of God, boy! Do you have the strength to fight?!” The Advisor showed those smiling eyes once again, making Hendrix grit his teeth. Hendrix noticed some of Milo’s blood still dripping from the chin of the Advisor’s mask from when he initially wiped it on his mask.

Officer 1060 zoomed down the hallway towards the cafeteria, jumping over the lunch tables towards the hole in the wall from the explosion at the beginning of all this.

“I’m sorry, sir. I believe the brothers are both dead. They were fine Officers, and I was just the one who retreated in time-” 1060’s words were cut short.

“You were the one who knew his limits. You’ve proven your superiority as an Officer, 1060.” The Advisor spoke to the Officer while keeping his eyes trained on Hendrix.

“Yes sir.” The Officer nodded.

The six teens sprinted down the hallway just under a minute behind the Officer, making it to the cafeteria before stopping at the sight in front of them.

Alex was holding a limp Bloom on one side of the cafeteria. In the middle, Officer 1060 was seen walking out of the compound and down the hill towards the car they arrived in. On the other side of the cafeteria, the Advisor and Hendrix faced one another.

At the kids’ feet lay a barely recognizable Milo, dead on the ground.

Kai turned around to vomit, as Taro put his hands on top of his head to attempt to take in deep breaths through his panic.

“MILO! MILO!” Taro screamed as he looked down at the lifeless eyes staring up at the cafeteria ceiling through a skinless face.

Amora instinctively buried her face in the chest of Chase, just as he instinctively closed his eyes while burying his face into the top of Amora’s dirty blonde hair.

“Please. Just don’t let me see that.” Amora’s muffled voice spoke through Chase’s shirt.

“I won’t.” Chase whispered back, his voice shaking through the sentence.

Akilah covered her mouth to muffle her fearful screams, falling to her knees.

“How… How could this all have happened?!” Akilah spoke through her hands.

Vida’s tears started to flow, trying to take in all of this horrific information.

“Milo… You died in the worst way possible… For what? What kind of god allows this to happen?!” Vida had heard so much about a living god today. She was sick of it. The thought of an all-powerful being made her grit her teeth as she looked at the lifeless Milo, the unconscious Bloom, and the bloodied Hendrix.

Hendrix noticed his friends' arrival, as well as their reactions to the horrific scene.

“I am awaiting your answer!” The Advisor tried to return Hendrix’s attention back to him.

Hendrix slowly turned his eyes back to the Advisor as he opened his mouth to speak.

“You’ll die a slow death.” Hendrix uttered. Blood spilled down his lip from his impact with the wall, but he didn’t bother wiping it, his eyes trained on his enemy.

His friends went silent as Hendrix’s words echoed off of the concrete walls.

The Advisor laughed contently, awaiting Hendrix’s next move.