Chapter 33

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Wednesday 17th March 1999

It came as no surprise that both Kayleigh and Will were absent from school the following day. She in particular most likely had no intentions of showing her face around us…

The school day dragged like nails scraping excruciatingly, ever-so-slowly, down a chalkboard. Even worse than when Nick first showed up, the stress and concern consumed everything else from start to finish. Sure, school ending hardly made anything better, but it meant we could actually try to be proactive in whatever way we could.

Kendal drove us back to Dakota’s, and had to park up on the pavement as both Neil’s car and Clyde and Amelia’s were in the driveway.

The five of us said nothing as we walked to the front door. The atmosphere had peeked into something almost mournful. Of course, while I can’t speak for the others, I was aware that we would have to put on a slightly warmer tone again as soon as we entered…

Dakota knocked before opening the front door, and we all shuffled inside.

Immediately walking into the hallway to greet us was a face I’d seen pretty much every day for months: standing right next to her family portrait, Cassie Henderson gave us a comforting smile. Having slipped off her shoes, Dakota greeted her aunt with a hug.

“You look so grown-up…” Cassie told her warmly while returning the embrace, still bearing an American accent.

“I don’t feel it right now…” Dakota mumbled back glumly.

“Hey now… it’s not your fault…”

While rubbing Dakota’s back comfortingly, she gestured gently for the rest of us to head into the living room. Formal introductions would have to wait, then.

It was pretty unusual walking into the living room and finding a bunch of adults sitting around, deep in discussion. Neil, Clyde and Amelia were there along with another man, who waved at us a little as we entered. Unlike Cassie’s measured smile, he let what seemed like natural cheer take him. It didn’t feel like he couldn’t read the tone; he just had a sunny disposition.

“Hi, I’m Fidel,” he told us. “Yeah, hahaha, like Castro… Fidel Rios.”

Still cheery even then. Probably an ice-breaker rather than something that people have told him in the past.

I’ll spare you all the introductions exchanged with both Fidel and Cassie, and I’ll gloss past our run-through of what had happened the night before too. We concluded by going over the information Will had imparted to us:

“We know where Nick’s holed up,” Zahid recounted. “We know how many people he’s got with him. We know the weapons are in a storage cupboard at the back. We know they’re leaving tonight… we don’t know where to.”

“How certain are you that we can trust Will?” Neil asked us immediately. He’d clearly been absorbing, processing and planning the whole way through our explanation.

“I think he’s being sincere…”

Dakota almost sounded uncomfortable making that claim.

“Like he said, there’s no reason for Kayleigh to actually share the weapons with him, and Nick wouldn’t consider us a threat now that he’s got the weapons back from us.”

“For the record, I’m still uneasy,” Bao added with his hand raised. “She’s right but I can’t shake the feeling something bad’s gonna happen… but maybe that’s just me. Sometimes I get funny feelings about things. There was this time that-”

“Might wanna save it for later, Bao,” I suggested, and he nodded back keenly.

“Still, there’s no saying this isn’t a trap for us,” Fidel reasoned, fingers knitted in contemplation. “It wouldn’t be the first time Nick’s had us led into a trap, and it was plain as day that you’d call us in to help you.”

“That was opportunism, though,” Clyde now spoke up. “We meant nothing to him back then. He’s not the type of person to try and lure enemies in, especially now he’s got the weapons back.”

“He’ll be seeing himself as unstoppable,” Amelia concurred.

“Yeah, he literally turned up at the front door and asked us to give him the weapons back, sooo…”

Kendal let her point hang in the air as nobody spoke for a moment. I was hit with second-hand awkwardness while she came across unscathed.

“Ideally, we can surround the place, get in there quick and intercept him before he can use the weapons,” Neil mused. “Once he’s got his hands on them, all bets are off.”

“What if we head in a minute or so before you?” Zahid proposed, making an effort to seriously engage them (though I suppose Kendal had been sincere too). “Enter through the back, Will can lead us to the weapons, we grab them, then you fly in and do your Mission: Impossible stuff.”

“You’re not getting involved in this.”

If you’ve ever seen The Lion King (Lucy’s favourite film, no I did not cry the first time I watched it), Neil had the stern tone of Mufasa down pat as he told us that.

“Without the weapons, you’re vulnerable. You can’t fend for yourselves. If you’re seen, you’re finished.”

“Then give us guns,” my friend argued. “We’ve got a man on the inside-”

“Listen. I left you in charge of the weapons, and you failed at that-”

“Oh, yeah, sorry!” Zahid growled now. “We should’ve known Kayleigh was Nick’s fucking daughter, shouldn’t we?” Vitriol dripped from his words.

“My point is that I can’t risk you slipping up in this situation,” the adult concluded bluntly.

“Like he said, give us guns!” Bao enthused. “Not saying that because it’d be cool, not that it wouldn’t, because it would… but we should be the ones to clear up our own mess!”

“Agreed.”

So I said.

“I mean, the gun thing’s kinda terrifying…”

Clarify, clarify…

“The whole situation is something I really don’t like… but I want to help fix it. We’re already involved in this.”

“You don’t have to be involved in the mission itself,” Neil insisted. His voice was sounding steadily more frustrated. “You can’t put your lives on the line the way we can.”

“Neil.”

From nowhere, Cassie was suddenly staring at her husband with what I could only describe as restrained fury. Like a devastating torrent held back only by a single iron fortification of a dam.

“We are not expendable. You and I have children, who we don’t even see half the time because of this job. Fidel and Amelia have spoken about starting a family someday and you-”

“Not now, Cass-”

“Yes, now,” she snapped back almost before he’d even finished speaking. I noticed both Fidel and Amelia looking uncomfortable all the while, having been brought into Cassie’s argument unwillingly.

“This was my dream years ago, and I’m so fortunate to have achieved it. But we have so much to live for now. Every time we go toe-to-toe with someone, I imagine Pete and Anna being told that we didn’t make it out alive. I’m not saying we end this, but please… we need to re-evaluate things.”

I looked to Dakota, and put a hand on hers before I even fully registered her face. Unsurprisingly, she was chewing her lip. What Cassie had said naturally hit close to home… Cassie’s brother hadn’t been so fortunate before, and it was Dakota who had to hear that her father didn’t survive a mission.

In spite of that – or rather, because of that – she had her gaze fixed hard and steely on Neil.

“I don’t like the kids getting involved either,” Cassie continued a moment later, “but they’re right. They can help us out here. We give them one handgun each, for self-defence, and they go in the back with Will just before we hit the front. They grab the weapons, power up, and get out quick. It’s risky, I know, but it’s the best option we have.”

Neil spent a few seconds ruminating on the idea; then he shut his eyes, exhaled through his nose, and spoke.

“Okay. But we plan this out thoroughly…”

His dark eyes opened, briefly returning Dakota’s gaze before looking at the rest of us in turn.

“And you have to be careful. This will be more dangerous than anything you’ve ever done.”

“We’ll be on the highest alert,” Bao assured him brazenly.

And just like that, the five of us had conscribed ourselves into a march on the devil’s turf.

…

Some time later, my friends and I were taking an unusually-solemn bus ride to our destination a couple of towns over. My usual childish impulse to go for the top deck had been drowned out by the cocktail of nerves, fear, and a dash of self-pity that was bubbling away in my stomach.

Well, I say solemn, but one of us was Kendal.

“Guuuuys… I can’t believe we’ve got G-U-N-S in our bags…!” she whispered to us with barely-restrained glee.

“Nice code, no one’s deciphering that,” Zahid grunted back to her.

“Hey, what if… maybe this is stupid…”

Bao’s line of sight performed a quick arc as he considered his thought.

“Maybe it’s not… what if Kayleigh had to make this journey every day?”

“To see Nick…?” Dakota asked flatly.

“No, I mean what if she’s been living at the warehouse? And she’s had to travel all this way to get to school and go back?”

An ambiguous “hrm” from Zahid was the only response any of us gave to that idea. On my part, at least, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it, or about her. She’d purposefully been targeting us from the beginning. She’d come to our town explicitly to steal the weapons from us. Surely her suffering – if you could consider lengthy daily bus journeys suffering – was her own choice? Even then, it wasn’t fun. None of this was fun.

I looked to Dakota, and found her looking understandably dismayed.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel… even a tiny bit better…?” I asked, expecting it to be in vain but knowing that it was my place to offer all the same.

“Not really…” she murmured back.

“Okay…”

And despite knowing that my question would prove futile, I still felt utterly useless. I should be able to think of something, to raise her spirits if only a little.

I wrapped an arm around her in an effort to give her a little consolation. She nestled in, resting her head against my shoulder, like that was enough.

…

After our lengthy bus journey, we spent a short while figuring out the way to the abandoned warehouse where Nick had set up base. It took some trial and error, and we were on-edge considering we would be very much screwed if we turned up at the front side and Nick or his cronies saw us, but eventually we found our graffiti-strewn destination.

“I told you no Evil Space Aliens had gotten to this one yet,” Bao remarked chipperly. “Okay, all good, let’s go home…”

“Aww, don’t be nervous!” Kendal chuckled.

“Aren’t you nervous?” I asked her while tensely wiggling the fingers of my clammy hands.

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “Nervous and excited kinda blur together most of the time.”

“Lucky you,” Dakota commented with sincerity, while holding her mobile phone. The arrangement was for her to send a text to Will when we were ready for him to let us in, and then another to Neil as we entered. He and the others had already confirmed that they were ready to go (they drove up while we took the bus, in case Nick happened to be on the look-out for us and our presence blew the adults’ cover).

“Everyone ready?”

“Gimme a moment…” I implored her, pacing tightly, taking a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. Bao seemed to be similarly trying to compose himself; as it happens, we both nodded to Dakota in unison. A tiny glimmer of amusement to further ease us.

“Okay…”

With a nervous twitch of her nose, Dakota sent the first message.

And then, for what felt like a slither of eternity, we waited.

Dakota quickly primed her second text while the rest of us rested acutely and uneasily on tenterhooks.

The back door finally opened, and Will emerged, not looking particularly relaxed himself.

“About time,” he uttered, before gesturing for us to follow him. “Come on.”

As quickly as he emerged, he vanished back inside the building. I watched Dakota slip her phone into the side pocket of her backpack, having sent the go-ahead to Neil and co.; then we set off after Will, into the dragon’s lair.

I’m not quite sure why I pictured pristine office corridors, but the reality was distinctly bare and grim. Well-lit, at least, but then for averting a creepy atmosphere, it instead showed up just how poorly-kept the place was.

Not to make it sound like I was worried about interior decoration when I was terrified that a gun-toting goon or five would materialise around each corner we turned.

While Dakota and Kendal had their firearms in their bags, Bao, Zahid and I had the tactical advantage of trouser pockets in which to stash ours. Our brisk lesson had taught us about turning the safety on and off, and how to aim. We’d naturally not practiced firing. If we had to use them, it would be our first experience doing so.

I was now a teenager wandering around a formally-abandoned warehouse with a gun in my pocket.

We were barely in the building for fifteen seconds when the sounds of gunfire rang out from nearby.

“I guess that’s your cavalry,” Will whispered ahead of us.

“Pretty much,” I replied shakily.

“If you’ve set us all up-”

Before Zahid could finish, Will gestured for us to halt. Another turn was directly ahead of us.

“I told Kayleigh that we’re going to have the opportunity to steal the weapons,” he explained. “The storage cupboard’s right ahead. She’ll be meeting me there any moment. What’s the plan?”

“You don’t have a plan…?” Bao asked with sheer confusion.

“Why would I have a plan? You’re the ones who know the weapons. Kayleigh and Nick are the only ones who have the code for the door.”

“Grab the bow and toss it to Kendal,” Dakota commanded. “Then we have a long-range advantage.”

“Unless Kayleigh has a gun…” I spoke without thinking.

What’s worse, Will had already walked off around the corner by the time I said that…

The five of us remained deathly silent while hurried footsteps drew close.

“Dunno where you got your insider tip from, but shit’s hit the fan hard,” Kayleigh’s voice began, replacing the footsteps.

“Kinda heard that,” Will replied. “Get this thing open, quick.”

“Alright, Christ. Keep your cornrows on…”

Then the beeping of an electronic keypad lock.

And a door being opened.

Kendal braced, and, under her breath…

“One… two…”

Now. I stayed behind the wall with the rest of the team, so I can’t tell you precisely what happened. What I can say is that, in the space of three seconds, Kendal swung around the corner, grabbed her Lokon bow as it was thrown to her, blasted her Painter costume on, and aimed a freshly-generated pink arrow down the hall.

“Shit-”

Kayleigh’s panicked voice was followed by the brief sound of movement.

“Give it back or I slit his throat.”

That was ominous…

Dakota, Bao, Zahid and I – perhaps stupidly – barrelled around the corner after Kendal, to find Kayleigh behind Will, holding him tight and poising my Lokon sword in front of his neck.

“Of course you’re all here…” Nick’s daughter spat, adjusting her hold on her captive. “The fuck are you thinking, Will?”

“That you’re the type to stab me in the back. Guess I wasn’t too far off,” he quipped. With a sword to his throat. What a guy.

“Heh.”

It seemed even Kayleigh found it amusing.

“Gotta give you credit… you’ve got bigger balls than I thought.”

“You have no idea.”

“F-Flirt alert…” Bao observed, with more uncertainty than me. As far as I was concerned, that was definitely flirting, even if the situation hardly called for it.

“We know you’re not gonna kill me,” Will continued, “so why don’t you hand the weapons to the others so we can all get out of here?”

“Because I’m not sharing,” his captor replied sharply.

“Kayleigh-”

“Kayleigh indeed.”

Now Nick had emerged, gun in his hand, smirking ambiguously.

Almost immediately, the gun was pointed at Kayleigh’s head.

“I don’t know what is happening here, but I’m gonna make things extremely simple for you, dear daughter. Hand me the sword, or you’re dead.”

Like father, like daughter, apparently…

“Hey, I didn’t start this,” she told him, retaining her position. “Will’s the one who brought the Painters here-”

“And I’ll deal with them next. But you shouldn’t be opening the weapon cupboard at all, should you?”

He chuckled lowly, still smirking.

“You look so much like your mother that I stupidly assumed you were as pathetic as her… but you’ve got streaks of me running through you, too.”

I don’t know what Kayleigh thinks of her birth mother. I have no idea if her adoptive parents ever knew her to tell Kayleigh what she was like. Maybe they made up stories about her, whether they knew her or not.

Maybe it wasn’t even about that – maybe it was the comparison with the man holding a gun to her head.

But her nostrils flared.

A moment later – so recklessly – she swung my sword right at Nick, striking him with the flat of the blade and knocking him off balance.

Released, Will stepped away from Kayleigh; she brought the sword in front of her chest, just like I would to power up, and… well, held the pose, to no effect. Nothing happened.

All she did was give Nick the chance to recover.

He reared up and aimed at her once more in one movement. Will dragged her away literally at the same time, and Nick fired on the wall instead.

Just like that, she narrowly avoided being shot by her own father.

“Yo, Nick!” Kendal shouted out. He turned wordlessly, and the moment he did, she fired an arrow at him. It unfurled in mid-air, turning into a glowing pink net which promptly ensnared our enemy.

“The weapons, quick!” Dakota yelled now while rushing for the storage cupboard. Bao and Zahid followed after her, while I went to Kayleigh instead. If she was shaken by her near-miss seconds before, she wasn’t showing it.

“Give me the sword,” I urged her, hands already out to take it.

“No… why….?” she asked uneasily.

“Because apparently you can’t use it, but I can. Give it to me.”

Our serious expressions battled each other for all of a second. Thankfully, she caved before I did.

“Fine…”

She placed the sword in my hands, and I effortlessly suited up. I then turned my attention to Nick, who was struggling to untangle himself from Kendal’s netting.

“Everybody out!” Dakota ordered; she too was now holding her weapon and sporting her Painter gear, as were Bao and Zahid. They and Kendal began sprinting back the way we came, and I made sure Kayleigh and Will were leaving with the rest of us before joining the stampede.

Beside the sound of our footsteps, and the distant echoes of gunfire, I could hear Nick talking to himself, desperate and infuriated.

“Yes… anything… give yourself to me…!”

I reached the exit and leapt through, finding the others hanging around outside.

“That’s your part of the deal sorted,” Will spoke while still right next to Kayleigh, almost defensively.

“And we’ll figure out how to do your part as soon as this is over,” Dakota replied. “Nick should be stuck for now, and the adults can grab him-”

An explosive blast of a thousand colours erupted from the back door of the warehouse, sending the seven of us flying. Even with my Painter gear, I was still winded by the collision with the ground, and worse for wear from the blast itself.

“Do I even wanna ask what that was…?” Zahid groaned several feet away.

Hauling myself upright, I squinted to try and see down the corridor from where I was.

The eerie glow came before anything clear.

Walking just a little slower than normal, Nick gradually made his way out of the warehouse, skin cracking and illuminated underneath by glowing colour. Like some kind of inexplicable Lokon zombie, he staggered towards us, sneering deliriously.

“Hey… hey, kids. Guess what?” he gurgled. “Turns out, I don’t need the weapons anymore.”

“Wait… how?!” Bao asked incredulously.

“Ssseeeecret…” our enemy teased giddily, while slowly spreading his arms wide.

“You two,” Dakota presumably addressed Kayleigh and Will, “get away from here now.”

I was too busy watching Nick to see them leaving, but I know that they did.

Aurora-like ripples of colour were forming, growing stronger, above Nick’s arms. He cackled at us.

“Look at you. Stupid children.”

He flung his arms forward, and the amassed power followed, ploughing forward and forcing us to scatter. It hit the opposing warehouse, and the whole world seemed to shudder and vibrate for a brief moment.

“You think you’re heroes?”

The ground beneath him, and then around him, burst open as colour surged through it like it did his body. At random points, large spikes sprung forth, constructs like we create; all we could do was try to defend ourselves, fighting them as they emerged.

“How many crimes have been committed? How many lives have been lost? How much could you have done for the world instead of fighting monsters that might as well be in your heads?”

“Like you care!” Kendal hissed, before firing arrows right at our transformed enemy. The projectiles hit their target unobstructed, and he absorbed them into himself.

“Oh, I don’t,” he confirmed. “Just pointing out how pathetic you all are. How immature you are.”

He raised a hand, and launched numerous iridescent needles in Kendal’s direction. She fired another arrow in response, which expanded rapidly into a disc to block the needles, but they pierced through and struck her. She yelped out in pain and stumbled back.

“Now, bow,” Nick continued. Glowing horns emerged from his head, growing out as a demented crown. “Bow before the king.”

“And we’re the immature ones?!” I roared out despite myself. Nick glanced at me, and the ground ruptured beneath my feet, forcing me to spring elsewhere.

The man’s laughter flooded our nightmarish battlefield.

“Life’s about power, boy!” he bellowed to the heavens with arms outstretched once more.

“Then have some more,” Dakota snarled, before firing a continuous stream of pure green from her spear, directly into Nick. Despite the blow knocking him back half a step, he didn’t stop laughing.

I clocked what she was attempting.

Making sure my footing was stable, I swung my sword forward and did the same, unleashing raw blue on our enemy. Same effect: very little.

“Aaaah, I see…” Bao noted, doing the same again; Kendal and Zahid’s pink and red joined in too, and finally, Nick was struggling to stand against our combined attack.

“Do your worst!” the maniac challenged us. “I’m invincible now! After all this time…!”

His body began to convulse beyond the streams of colour striking him.

“Stop!” Dakota shouted, and we ceased our attacks.

Nick collapsed to his knees, still laughing, eyes glazed over as he looked skywards. His body was glowing brighter now, skin splitting open all over as Lokonessence coursed through his system.

Suddenly, abruptly, the power exploded from him, momentarily blinding us, colour blurring into white for a split second before fading just as fast.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw Nick’s body limply keel over.

“Is… is he…?” Kendal asked quietly, almost innocently.

Ever the forward leader, Dakota slowly approached the body. While he was no longer glowing, he could still be playing a trick of some kind on us.

Reaching him, she crouched, and placed two fingers to his neck.

Then, she turned to us.

“Still alive.”

We said very little for the few minutes spent waiting for Neil and his team to join us.

…

Nick’s body was taken to a contact of Neil’s in the area; we were told he was comatose, and would be kept in care until he awoke and could be dealt with in whatever way was found suitable. Hard to build a court case for Lokonessence-related crimes, after all.

It was already dark when we returned to Dakota’s. As celebration for our victory – and to have at least a little St. Patrick’s Day cheer – we had some drinks, though us teens were heavily rationed. Which is fair, considering it was a weekday. The five of us promised amongst ourselves to make a proper day of it next year. A day that didn’t involve fighting a Lokonessence-powered man.

(I’m so glad we didn’t have to use our guns…)

As for Kayleigh and Will… Dakota sent Will a text, asking if he and Kayleigh were okay. It took a while to receive a response; we were preparing to leave when her mobile finally beeped.

The message was brief, and blunt.

“Both fine. Don’t message again.”