Pursuers (2)

"Are you... better?" Roxy asked at the end, hesitantly. The doubt not only showed in her words, but also in her expression. Nervous.

Afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Afraid that saying anything would be wrong, though someone had to break this silence.

She had said better.

Better, not well. It was hard to overlook that. And she was right, of course. Jonathan wouldn't be well again. Not until he killed that thing and got his sister back.

Until then, he wouldn't even be able to sleep well at night.

Indeed. Roxy was hesitating, but he didn't have to hesitate. There was only one decision he could make. Anything else would be cheating himself.

Postponing the inevitable.

Jonathan sighed, fed up with it all.

"Yes, I... Yeah. Sort of." It wasn't a lie. He wasn't well, but he was "better." At least he wasn't falling apart right now.

Jonathan hid his head in his hands, sighing again. Yes, he was deeply tired. But he couldn't rest. He had a long way to go before he could rest.

They hadn't returned to the road yet, naturally.

They were still standing on the side of the road, waiting.

Waiting for what?

In any case, now his back was against the vehicle they had stolen from that hellish place in order to escape. And he was sitting on the ground, hiding his head in his hands.

Hiding from... Them? From himself? Or...?

It didn't matter.

The fact was that the time had come to stop hiding, to run away. Now he could only fight.

Jonathan finally stood up.

"I will make the trade," he declared.

"Jonathan..." Mary took a step forward, reaching out for him as if to put her hands on his shoulders. Or give him a hug. If so, she thought better of it, and kept her distance. "That wasn't your sister. Whatever she is, she can't be your sister. You said she was dead. Dead is dead."

Jonathan frowned.

"Do you think I don't know that? I don't know how, but it was her."

Reason told him, no, compelled him to reject it. But he forgot all that when he remembered how she'd looked at him. What she had said.

Everything, but especially his name. Something no one should know.

None of those present, except for her. If she really was her. And she was. He wasn't suspecting, he wasn't doubting. The truth was that Jonathan, for one reason or another, was already convinced. And even if he was wrong, even if somehow that creature had managed an exact forgery of his older sister, even if it didn't make sense that he knew who he was or had researched him beforehand, he would only find out once he went to see him.

Not before. Not a second before.

And Jonathan couldn't live with himself if he abandoned her, claiming it had nothing to do with him, but never being sure.

Until the day he died.

Jonathan shook his head slightly, wrapped in thought. He'd already abandoned her once. It wouldn't happen again.

"But I'm not going to force you to do the same."

"What are you talking about?" Roxy demanded.

"Yes, what?" And Jamie, too. Mary just looked at him as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Offended. No wonder, but still, he didn't think he was making a bad decision.

"We'll stick together until I can get another car," he explained, forcing himself to be calm. "Then I'll go make the trade. You don't have to put your lives in danger... for a silly thing like this."

If only it were as simple as a trade-in. But, after doing it, that thing surely wouldn't let them leave alive just like that. So easily.

So there was no need to drag his family on a suicide mission.

Jonathan had to do this, but they didn't have to throw their lives away like that. Of course, it's not like Jonathan had given up, already assuming he was going to be defeated. But it was a possibility he couldn't ignore.

Especially once he put the Pistol in that abomination's hands.

"If you're going, we're going. It's as simple as that. So cut the crap." Mary was blunt, not mincing words.

Jonathan had expected a response like that, but it still surprised him. He looked at his team. His family.

The others were in agreement.

He should always have known they would be...and he had known, deep down. That his protests would do no good.

Jonathan closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and released it in a prolonged sigh. He opened his eyes again.

"Everyone... As you wish. And I'm sorry."

Because he hadn't made a decision just for himself, but for all of them.

A decision that could well cost them their lives. Or worse.

Worse still, he thought, remembering the people of that town, turned into ghosts of wires and steel. Robbed of their humanity. Of the ability to speak. Even of their own will.

Everything. Everything. Everything.

■

At last they were on their way again, but now they had a completely different destination. The coordinates that thing had sent them. Where they didn't know what they would find.

Only that it wouldn't be as simple as the creature had tried to make it sound, of course.

Jonathan feared abandoning his sister again, so he was doing this. But he feared just as much, if not more, dragging his new family into hell with him.

He knew they didn't know how to take no for an answer.

And he was tired, he didn't want to do anything but sleep, to be honest. Still, he tried to think of a way to convince them to at least let him go alone. They could accompany him to the door, so to speak, but he alone would venture into the wolf's lair.

While they would stay behind, watching, waiting.

That would be the most they would accept. It didn't seem like much to ask, but he couldn't think of how to convince them at all.

The day had been a long one. Almost endless.

That's why Jonathan was even surprised when night fell. It hasn't even been a day, he thought then.

They kept driving along the road, towards the specified coordinates. Sleeping and driving in turns. Of course, they were kind enough to let him have the last shift.

But Jonathan didn't sleep anyway. He just closed his eyes, pretending to do it. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep a wink all night.

He wasn't tossing and turning over the memories of his sister, or what the people who brought them into the world had done to them.

Jonathan was simply going over and over the same thing.

How to convince them. A useless topic, because he was drawing a blank. Going round and round, but getting nowhere. At least it served as a distraction, however, it was enough. In fact, it was a lot.

By now, if he didn't have a distraction, he probably would have gone insane. Even with the distraction, the night took forever.

He was so tired, he wanted nothing more than to sleep, but he couldn't sleep because of how tired he was.

And from the thoughts that hovered at the edges of his consciousness, of course. Nibbling.

So with all of that, Jonathan was grateful when it was his turn to drive. It was an uncomplicated task to concentrate on, turning his brain off. It turned out to be just what he needed.

There wasn't exactly a lot of traffic, so even if he screwed up, even if his eyes closed for an instant, what was the worst that could happen?

Well, yes, a lot of bad things could still happen. But he would avoid it.

If it happened in the first place.

Jonathan's eyelids were heavy, but he had been trying to fall asleep for hours without success. Now all he needed to make his day was fall asleep at the wheel. And waking up with a crash.

He hadn't had much luck lately, that was true, but that was precisely why the world owed him some good fortune.

Jonathan laughed at himself.

He was half asleep. The world owed no one anything. It neither gave nor took away. It just kept on spinning, no matter how many were crushed or how many were still above it.

There wasn't an accident, but only because he was wise enough to stop driving before it happened. He was too tired, starting to screw up.

Jonathan lay back down, this time genuinely hoping to fall asleep, even if not for long.

A few hours would be enough.

His hopes were dashed. He didn't sleep a wink. Slowly but inexorably, the endless night passed anyway. Mary was driving now.

Jonathan looked down at the Pistol on his lap. He squeezed it tighter.

It was his trump card. He should betray that abomination before it could stab him in the back, using the Pistol to shred it and any help it might have. The man who called himself Max had a small army.

He and the abomination had been connected. Surely he would have another army. Only bigger.

A few hours after dawn, everything went awry. Jonathan thought for a moment he was getting dizzy, but no, it was the vehicle that was spinning.

Spinning around. No longer touching the ground, by the way.

Only after that realization, that is, seconds after it happened, did he hear the explosion. It would have been useless anyway. No one had seen it coming.

The car landed abruptly.

Jonathan went flying forward, crashing through the windshield along with a shower of glass. His head cracked as it hit the ground. After that there was nothing for a while. Nothing.

When he regained consciousness, he looked up at the wrecked car on the side of the road. He noticed that it smelled of burning.

Jonathan had (they had, all of them) much bigger problems, but since he was still out of it, he couldn't help but think how ridiculous it was that they'd wrecked two vehicles in the same day. Well, not exactly, but close. Same twenty-four hour period, although it was already another day, technically.

Jonathan shook his head vigorously. Seriously, what was he thinking? A bomb. A bomb. There had been a bomb in the road, and the chances that they hadn't been their target all along were slim.

Even assuming they weren't the intended target, that didn't mean their lives weren't in danger.

That's why he had to go and make sure they were okay. And then crush their enemies, whoever they were, or however many they were, crush them mercilessly, with his own hands.

As he tried to get up, it was he who was crushed.

More precisely, a boot stepped on his face, sending him back to the ground.

"Jonathan Townshend." A voice he didn't know, but the same didn't apply the other way around, evidently. "I didn't expect to hunt you down myself. But here we are."

His head had been turned to the side, so he could see enough when he lifted it. She was a government agent wrapped in power armor.

She wasn't the only one. There were many agents present behind her, all in the same armor, and several vehicles.

A trap. They had finally found them, after so much running.

At last, but how the hell had they done it?

Now that they were on top of them, the only thing that mattered was to get rid of them somehow. But he wanted to know, anyway.

Jonathan had a feeling he needed to know.

"Firing the Pistol was a mistake," the woman said as if she'd read his mind. "We were able to track its signal that way."

Oh. That made sense.

They weren't beginners or idiots, of course the first thing he'd done, once they'd escaped immediate danger, was to examine the gun for anything that might be a tracer.

And they had found nothing, so he had let his guard down.

Jonathan should have known better.

That it was too soon to let his guard down. And that just because they hadn't found anything didn't mean it wasn't there, somewhere.

It was too late for that, though. Too late for regrets.

"I see," Jonathan said, slowly and after a while.

They had them where they wanted them. And, of course, their lives weren't needed. So now they would be disposed of. And there would be no one left who knew the truth.

No one who could interfere with the giant, crushing hand of the government.

Slowly crushing them all.

The woman raised a sword. Its blade pointed at him between his eyebrows. It would slide swiftly through his flesh, and he would be dead before he knew it. And that would almost be a comfort. Almost, because he wouldn't have to watch the people he loved most in this world die.

Jonathan heard a scream.

For a second, he thought it was his own scream. But if it had attacked him, he wouldn't have had time to scream, it would have been too fast, as he said.

Jamie.

Jamie had gotten out of the car, crawling across the floor. And now she was screaming, as she waved her staff.

The woman averted her gaze, gave the order to attack.

Too late.

The explosion tinged the world white.