“ Stay sharp,” Gillean said as they sped towards the city center. “We stop them here, tonight. No matter what.”
The city lights blurred past as they raced against time, the magnitude of their task clear in every heartbeat. Gillean’s resolve hardened, his focus sharpening. This was their last stand , and he would do whatever it took to ensure they succeeded.
They arrived at the government building just as the first explosions rocketed the night. The battle that followed was fierce , a desperate clash of walls and weapons. Gillean fought with everything he had , his team by his side , the unity unbreakable.
“ Aaah! “ Marcus shouted. “ Help me! I’m shot!”, he yelled and fell to the ground.
“ What the heck?” Lucas asked and rushed to Marcus with all his speed.
“ Bro, you’re bleeding terribly.” he said ,bending to see Marcus’s wounds closer.
“ Well, thanks a million, Captain Obvious.” Marcus replied with a hoarse voice.
“ You’re still sarcastic , no matter the circumstances.”
“ That’s what I like about him most. I’m gonna call the ambulance.” Asteria said as she approached them.
“ Is Gwen and Gillean all right?” Marcus asked.
“ They’re completely fine.” Lucas rejoindered, rummaging in his backpack.
“ What do you mean by ‘completely fine’ ?” Marcus responded, furrowing his brows.
“ They’re fighting somewhere near us, nothing special. We haven’t got any emergency calls from them so far.”
“ Tell to Asteria that she should go back to back them up.” Marcus demanded.
“ Okay, dude. But let’s get some medical help for you first. “ Lucas said and concentrated on tying the bandage on Marcus’s shot shoulder correctly.
“ It should help to prevent the blood loss till the ambulance gets you proper help.” Lucas finally announced and sighed with relief. “ Can you get up? “
“ I think so.” Marcus said in a confused way.
“ Let’s get you out from the battlefield. Otherwise, they’ll shoot you or me again.” Lucas offered and gave Marcus his hand.
“ Thanks, dude. I would have been dead without you.”
“ Nothing to thank for. Hold on me. We should hurry up to get you somewhere safer than here.”
“ Yes. I’m useless for the team right now, shouldn’t get in the way.” Marcus said pitifully.
“ You aren’t getting in the way, you just need to get some procedures before moving on and helping us again.”
They were walking together, Marcus propped up on Lucas’s arm. The explosions were wrecking the ground hard, making it crack and vibrate. The ambience was gradually getting blurry, slipping Marcus’s eyes and mind. The energy and ability to walk were fading away, his knees shaking as if he was seeing the biggest fear right in front of him. He felt the blood soaking the bandage tied around his shoulder. “ Will I make it out alive? “ he thought for a moment. But Lucas kept him going, not letting him fall down. He helped him to sit down on a bench and they were waiting for the ambulance together , while the turmoil was only getting more and more savage around them.
***
“ Faster, faster, he started loosing blood!” Lucas yelled as he saw the paramedics approaching them. Marcus was lying on the bench , his wound making him crouch from the excruciating pain. The medics took him away, Lucas with him, making Gillean, Gwen and Asteria fight on their own.
“ Don’t worry. You’ll be all right ,and we’ll get back to our friends ASAP.”
“ All right, I believe you.” Marcus said, grunting from pain. He closed his eyes and felt as though he was falling down. Lucas was holding his hand, while he was on a stretcher. Marcus passed out, his body became stiff, unmovable.
***
“ Set up this goddamn robot already!” yelled a middle-aged, broad-shouldered man. Marcus had a closer look. “ No way! This Adam Hadamson is here again..”
Marcus was standing right behind him, but Adam didn’t notice him. Neither did other people, working hard at the square. “ Am I dead?” Marcus thought and looked around. Everything was broken down, the corpses laying on the asphalt soaked with blood. The smell of iron spread everywhere. The Order members were trying to set up a huge robot. Adam grunted and approached the robot. “ I’ll do it myself.” he claimed proudly. Eventually, the droid made a humming sound indicating the completed set-up.
“ Boss, what is it for?” one of the Order members asked.
“ No time to explain. I’m waiting for all of you in the common room in 15 minutes.” Adam said and quickly left the square, the robot following him.
Marcus gasped and followed Adam immediately. He was walking down the corridor for a while, then turned right. It was an old and dusty pantry, with the stairs hidden inside of the cupboard. “ Holly crap…” Marcus thought and went down. He got to a dimly-lit room, with a stale smell pervading it. Suddenly, Adam pulled a weird lever arm and candles appeared on the floor and candleholders on the walls. Adam stood in the middle and a pentagram appeared right under the place where he was standing. He took off his backpack and started taking out some small, shabby dolls. Marcus squinted and recognized the Voodoo dolls with Gillean’s ,Gwen’s , Lucas’s , Asteria’s and his photographs on them. “ What the fuck…” Marcus whispered. He sat down on the floor and started coming up with a plan. His kit of things in the jacket pocket was rather scarce : his cell phone, a pack of cigarettes , a lighter and a lockpick . “ What can I do with these thingies? Where is my backpack? This dream or whatever it is ,is just playing tricks on me.”
A whacky idea sprang to Marcus’s mind: to make the robot obey him and spoil the ritual. Since he could not be seen, he could do whatever he wanted to save his team. Adam was standing in the middle of the pentagram , while Marcus approached the robot calmly standing in the corner. He saw a panel on it’s belly, and started changing the settings for the machine to serve a different person. “ It’s way easier than I thought.” Marcus noticed gladly. “ New login detected”, the text on the panel said. “ Yaay!” Marcus though and smiled exaltedly . He pressed a button on the robots back for it to move. “ An enemy detected.” said the droid in a drawling way. It turned and rushed to Adam Hadamson.
“ What the fuck is going on?” he exclaimed to his hands started shaking with panic. “ I’m all alone , who could have possibly hacked it?”
Meanwhile Marcus was walking right behind the robot to blow off the candles somehow. He noticed the very lever arm that Adam pulled and did the same . The candles disappeared, leaving not a trace of their warm, yellow light. But the pentagram was still there, brightening the silhouette in its center . Marcus stepped closer, and trapped over something weird. “ What is it?” Marcus asked himself and bent to look closer at the thing. It was a timeworn book . The cover was made of leather, making it look like a grimoire. Marcus was skimming through the pages, when he noticed something queer, standing out from all the other text . It was an incantation. There was a post scriptum under it : recite it to eliminate the Voodoo-serving pentagram. “ The Elvish language. I remember seeing it in my favorite childhood novels from the religion professor’s library. It can’t be true” Marcus thought. Breathing in and out, he mastered his courage to recite the incantation. “ I’ve got nothing to lose. I need to save ‘em out on the battlefield.”
“ Lais anorath vilya,
Harad falmar yulma,
Calad an-uir quoron,
Heriad i saeg;
Gurth i pentagram,
Eldalye ereth an-uir!”
The room burst with the blinding white light, the pentagram breaking down, fading away, Adam screaming in agony. The robot stroke him with the blades sticking out of its belly. Marcus ran towards them and stroke the cigarettes from his pocket and thew them right at the place where Adam was to intensify the fire. The room dissipated , making Marcus fall into darkness and stony silence.
***
“ Gillean , how is it? Need any help?” Asteria asked, panting .
“ Coping with ‘em well so far.” Gillean responded, shooting another Order member .
“ I’ve overheard some news…” Gwen yelled, running to them.
“ What kind of news?” Gillean and Asteria asked in unison.
“ Sort of useless, but still worth knowing. The Global commission’s members fled , some of them had died. Now we have to deal with the Order members for this to be over. “
“ Wow. That’s really helpful for us now.” Asteria said sarcastically.
“ Don’t mind her, she’s always like this. Especially under such circumstances.” Gillean replied, trying to support Gwen.
“ It’s all right. Not really the information we should focus on now. “ Gwen responded and wiped the sweat off her face . She was slaughtering the enemies with an extreme kind dexterity , that could only be possessed by such people like her, the detectives.
“ Where’s this cunning Adam?” Gillean thought and than saw three people carrying someone. It was Adam . “ Guys! He’s dead!” Gillean yelled with joy. Asteria targeted the group carrying their boss. “ Guys, target them too.” she urged them. With their effort, the people collapsed on the ground, their dead boss lying among them . The fight was over now. The Order is defeated . The totalitarian government is not here anymore. The team has done what they’ve been aspiring to do for such a long time.
“ Now we should get to Lucas and Marcus, cheer them up with our eventual victory.” Asteria said while putting her gun in the holster.
“ Of course.” Gillean replied .
***
Marcus was sleeping peacefully, Lucas was holding his hand, when the door burst open. Gillean , Gwen and Asteria ran in, grinning when they saw Lucas and Marcus .
“ Who’s there?” Marcus asked groggily, not opening his eyes.
“ Marcus ! We won!” Gillean hollered and sat on the chair in front of Marcus’s bed.
“ Wait. What? Am I dreaming?” Marcus said and got up immediately.
“ No, you aren’t. It’s true.” Asteria rejoindered.
“ What about Adam? And the Global commission?” Marcus questioned, not feeling sleepy anymore.
“ The Global commission had fled when the fight was only beginning, and when you were shot other people saw the turmoil and started coming up to us and fought with us. At the end we saw some Order members carrying Adam , he was dead. We shot them and the fight was over.” Gwen retold.
“ Guys, I need to confess in something.” Marcus murmured.
“ Go ahead.” they said in unison.
“ Okay, so… When I was in the ambulance car, I passed out. Then I had a some sort of a queer dream. I saw Adam in a dungeon. He was preparing to conduct a ritual to obliterate all of us. He had Voodoo dolls with the pictures of us on them and there was a whacky pentagram in the center. The candles were electric, you had to pull a lever arm to light them up. There was the robot we’d seen on the square earlier, and I successfully hacked it. Then I found a grimoire and recited an incantation to destroy the pentagram and the robot slaughtered Adam , everything was burning and then I passed out again. “
“ It wasn’t a dream. It’s a medical condition called the somnambulant vividus syndrome. Shortly, it’s when you’re physically unconscious , but your spirit wanders around and you have visions. Or it may be something abstract , like an out-of-body experience.” Lucas responded.
“ Adam ran away even before the beginning of the fight with this robot in the box. He was probably planning the ritual while there was an absolute melee outside.” Asteria assumed.
“ Yeah , it could be.” Marcus agreed.
“ Does the wound hurt ?” Gwen asked.
“ It’s all right, I had it cleaned and the shards removed. They also applied a good bandage on it, so it’s not so critical. Just takes time to heal fully.” Marcus said to calm his friend down.
“ I hope so.” Gwen replied and patted Marcus’s head.
“ When are you allowed to come back home?” Gillean questioned.
“ Tomorrow after 12 pm.” Marcus answered.
“ Don’t you mind if we take Lucas away? He should get some rest too.” Asteria suggested.
“ No, I don’t . Thanks a million, guys, without you I’m just no one. It’s impossible for an individual to plot such plans and act alone. Go home and relax, I want to sleep too.” Marcus said and beamed.
“ Good night, bro.” they said simultaneously.
“ Good night. Sorry than I can’t hug you yet.” Marcus responded , and turned on his right side, which wasn’t injured.
***
“ I can’t believe we’ve managed to do it.” Gwen squeaked and gave everyone a high-five.
“ Yeah. But it is our finally happy reality.” Asteria riposted with a joyful tone.
“ What’s gonna happen to the city now? We need to ask for a new government somehow.” Lucas said anxiously.
“ We can sign some petitions and our TV presenters and correspondents will definitely talk about this. Other countries will probably help us redeem ourselves. The US have been a totalitarian country for a long time and our government has done a lot vile things both to the Americans and the world as a whole.” Asteria responded.
“ We have to do something for our own wellbeing.” Gillean announced proudly.
“ Of course.” Gwen confirmed his words.
“ But now we all should hit the sack.” Lucas said and came up to everyone to shake hands with them. “ Good night .” he said and yawned. Asteria did the same.
“ Gwen, don’t you mind spending the night with me? I don’t want to be alone.” Gillean offered kindly.
“ Me neither. I need someone to talk with about these brain-wrecking events. I ought to be with someone this night to get over it.” Gwen answered.
Gwen and Gillean were sitting on a comfortable soft couch on the balcony and looking at the stars. The cool night air made the ambience calmer, letting them decompress after the prior troubles. They were hugging and then Gillean turned and started kissing Gwen in her lips. They pulled each other closer, kissing and feeling their affection grow with every singe day. “ My darling, now I understand , that you’ve been my love since working at the police department.” Gillean confessed. “ I love you too.” Gwen responded softly. They cuddled and fell asleep on the same couch, with the stars and night above them.
