Date: Wed, 24 Aug 1994 06:51:41 EDT Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "(Nancy Cleveland)" Subject: Aloha Chapter 2 (p 91-96) This is a dark and violent story....any questions, class? The sense of the other Immortal changed, diminished somehow. He wasn't sure how, or why...only that it was different. "This is a covert op." Vulcan spoke quietly, his lips barely moving." Everything they're doing now is under the bed. The local cops, the feds, everyone else is totally out of it. This is their game. Solo." He twisted in his seat, watching the garbage truck's slow, ominous approach. "They're under the gun, Raven, desperate to stop the information you've let out. I checked in with Jose, when I got in yesterday. He said they've pulled in all their crypto people, all their freelance hackers, to try and chop off your data at the source." Jonathan was silent, concentrating, trying to track the changing pattern of the buzzing, tingling sense, trying to puzzle out what it meant. He had to decide, to make a move, quickly. To go in, try to warn the Immortal inside, or to run, while there was still time to escape, himself. The truck was several hundred yards away, moving slowly, and the van had stopped, double parked at the other end of the street. Motion. The garage door rose, levitated open, soundlessly. A raucous, sudden roar split the peaceful Georgetown street's quiet, and a motorcycle leaped out the dark interior, a helmeted, leather clad figure crouched low on the body of the bike. It skidded down the driveway, slewing sideways when it hit the street, scattering gravel and leaving a smell of burning rubber and a smear of tire mark as it went. It wobbled, straightened, and headed down the hill. Towards the Key Bridge. Towards Virginia. Now he understood, or thought he did. "Follow him. No matter what happens, stay with him, get him, bring him back. " Jonathan gripped Vulcan's shoulder, staring into his cold blue eyes, like staring into a glacier, looking for agreement, acceptance. Vulcan nodded, once, stiffly. He dug in his shirt pocket and handed Raven a hotel key. "Room 38. The Belmont." Jonathan smiled. He handed the key back, closing Vulcan's hand over it, firmly. "I'll be there. No matter what you hear. Wait for me. Follow the van. Go. Now." His decision was made for him, as the van peeled off in pursuit of the motorcycle, its engine whining as it accelerated up the street. Raven grabbed the door handle, swinging it open and rolling low across the curb and lawn, into a tall hedge that partially shielded their vantage point. A prickly hedge, he rapidly discovered. Very prickly. Vulcan eased the door shut and pulled out, following the van, weaving and dodging the spray of bullets that splattered suddenly against the side of the car, as the garbage truck rolled open its vast cavernous bay and a dozen black clad figures leaped out, automatic weapons in thieir hands, black ski masks covering their faces. Jonathan wriggled along the hedge, ignoring the insistent, plucking spines, working his way closer to the house. How close had that congressional investigation gotten, before? How close to shutting them down, for good? He wished he had paid more attention to his sources, had spent more time probing beyond the superficial information levels he exchanged regularly with his coded contacts. While he was looking for his son, some major shift in policy had occurred. Vulcan was away, safe, it seemed. Two of the black clad figures had half chased his car down the street, firing. They were called back, turned and ran to rejoin the group, which was moving quickly to surround the house. Jonathan ducked and wriggled deeper into the hedge where it abutted the frame building, pushing his body inside the trunks, easing his way along the wall, feeling, searching for the cellar window he'd spotted earlier. There. The sharp tinkling of glass breaking, all around the house. He thrust his hand through the window, the noise blending with the others, the razor sharp shards slicing his skin, his wrist. He reached in and turned the lock, then shoved the window up, holding his breath when the rotten wood creaked, groaned and splintered under his fingers. The opening was large enough. Barely. He slid in, his lungs empty, like an eel under a door, and fell with a solid thump to the floor. A cloud of dust surrounded him. He held his breath, willing himself not to sneeze, not to breathe. He rolled to his feet, and felt his way slowly across the floor, lightly, groping like a blind man in the dark, waiting for his eyes to adjust from the bright midday sun, touching objects strewn haphazardly everywhere, a miscellany of precariously balanced junk laying in wait for him, treacherous, ready to betray him at the slightest touch, the slightest mistake. Footsteps moved above him, muffled crashes as doors were kicked in, furniture upended. He could hear the seach party. They sounded baffled. Angry. As if the prey had escaped. The buzzing was stronger now, but different, somehow. Like a different flavor of ice cream, a different instrument playing the same note. He tasted it, heard it...felt it in his head, in his mind.... The lights suddenly switched on. He closed his eyes, dropping instinctively to the floor, rolling, momentarily blinded but still no easy target. The buzzing intensified. A flash of steel, and a warm body dropped onto his, an arm locked around his neck, a blade pressed at his throat. The rush of memories, of images from another Immortal mind distracted him, momentarily. He stopped himself just in time from breaking the man's...the boy's...neck. Converted his initial move into a stunning blow, not a killing one. The other Immortal gasped, then slumped, momentarily dazed. Jonathan looked around, noted the heavy wooden crossbar protecting the cellar door. From the sound of it, all the armed figures were inside, though. He turned to the figure on the floor, beside him. The boy's eyes were unfocused, as he shook his head, then reason gleamed in them and he scrabbled desperately on the floor for his blade. Jonathan knelt on it, holding it down, away from the boy's prying fingers. "You must be Richie." "And who the hell are you?" The boy glared at him, his eyes widening as recognition dawned. "Raven? Damn. Mac didn't mention you were an Immortal." "Well he did tell me about you. Said you were his most recent student. Before me." The boy sat up, and looked at Jonathan, suspicion furrowing his brow. "Mac didn't tell me you were his student, either. He didn't tell me a lot of things. Why should I trust you? You set him up!" He spoke in a whisper, but rage vibrated in his hissing sillibants. The boy's tone was accusing, angry. Defensive. Jonathan sensed more than anger under the boy's voice. Fear was there, not for himself, but for his mentor. Something had happened to MacLeod, something bad. Something the boy didn't trust him enough to share with him. Something that made the man vulnerable, somehow. Guilt surged through him, his worst fears hovering, reawakened. The footsteps above were gathering, concentrating, a milling of the herd. Then the assault on the door began. Bullets splintered through it, to no avail, then a hissing sound filled the basement as an acetylene torch began cutting the hinges, the metal glowing a dusky red in the grey shadows of the cellar stairwell. "I came to help... him. Where is he? What happened?" Jonathan stared hard at the boy, trying to see past his eyes, into his mind. The boy shook his head, a stubborn cast to his face, mistrust clouding his eyes. "Mac didn't say anything about you helping him.....I saw what happend at the airport. I was there." "We need to go." Jonathan stood and offered the boy his hand. Richie ignored it, ignored Jonathan, and levered himself to his feet, picking up his sword and sheathing it in a long soft leather scabbard. He did...something...and it disappeared, into his loose clothing. Jonathan stared at him, eyes narrowed. Was this another Immortal trick MacLeod had neglected to mention? In a flash, it came to him. The primary concern of Immortals, a concern that had almost slipped his mind, in the press of other events, other concerns that were closer to his heart, closer to the life he had lived and, he kept forgetting, had now left behind. "Look, if I had come for your head, I could have taken it right here, right now. I didn't. Doesn't that mean something to you?" He stood facing the boy, forcing Richie to acknowledge him, to acknowledge the ramifications of his statement, his actions. The boy stared back, his expression closed, distant. "Other people have tried to use me, to hurt Mac. You wouldn't be the first. Or the last." The boy seemed to be weakening, despite his cold words, his mistrust lessening as he mulled the sincerity of Raven's statement. "I came here to help. Trust me. Please." Jonathan held his hand out, pleading. Above them, the door creaked on its hinges. He glanced upwards. The red molten glow of the torch was cutting through the bottom set, now. The people above were almost through. Ritchie made a sudden decision, moved closer, grasped Jonathan's hand, firmly. The rushing surge of memories, images, tumbled in a random cascade through Jonathan's brain. He recoiled, instinctlively, against the onslaught, then forced himself to stand firm, to let the images, the memories, in. Jonathan supposed it was a two way thing, this connection, this communication. Maybe it couldn't anticipate the future, couldn't show him what the youth clasping his hand was thinking right now, or what he planned to do, soon, but it could, and did, show fragments of what Richie had seen, what he'd felt and experienced, in his past. And likewise, the youth could sense, could share, Jonathan's past. Or so he hoped. The memory was a flash, rapidly covered up. The boy still didn't trust him. Was on a fishing expedition of Jonathan's memories, probably. But Jonathan had seen enough, in the rapid overlay of images. MacLeod, in the past, confident, at ease, secure in his experience, his prowess. MacLeod, this morning, uncertain, unsure of his own identity. Jonathan broke the connection. Broke the boy's grasp. Turned and pulled Richie towards the window. Hurrying. Pulled the breaker box the boy had tripped, blotting out the lights again. There was no time, no time to waste. More debts of honor, to pay. More evil, to avenge. Obligations piled on obligations. Would eternity be enought time, to repay what had been done? He didn't know. Above, the door was shaking, loose in its frame, light from the room above spilling down the stairs in ever widening pools. Shouts, of triumph, as it splintered one final time, cracking and breaking loose, tumbling in pieces down the stairs, a rush of dark clad figures sweeping behind it, guns flashing and spitting death into the shadowed cellar below. The boy didn't resist. Let Jonathan guide him to the window, let him boost him up, and out. Scrambled along the wall, the way Jonathan had come, his sneakers disappearing from Jonathan's sight just as the basement lights flared back on. Jonathan could hear Richie rustling, struggling through the bushes. A gun cracked, outside, low and flat. Almost instantaneously the boy cried out, an inarticulate bellow of pain, of hopelessness. Jonathan felt his gut clench, in sympathy, and in rage. He turned, facing a dozen automatic weapons, all held level, aimed directly at him. "Give it up, Raven. We've got you." A rasping growl from one of the faceless shapes. Jonathan snatched a half seen rusty metal disk, a circular saw blade, his fingers identified it immediately, and threw it at the man who'd spoken, spinning flat, edge out, like a shiruken, only larger. He fell, rolled sideways as the space he'd been occupying was crisscrossed with bullets. He glimpsed the man he'd targeted stagger back, the disk buried in his throat. He reached and pulled a pitted metal andiron from the floor, braced his feet on the cement wall behind him, and threw it, end over end, at the cluster of figures. It hit, the sound like a ripe watermelon dropping, splitting. He rolled, grasping for any weapon his fingers could find, keeping low, behind the scattered piles of junk, the bullets tracking him, raising little spurts of dust as they hit the floor, moving closer, then beyond him, then back. The figures had split up now, scattered and crouched low to the floor, the four remaining quartering the room, covering each part of the cellar with their weapons. Jonathan hefted a chuck of broken brick, tossed it at the lone bright electric bulb that illuminated the space, shattering it. He rolled again, seeking the shadows, seeking cover, feeling a rush of bullets passing near, plucking at his clothes. Outside, the bushes rustled again. More footsteps pounded across the ceiling above, reinforcements coming from the second floor, from outside. He realized his position was exposed, wide open, to the figure that loomed, blocked the filtered daylight in the tiny basement window, and fired down on him. He rolled, moving with what he hoped looked like desperation to evade the gun, but he was too close, too easy a target. His will, his mind, warred with his instinct, his gut, as he hesitated, presenting the gunner with a gift. His life. Jonathan could feel the bullets hitting his body, pounding into his back, ripping through his chest, his diaphram, splintering his ribs, tearing apart muscle, cartilage, tendon. He could feel his energy, running out of his body, leaving only the broken empty husk behind. He reached out, grasped the rickety wooden table next to him, pulled himself up, with his last dregs of strength, his last spurt of awareness. His left hand moved, almost of his own accord, as he felt the shadowed figures coming close, felt blood starting out of his nose, his mouth, as his lungs filled, and collapsed, a suffocating feeling enveloping him, crushing him. His hand moved, the fingers in a claw, the face that loomed too close fell back, nose shattered, bone driven into his brain, still breathing, but dead. The other figures pulled back, raised thier guns, fired. He felt the bullets hit him from three sides, felt them push him back, against the wall. He leaned there, feeling his life slipping away. His hands dropped, his knees weakened, folded, and he felt himself slipping, slowly, down the wall, his eyes still open, but his vision gone. It was Richie's only chance, now. He felt a momentary flicker of concern. Or Jonathan would deal with it , later. He felt a surge of quiet satisfaction. Then the terror, the dark, the falling, endless vertigo caught him in its grip and he screamed, all alone, inside. * * * * * =========================================================================