Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1994 21:14:38 EDT Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "N.L. Cleveland" Subject: Aloha Chapter 2 (p 102-108) * * * * * "Yeah, it's him all right." A man. Bored. Indifferent. The voice a familiar one... The words faded in and out of Jonathan's hearing, sometimes muffled and inaudible, sometimes sharp and clear. He felt cold, stiff, dry as a mummy in the desert, his mouth parched, his body twisted in an odd unnatural angle. The concrete floor was hard against his shoulders, his back. His skin was stuck to it, glued in congealing puddles....of blood, he supposed. He kept his eyes closed, his face blank, and lay still as he could, fighting the urge to sneeze at the dust the unseen voices were stirring with their feet. At the edge of his consciousness, faintly, he could feel the buzz of another Immortal. He couldn't tell who... "....autospy?" A woman, this time. Nervous. Angry. Again, familiar.....Miriam? "No, it's pretty obvious what he died of." The man, again. < Jack, it was Jack Benson. All the field directors were here, it seemed. Or at least the ones he knew. > Clicks, and flashes of light coming through his eyelids. Something was poking into his side, his body half covering it. It was hard. Cold. Metal. A gun, pehaps. From one of the dead agents. He wondered if he could somehow take it, hide it. He kept his muscles limp, using his meditation techniques to relax, to keep his fingers from twitching, his eyelids from flickering. "...damn trigger happy buffoons....." Miriam again. "He killed Tony, Juan, Sam.. He was coming for me. We had no choice." Another voice, male, defensive, loud. No one he'd ever heard before, that one. He breathed shallowly, lightly, barely stirring his chest with his tiny puffs of indrawn air. "The Director will not be pleased." A new voice. Also familiar. Someone else he knew, someone he'd worked wtih, taken orders from, for years. McDermot. "At least we caught the kid. Maybe he can tell us something. He's even got another of those damn swords. There's got to be some connection." Jack, again. He didn't want another blood debt, another burden of guilt on his shoulders. He knew what the boy would face. Only too well. The boy must be the other Immortal whose presence he sensed. He tried to pinpoint the boy's location, but the sensation was too vague, too diffused. "Find out what he knows. Do it fast. And get rid of this garbage." McDermot, once more. He felt a pang of grief, a small burning ember of anger. The final separation, the last tiny tie of loyalty to anyone, to any of the people at the Agency parted at that moment. < Garbage. That's what they think of us as. Consumable goods, to be used and tossed aside when we break or disobey.> This piece of *garbage* would not be tossed aside. "They're softening the kid up now, in the van. He should be ready to talk by the time we get him home." Jack, satisfaction in his voice. Jonthan felt his shoulders being lifted, his body rolled onto a slick plastic surface, bundled inside like a piece of meat, then carried at an angle, up the stairs. He fought his instictive urge to move, to react to the motion, to tighten his muscles and seek to balance. He forced himself to relax, to stay limp and fluid, to let his muscles sag as if there were no volition, no conscious mind controlling them. It was one of the hardest exercizes he'd attempted. His body slid and shifted on the slick surface, puddling to the bottom of the bag. The man carrying his legs cursed and faltered on the stairs, almost dropping the plastic. "Dammit, Art, hold on to your end better. I can't carry the whole load." "You can't hack it, drop it. He's not gonna notice." The bottom man grunted and shifted his grip, then continued up the stairs. He was level again, on the ground floor, in the entry way, it felt like. Jonathan could hear feet upstairs, downstairs, conversation all around him. The place sounded like it was being torn apart. "Where do you want him?" "In the truck, with the others. We'll sort them out later, in the Basement." The men moved on, swinging him down the outer stairs. More voices, and the sound of an engine, starting. "Please keep back, folks. D.E. A. Drug bust. You'll see it all on the evening news....." The low growling rumble of the garbage truck was all around him. He felt himself lifted, thrown, and fell, hitting the hard metal floor with a solid thud, his head cracking against it and stars exploding across his vision. He wasn't sure how long he lay, dazed. He heard other persons entering, the loading door of the truck rumbling shut, and felt it grind into gear, bumping along the quiet street. The other Immortal was no closer, still a vaguely felt presence, somewhere ahead of the truck. He gathered his strength, his purpose, his rage. He listened, trying to pinpoint the locations and number of people with him, in the belly of the truck. Three, maybe four. All male. Joking. At ease. A successful mission, accomplished. Survived. They thought. He heard someone's feet scuffing the floor, near his head. The plastic was lifted away, and he felt the pressure of a hostile gaze. He lay still. Focusing. "I never would have believed it, if I hadn't seen it myself." There, the first one. To his right. "He was supposed to be one of the best. What a way to go. Shot like a dog in a basement." Now, the second. Near his feet. "He had it coming. He tried to bring us all down. He got better than he deserved." The third, to his left, just at his shoulder. < Was there another? > He couldn't be sure. If there was, he hadn't spoken, was just a silent presence, a fourth echoing pair of feet lost in the crowd. Maybe there were only three. < Maybe.> "Hey, is he breathing?" The frst one, leaning suddenly close. Too close. Jonathan moved, his eyes still closed, concentrating, listening, shrugging loose from the plastic, reaching up and grabbing with iron hard fingers the groin of each of the men on either side of him, twisting and yanking and pulling them to their knees, kicking straight up with his still cocooned legs and driving the breath and all thought of fighting out of the man who was standing far too near for his own good, at his feet. All three were down, incapacitated for the moment. Jonathan opened his eyes, blinking in the light, reached without thought to his right and twisted the neck of the first, severing his spinal cord, then swiveled left and snapped the spine of the second, while the third hunched in a pile of misery, reaching for his gun. He was operating on instinct now, a pure mindless killing machine. He felt no remorse, no grief for the lives he was snuffing out, no pity for these mortals who had dared to get in his way, to tamper with his life, with his loves. Jonathan had no time to shake loose the clinging plastic. Noise would be fatal to his plans. He surged forward, in a half tumble, his legs still encased, and threw himself on the third man, levering his forearms together and cutting off the flow of blood through the agent's carotid artery, feeling the man go limp, and then the pulse in his throat go still, beneath his taut muscles. He ducked as a half seen shape flashed across the edge of his vision. He rolled, twisting onto his back, and reached out with his legs, lifting the man who had grabbed at him and flipping him in mid-air, reaching up and snagging his throat with his fingers, crushing the man's windpipe, and then lowering the still quivering corpse gently back to the metal plated floor. Quietly. With no more sound than a whisper. The man's wallet had fallen from his pocket. It lay, open, on the floor, near Jonathan's face. He glanced at it, noticed the snapshot spilling out, a picture of a smiling woman and child squinting into the sun, wearing sunburns and swimsuits. At a beach. Jonathan closed his eyes, a piercing shooting pain cutting through his temples for a second. Still ahead, that diffuse, nagging buzz. The truck must be convoying with the van. The van holding Richie. Jonathan looked around the well equiped space. Foam padded chairs, an open ice chest with sandwiches and soda sticking out, a gun rack, a mobile radio humming and talking to itself, its red scanner attachment sweeping the dials for any tidbits of interest..... Almost without conscious volition he moved to the chest, popping open the soda tabs and guzzling the fizzy liquid. His lips wrinkled in distaste, but he couldn't stop drinking. He was dry, parched like a man who had been in the desert too long....even his skin felt leathery, thickened and hard. He opened four cans, swallowed them almost without a pause for breath in between and then stuffed some ice in his mouth, savoring the liquid as it curled down his throat, soothing the raging thirst he had been ignoring, as he had been taught, as he had learned to do. There was a metal grill mesh venting out the top of the truck, but no other opening to the outside, no direct communication with the drivers that he could see. He stuck two guns and an extra ammunition clip in his pants pockets, then stood on one of the rickety chairs and held on to the grill, pulling himself up, putting all his weight on it, watching it bend slowly beneath the strain, the sharp edges of the metal slicing through the skin on his fingers, watching it bend, and finally break, sagging in the middle, the metal split and cracked. He let his numbed fingers loosen, and put his weight back on the chair. He pulled the shattered grill furthur apart, then shook his fingers, willing them to bend, to obey his direction. He reached up and shoved his way out, the metal catching at his shirt, his skin, gashing jagged slices as he twisted and turned, pulling and pushing himself up and out. He lay low, flat along the top of the truck. He glanced behind. No one from the Agency seemed to be following. In front, he could see the white van, almost four blocks away, the Immortal's buzz just at the barest edge of his perception. He edged along the swaying top, clinging to the smooth metal, sliding over the bolts, the welded seams, working his way forwards, towards the driver's cab. Waiting for the perfect moment. The van turned, ahead, disappearing around a tree lined corner. No cars were anywhere near, no pedestrians watched. The truck pulled up to a stop sign, just as Jonathan swung down from the metal roof, his legs driving through the open side window, smashing the head of the driver sideways into that of the man next to him, stunning them both. He slid halfway into the cab, kicking again at the driver, a precise kiling blow to his temples. He reached out with his legs and drew the other man to him, scissoring the man's neck between his locked thighs, reaching out and turning the man's head with his hands, listening without feeling, without remorse, to the sound of the bones cracking, snapping, popping. They were dead. It had taken maybe a minute. Maybe a little less. He allowed himself to feel nothing. He had a mission to perform. He was Raven, now. A creature of the night. A trained assassin. He doubted they could. Anyone could. Except, perhaps, another Immortal. And he now knew what they were. Would not be surprised, again. Would not be vulnerable, not to his son, not to his passions, not to anyone. Anything. Never again. He slid all the way in to the cab and shoved their bodies down, into the foot compartment, half under the passenger seat. He borrowed a shirt from one, stuffing his own blood saturated shirt under the seat, borrowed a hat and sunglasses from the second, an ID badge from the first. He tossed a few extra body bags on top of the two..... Then he settled into the driver's seat and engaged the gears. The truck lurched slowly forward as he puzzled out the gear shift ratios and brought it up to a respectable 35 miles an hour, only once almost dumping the bodies in the back when he activated the hydraulic lift, by mistake. By the time the truck was approaching the back gates to the Basement, he was at ease with the controls. He had a lot more respect for the skills of a garbage truck driver, now. He nodded to the guard and drove slowly through, the guard waving him on and in, not even pausing to be ID'd. The white van had gone ahead, the Immortal's presence fading from his senses. Now it was back, up close, strong, as he pulled into the submerged garage. The van was there. He pulled the truck up to the van, slid casually out, pocketing two more clips of ammunition as he did. There was a small cluster of men standing near the rear of the van, the door open. He walked over, every sense alert, plotting the motion and vectors of everyone in the echoing space, planning where he would be, to intersect each line, each tanget. =========================================================================