Things Always Happen Part 3

Some would call It a villain. That would be the logical thing to do. However, scholars of history are told not to judge the past by modern values. That what seems barbaric now was ordinary then, or in some cases even merciful compared to other behaviors in a given time. It is old, older then history, older then dirt, older then the stars. Only now It is here, in this time, leaving a trail of bodies. Is It a villain, simply for doing what it has always done? Are they monsters, for wanting to stop it, when it has no intentions to fight them?
“They do not matter,” It said, voice rasping.
“If they find us, they will attempt to take us from you,” she says.
“This does not matter,” It repeats.
“Lord, please, let us kill them,” she begs.
“If that will bring you pleasure. It makes no difference to me.”
“Thank you Lord,” Sheena says. It isn’t the violence she longs for, it is the safety. Nothing may take her from her lord. The investigators must be destroyed.

The representatives of Safety and Freedom Enterprises have spent the last several days visiting the homes of all the cult members. They found three more bodies, burnt the same way Hoyt and Armando had been, the surroundings untouched. Alec still doesn’t know what killed them, consuming the body, rotting and burning with such intensity, while leaving the furniture mostly intact. More intriguingly, the other residences are deserted, empty and stripped of all information. It’s this dead end that’s led them back to the beginning, the warehouse where they found the remains of the four armed man.
The body has been disposed of, cremated professionally this time, and passed through local law enforcement to Armando’s next of kin. Cover stories were issued all around, a hapless group of friends caught in a completely innocent fire.
Nothing to do, not time to go home, it’s a brief lull before an onslaught of insanity. They don’t know what’s on its way, but it’s always something, and it doesn’t help to worry.

It loves having form again. An unnecessary affection, some would say a hindering vanity, but It appreciates form. Ages had It longed for one. When that bumbling conjurer, Hoyt had brought It across the planes, he had done so in the simplest terms. It had arrived as energy, hardly more then an idea.
At first It had believed Hoyt to be a man of power, worthy of lauding for at last letting It free. The rites of liberation were very old, so old that It had believed them lost. Then along came Hoyt. It quickly learned that He was nothing more then a two bit hack, leading worse clods with less ambition. Hoyt was a charlatan who expected favors for his luck, but instead had earned a swift, painful death.
With Hoyt gone It came to Sheena. Pretty, silly Sheena. After killing Hoyt It had visited all of his brood, burning up all those who would disobey It. The unfaithful culled, and the drones in place, It needed someone to be Its voice. Pretty, silly Sheena. It whispered plans to her: abduction, amputation, the correct way to perform human sacrifice. She took to the way of life, so well, learning to be cruel, and beautiful, like magic. It was Sheena who put the vessel in place, additional limbs and all, ready for Its taking. Now it wavers, shaped in a crystal body.
Sheena drives to their old haunt, her Lord had informed her of it’s new infestation. She smiles, there is no one to see it. The foolish investigators didn’t even try to hide. She’ll waltz right in, riddle them with bullets, and get on with being the consort to the once and future god of earth.

*babeeb*babeeb*babeeb* goes the automated machine.
“The sensor at the gate went off, we’ve got incoming,” Cleo says. She pulls up the camera feed. She zooms in the picture, focusing in, and heightening the resolution. Facial identifiers make her Sheena Johns, one of the cult members who had gone missing. Cleo shouts, “Hey! It’s the chick who had the really dumb polystyrene flowers!”
Oliver coughs up a laugh. “Alright people, let’s be ready.” They hurry around franticly preparing for a few minutes, before freezing in planned positions. The uninvited visitor is at the unlocked door.
The knob is wriggling. It must be stuck, or she’s even not even as bright as they thought, and then BANG a shot is fired through the lock, and she kicks her way in.
“Hello? Anyone home?” Her voice is rattling.
Vivienne takes aim, and sends a tranquilizer dart whizzing towards the intruder. Six inches from her skin it stops, and clatters to the ground.
“My Lord won’t let you touch me,” she says, “So come out, wherever you are. Let’s get this over with.”
Oliver crashes into her from behind, sending her sprawling, the gun flying from her hand. She gets to her feet first, and sends him smashing into the wall. Alec throws himself at her, smiling as she pins him to the floor. She’s reaching for a knife holstered around her leg, but he has a knife too, and it’s quickly flipped from along his wrist, into his hand, to against her throat.
She freezes. “You wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Of course I do. You’re one of the good guys.”
“Not so much...”
Oliver interrupts. “She’s right. We need answers, not another corpse.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Aleczander sing songs. “Now dear, I’m going to cuff you, and you aren’t going to move. Got it?”
“Yeah,” she says. He reaches down to take the restraints from his back pocket, and she lowers her hand down her thigh, and as fast as lightning palms her blade. Sheena moves stab him, but Alec avoids it, inadvertently letting her free. She cuts up again, but he’s faster, blood appearing in a slick line along her shoulder. She shouts, and cuts into his side.
He gasps, and concentrates on the click clack of high heels on cement. Sheena takes a boot to the head, and is suddenly still.
Alec rolls away from his opponent, and sees Vivienne’s cold stare. This wasn’t close to their original plan, but he thought it worked out alright. The French woman obviously disagrees.
“You never were good for anything other then a distraction,” she says, then storms outside.

There’s a rush after that. Piper follows Viv to open air. She hates blood, and needs to be talked down from a predictable rage. Oliver picks himself up, and ties up the prisoner. Cleo gets out the first aid kit. Aleczander lies very still on the cool floor, taking deep breaths.
“Hey, you’re going to be fine,” Cleo tells him.
“I know,” he says.
She laughs a little, even though it’s not that funny. Oliver has Sheena trussed up good, tied a chair, and stripped of her remaining weapons. He looks to the door, but getting Alec taken care of is priority.
“Do you think it needs stitches?” He asks.
Cleo wipes away the blood, examining the wound. She shrugs. “Damn it Ollie, I’m a geek, not a doctor.”
“If Kas was here, I’d ask her, but since she’s not...” Oliver trails off, conveying that they’ll just have to make do. Kasih Alles, S.A.F.E.’s resident physician had opted to extend her stay in Haiti past when the others had jetted off to quietly tidy up a bit of pre-Olympics espionage that had gotten out of hand.
Cleo considers the cut a moment longer. “I don’t think so. I mean, he’ll be fine without them, and as the options are our poor work, or braving foreign urgent care, I’d say leave it be.”
Oliver gets close enough to see for himself, and scrunches up his face. “Alec, you’ve got a thought about this? It is your body.”
“I would like painkillers,” he says. “Now.”
“You heard the man,” Ollie says. “Wrap it up, and then drug the poor bastard.”
“Will do, Sir,” Cleo nods.
Oliver goes outside, and leans against the wall, next to Piper.
“I’m going to call Edith,” Oliver tells his friend. “Check in, let her know that Alec got hurt.”
“That’s one call she won’t like.”
“Still it’s not cause of anything she’s responsible for.”
“Yeah,” Pip agrees. “Remind her of that, alright?”
Ollie nods. “Is Viv going to be good?”
Piper is momentarily confused. “Of course. When isn’t she?”
Oliver doesn’t know.

Talking to Kas normally makes Edith feel better because Kasih is a doctor, and can fix things. So when Kas’s number pops up Edith is pleased, hoping for good news, instead of what had come previously. That hope is killed pretty damn quickly.
“I’m not coming back,” Kas says.
“No.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You can’t. We need you. We’d be dead ten times over without you.”
“I’m needed here too,” Kasih reasons. “It’s not impressive but it’s people.”
“Are we not people?” Edith asks pleadingly.
“You are. Good people. But the job is saving the world, not helping people. I can’t do that anymore, after everything.”
Edith goes silent, not knowing what to say, before choosing, “You couldn’t have saved them.”
“No,” Kas admits, “But someone could have.”
“Kas...”
“I need time to heal. You find a new M.D. It won’t be a challenge, doctors love to save the world.”
“Only it won’t be you.”
“It won’t, but if I came back now I wouldn’t be me either, not really, not as I should be. I’ll call, I’ll write, and when things get more sorted out here, barring some new disaster maybe I could come home.”
“That would be very, very good. We’re a bit of a disaster right now.”
“Yeah, we really are,” Kas says before she is must get back to the her duties.
“If it keeps on going like this there’ll be no one left,” Edith says to herself. She wishes she had never answered the phone. It wouldn’t have changed the overall circumstances, but she wouldn’t have had to known for another day. Ignorance as bliss, because her life is an unwinnable bingo card of cliches.