Dust to Dust Ch. 05

Finally, she poked her head out the door, looking red-eyed and wild-haired and more than a bit sheepish.

"Uhm . . . listen – "

"It's all right," Valar said, moving to block her path from the antique vase on the one remaining end-table in the area. "You've been under considerable stress."

"That's no excuse," she replied. "I'll pay – "

"Nonsense," Alyidana replied, giving Dusty a big hug. She was relieved herself. Her daughter had survived the fight.

"Have we heard from Ashley?" she asked.

The mood grew uncomfortable again.

"No," Valar replied. "She – " He wasn't sure he should say anything, but Evlidone had no such reservations.

"She is going after Chimera on her own. She sucker punched my daughter," he said with no small amount of anger, "and then ran off."

"WHAT?! " Dusty said. "She can't! They'll kill her!" She looked towards the front entrance, but there were two guards there.

"What would you do?" Alyidana asked gently. "This is a warrior's game now. Imagine how I feel every time my little girl goes off to battle to pick a fight or to put herself in harm's way – "

"But Eliza knows how you feel. She knows you love her," Dusty sniffed. "I never got to tell Ashley – " Dusty trailed off. She felt sick to her stomach, and nothing anyone was going to be able to say would make that feeling go away.

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On Earth . . .

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Ash wasn't used to these conditions. Before, she had never had to worry about being cold during a stake out. She had never had to worry about falling asleep.

'This is so much more complicated than it used to be,' she thought bitterly to herself, sucking down a caffeine pill and a cup of coffee. That at least was a pleasant new experience . . . coffee. She glanced up from her hiding spot. There were several unmarked vehicles outside the facility she was staking out. She had thought back to the map she had once seen in Chimera's lobby. It had a listing of all their facilities. She remembered some that weren't high profile: more warehouses really. Chimera knew they had been discovered, so probably wouldn't rally at their major locations. Ash had bee-lined for one of these locations, stealing aboard a high-speed train and then stealing a hover-car. She had rigged the security system's homing beacon to activate in another hour. The owner would get their car back without a scratch and with a note of apology. She probably could have just rented a car, but she didn't want to waste time or allow her movements to be traced if she could avoid it.

She studied the vehicles that personnel and equipment were being loaded into. She saw one that would work. It had a crawl space that she could get into between the primary lifters, a trick she had used before. Then she would attach a tracking beacon underneath it. If she failed in her mission, it would draw authorities to the location. Chimera couldn't be allowed to get away, but Ash couldn't let it go. She wanted them all to herself.

She crept with cool patience to the edge of the road. Another vehicle drove by and she quickly secured herself to the back of it. Once inside the perimeter gates, she dropped and rolled under the vehicle that she had eyeballed earlier.

'Soon,' she thought. 'I find out where everyone is going and then . . . then I end this.'

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Several hours later . . .

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Ash was glad she had thought to bring magnetic cables with her. She had been able to secure herself to the carriage and alleviate the stress on her arms. It was something else she had never had to worry about before.

The caravan had traveled for a while, but not as long as Ash had expected. They had entered a tunnel and were pulling into what appeared to be a large room inside of a mountain.

'Great,' she thought. 'I wonder if my beacon will even work here.' She set it anyway, attaching it to a drainage gate that was near the vehicle. It would go off in two hours. That was how long she had to quench the fire that Chimera had started in her soul all those years ago.

She crawled under several vehicles and behind a row of crates. Sure enough, it was a large room with guards everywhere. People were running helter skelter, like an ant hill that had been stirred up.

'Now where's your queen?' she thought.

It took a long time before the man that Eliza had referenced made an appearance. The Savior climbed up onto a platform and the lights in the room blinked three times. A hush fell over the room.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the powerful voice boomed. "As many of you now know, the gig is up. Chimera's continued existence is no longer a secret. Those troublesome folk at Hybrid Security somehow discerned our existence and are on our trail. But instead of seeing this as a setback, we should see it as an opportunity. For forty years, Chimera has lived in the shadows of this world while learning the secrets of the other. Our experiments have been in vain, but armed with the knowledge that we gleaned from Dr. Trendenfall, I am confident that we will soon be able to throw off the genetic shackles that keep the dark arts from us. Soon, the human race shall be masters of both technology AND magic, and we shall assume our rightful place as the supreme species on both worlds."

While the applause rang out, Ash could feel the coldness coming back, sliding through her veins like liquid nitrogen. It was more than what he said . . . there was something about his voice. And then she saw him remove his mask.

It was younger for sure and the face was a little broader . . . the eyes a different color, but it looked a lot like him for sure. Maybe a relative, connected by blood to the man she had killed all those years ago by crawling into his throat and listening to the last breath escape his body. And a sickening thought went through her head. 'Good. I didn't kill you slowly enough the first time.' She shook her head. No room for that. She needed to be cold.

"We must prepare," the Savior continued. "Hybrid will be coming for us, so we must be prepared to destroy them. I shall personally send the head of Eliza Msabdteelfinclor back to her homeworld as a sign of Chimera's power. Others have made the mistake of taking on the world rather than face them directly. The Purity's pathetic attempt was made out of desperation. We will wipe the enemy from the face of the Earth and – "

The Savior was expecting an ovation when his speech was over. He was expecting to begin his scheming to destroy Hybrid. He was NOT expecting half the motor-pool to explode.

"What the – " he started. 'Hybrid,' he thought. 'It has to be!' "Everyone scatter! Lay down suppressive fire on the primary corridor!" He had more instructions to dish out, but it was hard to do when the lighting truss over your head was crashing down and you had to use considerable magical force to keep it aloft.

The inside of complex had turned to chaos. There was no way they could have been found so easily! He knew for a fact that Hybrid hadn't been able to track them. But it felt like there was a war going on in his lair.

"Sir," one of his subordinates said, "we need to get you out of here. You can still use your magic from the observation deck!"

The man's suggestion made sense. The Savior needed to remember to promote him. He and a couple of guards hurried across the open ground and up a staircase leading to a fortified room that overlooked the whole area. He would be able to spot the intruders and crush them.

The Savior cruised the door of the overlook and headed straight to windows, staring down to try and determine the enemy locations. He was looking out over the flaming wreckage that was his hideout when he heard two "thuds" and the sound of bodies falling to the ground. He spun around and immediately felt something very cold brushing up against his nose. There was a gauss pistol pressed against his face, wielded by an all-too-familiar young woman.

"Ash," he said, gulping a breath of air more out of surprise than anything. He was a tough nut to crack. "I have to say I'm surprised to see you," he murmured as he started to pool his will. But the hum of the gun's drivers building power broke his concentration.

"I can shoot," she hissed at him, "faster than you can think. I feel so much as a shift in the air flow in this room and I terminate you." She had wanted to say something more menacing, but she had never really bothered to threaten anyone before. She had never understood the point of threats.

"I'm under the impression that you're going to kill me anyway," he replied, biding his time. "Why else would you follow me?" He paused. "How DID you follow us?"

Ash didn't smile and she didn't gloat. She also didn't explain. "That's irrelevant."

"You won't win, you know," he replied smoothly. "You're potent, I'll give you that. But you're in a contained area, and the element of surprise is over. Let me go and – " The gun began to hum again.

"There seems to be a very faulty premise that you're operating under," Ash shot back. "You think that I'm planning on living through this."

"Then why are you doing this?' he said, looking around. "Why confront me?"

She cocked her head. "You look like him . . . the man who killed me. I just wanted to see you up close."

The Savior smiled, and it unnerved Ash. "My father," he said. "This," the Savior said while glancing at the room around him, "is a family tradition. I was destined to take over. My father created me that way." He noticed that Ash looked surprised, so he pressed his advantage. "What? You thought you were the ONLY success story? Oh no, my father's experiments gave me access to untold powers. These powers were easily worth the price."

Ash remembered what it meant to be a "success" in the eyes of Chimera. Had the man who had killed her actually subjected his own son to his sick whims?

The Savior realized that Ash's mind was distracted. And that was all the time he needed. With a quick thought, Ash was hurled across the room and crashed into a table at the far end.

"You never appreciated what was given to you," he said, waving his arms and clearing the path between them. Ash was propping herself up on one elbow, obviously injured. "You spent all those years trying to get rid of such tremendous power. What a waste," he chuckled, telekinetically hauling her halfway up the wall, choking her while hurling a chair at her body. The chair crashed into her with a satisfying noise. He let her drop to the ground, and then glanced out over the room below. "I want you to know that I bear you no ill will for killing my father. Your reaction was quite sensible given the circumstances. But it upsets me that you let the gift that he died to give you go so easily."

"Easily?" Ash said, coughing up blood. "So many times, I was tempted just to give in. But what does it mean . . . if you can't feel any of it? The power . . . the passion . . . life. It's all meaningless if you can't feel it."

"Very dramatic," he replied arrogantly. "You were a creature of pure logic. You could have accomplished great things as part of Chimera. We would have taken you in and given you purpose." He stopped. Ash was laughing.

"You couldn't have given me anything! You don't get it! Everything you could have offered . . . it was all just a joke. But now – " Ash stopped and thought back to that day she spent in Dusty's bed. "I have something you never could have given me. You would have used me for your own ends," she whispered. Dusty wouldn't have used her. Dusty cared for her. Ash would like to think that someday Dusty might have even been able to love her. She began to speak again, but it made no sense to the Savior. "Because of you, I might never have felt it . . . felt like that. And I won't let you keep anyone from that chance . . . that experience – "

"And how exactly are you going to – " The Savior stopped in mid-brag to dive behind a table as a volley of low-range explosive rounds erupted from the secondary sidearm that Ash had hidden under her coat and had been aiming while she had been blathering.

Ash struggled to reload as she looked around the room. She had taken out the lights, but several pieces of furniture had caught on fire, illuminating the room in a hellish glow.

"Okay," the Savior's voice crept from the far end of the room, "that was good. C'mon Ash, it's not too late. You're in pain," he said soothingly, "and I can take that all away."

"I'll keep my pain," Ash said tiredly. "It reminds me that I'm still human."

"Not for long," he said, manipulating the fire so that it crept slowly towards his opponent. "This should seem familiar," he cackled. A bullet whizzed over his hiding place, shattering the remaining glass from the window. "You're aim needs work," he added.

Ash knew she had lost. The smoke was beginning to get to her, and the flames were getting closer. She hoped her beacon would bring the others in time, and that her selfish desire for personal vindication hadn't cost the world a chance to get rid of these vermin. She propped herself up on the wall and switched clips. She had one last trick before she died for the final time.

She thought back to when the fight had first started, and then to the moment when he had unleashed his magic. Her mind started to work a mile a minute, locating where everything in the room had been displaced to. 'Where was he standing?' she thought. 'And where would he hide?' She looked across the devastated landscape of the overlook and smiled.

The Savior was looking towards the door, thinking of making a run for it when the shots rang out and his kneecap evaporated into red mist and chunks of bone. He screamed. Then another armor-piercing shot barreled its way through his cover and took a chunk of flesh out of his arm.

Ash heard the screams with almost guilty satisfaction. 'At least I'll take him with me,' she thought.

But the Savior wasn't quite done yet. He crawled out to where he could see her and, in a pain-filled rage, he sent a heavy lamp crashing into her, knocking the gun from her hand.

"Okay bitch," he snarled, "no more Mr. Nice – " The Savior wasn't fated to finish many soliloquies that day. Ash watched through the smoke as the door caved in. She saw forms rushing into the room. Ash thought she saw someone motion towards the Savior and send him flying through the open window to the distant floor below. Ash wished she could see him land. But other people were rushing towards her. They looked like soldiers, but not Chimera soldiers. They looked more military. One of them picked her up and carried her towards the door, and she was far too weakened to struggle. But as she cleared the door, she saw –

"Impossible," Ash muttered. It was Eliza! "How – "

"You're not the only sneaky one," the hybrid said with a smile. She and the guards carried Ash down into the main room.

Ash looked around and saw that the Chimera guards had all been rounded up! They were standing in the center of the room, surrounded by soldiers of the United States armed forces and by members of Hybrid Security.

"That her?" one of the soldiers (a Colonel based on his insignia) said as he walked up.

"Yep," Eliza replied. "This is the girl who led us here."

"I what?" Ash said, grimacing through a lot of pain.

Eliza winked. "I figured that you would run off alone to find these guys and would probably do a better job than we could. I also figured that you'd do it whether I told you to or not. So," she said, reaching down and removing a little metal object from the hem of Ash's coat, "I fixed this to you before you spotted me back at the other Chimera site. Magic can be kind of useful that way. Then we just tracked your movements. Of course, we meant to come in before things got too out of hand," she added, looking at the flaming wreckage that surrounded them. "But you're a pretty efficient attack force."

Veronica was standing nearby, and she took Ash's hand. "You're a brave girl," the blond woman said. "Though you and I are going to have to have words about sucker punching my fiancée!"

Ash would've blushed except that her head wasn't working quite right. The army medics had dosed her with something that was making her feel very numb. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I shouldn't have – "

"No worries," Eliza interrupted. "I've had worse, and I should've been paying more attention. I was only down for a minute anyway. Cool hybrid recovery. Anyway, you rest now. We'll talk once you've been patched up," she added, watching as her two trolls rather gently loaded Ash into the medical vehicle.

"Eliza – " Ash whispered, "is he – "

"He's dead," Eliza said. "He won't hurt anyone now. Now go," she added, smiling again. "We received a communication from Dusty informing us exactly what she was going to do to us if we didn't bring you back in one piece."

"Dusty," Ash . . . Ashley said, finding some warmth in thoughts of the chocolate-tresses and the beauty of their wearer amongst all the chaos in her brain. Then she wasn't thinking of much of anything, but rather succumbed to a numb bliss.

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Several days later . . .

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Ashley hurt like hell, but she found it oddly comforting. She was still alive. And as ready as she had been to die again, being alive wasn't so bad. The rage she had experienced had dissipated over the course of her hospitalization. She would be a long time in recovering, but she refused Eliza's offer to bring her mother back to Earth to help in the healing. Ashley had this weird idea in her head that no one else should be "inconvenienced" by her. She had gotten herself into this situation, and she'd see it through her own way.

She had heard that Mr. McBride was going to pull through as well. She was glad. Not a lot of people were that dedicated to their jobs or their friends, and he hadn't deserved what happened to him. She had wanted to call, but didn't think he'd want to hear from her.

She turned her head towards the window. She had convinced them to open it a crack. It let her feel a slight breeze and hear the birds outside. She liked the sound of birds. She closed her eyes and listened to the squawks and the shrill tweets and the rapid panting –

"Birds don't pant," she muttered as she opened her eyes. She heard the clacking of something hard one the tile next to the bed and felt the bedding getting tugged at. Something jumped into the chair next to her and then put its paws up on the side of the bed with a little black nose poking up over the edge.

"Mr. Fuzzy Butt?" she muttered, leaning over despite the pain in her ribs. There was that adorable face again, genuinely happy about getting to see his person again. She leaned over so he could lavish smelly dog kisses all over her face, and it made her smile so wide she thought her face might break.

"I wish you'd look that happy when you had a human visitor," came a sultry but somewhat sorrowful voice from the door.

Ashley tried pulling the covers up when Dusty slipped into the room. She didn't want the young woman to see her like that: bruised and broken from a fight she had caused and then had to be rescued from.

"Don't . . . please," Dusty said, pulling the covers back down. She didn't even see the busted lip, bruised cheeks, bandaged shoulder or broken arm. She just saw the slender blonde hell cat that had been willing to go to war for her and her father.

"I'm . . . uhm . . . it's just . . . are you sure he should be in here?" she asked, trying to avoid the guilt she still felt. Mr. Fuzzy Butt had clambered up onto the bed and was spinning around next to her, planning on taking up residence.

"I persuaded the nice lady at the desk to make an exception. I said he was a therapy dog." Dusty scratched behind the dog's ears, making him wiggle a bit before yawning. "And . . . and I needed some help getting up the nerve to talk to you. I heard you weren't really accepting visitors and there's an awful lot of security around you – "