Chapter Fifteen: Aut Vincere Aut Mori
The temple was in full view as the sun was setting. White stucco and grey granite butted together in a vehemently grotesque manner, as lines and angles jutting and remaining parallel save for the spires topping the conglomeration of modern construction. It was a plain building, but only because it blended with the natural hues of the surrounding environment. It was white and tan and grey, with a textured tone that seemed to clash with however rich or poor the surrounding city had been.
“Mexico City Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” a plaque read on the outer fence. Strange that only one building out of an entire city should remain untouched. It was on a hilltop, true, but was that any real reason? The adobe buildings that had survived the longest without any maintenance had long since caved in, or broken down into heaps of sediment and concrete. Deserted except for the rats and the dogs, and the coyotes. Birds of prey, perhaps, but those wouldn't come out until nightfall, and for now only the scavengers were out, searching for meat that had spoiled from the heat of the day. Condors and vultures, ugly winged creatures circled overhead, waiting for an easy meal.
Lazy beasts, thought Sera as they approached the main gate.
“I've got a bad feeling about this,” said Gabriel on her right. “Something is very wrong here.”
Sera nodded, “I feel it too, but we've come so far, and I can't bear to think of just leaving.”
He stayed silent, trying to slip free of the dark sense of foreboding that seemed to weigh him down. Sera felt it as well, a finishing, an end to the struggle she had discovered just a few weeks before as she had watched what had remained of her village, The Brig, smolder and smoke. Just a few weeks, yet it had already killed her twice, and tried to kill her at least double that. No, the end did not frighten her as it should have, it simply was, but what might happen after did. What if Jack had been right about revenge losing its savor once it had been gained? True, it was a driving force, and had been since the beginning, but was it her only motive? She hated Jack for what he had done, for forcing her to break her oath, and for making the choice to follow for her, but would she have chosen any differently had he not come along and thrown her world into confusion and hysteria? Sera had been waiting for an excuse to leave her small down, and the cougar had been a good enough reason to leave as any, yet that was a little comfort compared to the lives lost that day.
One for many, Jack had said, one for many and your logic is flawed. That same reasoning was behind his attack on the Brig, behind his deceptive generals, behind every decision he had made that concerned her. The ends justified the means, but did they really? It was just another way to word the same flawed argument, and it was exactly the same method he had used to goad her out into the vulnerable open. Then again, Jack had said many things, and that was just the least of it. A strange cycle to which he too had been born; a fight that embodied the innermost conflict of mankind, and showed with uncanny accuracy the violence that seemed so inherent in man's nature.
How much of it was nonsensical bullshit? Sera had seen many things in the past few weeks, things which defied the laws to which she had grown accustomed, and that was only a small part of the truth. She, herself, had done things which were impossible: slow or stop time, reverse the flow of time, resurrect herself after she had rightfully died, and though these incidents were disturbing, the one that stood out most was traveling beyond her home, her planet, and into the vast and deep recesses of space, to the beginning of time and the universe. It was possible, she reasoned, that what she had seen and felt in that warm black void near the fiery white heart of life itself had been something completely different, perhaps imagined and visited only in her mind, but that seemed unlikely at best, and childish at worst. Always she had had a rational mind, and was not prone to inventing strange places in her head. Not that she had to convince herself of the reality of her travels, only that to do so would have been madness, and insanity was no option for her now. Jack had enough of that to go around.
As far as this whole scene being played out in times beyond numbering, she could not say, for she had never seen this before, but it did seem likely given these same unusual circumstances. How many, and why? Jack would know . . .
The sun was setting on the horizon, but more than that, it was setting on an era marked by plagues, and famine, and mass murder. It was setting on the sickness of shades, and she would see this thing through to the end even if it meant the end of her life as well.
One for many, she thought, and Jack's voice came back from the past in response: And what about the boy, would you sacrifice him as well? Torn by the demons of doubt, her mind shrieked out against the infinite, screaming her rage and frustration. Never him! Never in a thousand lifetimes! Never him! She clenched her eyes shut against the red sky, an omen of the bloodbath to come.
“Never him,” she whispered.
Her heart was pounding in her chest, and with each breath she took, all the sounds around her seemed to quiet a little, until all was still as death. No creature stirred at any move she made, and even the wind lost its strength, ceasing its breeze and ending the sagebrush's and the coarse grass's rustling. Only the beating of her heart, and that other heart, which she knew belonged to Jack—thrumming simultaneously in the desert wastes of Mexico, far away from any civilized outpost and deep in the nether-reaches of No-man's land. A second heartbeat she felt suddenly, apart from hers and Jack's, and it was smooth and calm, quite the opposite of hers—frantic and frenzied, but it was also opposite in another way. For each beat of her heart, the other paused until it could beat again, between her beats and against them, but also for her, and she knew that if nothing else with each beat as she knew that it was all drawing to a close.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
A lone building on a hill overlooking a vast plain of destruction, the broken city stretching across the land like an open wound waiting to heal. Jack had forever scarred the world and its many peoples, and though Sera cared nothing for the rest of the world, she would see him dead—not through some deluded sense of altruism, or for that sickening sacrificial mindset that so held its sway over the history of men, but for what he had done to her, to the Brig, and that was the short of it.
An eye for an eye, she thought as she began to move forward, one foot in front of the other, taking her time to walk to the open doors of the temple. Gabriel did not hesitate to follow behind, even though he had lost his gun, and had no weapon save his fists and feet to protect him. She doubted that it would come to that for him, and even though she wanted him to stay outside of harm's reach, she knew that if she asked it of him, that he would refuse, choosing instead to remain at her side. It was a small comfort, but a welcome one.
“Gabriel,” she said softly, slowing her step to walk beside him.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I just wanted you to know that whatever might happen in here, I care for you very deeply, and I don't want anything bad to happen to you.”
“Jesus, you're not getting all spineless on me, are you?”
“Fuck! Just listen for a second, okay?”
“Sorry, okay?” he was genuine, and open.
“If anything goes wrong, I want you to get the hell out of here and don't look back, okay?” Her concern was welling up inside of her like a geyser, and she held down everything else that she wanted to say, wanting to keep her emotions in check. She didn't want to be an emotional train-wreck when she finally met Jack face to face for the final time.
“I . . . can't promise you that, Sera. Anything but that. You remember how they treated us at New Zion? It'll be like that everywhere as soon as the word spreads, and word will spread, you can count on that. They think you're the Anti-Christ, thanks to Seth, and I'm one of your demonic consorts. No, I'm not going to leave you no matter what. I'll follow you into a never-ending battle and do it gladly, because as long as I'm with you, I feel like I could fly. I love you Sera, and we do this together.” He stopped walking and pulled her into his arms, kissing her passionately and fiery, and filling her with that same emotion that showed she felt the same way.
When he finally pulled away, he gave her a startled look. “You mean you're not going to slap me?”
Sera grinned back at him, “Do you mean you'd like me to?” He grinned back and shook his head, then took her hand in his as they walked up the concrete steps slowly and without a sound or trace or mark to show they had passed that way. They had, though, and the air following them seemed sweet compared to the stagnancy of desolation that surrounded the temple on the hill.
Destra ot Destrayes, the Holy of Holies, awaited within, and in it Jack surely paced impatiently. The air was dead and silent as a cemetery, long since abandoned by its former occupants, and it felt as if everything in the world, every human being, was holding his or her breath to keep from disturbing the moment. The doors that they passed were an odd assortment of cheap wood with brass fixtures to glass and steel with simple yet functional handles and locks. Why would these doors have locks, she thought, why would you lock up something sacred? Perhaps it was the eerie gloom that seemed to have settled on the building, or maybe the spirits of the dead still walked the halls in this place, but the hackles on the back of her neck stood up and Sera could not help but shiver as if it was cold. It wasn't cold, but stifling in its furnace of unmoving air as if the circulation system of vents and shafts did nothing but move the head to wherever she and Gabriel stepped. Trickles of sweat were running down her cheeks, and she saw that her lover was having the same problem. Was it just her imagination, or were those paintings on the wall on her right staring straight at her, penetrating her skin and looking deep into her inner workings as though she were transparent?
Not real, she thought. It isn't real.
The hum, however, was a different tale entirely. It seemed to be in the process of consuming the entire structure, infusing it with whatever dark and twisted, sadistic and insane will that Jack was calling his own now. The pores of the walls seemed to be sweating blood as they walked, and it dripped to the cheap commercial grade flowery carpet as they passed, oozing and swelling with the blood shed by the thousands of generations of men, women and children who had been voraciously consumed by the cycle to which all were held. Even she was no exception to this, though perhaps her place was greater than those who simply followed. Hers was the struggle of every man who sought to change the fate of the human race, to deviate from that course which they had been set upon from the beginning—a course which lead to the eventual extinction of men. Maybe her motives were more pure than she'd thought, maybe she did want to force her people to see past the bigotry and dividing violence that moved men to unspeakable acts of rage and aggression. Maybe.
Jack was the key to ending the cycle, at least this incarnation of it, and while he may have already descended too far into the depths of madness to realize it, she would get more answers from him as to how this lofty goal might be accomplished.
The hallway, filled with tiny offices and sitting rooms, with cheap laminated particle board furnishings and sofas and sedans and lounge chairs that seemed to be upholstered with the same material as the carpet covering the floor, was at an end, and a wide spiral staircase of white speckled tile and once-polished brass coiled upward into the next floors above like smoke rising from a campfire. As her feet touched the tiled steps, she noticed the wall of glass and once again, brass, that looked outward over the eastern-most hills of Mexico City, and the landscape of rocky mountains—painted all manner of reds and oranges in the fading light—filled the stairwell with a still-life portrait of a land that should have been filled with people and beasts, but wasn't. It was an injustice, just one of the hundreds to be tallied on Jack's list of vile transgressions, and it showed just how much he deserved to die. The staircase wound upward as she lead herself and Gabriel to the uppermost level in the building, the one closest to Jack's location, and that level was graced by a single door at the far edge of the landing, also tiled like the stairs were, and the dust had already been disturbed by two sets of footprints. The door had been whitewashed to match the surrounding walls and door jambs, and it appeared to be strained on its hinges and latch, as if something were pulling with its might against the door.
Is that something trying to get in, or out? She wondered. The door appeared to open inward, so perhaps it was trying to get out. The owner of the second set of prints, perhaps?
Gabriel took a deep breath, and stepped up to the doorway, turning the knob only slightly before it jerked from his hands, slamming the door against the wall on the right. Sera tried desperately to cry out, to make him stop, get down, but mostly she tried to yell the only thing she could think. No! Her vocal cords weren't responding, or maybe her cries were drowned in the screaming of another man who had been hanging just outside the window. Had been until the door swung open and released the boulder that had been tied to his ankles.
Ka-thum. Her heart beat once.
The man was screaming as his torso flew through the window, torn free from his legs and dripping blood and intestines as he landed on the carpet. The grinding of steel against stone grated against the man's continued cries of pain and agony.
Ka-thum. Her heart beat twice.
Something heavy was swinging, pushing the air around it as it moved, swiftly and with that grinding of stone. It was larger than a man, and far heavier. It's corner swung into view as Sera watched, terrified and screaming the same 'No!' as before, but her cries had long since been covered by the squeal of grinding stone, the drips of the screaming man's entrails as his blood poured into the white carpet, and the man's sounded pain as his final reflex played out where he lay writhing and spasming on the ground.
Ka-thum. Her heart beat a third time, and then it seemed to stop as her world of pain and sorrow and anger and depression was once more crushed into the ground. The sounds of women wailing and men gnashing their teeth in hellish torment filled her ears as she watched the horrible events transpire before her eyes.
That other beat from a heart not too far from where she stood transfixed, beat as hers paused, and the whole world flashed grey as Sera pulled at the golden threads, trying with all her might to stop what was happening, but she felt nothing of the strain of timelessness on her mind, and the color returned to the surrounding walls and ceilings. Again as the milliseconds flashed by she tried to drain the myriad of hues of their color and bring about the chill and grey of the interrupted timestream, but the blues and browns remained, touched by the reds and oranges of the setting sun. The altar of this temple was intact, and strung from a metallic cable, swinging like a giant's pendulum towards Gabriel's unaware head.
Again she screamed, “No!” but the warning could not have reached him in time to save him from the altar's strike. Sera dove at his legs, to try and tumble him to the ground, but even though battle time seemed slowed, without additional aid even her superhuman speed could not move her fast enough. Her mind raced inside her body, which seemed sluggish and unresponsive as she dove, and she closed her eyes against the sight she did not want to see. The altar's corner struck Gabriel square in the forehead, and he spun around in a daze as she knocked his legs from beneath him, but she couldn't tell if he was falling from her blow or if he had just gone limp from the altar's. They tumbled together, across the bloodied white carpet, out of the altar's path, should the cable snap, and the large stone crashed through the wall, knocking stones and mortar out of place and shaking the whole temple. The cable snapped with a metallic and musical twang, and the huge marble altar was free to fly through its hole, sailing through the air with ease before smashing into a sandy dune that lay at the bottom of the hill.
The man who had been split in two still flailed, but his screaming had died down, not that Sera was concerned about this stranger in the least, but all the same it was just one of many details that her mind cataloged and stored away. Her attention was entirely on the boy she loved, who now lay still just a few feet from the window. Gabriel was silent, and did not move; his eyes had rolled up into his head and he was blessedly unconscious from the blow that might still kill him. His skull had been crushed, and she could feel pieces of it floating around without support. A large gash in his forehead concerned her the most, though, and it was bleeding profusely, yet even that seemed like nothing at all. A large chunk of bone had broken inward from the hole in his head, and had penetrated his grey brain matter that seemed dyed from the crimson blood inside his skull. His breathing came in shallow ragged breaths, and he was living, but only barely.
She was afraid to move him, afraid to touch his face, no matter how much she wanted to, to tell him he would be all right, the sweet white lies reserved for the dying. “No! God, no!” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “No, no, no,” she uttered as the salty wetness fogged her eyes and clouded her thoughts. It was too much. Not Gabriel, never him. Why? Why, oh why, oh why? Sera took his hand in hers and held it to her cheek, “I can't lose you, it isn't right! You can't leave me, I'm not ready for this.”
Yet deep inside her body, where her soul was bound to the beating of her heart, the same binding that held life to eventual death, the same invisible chains that held the stars in constant motion around a focal point in the galaxy, and the infinite galaxies that circled the singular source that was the beginning and the end, she knew she was ready. Perhaps now, more than ever, she was ready. She let his hand fall to his chest slowly, as he rested, nestled in the sweet oblivion that lay near death's door. The only other door in the room was near to where she knelt, and behind it waited the foul creature who had done this to Gabriel. Now it was time for Jack to pay with his life for all the horrors he had wrought upon the land, upon the world and its peoples, on the Brig and her people, and upon her, but most importantly, on the boy she loved.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and in one fluid motion she pulled her spear-knife from its sheath on her belt, let its handle rest against her wrist and forearm, and it was a part of her once again—an extension of herself clad in steely sharpness and forged as a part of her identity in the fires of the rage that built up inside her with the speed of a snowball starting an avalanche. She was ready to face Jack, and wreak her vengeance upon him without mercy.
The door gave little resistance to her grip as she pulled it open, revealing a short staircase that lead into a small office at the top of the temple. Jack, her nemesis, her final opponent in this mad tournament of wills for the souls and the ultimate fate of mankind, was waiting with an arm outstretched in the center of the room. Reddish light from the setting sun gleamed bright on the bronze blade of his sword, which seemed to dance wickedly without moving, and it appeared hellish, casting its orange reflection back onto Jack's face and on every corner of the room. The blade was inscribed with strange runes she had never seen before, yet that made no difference to her. She had a purpose.
“Hello, Sera,” said Jack coolly as she shut the door behind her.
Copyright 2006