Chapter #3

10:57 p.m.

A gust of wind blew over the dark night sky. Nothing could be heard among the ruble of West Street. Nothing stirred except for the crackling of fire throughout the block.

Over near where the staircases used to e in the mansion, lay the body of Seth Zarian. He lay in the ruble, glass sticking out of his skin, with no signs of life among him.

Suddenly, there was a small twitch in his hand. Breathing came to him. His eyes began to flicker open.

Clouds started to appear, darkening the night sky. Rain drizzled down on the burnt ground. Seth rolled onto his side, and then got on his hands and knees. His entire body ached in pain, but his head hurt the most. 

The thing that was confusing him the most was how did he survive? The last thing he remembered was a great flash of light and being knocked off his feet. How could his bullet have caused so much destruction? The more he thought, the more his head burned in pain.

Without warning, a scorching pain seered through his brain. He gripped both sides of his head and screamed at the sky. The pain was almost unbearable, like his head was about to explode.

Suddenly…the pain stopped. Though his head still cloudy, Seth began to feel, instead of pain, a sort of calming feeling. He realized something was definitely not right, and brought his head down from staring at the sky. He couldn’t believe what he saw when he looked around him. 

Small pieces of ruble floated around Zarian; bricks, stones, shards of glass. How can this be?! He stared in awe. He brought his hand up to a large piece of glass floating. Has the bizarre pain done this? His eyes widened in disbelief. What if…no, that’s going too far. But the more he thought, the more curious he became.

It’s worth a shot. He began to glare at the piece of glass. Left, he thought to himself. The glass began moving to the left. Seth’s eyes widened to their full extent. He thought once more and the piece went flying off at blazing speed and splintered against part of a brick wall that was still standing.

Seth Zarian fell forward, back onto his hands and knees, looking down at the ground. A large grin spread across his face and he began chuckling to himself. This is so much better then money…

~

Henry’s body was pinned down by a small piece of brick wall, fallen due to the blast. He could not remember anything after the blinding light, while he had tried pathetically to change some stupid batteries for his camera.

As he slowly came to, opening his eyes slightly, he recognized the flashing lights and sounds of sirens.

“Hey! We found another one over here!” a loud voice came from above Henry’s head.

Suddenly a scruffy, elderly man crouched down to Henry, “Sir! Can you hear me? If you can, I need you to show me in some wa-.”

“Yes,” Henry breathed weakly.

“My god,” the man quickly shouted back behind him, “Hey! We got another live one. He’s pinned, I need help moving this crap off him!”

Henry began to feel dizzy, and before he passed out, he felt a load of pain vanish from his legs…

~

Henry awoke to the smell of the old and medication. The hospital, he though as he opened his eyes to a bright white room. He lay in a leaned-up bed where a bunch of tubes were attached to him.

The door to the room swung open to reveal a man in a white lab coat. Before the doctor saw Henry, he quickly closed his eyes. Henry decided to play it safe and hear the bad news that the doctor might say.

The doctor walked over and picked up Henry’s wrist, checking for pulse.

“Pulse normal,” he grunted to himself as he began writing down information, “No signs of odd behavior like the others…”

Odd behaviors? Others?? Henry’s mind whirled at this bizarre news.

“Breathing is normal,” the doctor continued the examination. Suddenly an alarm went off in the room, “What the-!”

Henry heard the man rush toward the side of his bed, “His heart rate is off the charts! Is he having a heart attack?!” he raced over and grabbed Henry’s wrist again.

Henry opened one eye slightly. He felt fine! How could his heart be racing this fast?

The doctor gave a confused look, “His heart rate is completely normal! What’s wrong with this machine?”

He walked back over to the heart monitor and tapped it lightly. Just as he did, the monitor went off even louder as the line went flat.

Henry was confused as ever. Now wait just one second! I’m not dead!

The doctor quickly rushed over to Henry again, just to make sure. But just as he was about to check his pulse, a sudden jolt of electricity flashed from Henry’s arm to the doctor, shocking him enough that he fell backwards, paralyzed. 

Henry opened one of his eyes fully, hearing the loud thud and then seeing the doctor’s body on the floor.

“Oops,” Henry leaned up, staring at his hand.

He quickly jumped out of the sickbed, taking off all the tubes attached to him, and grabbed the notepad the doctor had been holding. 

“Others, huh?” he began reading the list:

Strange Occurrences in Known Casualties

Catherine Allsworth

Johnathan Allsworth

Aaron Broider

Martin Zimmer

Clare Jenson

Marié Verdón

Roger Verlin

Harold Maxwell

Henry Fredric

And then the list ended. 

“Clare…Aaron…Martin…” Henry read the names again.

Suddenly the doorknob rattled.

“Oh s**t,” Henry quickly began sticking tubes to himself and jumped back into the sickbed. The door continued to rattle as a voice came from the other side of the door, “It’s stuck! Help me out here!”

“Come on, damnit! Work for once!” Henry tried waving his hand toward the monitor. There was a sudden flash of electricity that jumped from Henry’s fingers to the machine. The monitor sprung to life, reading a normal heart rate.

Henry ogled at his hands in disbelief but before he could think of a reasonable explaination for it, the door crashed open. Henry quickly fell into a fake sleep, as he listened closely to the voices entering the room.

“Whoa! What happened in here?” a voice slightly chuckled.

Aaron?! Henry thought he recognized the voice.

“Eh, that doesn’t matter right now. We’ve got to get Henry out of here,” another voice said nervously.

“Martin?!” Henry’s eyes fully opened to the people now in the room.

“Henry!” Clare ran over to the bed and hugged him quickly.

“Uh, hey Clare,” Henry stuttered slightly, “What’s going on here??”

“Look we’ll explain later. Right now we got to get the hell out of here!” a man in the doorway shouted to the group.

“Who the heck is that?” Henry was getting more confused by the second.

“Introductions later,” a grey haired man with glasses began pushing on Henry’s back.

The large group of people began filing out of the room.

“Cover us in the back, will you Mr. Allsworth?” a man closer to the front of the group asked calmly.

“You got it, detective,” the younger man kissed his wife before moving to the far back.

“Alright, follow me, we got a group of people already outside for transportation,” the detective whirled around and began walking down the hall, his partner, twirling a gun, quickly following.

They moved through the hallways quickly, so far without anyone spotting them. But then, just as they saw the EXIT sign, two doctors turned into their hallway. They looked up from their paperwork to see the large group moving down the hall toward them.

“Hey-,” but before they could make another sound, the detective’s partner pointed his gun up to the two doctors and put a finger on his lips, showing them that they should stay quiet. He waved his gun, telling them to move out of the way.

As the large group passed, the detective pulled out his badge and flashed it to the two men, “Detective Donovan Cedar. I’m taking these people out of here. There will be NO experiments done on any of us! You can tell your boss that.” The two men continued to just stare nervously as the large group left the building.

Outside, a large, red double-decker bus waited for them, three people already inside.

“You couldn’t have just gotten a cab, huh Tracey?” the man with the gun smirked at the woman officer at the wheel.

“You want to try fitting thirteen people in a dinky little cab, Guilzini?” she shoved him lightly.

“Alright, let’s get these people on board,” Cedar ordered.

The large bus roared to life as the last of the group was helped on.

“Where to now?” Clare asked worriedly.

“To police headquarters. We need to tell them exactly what happened,” the detective pointed to the driver, “to H.Q.”

The bus began moving out of the hospital parking lot. 

“It’ll be only a couple of minutes,” another officer reassured everyone.

Henry was still confused more then ever, and he leaned over to Aaron and asked, “So what exactly has been going on?”

“So far all we know is that we were brought to the hospital after that weird explosion. We apparently are the only survivors,” Aaron looked down at the ground, trying to recollect information, “Somehow, this blast effected us in some way. When I woke up in the hospital, I was floating off the ground! Unfortunately the docs saw our strange behaviors and were planning to experiment with us. We…” he looked up at the detective, “wanted no part of that ofcourse. Next thing I know, Martin pops out of the shadows, pulls me out of bed, and we met up with all of these people.”

Henry looked over at a man sitting next to his wife, snapping his fingers to create small bursts of flame.

“I was working,” he looked up at Henry, who was obviously curious as to why he was here, “at the plant next door. One of those b******s in black walked in on us. My brother…” he paused for a moment, choking back tears, “My brother tried to stop him. But that…a*****e…shot him. He killed my brother, and I will not rest until that b*****d is dead,” his hand clenched into a fist and then began to burn.

His wife quickly covered his hand, water dripping off of her own, dousing the burning fist, “Please John, take it easy,” she pleaded.

“I know. I’m sorry Cathy,” he put his arm around her.

Henry felt terrible about ever wanting to know what John was here for. Clare cuddled up against him, “I was so worried you may have been gone.”

Henry smirked faintly at her, “We’re here now. It’s all going to be ok.”

“We’re here,” Detective Cedar announced.

~

They moved through the lobby at a quickening pace. As they passed the counter, the man behind it barked, “Hey! You’re not allowed back-oh!” he stopped as the detective, without stopping, flashed his ID to the man, “Good evening Detective Cedar.”

The group came to the end of a hallway where a large black door stood in silence. Donovan bashed through the door into a large office area, where people were rushing around, papers were being printed and shredded, and loud conversations were being made. But as the door burst open, all talk ended and the only sound made were papers continuing through their processes.

Donovan marched to the center of the room, leaving the group staring in the doorway. He drew his gun, but kept it at his waist.

“Which one of you a******s decided to give the hospital the thumbs up for them to experiment on us?!” Cedar roared at the people in the room, looking around wildly, “Was it you, Riley? Elders? Simelton?  Where’s the chief?!”

“Shut up, Cedar,” an elderly man walked out of the small office area in the back of the room.

“Captain, this is a serious matter!” Donovan yelled to him.

“The more important thing is you’re safe,” the man slowly walked up to Cedar, puffing on his old fashioned pipe, “And look, you brought the whole gang back too.”

“Look sir,” Guilzini ran up to the two men standing in the middle of the room, “We came back to tell exactly what went down last night…”

“We already know exactly what happened!” the captain barked, “there was an accidental blast and you guys were lucky to survive i-.”

“No, captain,” Cedar interrupted, “It was a heist.”

“What?!” the pipe fell out of the captain’s mouth, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“We got a call in from a neighbor and they called us in. We have witnesses to prove what happened!” Tracey ran up to join the argument, her partner at her heals.

“That’s ridiculous!” a scrawny faced officer came running up to them.

“Easy, O’Connors,” the captain grabbed the man’s shoulder, “Did you get any names of these robbers?”

“Yeah, some guy named Mencelli,” Donovan recalled.

“Luey Mencelli?!” another man ran up to the small group, “He’s dead. I took that case. Turned out he was an ex-mafia member who long-lived his days.”

“I know what I heard, Craig,” Donovan glared at the stout man.

“You’re delusional!” O’Connors snapped.

Guilzini’s gun was pointed between O’Connor’s’ eyes before anyone could react.

“Hey! D-Draco! Cut it out man!” O’Connors jumped back nervously.

“Put that damn gun down, Guilzini,” the captain calmly ordered, lighting his pipe again.

Draco gave a quick glance to Cedar, who nodded slightly, before slowly lowering his gun.

“Look, let’s just calm down. All we know is that you all were the only survivors. Whoever these ‘robbers’ were, they’re gone now-,” the captain began. Suddenly a man came running from out of his desk corner toward the small group, “Captain! Captain Wilson! You better take a look at this!” he flipped the large television screen on the wall on:

“…Sorry to interrupt this program. The downtown of Limerick is under code red alert. Massive havoc has breached the city. We go live with Matthew Harris,” a man behind a desk announced.

There was a sudden transition and the television flashed to a man in glasses holding a microphone, “Thanks Bill. It’s chaotic down here. Every bank is being broken into by…odd behavior,” he stuttered. Suddenly a large object flew through the air behind the man, a loud explosion quickly followed.

“Holy s**t! Was that a car?!” Matthew panicked as the camera zoomed in on a car upside down in the road, flames burning all around it.

“Dude, I don’t think you can say ‘s**t’ on TV,” the camera man whispered to the reporter.

“Dude! That was a FRICKIN’ CAR!” the reporter shrieked.

The TV flashed back to the man behind the desk, “Please, we advise everyone to remain indoors. Police should be on their way momentarily…”

“That’s our cue ladies and gentlemen! Whatever the hell is down there, expect the worst!” Captain Wilson roared to the whole room.

“Cedar, I think it’s only safe you-,” Wilson turned around to see Donovan and the others already out the door, “-didn’t go…” he finished in an agitated voice…

~