It's been a while since I've posted here, longer than I intended. I decided to shift a few details of this story around, and it took longer than I expected. Regardless, here is the next chapter of Reaper! It's a big one where a lot of important stuff happens, so I'm just going to get right to it and let you see for yourself.
The Killer
El scoured the area. She tried not to look at the spot where the last home that she had ever shared with her parents had been, and instead to focus on the task at hand, but her gaze kept shifting back involuntarily. She would have likely had to backtrack and recheck several areas if James hadn’t spoken to her once more, drawing her attention away from the distraction.
“Hey,” he called from his place several yards away, “there are a lot of stones here. Some of them could be entrances to a ruin, but I can’t tell tell if what I’m seeing are shadows or openings. Do you have a flashlight or anything?”
El frowned. The moon and stars were bright enough for the two of them to maneuver through the site with relative ease, but she should have realized that a more nuanced search would be more difficult. Looking around, she saw that he was right, and that she hadn’t even noticed it. She scolded herself silently for making such an obvious mistake when she was so close to her goal, thinking, You’re being ridiculous! Don’t dwell on their deaths, dwell on getting them the justice that they deserve.
She swung her bag off of her shoulder and unzipped it. “Here,” she called back, removing two glow sticks, cracking them both, and tossing one right into the detective’s outstretched hand.
“Good throw,” he said, in awe.
“I’m accurate,” El told him as she held the other glow stick out in front of her, casting the landscape, and herself, in an eerie green light, “even in the dark. I’d be useless if I wasn’t.”
“C-can I ask you something?” James wondered.
El hesitated. She didn’t know what it was that he wanted to know, and she was worried that she wouldn’t want to answer once she did. Still, she was curious, so she replied, “What is it?”
“I was just wondering,” James asked, sounding anxious, “what you plan to do once we, uh, remedy this particular situation? Once this man is no longer a threat?”
El didn’t answer. She tried to avoid thinking about exactly that subject. She had devoted so much of her life to finding the killer and making him pay for what he’d done that she honestly didn’t have an answer to that question. She couldn’t imagine a life after this, not that she ever tried. Or at least she hadn’t been able to until just now. When she thought of it again, in that moment, as she crept along looking for a tunnel into the ground, rather than nothing, she saw a face. A face that was soft yet angular, with a harsh expression in its piercing blue eyes. She felt her cheeks grow hot, and desperately she wanted to avoid the subject.
“That isn’t important right now,” she insisted hastily.
“It’s just,” James said carefully, “that you seem to determine your self worth by whether or not it seems likely that you will find this man. That isn’t healthy.”
El stopped and smiled, looking over at James amusedly, “I have never once claimed to be healthy. I don’t even remember what healthy feels like.”
She started moving forward again as she asked, “Why do you care, anyway? You’d arrest Reaper and me if you felt you had the option.”
“Thompson would,” James said hastily, “but I wouldn’t. What you guys are doing, it shouldn’t be as unsupervised as it is, but it does help people.”
“I don’t help people,” El argued, surprised by the certainty in her voice, “I’m on a mission, a selfish mission for myself. I don’t kill people to complete it, but I don’t go out of my way to help them, either. That’s Max who does that. He’s your Batman, not me.”
James was silent. That had caught him by surprise. But that didn’t surprise El at all. She’d had a suspicion for a while now that James had some romantic view of what Max and, to a lesser extent she, did. And he wanted to talk to her about what was healthy.
Then, to El’s surprise, James spoke again, and what he said cut El like a knife, “You love him. You’re in love with him. But you’re afraid, so you want to convince yourself that a relationship wouldn’t work.”
El swung to face James, “What do you know about anything? Don’t talk about stuff you don’t understand.”
“I do understand, though,” He told her, turning to face her as well. “You aren’t the only person to feel inadequate. Look at me. I stammer. I can’t handle my gun. I know the only reason that I’m a cop is because of my programming skills, because there isn’t a single other person on the police force who can do the technical things that I do. I was offered a high-paid position at Kaiba Corp. right out of High School, but I turned it down to become a detective because I thought that I could make a real difference, but my colleagues just see me as the computer guy. They don’t actually trust that I can do the job as well as they do, because in a lot of ways, I can’t, and that bothers me. I tell myself that I’m still making a difference, that it’s okay, but that doesn’t mean that I always believe it. And it affects me, every day. I have to tell myself, sometimes out loud, that I can, and should, keep going, that I do matter. That my self worth isn’t tied to this job. I think it’s the same for you, and that it has you looking for excuses as to why you can’t have what you want.”
El didn’t answer at first, and then, after a few moments of awkward silence, she returned to her search, saying, “Like I said, don’t talk about stuff you don’t understand.”
They didn’t say another word to each other for several more minutes, until, suddenly, El’s light fell upon a narrow passage beneath a sandstone arch, situated between two sandstone walls, much like the dozens of others throughout the site. She rushed toward the opening and held her light inside. It continued forward at a downward angle, and she couldn’t see where it ended. She turned her light, and her attention, toward the ground, and she was sure that she saw the leftover impressions of another person’s footprints alongside her own.
Instantaneously her anger with James was replaced with excitement, “Hey, over here, I think I found it!”
James stopped what he was doing, and he jogged over to meet her, careful not to trip over any stones on his way, and he shone his own light into the tunnel alongside El’s. “I think you’re right,” he told her after a moment’s scrutiny. “We should send up the flare.”
“Already on it,” El told him. Her bag was already off of her shoulder, and she already had the flare gun in hand. She loaded it, and fired it off into the sky with a hiss. She was surprised by how bright it was, even though she’d already known how bright it would be.
Once the flare was up, she looked at the opening again, and then over her shoulder in Max’s direction. She was so close. The man could be as little as twenty feet ahead of them for all they knew, and every second that they waited, they risked him getting what he wanted. In that moment, El made a snap decision.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s go. He has too much of a head start for us to wait around now that we know where he is.”
James looked nervous, taking a step back from the opening, “I don’t know. I think it would be a better idea to wait for the Reaper.”
“He can catch us with his powers,” El insisted, stepping closer to the opening, even as she faced James. When she saw that he wasn’t going to budge, she felt her face harden, “Fine, you wait here, I’ll head in first.”
She turned toward the tunnel, her glow stick out in front, and surged forward into the low passageway. James looked from her receding form back toward the hill where they had left the Reaper resting. Then, after another moment of hesitation, he shakily drew his gun from its holster and followed after El, vowing in the moment to do everything he could to keep her safe.
Max was tired of looking at the stars. His entire body still felt weak and tingly, like the trailing end of an adrenaline rush dialed up to eleven, but he was becoming anxious. He understood the necessity of rest, and even why it was important now, but the longer he waited the less willing he was to simply lie here and allow El and the detective to go ahead into potential danger, when he could be with them. He’d finally had enough, and he sat up, preparing himself to stand. He would go and find them, and he would join them in their search, regardless of whether they had signaled him or not. He simply couldn’t stand doing nothing for a second longer.
Then he saw it, a bright red flash surging into the sky maybe two hundred yards away. He didn’t simply rise to his feet, he jumped up, and wrapped himself in smoke that billowed from beneath his cloak. He rose into the air, and came to a disturbing realization: he didn’t know where the flare had come from. He knew the general direction, but he hadn’t been able to tell the exact location. It was a problem that the group hadn’t considered.
I can’t risk yelling for them, Max decided immediately, in case we somehow beat the killer here. I don’t want to risk giving away either of our positions. This confrontation has to happen on as close to our terms as we can make it. I’ll just have to try and spot them.
He scoured the landscape in the presumed direction of the flare’s origin, but he only saw stones and shadows. He felt desperate anger welling up inside him as he strained to rise higher, kicking himself mentally for not considering this, for not going with them, for not being stronger and better, and other things that he was too late to change or that he couldn’t control. He swept his gaze again in the same direction, but a bit further away. He could make out what looked to be the main section of the excavation site, but still no figures of people. He cursed, but even as he did, something caught his eye.
It was a shadow, smaller than the others. He never would have noticed it, except that it moved from side to side, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, it seemed to be cast by a faint green light. He locked his gaze upon the location of that shadow, and he bore down with his magic, willing himself forward as fast as he could go, allowing gravity to aid him. Still, it took more than two long, stressful minutes to reach the spot where he had seen the shadow, and when he arrived, between the strain of getting there, and the strain of stopping his descent, he was left breathless, darkness completely independent of the Egyptian night creeping into the periphery of his vision.
He blinked the spots away, and he set the pain in his overworked lungs aside, and he looked around. He almost missed it, but there, to his left, was an archway with what seemed like a tunnel behind it. He couldn’t see any light within, but he knew it had to be the right place. The passage was narrow. He would make the best time if he dissolved his body completely and went ahead as a form of smoke. Despite his growing fatigue, he willed his body to come apart, and with a flash of the Soul of Life, it obeyed. He surged forward, across the threshold of the tunnel, and to his shock and amazement he immediately reformed, fell out of the air, and slammed his head hard into the sandstone floor. Despite his best efforts, he blacked out.
“El, slow down,” James called as he pursued this companion. He was moving forward as fast as he could in the low, narrow corridor, and yet El was moving even faster, almost recklessly so. He was worried that she would injure herself. She didn’t listen, however, until she came to a sudden and mysterious stop. James, who had been focusing on keeping his footing, nearly slammed right into her.
“What is it?” James demanded, unable to see past El at all.
“Wire,” she told him, “connected to some kind of swinging device. I think it’s a trap, but it’s already been triggered.”
“More likely it was disarmed long ago,” James reminded her, “when you parents discovered this place. Assuming that it hadn’t already degraded long before.”
“No, you’re wrong,” El told him, sounding thoughtful, “I see blood spatter here. It’s shiny. It must be fresh.”
Her gaze snapped up from the floor, toward the still-dark corridor ahead, beyond the range of their glow sticks, “He’s already here, but he’s injured. There isn’t a lot of blood, so it probably isn’t serious, but it might give us an edge if we strike before he can recover.”
She sounded excited. James wanted to disagree with her, because he could hear the over-zealousness creeping into her voice, overriding her good judgment, but he couldn’t fault her logic. An injured person, even if the injury was only serious enough to cause them semi-constant pain, would have slower reaction times, and subconsciously alter their movements to protect the injured area. So, when El rocketed forward again, even faster than before, he did everything he could to keep on her heels. Maybe she was being reckless, but she was right, this might be their best chance.
As James passed the spot where El had seen the trap, he made note of how much she had understated the complexity of the device. He was momentarily puzzled by how it was possible that no part of the contraption had failed in thousands of years. Or how it was possible that El’s parents had entered this place and not set the trap off themselves. Then he reminded himself that he was dealing with magic now. Anything was possible, at least from his perspective, until he learned more regarding the subject. And he did intend to learn, somehow, once this was all over.
He frowned, Provided that I survive this, anyway.
James was entirely aware that he was the weakest person involved in this pursuit. He only hoped that, at the very least, his presence might act as a distraction and give one of his allies an opening to strike. The Reaper, given a moment’s opening, could strike the killer down with ease.
That’s when something struck him. He realized, suddenly, that the Reaper should have caught up with them by now. Yes, his powers only allowed him to move at peak human speed, as he had said before, but unhindered by things like the size of the corridor and the need to make contact with the ground, he should have caught them several minutes ago. James did a quick bit of math in his head, taking a guess at how long they had been in the corridor already, and how far they’d gone. He was right, there was no reason why the Reaper would not have arrived, provided that he were unhindered, of course. Had he been unable to pin down the source of the flare? Had they entered the corridor too quickly for the Reaper to make visual contact? Was he even following them?
James began to panic. “El,” he said, his voice shaking, “I think something is wrong. The Reaper should be here by now. He may not know where we are.”
As he spoke, James noticed that the ceiling was suddenly higher, and the walls further apart. He realized with a start that they were in a much larger room. His voice echoed, and he couldn’t see the walls or ceiling in the light of his and El’s glow sticks any longer. El realized the same thing, and held up her hand, signalling him to be quiet, but it was too late. In an instant, braziers placed equidistantly around the perimeter of the chamber lit themselves, bathing the room in flickering light. Four pillars stretched from the floor to the high ceiling, holding it up above the fifty-foot wide round room. Two larger braziers marked a wall directly across from James and El, bearing the pictographs of the three artifacts that had been depicted in the research notes. The chalice sat upon a stone mantle just below them. Standing in the center of the room, between the four sandstone pillars, was the killer.
In the shifting orange light cast by the braziers, the man looked even more menacing than he had in the dark. All of the same details were present, of course, but they seemed to shift randomly. The subtle movements of his gangly limbs seemed almost inhuman. He’d been waiting for them. He’d known they were coming.
No one said anything. El simply stood there, looking at him, and he stared back from beneath his wild hair, a broad, evil smile spread from ear to ear. El was stunned, but shock turned to acceptance, and acceptance turned to rage, and in a lightning quick motion she pulled an arrow from the quiver on her belt, strung it in her bow, and pulled it back into firing position, aimed right at the man’s head. James could hear her breathing heavily, and he could see her shaking. He had seen how accurate she was with her weapon, but he couldn’t imagine that she could make a reliable shot unless she got herself under control.
James drew his gun and aimed it at the man. As he did, El met his eyes, as best she could with them partially obscured. The man looked right at her. She could feel him doing it. After a few seconds of silence, his crazy smile changed to become something else. It became a smile of recognition.
“Ellie,” he said, his voice quivering, as if it were pushing against the man’s own self-restraint, “I thought it was you chasing me all of these years, but I had so much trouble getting a clear look at your face.”
“Who are you?” El asked, still no more in control than she had been, but unable to resist answering the question. “I’ve been tracking you for years, and that’s the one question that I’ve never found an answer for.”
The man nodded, “I guess you wouldn’t recognize me. I became slightly obsessed as of late, and let myself go. You probably don’t even remember my name anymore. You’d likely remember me as the aide to Professor Cord. I came with him to the dig as part of the attache from the university.”
“Charles...something,” El said, the name simply popping into her head.
“Charles Simpson,” the man told her. “You do remember me. I’m flattered.”
El’s breathing changed, growing less irregular, but more hysterical. “You were a friend,” she said, her voice rising with each word, “my parents liked you. You would watch me when they were working!”
“That’s right,” Simpson answered. “And I liked them, too. That’s why I gave them a choice. If they’d agreed to help me find this place, I would have allowed them to live.”
He laughed, “If only I’d known at the time how close I was.
“What gives you the right to allow anyone to live?” El demanded. “You don’t get to decide who lives and who dies. No one does.”
“You’re wrong,” Simpson replied, his tone making it apparent just how sure he was that every word he spoke was right, as he pulled the dark metal razor from his belt, “from the moment that I touched this I knew that I was meant for so much more. I saw the truth in my mind, and then what little I managed to see of your father’s notes before he started hiding them from me confirmed it. I didn’t know the details, but I knew I had to get them. I knew I had to see those notes. And now I have. Now I know everything. It’s why I allowed you to catch up with me here.”
“What does that mean?” James asked, speaking up for the first time. He was curious, in general, and curious to know what any of this had to do with attaining the great power mentioned in the notes. Did he already have the eternal power? He couldn’t, could he? This was still the outer chamber, which meant that he hadn’t uncovered the second chamber yet. Which meant that he hadn’t cast the spell. So what was he waiting for?
“You keep out of this,” Simpson told James as his only reply. He sounded far less cordial than he had when he’d been speaking to El, and the intense harshness beneath his tone was enough to make James take a step back.
He recovered quickly, however, taking a deep breath and finding his resolve. He scrutinized the man, looking past the shifting shadows cast upon him, and he saw a dark, wet stain on the left shoulder of Simpson’s jacket. His left arm, that was where he had taken the injury from the trap in the corridor behind them. He was injured. If James could give El an opening, they might be able to end this now. Without saying a word, he lined up his shot along the barrel of his pistol. He imagined that he was at the department firing range, and that the man standing before him was a practice target. He took a deep breath, and he fired.
Simpson had, however, seen James raise his gun, and he twisted to the side. Rather than striking Simpson in the torso, the bullet grazed Simpson’s jacket sleeve. Simpson turned, instinctively angling himself so that his injured shoulder was pointed away from James. In the same motion, he swung his razor, slinging a random-length energy blade from its edge. It spun toward James, not as fast as a bullet, but fast enough that the detective didn’t have any time to avoid it.
There was a sharp, stinging sensation across his chest, and suddenly James grew tired. His legs began to shake, even as his chest and stomach grew warm, as if they had been submerged in a hot bath. His vision blurred, and he dropped to his knees. He could feel consciousness slipping from him, but even as he realized what was happening to him, he smiled, because despite the undesirable outcome to himself, he had won. He had given El the opening that she needed. In turning his shoulder away from James, Simpson had turned his back toward El. The last thing that James saw before blackness overcame him was El’s arrow striking Simpson in his left kidney.
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