Chapter 12

I have to warn them.  I know I do.  Maybe that's why I focus.  My mind is rolling a million miles a minute.  It's so odd when you can use your mind as a weapon.

When I imagined attacking Mal Tiffany, it happened.

Within a minute, she is sent to the other side of the room through my mental ability.  She hits her head up against a metal pipe.  She isn't moving.  I stand over her.  If I was a worse person I would finish her off right now.  That's what Bombard would have done.  She's been causing more and more issues. But I wasn't a bad person.  No matter how much I wanted to be.

 

So I turn and run into the hideout as fast as I can.  My heart is beating.  I'm terrified.

"HEY!"

 

They are sitting around a table.  I think they are having a serious discussion.  I am interrupting and it's clear.  Antietam, Old Man Keeper, Prall, Tonnet and Bombard are at the table.  They are looking at me as though I have three heads because I run in the room in the way that I do.

 

"How's it go?" Antietam asks me.

 

"Is he going to give us the bomb?" Tonnet asks.

 

They look like they've been worried about this date.  I don't blame them.  It's not every day the future of the world was dictated by a date.  Little did they know that I was catching my breath.  After using psychokinesis your mind is a little scattered.  It's all over the place.  I'm trying to focus.  I'm trying to compose my thoughts.

 

It doesn't work.  I just spill out whatever is on my mind, "Mal...outside...tricked me...soldiers...coming.  Now.  Run...Run..."

 

The words spill out of my mouth like vomit.  It's Antietam who stands up.  By the look in her eyes I was clear enough.
"You lead them here?" She asks me.

 

What I said seems to click to the others by the time I nod.  I'm embarrassed.  How could I note realize how strange Mal Tiffany was.  How could I not realize that it was Tonnet's twin and not her.  It's too late.  I've done this.  One day I'm the hero of the Sewer Lineage and the next day I'm bringing enemies to their fucking doorstep.

I can see Prall clutch his chest almost, "Oh shit..."

"They know where we are.  There are soldiers.  She sent them here."

Bombard glares at me.  I can see it coming a mile away, "How the fuck did you manage to do that Jamison?"

Luckily though the others are too panicked to play the blame game right now.  Tonnet and the others start running to their rooms to get things.  They are trying to get material possessions right now.  Maybe they don't understand how serious this is.

 

"Everyone drop everything.  It's time to leave," Antietam stops them.

Within seconds, they listen to her.  We start out of the door.  I am following behind Tonnet and keeping Prall close.  My heart is beating fast.  I'm so scared.  I'm even more scared when I come outside and Mal Tiffany is gone.  She was laying on the ground, knocked out but no more.

 

Antietam is leading the way and we are close.  I'm so tired and stressed.  I don't know how to focus.  I look to my right though.  Prall is looking up at me.  He looks up to me for whatever reason.  I feel like I let him down.  The sewers were his home.  I let them all down.  I should have known.  I'm beating myself up about it.  Even Piece was a little suspicious back outside the pizza joint.  I was the one who was blinded.  Prall is looking up at me.  He's following close to me as though I could protect him.  How was I supposed to though.

 

We hear footsteps.  Loud footsteps.  Marching sounds.  Flashlights curving around the corner ahead coming from the same direction we are going.

 

"Back the other way!" Antietam screams.

 

I hear panic in her voice.  She's afraid.  She's playing the leader with the others but she's afraid.  I remember how Piece talked about these trained mercenaries known as the Soldiers that worked for the Corporation.  Piece was shook about them.  It seemed to take a lot to get Piece shook.

 

We are running back the way we came.  I look back for some reason and I see them.  Men dressed in black.  They look like a swat team. They have guns in their hands.  And they are shooting at us all of a sudden.  The gun shots barely miss me.

 

But I turn to the right.  Prall is down.
He's been shot.

"PRALL!"
I'm screaming as I stop to look down on him.  The others seem hesitant to stop.  Bombard and the old man are still running.  Maybe they didn't realize Prall was shot.  Maybe they just don't care.  I'm not too sure but I watch them disappear within a matter of seconds.   Tonnet is running backwards.  She stops.  Antietam glares at her hard at her side.

 

"Go...I'll hold them off..."

Tonnet doesn't hesitate any longer.  She turns and she disappears.

 

I'm crouched there with Prall struggling to get him to his feet.  I realize I'm going to have to carry him.  He's shot in his leg.  The leg is bleeding.  The blood covers my hands and my feet.  Prall is squirming in pain.

 

"I'm not leaving you," I tell him, "You hear me?"

"Go..." Antietam's voice says from behind me, "I'll get Prall."

I didn't trust her.  I remember what Piece told me.  Antietam wasn't afraid to sacrifice her pawns.  She would leave Prall here.  And I wasn't willing to do that.  I grab Prall and hoist him on my back.  He's heavy.  He has to be 140 pounds solid.  I don't care. I have no choice.  Prall is depending on me.

 

The soldiers are coming.  Their dark suits fill up the sewers.  Their guns are aimed at me.  In the next moment they fire at Antietam, Prall and I!
My heart stops!

I close my eyes.

I open them to realize I'm still alive!  I turn and see what Antietam has done.  She's put her hands up.  She's stopped the bullets completely.  I'm in awe.  The bullets are suspended in the air like the matrix.  They fall to the ground.

All bullets but one.

Antietam falls to her knees.  She's been shot.

 

Several of the soldiers see this as a sign.  They rush forward but Antietam isn't done yet.  She focuses and they are PUSHED back!  I'm still holding onto Prall.

 

"Get him out of here..." she tells me.

"Antietam..."

"Save yourself...get the bomb.  Save the world."

It's at that moment I see a flash of the woman I knew a long time ago.  A caring woman.  A nurturer.  A woman who has a soul.  Antietam is my mother all over again.  She is sitting here sacrificing herself for this bigger picture.  This redemption.  This is hope that she has in for world.

I don't say thank you.  I don't need to.  This is her duty.  This is what she sacrificed her life to do.  Thanking her would be me completing this.  Thanking her would be me disarming that bomb and figuring out how to stop Victoria's plan for world destruction.

 

So I turn with Prall and I run away.

 

I don't look back even as Antietam uses her psychokinesis.  I can feel the ground shaking behind me.  She is collapsing the sewer lines.  I can feel the place caving in.  Within a matter of seconds...Antietam, my mother, has buried herself and the soldiers in that tunnel.

 

"Prall...are you ok?"

"It's just a light scratch," Prall responds, "I'll be fine.  Yeah.  It's just.  You know.  Antietam.  G'dam she's dead isn't she?  She brought down that tunnel she was in...didn't she, Jamison?"

"Prall..."

"Jamison...is she dead?"

 

His eyes look up at me.  They are full of disappointment.  They are full of sadness.  I didn't need to look back to know what happened.  I didn't have to look back to hear the tunnel collapsing.  Antietam did what she had to do to stop them.  She saved us though.  If it wasn't for her...we'd be dead right now.

"We need to keep moving.  We need to find the others."

I look down the tunnel.  The other way is caved in.  The tunnels make a fork up ahead.  I don't know which way to go.

"Antietam's dead...Antietam..."

He's crying.   I wonder then how close he was to Antietam.  Was she the mother to him that she never really was to me?  The tears are falling down his face in the same way that they fell down my face.  I remember how it felt when Aunt Gloria died.  I remember feeling like I wouldn't be able to keep going.  Maybe that's what causes me to sit down at that moment next to Prall.  I realize at that moment he isn't a piece in a chest game.  He's a young kid who doesn't have a family.

 

"You know the thing about life is...you have to know what you're fighting for..." I tell Prall.
He doesn't seem to be listening.  His face is blackened.  He's immobile. I can't carry him any longer.  Even if I did decide to carry him I wouldn't know which direction to go.  I've lost the others.  We don't have phones to connect to one another.  Everything was probably back at the hideout.  I have no way of getting in touch with Tonnet and the others.

 

Prall and I were on our own...

"What's there to fight for?" Prall asks me, "By the time this shit is over there won't be anyone left."

"That's not true..."

"I spent years of my life in your father's lab," Prall stated shaking his head, "I was a freak.  Moving things...left, right, left again, right again with my mind.  I had to drink ambrosia and I'd miss hours of my life...days of my life knocked out on that shit.  All day over and over.  I was a lab rat.  It was your mother who saved me from all that.  And even though I lived in the sewers I didn't care.  I'd rather be a sewer rat than a lab rat.  That's what I was fighting for.  Freedom..."

"Then get up."

"The fuck for?"

I push at Prall, "To keep fighting.  For love.  For life.  For freedom.  Fight for a chance to have a future."

Prall is still crying.  He hands are shaking.  He's looking back at the tunnel that is caved in.  There is a pile of dust coming from that way.   No one could have survived it.

 

He's shaking.

 

"Maybe we should just give up.  Maybe we should join Victoria.  Maybe she has a place for us in her Olympus."

"Is that the kind of life you want?" I ask, "You want to force evolution?  You want to rule over a kingdom of ashes and dried bones?  Is that what the FUCK you want Prall?"

"No.  But...what if we can't win..."

I can't convince him.  He's beaten.  He can't even focus.  And as if this was all planned I hear footsteps.  Almost light footsteps coming from the other way.  I get up thinking that maybe it could be Tonnet and the others come back for us.  Maybe they figured that we survived.

 

I'm wrong.

 

There is someone that comes.  And the look on his face lets me know who he is.  It's the General.   The flamboyant skinny man that sent these soldiers.  He looks at me with his long fake eyelashes.  He walks from the right.  His eyes are full of malice.  I block off Prall standing in front of him.  The General is just gazing at us with an intense hatred in his eyes. .  He is letting us know that he despises us.

 

"Look who it is..." The general states.

 

He is approaching me making his hips sway in a very seductive way. The tunnels are dark but I can see all this sexual tension in his eyes as he looks me up and down.  He's a pervert and he's freaking me out.

 

"Let's just give up," I hear Prall telling me, "Let's just ..."

"No."

I get up and face him.  The flamboyant man seems amused that I'm there.  He raises his hand and I'm sucked over to him within seconds.

His hand is around my throat.  He grapples my hips closer.  He's FONDLING me just like he did back there.  I can't move.  My entire body is frozen as though encased in ice.  His psychokinesis is so strong.  His grip is so tight that I have to struggle to focus my mind.

"I sent my men down to chase you guys down.  Victoria wants you all dead," the General tells me, "Luckily for me I wasn't in that hallway with them.   I am Pretty sure they are all dead.  It is such a shame...isn't it?  Never-you-mind though.  They are all replaceable.  You know what isn't replaceable.  A sexy man like you.  You're one in a million handsome..."

"LET GO OF HIM!"  Prall screams out in my defense.
I can see Prall trying to use psychokinesis.  The General hardly staggers though when Prall uses his mind to push him.  He laughs a little bit and giggles at Prall.  He's not entertained enough.  There is this look in the General's eyes.

 

"The young one is a little sexy too," he states looking over at Prall, "Once I'm done with you.  I might get me a little young flesh as well."

I can feel my pants being pulled down by psychokinesis.  I can't move.  I can't fucking move!  What the fuck is this guy trying to do?  It's like he's trying to take advantage of me!

He has this girly laugh that is sick and perverted.  It rolls over me in waves.   The girly laugh is getting underneath my skin.  I can't stand it.  I'm struggling to focus.  I look back at Prall.  Prall can't stand but he's using psychokinesis to try to attack the general.  It isn't working!

My pants are at my ankles right now.

I'm suspended in the air without him touching me.  The general looks me up and down.

"Why don't you get hard for me, daddy?" the general asks, "If you do that I might not kill you."
"Fuck you...you sick fucking bastard."
He laughs.

"Ok.  How about this.  If you get hard for me...I might not kill your little friend over there."

Shit.  My heart is racing. I am managing to control only my head.  I look back.  Prall is afraid.  My dick is limp as fuck.  I'm not attracted to this guy at all.  He's not my type.  Even if he was my type, I was in love with Piece.
Then it crosses my mind.  This sick pervert is attempting to RAPE me or at least illicit some sort of sex from me.   I can't fucking believe what is happening right now.

"Just give me some of that good dick.  Let me see what Piece is so in love with," he says at that moment, "Ooh...look at that.  It's all thick.  I bet you got the thickest nut.  Can I put it in my mouth baby?  Do you nut a lot.  I'll let you nut in my mouth."

"I do NOT want to have sex with you..." I reply.

"Just a taste.  We don't have to be enemies.  Here.  Let me suck it.  Mhm...how's that...mhmm..."
He's sucking my dick right now.  My dick stays limp even as his lips curl around it.   He's bobbing up and down at that moment.  He's enjoying it.  I can see it in his eyes.  He's enjoying every fucking moment of this.  Prall is screaming.  I can tell whatever assumptions he had about joining Victoria was out of the window.  Was this the kind of company she kept?  Were these the gods that she wants?  Men who forced sex on other men?

My dick is so limp.  For some reason I feel like I'm cheating on Piece.  And it's the thought of Piece that is getting me focused right now.  What would Piece think if he saw this right now?  How would he react to this?   Even though it's against my will... I didn't want to have sex with anyone but him.

 

And I find myself forcing with all my strength.

 

I force him back!  My mind pushes him.  Maybe it's in combination with Prall or maybe it's just on my own, but it works!  The General falls back off of me.

 

I'm released.  I fall to the floor.

 

My legs are strapped against my ankles.  I don't even have time to lift them.  I see the General standing back up.

 

"You'll PAY for that!"

He's bleeding.  He must have hit something falling over. All of a sudden the General flies at me.  His hands are outstretched.  His hands aim at my neck!  He's pulling.  He's FLYING AT ME!

 

He's looks like he's about to claw my face but then all of a sudden he stops mid air.

 

"The boy said no," a voice said.

 

The voice is coming from Piece.  He's here.  He's fucking here.

 

"Piece...of shit," the General states.

 

He barely gets it out before his body is thrusted over and over into the wall.  I'm shocked how Piece is handling it.  Piece doesn't raise his hand to move the general.  Hell, he is hardly even looking at the general!  Piece is smashing the general's body into the nearest wall over and over using psychokinesis.  His body is contorting as it smashes into the wall.

Blood and gore follow.

I run over to Piece.

"Stop.  Stop it's ok!"

"No it's not..."

Just at that moment, I hear the General's neck snap.  Piece has broken his neck!  I'm shocked and appalled.  The general is laying there now with his body in shambles.

 

Piece gets us a hotel room in downtown Chicago.  It's just a few blocks from the corporation.  After killing the General he doesn't speak. He's completely quiet.  I feel so fucking bad.  I tend to Prall's wounds and watch as he falls asleep.

 

Piece is in the shower, and when he comes out, he is still drenched in water.  His body is beautiful.  The slim frame and flat abs leading down to his small wait make my dick jump just a little. The fluffy towel wrapped around his genitals and plump phat ass if driving me crazy.  He looks over at me for a minute but doesn't say anything.  He walks over to the mirror.

 

"It's the first time I've ever taken a life," he tells me.

I remember the face Piece made underground when he was flinging the general's body.  He was angry.  He was beyond angry.

 

"You did what you had to," I stated, "You saved my life how many times now?"

Piece shakes his head, "It's my fault.  I was so suspicious of Tonnet.  She always grimaces when she sees me.  Mal Tiffany doesn't.  She barely pays me attention.  I should have known it was Mal Tiffany.  I figured it out too late.  I followed you down into the sewers.  I was too late."

I find myself walking up behind Piece.  I'm hugging him from the back.  He smells like soap still.  I let the scent fill in my lungs.  I'm holding him and there is no place else I'd rather be at this moment then here holding him.  Prall is snoring in the background.  Every part of me wants to bend Piece over this dresser and make sweet love to him over and over.

I chew on his neck letting my tongue calm his nerves.

"You're always right on time," I assure him, "Antietam...she didn't make it.  The others should be safe though.  Prall and I would probably be dead if it weren't for you.  I'm supposed to be the one saving you...remember?  You always save me."

"I killed a man today..." Piece responds, "I never meant to.  You have to believe me.  I just let my anger take over.  The way he was touching you.  The way he was violating you.  It was unacceptable."

I grab him closer.  He's not a monster.  He's not like Bombard.  I can see the innocence in Piece's face.  Piece killing someone was breaking him.  And all I wanted to do was make him feel better about it.  He wasn't the monster.  The general was the monster.  The general was the one planning on taking advantage of me and then moving on to Prall when he was done with me.

 

"I would have done it for you," I explain to Piece and then turn him around, "I would kill for you.  You know that, don't you?"

I turn Piece around.  I want him to look into my eyes.  I want him to know that I mean what I'm saying

 

I want him to know that I would move mountains for him if I had to.  As I gaze into his eyes, I can tell he's softening up to me.  His heart is beating fast.  I can feel it up against my chest.

 

"I don't want anyone else to die," Piece says, "Not because of me."

"No one needs to," I tell him, "I'll protect you.  I'll take you away.  Antarctica remember?  We'll play with the penguins.  We'll fall in love..."
Piece smiles. "That sounds nice."
He looks so far away.  Something is wrong.  He's saying how nice it sounds but he's not saying he wants to do it.  I don't get it. Why is he always holding back from me?

 

"How do you feel about me Piece...tell me now.  Is this what you want?"

"More than anything in the world.  I want to be with you," Piece explains, "But sometimes wanting something and making something happen are two different things."

"What are you saying?  You are always fucking holding back Piece," I tell him.

I grab him up passionately.  I'm not letting him go this easily.  I'm not letting him go this time.

"I should tell you where the bomb is," Piece explains changing the subject.

"Right and then we can leave.  Then we can walk away from all this."
"That's not going to work," Piece responds.

"Why the hell not?"
"Because I AM the bomb, Jamison," Piece explains, "My father put it in me.  One day I'm going to explode...and I'm going to take all the humans with me..."

I gaze at him listening to the words and realizing that everything before that moment meant nothing.  Here was the boy who I had fallen hard for that went out of his way to save my life on so many different occasions.  Here was the boy who I wanted to build something with and he was telling me he was about to die.  He was telling me the worst news possible.  And before then I thought the world was my top priority but I'm realizing the world means nothing.  I didn't understand what life really meant until this moment.

At that moment, I understand what love is.

At that moment, I understand what heartache is.

At that moment, I understand pain.

 

 

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