ALEX #14
In the next moment Bay pulls a balaclava out of his pocket and puts it on. Only then do I notice he is armed. He has a gun in a holster and what looks like a knife. Maybe even a vest. What the fuck.
"The hell? Bay, what is happening…"
Bay turns to me, takes hold of my shoulders, and looks straight into my eyes.
"You should not be here, Alex. You should not see this. Get into Ennio’s car and do not move. You have to promise me."
"But…"
"Promise me, Alex."
"I promise…" I whisper.
Bay turns and heads toward warehouse C35, but he does not go in from the front. He circles the building, and from a distance I see him heading for the ladder that leads to the roof.
"Ennio," I turn to him, "tell me he will be safe, please."
"If he is not safe, no one else could be," Ennio mutters. Then he grabs my arm and starts dragging me toward the car.
I struggle and resist. "I want to see what happens to Bay."
But he’s much stronger than me. He shoves me into the car and slams the door.
He walks around, gets in on the other side.
"What now? Are we just going to sit here and do nothing? There are armed men in there, they will kill him, they will shoot him…"
"Calm down. Bay knows what he’s doing. He has been doing this for ten years."
I freeze and stare at him. "What?"
Silence.
Finally, I shake off the shock and, looking at him pleadingly, blurt out, "That does not change the fact that their whole brigade is in there.
Why did you send him in alone when you have soldiers who could help him?
" I gesture toward the two soldiers sitting in the front of the vehicle, behind the partition.
Ennio’s jaw twitches.
"None of my men can help him, for a very simple reason. They are not only my men, but also Rocco’s, the current capo, as I am sure you know." His tone grows sour. "At least officially they are. They simply can’t confront the others."
I go pale.
"So Anzo lost his position for good? Is it Rocco who kidnapped Summer and Bay’s dad? Why? I do not understand any of this, for fuck’s sake."
"Summer is not an ordinary human. Rocco wants to use his power and on top of that he wants revenge. Bay’s dad is nothing more than his leverage. That’s it."
I am starting to hyperventilate.
"That is even worse! Fuck. And Summer is dangerous. Moon warned Bay about him, said he could destroy all of us, said—"
"He also said that only Bay can save us," Ennio cuts in abruptly, his face stern and pale. "That’s why he’s the only one going in. And you need to calm down, because you’re having a panic attack. If you don’t want me to smack you, shut your mouth."
"The fuck," I hiss. "I don’t want to calm down! I don’t want to calm down!" I jerk away from him, "I love Bay!" And before Ennio can stop me, I jump out of the car.
The next moment something unbelievable happens.
Warehouse C34… explodes in front of my eyes.
But it isn’t an explosion like anything I’ve ever seen.
In a split second the perimeter of destruction expands at impossible speed, wiping everything off the surface of the earth, including the second hangar, C35, and then a wave of debris races straight toward me…
Screaming, I cover my eyes, even though I know it won’t help, because the shockwave is at least as strong as if a massive bomb had gone off.
I drop to my knees with my hands over my face, but to my shock, instead of feeling shards tearing into my body, nothing happens to me at all…
Not a single speck of dust, not a single piece of rubble or glass or metal touches my skin. Nothing slams into me, nothing cuts me, nothing crushes me.
What the hell?
Slowly, I open my eyes.
In shock, I see the ground around me flattened completely. The shockwave has pushed outward at least three hundred yards already, probably farther, leveling the earth, leveling buildings, leveling trees, leveling the entire city infrastructure into a flat wasteland.
Ennio’s car is gone, everything is gone, all of it disintegrated by that horrific, impossible force that somehow… doesn’t touch me at all.
In the center of the eye of the storm, through the swirling dust, I see two figures standing unaffected by all the mayhem.
It’s Bay.
Oh Fate! Thank you… he’s alive.
I think he’s holding his dad in his arms or something, then he lays him on the ground and straightens up.
But then… I blink. Something else is there too, something monstrous, black, with enormous wings spreading wide on both sides.
And those wings are massive, stretching left and right, probably dozens of yards long, ragged like torn black veils, seemingly belonging to some kind of demon.
How are Bay and I still alive?
Why didn’t anything touch us? It doesn’t make sense. I try desperately to piece together some plausible explanation, but nothing fits. What the fuck is this? A dream?
Shaking with terror, I press myself to the ground. I don’t even know why, but I’m terrified that the black creature in the center will notice me and decide to destroy me, decide to focus on me.
But I see Bay walking boldly toward it.
"No," I whisper under my breath. "No, you’ve lost your mind. That has to be a demon."
I glance back and see that the rubble stretches out at least a mile now, if not more, the terrain flattened all the way.
And it’s not over, the shockwave keeps rolling deeper into the city.
In the distance, I see buildings and skyscrapers collapsing.
My Fate, this is the catastrophe Moon was talking about!
There’s no way it’s anything else. He warned us…
And if that’s true, then Bay arrived too late.
Did I stop him?
Did I slow him down?
Those precious few seconds…
Suddenly I see Bay grab the demon by its blackened throat.
Wow. That’s what courage looks like. Bay is strong, but this is something… else he’s up against.
I stare at them. I’m far away, at least fifty yards, maybe more, and with all the roaring destruction around us I can’t hear what they’re saying, but Bay seems to be shaking the demon slightly, like he’s trying to force something out of him.
My Fate, did the world really just end? How did this happen? Everyone is dead? Ennio, Snow, and now the people in the city, millions of them…
I turn back toward Bay and blink hard because I think I see something behind him, a kind of illusion.
What is that?
When I blink harder, sometimes I see it and sometimes I don’t, like a flickering afterimage.
Are those wings?
Huge, shimmering white wings rising behind Bay…
But then I blink and they’re gone.
Then I blink again and they’re there!
Like they’re some kind of mirage, or like they can’t fully materialize. Only their outline, only a faint glow visible in the dust-filled air swirling around them.
I stare in disbelief.
Who is Bay?
Is this why he was sent here, what Moon was hinting at?
To save us, to save the people in the city?
"Save us Bay," I whisper, "Bring us back to life!"
I squeeze my eyelids, repeating almost like a mantra, "Bring us back, bring us back…"
And then…
In a fraction of a second I feel a strange pull around me, like a wave of blue energy shooting through everything.
Stunned, I squeeze my eyes shut.
When I open them…
I’m standing next to Ennio’s car, holding on to the open door, and behind me I hear his tense voice.
"If you go in there, you’ll die. They’ll shoot you."
I turn toward him in shock.
Wait, wait. What just happened? I blink and wipe my eyes.
Ennio’s face is unchanged; the car is exactly where it was before.
I look around stupidly.
What the hell? All the warehouses are intact, and the city is also untouched.
"Holy shit," I mumble. "I can’t believe this," I whisper, climbing back into the car and sinking into the seat beside Ennio.
"A moment ago the whole world blew up, and now everything got reset. You’re all alive again."
I blink and again, vigorously wipe my eyes, even rub them, as waves of shock crawl over my skin.
Ennio stares at me with his wide black eyes.
I nod hard and even smirk in a kinda helpless way.
"Yes, yes, you were dead a moment ago, all the buildings were flattened. In the middle of it all, there was something monstrous, possibly Summer, but I’m not sure. He obliterated half the city. But Bay stopped him, forced him to… I think, to… I don’t know. Undo it. Reverse it. Erase it all."
Ennio keeps staring at me and I know how everything I just said must sound to him, like the ravings of a lunatic.
But to my shock, he just leans back and lifts his vape to his lips like nothing happened, like the world didn’t just fall apart a moment ago. What a cold fucker.
"Apparently we all have our purpose on this planet," he says calmly.
That’s all he says. Silence settles in.
We sit there for a moment, and I feel numb, staring ahead over the driver’s head, as we’re separated from him by the glass partition.
A moment later, Bay walks out of the warehouse carrying his unconscious dad, and from the other one Snow appears with… I guess it has to be Summer… as if nothing happened at all!
Summer looks normal, just an omega, no trace of the darkness or those terrifying wings.
I sit there watching it all like I’m seeing it on a TV screen.
Minutes stretch; time feels like it’s flowing somewhere outside of me. I feel even more desynchronized than before, like I’m existing half out of time.
It takes me a long moment to pull myself together.
I notice Snow and Summer turning behind warehouse C34, and Bay heading toward us.
"Will you do me a favor and stay in the car now?" Ennio asks with a sarcastic smirk, almost as if doubting he could ever persuade me to do so.
I nod numbly, too stiff to say anything.
Ennio gets out, walks toward Bay’s car, and opens the door. Bay settles his unconscious dad in the back seat and exchanges a few quiet words with Ennio, they’re both leaning in, whispering, careful I won’t hear it.
Then… he comes up to me.
He leans down through the open door and looks into my face.
"Alex, are you alright? It’s over now. Everything is fine. My dad is safe and so are Summer and Snow."
I swallow hard, snapping out of my daze.
"I saw it, you know. He destroyed everything."
Bay’s face goes still.
"You saw it?"
"Yes… But the cataclysm didn’t touch me. Strange."
Bay blinks a few times as if surprised, then frowns and says, "We really are two pieces of the same soul."
I give him a faint smile.
"Looks like it, and it’s one hell of a soul," I say almost solemnly. "Congratulations, Bay. You stopped the destruction. Maybe that’s exactly what you were sent here to do."
We look at each other for a moment.
"Why did he do it?" I whisper.
"He was very upset… scared he had lost his love."
"Oh… so another love story gone wrong?"
"They all are like this, aren’t they?"
"What did you tell him? To repair it?"
Bay lets out a slow breath and shrugs. "Nothing epic, really. I just told him I’d kill him if he didn’t reset it. Kinda basic, but it always works." He gives me a small, innocent grin.
In response, I burst into frantic, nervous laughter.
"His power had no hold over you, right?"
"It didn’t. For some strange reason, I’m immune to Summer’s and Snow’s powers. And I guess you are immune too."
"Almost sounds like it’s by design," I say meaningfully.
A moment of silence.
Then I slowly rub my face, feeling overwhelmed.
Bay is quiet for a while, then he speaks softly.
"Well. Anyway. Looks like Moon is a legit seer."
I burst out in a kind of helpless chuckle, because all that tension and horror have to go somewhere.
"Oh yeah! Definitely."
Bay straightens up and brushes loose strands of hair away, looking hot as hell as always, and he’s my hero… and now, not just mine.
"I’ll take Dad home and then come back. We’ll talk, I’ll explain everything, the whole backstory."
"Okay," I whisper, "though I think I already understand quite a lot," I add with a knowing smile.
Bay gets out of the car, and I can see him walk over to Ennio and shake his hand with a firm, strong grip. He leans in slightly, and from the movement of his lips I can read "Thank you," or something along those lines.
It almost looks like… saying goodbye?
When Bay drives off, I’m left alone with Ennio, who’s standing near, leaning his side against the car, staring off into the distance, deep in thought.
I step out of the car and stand next to him.
There’s a moment of silence while he vapes, exhaling the vapor upward, and then I say,
"Sorry for being such an annoying brat… and thank you for… I guess, looking after him all these years. Guiding him through his darkest hours."
Ennio fidgets with the vape between his fingers and doesn’t react to my words at all.
"But I hope you didn’t fuck?!" I blurt out, simply because I have to.
Ennio shoots me a dry glance and rolls his eyes.
"I don’t do alphas."
I study him for a moment, and then a particular thought crosses my mind.
"So? Looks like I’m standing next to the new capo right now. I really don’t think Rocco would just let them walk away without any resistance."
My words finally trigger a stronger reaction. Ennio slowly turns toward me, and a rare expression appears on his face.
A dark, triumphant smile.