"At the moment, Ryuzaki Miyaza."

"Just one more dance, please!" Rachel begged.

Vladimir took her hand, "Rachel, we have danced four times, and I really must be going, as it is getting late."

"Are you sure you can't stay for one last dance?" she asked.

The pair danced to more than a few songs before Jordan caught up with them. He hastily seized Vladimir by the wrist and pulled him away from the dance floor and out from the party and into an alley nearby.

"You can let go of me now Jordan," Vladimir told him as he wrenched his arm free.

"I don't know who you think you are Vlad, but Rachel's my girlfriend. So back off," he spat as he shoved Vladimir into a wall.

Vladimir calmly brushed himself off and told Jordan he'd done nothing wrong. He started to leave when Jordan kicked him in the back and into the nearby wall again. Jordan grabbed Vladimir by his shirt and struck him three times in his face. The final blow broke Vladimir's nose and blood began to pour out.

Vladimir immediately broke Jordan's grasp and threw him, with ease, off of him and into the alley. With one arm he pinned Jordan to the ground and with his free arm he wiped away the blood. Vladimir muttered, "You are an irksome pest, Jordan."

Jordan watched as Vladimir's nose mended itself, ceased bleeding, and after a moment Vladimir looked as if Jordan had never laid a finger on him. Vladimir's grip tightened while his prey whispered in horror, "What are you?"

Rachel rushed out of the party in search of Vladimir and Jordan, though all she heard was a cry. She panicked and ran toward the alley only to find Jordan alone and wounded. He was collapsed on the ground, conscious, but bleeding out of his throat, chest, face, and arms. A majority of his ribs were broken and as such his breathing was drastically inhibited. The blood from his throat wound caused what little air he could breathe to be drowned out by the pool of blood that formed in his lungs.

Tears flooded her eyes and all she could do was cry out in terror while he lay dying in her arms. She gripped him tightly, closed her eyes, and silently prayed for help. The alleyway then illuminated in an instant and once Rachel opened her eyes she discovered the unknown light came from Jordan's wounds. His near-dead body repaired itself, bones, organs, blood and all. The light faded as soon as the young man was saved and left him merely unconscious in her arms.

Part II.

Faith.

Chapter 9.

August 25th, 2029.

11:45 AM.

Baltimore, Maryland.

Sage slowly opened his eyes and through his blurred vision he discovered he lay in a hospital bed. The fluorescent light flickered rapidly, faster than the present swish from the ceiling fan. A machine kept a slow, harsh rhythm that he soon discovered was the beat of his own heart. He traced the wires from the machine to his chest.

He looked around the room and found an empty gray bed adjacent to him on the left side, a gray metal door on his right, the gray ceiling above him, the gray tiles floor beneath him, gray chairs in the corner, and the gray painted walls that surrounded him. After a moment, he realized he was the only thing in the room with any color.

Sage removed the wires from him and let them slowly fall away to the machine where the cables retracted back inside the strange device. He set his feet on the floor and was startled to feel nothing. They were not cold or warm or anything. He hardly felt their presence at all.

He tried to stand but fell to the floor and hit the tiled surface hard. Sage struggled to lift himself but failed to do so. He looked at his legs but nothing restricted him. After a moment of struggle he simply crawled over to the door. Once there he found it without window, k.n.o.b, or sign that it could ever open. He pushed against it though it didn't budge.

In defeat he crawled over to one of the chairs and took a seat. He looked at his room, the open window, the swirling fan, the ceiling lights on the floor in the pool of black Sage shook his head fiercely and the room righted itself. The fan twirled silently, the floor was the floor again, and the lights were on the ceiling where they belonged. More importantly a small rectangular window appeared on the door, which excited Sage as he finally had a view of the outside world.

He crawled over to the door and dragged the chair with him. Once he positioned the chair, he climbed up and peered through the small gla.s.s rectangle. Outside the door was Baltimore, his city, from a bird's-eye view. Sage glanced at the room and back through the window. He felt the room should have been on its side, with the door and the wall as the floor and the bed and the floor as the wall. But he remained where he was and the room remained as it was. Sage looked out once more and found his city functioning as normal; cars crept along as ants, it rained, and all seemed at peace.

A cry pierced the silence. Sage turned and saw a lone crow perched on a windowsill at the other end of the room. The window had not been present before, and Sage discovered a neon green exit sign that floated above the crow. The bird flew out into the darkness beyond the window.

Sage tried to move to the other end of the room, but he fell from the chair and into a viscous black liquid. The man tried to swim and to return to his bed or even to the chair, all of which remained perfectly still among the top of the liquid. He sank while the beat of the fan, his pulse, the machine, and the flickering of the lights all synchronized.

3:45 PM.

London, England The injuries Jason sustained from the fire were far graver than Audrey initially believed. His doctors were amazed he even survived. His entire body consisted of second and third degree burns, along with one ma.s.sive fourth degree wound on his left arm which worried the doctors most of all. Yet internally he was relatively fine, which confounded them and raised a few eyebrows. His heart and lungs sustained smoke inhalation but the damage wasn't as destructive as it should have been. They kept him in their burn unit, completely secluded, and she hadn't had an opportunity to speak to him or see him since the fire.

She sat out in the lobby nearest to the unit, lost in thought, foot racing away devoid of her awareness or control. Her brother Jack and his wife planned to stop by to be with her later that night, but all she had to comfort her then was her mother, who only made her worry more. Audrey asked her to get some food from the cafeteria so she could have a moment of quiet to herself.

Her thoughts raced to when she first met Jason and how he gave up his seat in their history course when she came in late on the first day of cla.s.s. He left to find another one without a single word and sat near her when he returned. From then on she made sure to be at cla.s.s early so that embarra.s.sment wouldn't recur, though she only managed to become friends and eventually more with that very same young man who gave his seat to her. Audrey recalled their first date too; Jason took her out to dinner to a small Greek restaurant on the opposite end of town (only to later discover how atrocious the food really was). He wasn't as confident as he later turned out to be, nor as cultured either. Their dates ranged from concerts and movies to walks through museums and secluded parts of London she hadn't ever known existed. After two weeks she kissed him and a few weeks after that she made it a habit to always be near him, even if they could only see each other for a few minutes. His proposal at her apartment near Christmas over a candlelit and home cooked dinner took her by surprise, yet garnered the ecstatic result he'd hoped for.

They weren't wed until after their graduation date in twenty-twenty-five, though they found their home two months after their engagement. Jason had lived with three other guys he'd known from his youth, and Audrey lived with her best friend Hannah then, so they had to find their own place. That same home lay burned down and little more than charred rubble. All that remained were the two of them and a safe Jason kept in their closet. Its contents were generally safe, though Audrey's last thoughts were on her legal papers. Her husband lay near death in a room less than one hundred meters from where she sat and the phone call she received that informed her of the safe's retrieval hardly phased her. Her husband lay in a bed nearby, burned and blackened from head to foot, strung up to everything he could manage to be connected to, and from what a doctor told her he was in unbearable and indescribable pain. Jason was however comatose, which the doctors told Audrey was a blessing, as it helped him manage the pain. Yet Audrey's mind raced back to stories of burn survivors who remembered that pain from within their own comas. She even thought about all of the ones who couldn't survive and questioned whether Jason was alive from within and screaming without a soul to understand him or receive him, or if he was gone and the sh.e.l.l of the man she loved wouldn't ever reanimate again.

Audrey cried for a long time after her mother left to get her a meal.

Everyone in her family felt that they needed to be there for her, including her friends and Jason's too, but all she wanted was a minute to cry. She wanted to be removed from all of the hopes and well-wishes and comforters and simply scream. She wanted to swear, to curse heaven and earth and whoever burned down her home and her husband, and Audrey wanted to race into her husband's room and yell and cry and smack him. She wanted to bring him back and felt completely powerless in her chair in the lobby of the hospital.

There were only a few others in the room and they tried to ignore her and give her s.p.a.ce. The room was big, with six couches and eight matching chairs. Two televisions were mounted on the large walls that played old movies to distract the unfortunate souls there, though no one paid any mind to what they played. There was a coffee table with magazines piled high between each set of couches. On one of the tables near Audrey lay a newspaper with an article open, t.i.tled 'Dafu Attacks London'.

Aug. 25 On the night of August 22, multiple bombs were detonated inside of an apartment complex within the Redbridge area of London late that night. The bombs created a ma.s.sive fire which engulfed the building, ten people perished in the flames and one man was found in the debris, alive but in critical condition and taken immediately away for further medical a.s.sistance. The next day the Dafu claimed responsibility for the attack. This marks the eleventh attack worldwide since the attack on the United States President's life last week.

For the complete story see section A4...

She couldn't bring herself to read the rest of the article. All she could manage was to toss it aside and cry. Audrey wept, alone.

11:45 AM.

Baltimore, Maryland Ryan opened his eyes again. It wasn't difficult then, his vision wasn't a blur, and he saw everything with clarity. He lay on his back with the starry heavens above him. There were two pulses he heard, one was his own and the second came from the beating of the wings of a small group of crows that circled overhead. He looked out and noticed a ma.s.sive rolling black cloud beneath him, one that stretched out for miles and that may have gone on for eternity. There was no room, no wall, no floor, no ceiling, nothing else.

Ryan looked at where he was and found himself in a dumpster filled with the remains of his investigation. All of the doc.u.ments, the food he'd eaten, all of the wrappers, the evidence, the damage, and the bodies. All eleven corpses of the eleven victims were there and they were each branded with the crescent scar on their arm.

He tried to yell but was drowned out by the collective cry of the crows above him. Ryan fled the ma.s.s grave and fell onto a blanket of crows which prevented him from falling through the black cloud beneath him.

Out in the distance he saw a lone door, open and inviting, and he ran there. Each step of the way there was held by a crow at his feet, almost as cobblestones.

Through the door he found an apartment littered with clothes, garbage, bills, food, and all manner of refuse. On the wall to his left was his investigation, though far more detailed and further along than he was. Ryan looked at the photographs of the victims and failed to recognize any of them.

A short rectangular table was in the center of the room with two lit candles. Beyond the table were two open windows. He walked before the first window and saw Baltimore, completely deserted. There were no cars, people, sound, light, or motion. Suddenly three winged creatures flew together, a bat, a crow, and a dove. The creatures flew much faster than Ryan had ever seen winged animals fly. The birds circled around one another and crashed into a tower. They vanished into a plume of feathers.

Ryan moved on to the second window but recoiled in fear. He only looked for a moment but the image was burned into his mind. The completely decimated remains of that same city stood beyond the threshold of the window. Hundreds and thousands of dead lay strewn about in the streets and in the rubble of the fallen buildings. Many more stood and were impaled by demonic hands.

Ryan fled the room and ran back outside only to fall through the cloud and plummet through the night sky. He saw his city beneath the cloud and fell through the sky, past the towers, by the streetlights, and through the street into nothing.

4:15 PM.

London, England "All I'm getting at Audrey is that the city proves too stressful," Jack told her. "Why don't you move home with mum for a while? Until you'reer...that is, until you and Jason have recovered. Audrey, I have been rather successful this past year and I'd be more than happy to help in any way I can."

Jack sat beside Audrey in the waiting room with his arm rested on the back of her seat; Audrey remained still, distant, and quiet. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor, though her thoughts raced from memories to fears and from fear to sorrow. It was bleak, she knew it, and they all hid it from her. As coy as they pretended to be she saw through their collective ruse. Jack believed it was the end, or at least the moment to restore his dominance in the affairs of their family. He wanted to be the patriarch of the family once more, and the road would be clear without Jason (as no one in the family saw Alan in such a role).

Audrey's eyes widened and she felt a tightening in her chest. Whatever her brother said failed to reach her. She retraced her thoughts and found her cynical side had crept in. Jack wasn't the type to do something tasteless at such a trying time. He might believe there was little hope for Jason but he wouldn't say so; he simply wanted to look after his little sister and she missed that.

Audrey thanked Jack quietly.

She stayed at a hotel close to the hospital with her mother and sister Suzy, who tried their best to comfort her, though she only sought solitude. Audrey wanted Jason, she wanted to see him and to hold him and to comfort and rea.s.sure him. She didn't care how disfigured he was or would be if he survived; all she wanted was to see him again. Audrey knew she would willingly give up anything to have him back safe, or even to talk to him.

"Audrey, did you miss that?"

She pulled herself out of her trance and looked at her brother with weary eyes. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I was only saying it's a shame you can't back out of the vacation plans you and Jason made." He paused for a moment to see if he'd struck a chord with her and continued cautiously, "You two could have used the money to find someplace else to live, or at least to help cover expenses, not that we won't help, mind you. All I'm saying it that it's a shame it's going to waste."

Audrey only nodded politely and hardly at all. Jason dreamed of taking her there and it really was a shame all they worked and planned for would go to waste. They made the decision to go nine months earlier and Jason dedicated himself to the plans; he budgeted and made all of the arrangements and often told her how excited he was to surprise her with the events on their holiday. The weeks leading up to it only heightened their antic.i.p.ation and eagerness to leave their daily life for a while. But with the fire and Jason's health the dream seemed unreachable.

Jack saw his sister's expression and quickly started off on some of his son's school projects and after school activities in a vain hope to change the subject.

11:45 AM.

Baltimore, Maryland Chief Martin Johnson and Detective Chuck Felton chatted quietly with a doctor about Ryan's situation. Ryan lay asleep in the bed but suddenly shot up and screamed.

"Sage! Sage calm down!" barked Johnson as he, the doctor, and Felton all held him down until he calmed. Ryan asked what had happened and Johnson continued, "You were attacked yesterday and now you're in the hospital."

Ryan, who was then soaked in cold sweat, looked about his room. Everything was as it should be, the lights on the ceiling, a window mounted into a wall that did not open, simple brown chairs, his bed, the machine next to him, an open door, a colored tile floor, and the absence of a ceiling fan. He took a breath and relaxed.

"Mister Sage, I'm Doctor Grayson," the man introduced himself. "Your partner told me you were attacked yesterday on patrol and were taken here."

"Why am I here?" he asked.

A voice, separate from all those in the room, whispered to him, "Don't panic."

"Your left leg," the doctor continued, "from the knee down was severed during the incident." Ryan paled. "Later we will need to discuss prosthetics."

"Don't worry," the voice told him.

"What?" Ryan asked.

"Prosthetics, Mister Sage, a replacement limb."

Ryan blinked and looked about the room and calmly spoke, "Alright, okay...Alright. Ah," he looked at the Chief and Felton and asked if he could speak to them alone and Doctor Grayson agreed. Once he left he looked at the two of them and asked, "What happened?"

"First," Felton began, "Evanston was killed. We checked and the mark was burned into him too."

Johnson cursed, "Now how many days are there until the next stiff turns up?"

The voice returned, "Five."

"What?"

"What?"

"No," Sage stopped and thought for a moment. He looked about the room and quickly asked for a pad of paper and a pen, which the Chief gave him. Sage looked at Felton and asked if he remembered when each of the victims died so he could cross check his numbers with what he just theorized. He wrote eight numbers down and showed it to them. "This is the pattern," he said with a weak smile. "Four days, then six, then five, five, eight, two, one, and nine; after that it restarts at four and works its way down," he told them.

Felton looked at him and frowned, "How can you be sure?"

Sage explained the gaps between deaths and how recently the pattern had resurfaced. "Caroline Reynolds died four days after Brett was killed, Angela Walsh was killed six after that, and Mario Evanston was just killed yesterday which makes five." He looked at them both and reiterated his point, "The pattern loops through like that."

Johnson nodded, "Alright, so we've got five days including today to locate the next target."

"How did he know where to find Evanston though?" Felton asked.

Ryan shook his head, "He could have simply kept an eye out to locate him throughout the week and noticed he wasn't at his job or home and came looking for him."

Felton agreed. "Though since he's invisible isn't there a chance he could have been in the station while we talked about our plan?"

They all thought on the possibility and realized it wasn't too outlandish. "Fine, we'll put infrared cameras throughout the station to locate him if he tries to listen in anymore."

The voice whispered, "The car."

"The car?" Ryan repeated.

"What car?"

"No," he stopped and thought intently and realized what the voice meant. "The car, Angela Walsh's car. When Cladis shoved her car into Evanston's, the airbags, the seat belt, and the brakes all failed. Maybe that means he can disable or disarm electronics?"

Johnson followed his thought process, "Meaning infrared cameras would be a waste of time." He swore, "These cases aren't supposed to be so insane," he muttered. "What happened to the days when we dealt with gangs?"

"We still do," Felton reminded him, "They're just not on the forefront of our minds at the moment."