Gravity Would Do The Trick

Urijah knocked on the door. The office was tiny dark and dank, the only light coming from the entire building was emanating from the sign that said it was closed. He knocked harder and looked at the camera above the door. He frowned what he hoped was menacing frown. He wondered to himself if a frown could be menacing. He was over thinking it. He kept the look on his face and banged on the door again.

He felt a coolness begin to move inside of him. Not enough to worry him but he didn't ignore the magic outright.

"Be right there." The voice of a woman crackled over an intercom system that Urijah couldn't locate. He looked all over and saw neither speaker nor button to respond to the disembodied voice.

He stepped back from the door. Maybe they'd unlocked it. He reached forward and tried the handle. They had not.

The cool feeling inside of him warmed. No, there was warmth moving inside of coolness. There were two people in the building.

"Um, actually, if you could head back to your room, we'll be along shortly." A new voice was speaking, a male this time. His voice didn't carry the confidence that the woman's had.

Cold and warmth retreated and he was left feeling himself only. They wouldn't be coming to meet him just yet.

Urijah again looked around for an intercom. Again failed to find one so he looked into the camera and said, "Ok, don't knock on the door when you come to get me, just stand outside. I'll know you're there."

Walking back to the room, he looked into the sky, twilight was on them. The sun would be up before too long. The fading stars and retreating moon reminded him of the early morning that ended the life he'd had and started him down the path that brought him to this dirty little motel.

He remembered all too well the clear sky with the overlarge moon pressing down on him. The stars, pinpricks of light reaching him and illuminating the path he followed to his heinous mission. The smell of the nursery came to him with the memory. Sterile, mostly, but you could faintly smell the babies when you got near their cribs.

He remembered telling himself that he was following orders. He had reminded himself over and over and over again that what he did was for the good of the collective. Standing in the room, looking at them all swaddled and asleep, the question, "Why Me?" stuck in his head. It wasn't until much later that he'd asked, "Why her?" He hadn't the capacity to move past his hatred of himself to consider anything else. Who was that child, why did she need to die?

When he exited the sun had come up to greet what was left of him. Part of Urijah had died inside of that building. He was a broken man.

Following his nursery assignment, Urijah had been promoted and was given the opportunity to select his job. He chose to join the Vanguard, the seek and destroy arm of the Legion. Old forces moved in their new world and those old forces fought the LTC, dealing with them, hunting and killing them was what the Vanguard trained for.

With the Vanguard he volunteered for the deadliest missions, hoping that the enemy would strike him down. He wanted to die but he didn't have the fortitude to do it by his own had so he ran into every battle with reckless abandon.

Ambushing a caravan was where he had almost gotten his wish and also where he'd found his salvation. Legion had learned the location of their enemies headquarters, deep in the remote Appalachian mountains. The OE, Original Earthers, was the one of the organized efforts the local humans had put together to resist and disrupt the LTC. Urijah didn't know much about them other than they were on their last leg and most likely the final big budget insurgency this planet would be putting together. Its money backers had been killed or financially ruined and the last of their fighters were on the run. Vanguard was tasked with moping them up.

The mountain air was fresh and crisp. He felt so alive in the wilderness. Urijah lay still in his cover, a cluster of bushes just on the edge of the kill zone. The daisy chained batch of IEDs that constituted the kill zone was to be set off on the road in front of him. After the explosions he and his strike team would move in and finish them off. Urijah hopped that this would be his final mission. Dying while snuffing out the hated OE would be good. Today was a good day to die.

Through his binocs he watched them approach down the winding road. Six old cars, obviously picked because they didn't have any tech in them, harder to track. It hadn't saved them. It wouldn't have really helped. Urijah wasn't very far up the food chain but he'd heard chatter that they had a traitor.

That was how it'd gotten to this point so quickly. Years ago, the OE had been formidable but over the past two years they had been picked apart, bit by bit. Most likely Vanguard had relied heavily on the traitor to make such quick progress against an organization like that.

Snow was falling in big fat flakes, Urijah had to keep his hand near his face so he could brush them away without moving to much and giving away his position. The call came over his radio that the convoy would enter the kill zone in less than a minute.

He focused in on his magic. He felt for the familiar feeling. He experienced the telltale boiling icy cold inside of him. Contact was imminent and deadly.

Urijah rolled on to his side planting his automatic rifle in his right shoulder and pressed the ejection port against the ground. With his left hand slowly eased back the bolt back. The round he had in the chamber tried to eject, but had nowhere to go. When he released the bolt the next round moved up from the magazine, propelled by the springs. It couldn't slide into the chamber due to the previous round still being in the way and exactly as it should have, the rifle jammed. He didn't want them to think he'd run into a fire fight with just a pistol and knife for no reason.

The little red Toyota pickup rounded the corner. Urijah breathed in and out through his nose deeply and purposefully. He didn't have what it took to be part of the Vanguard so he would end it here and they would remember him fondly. He rose to a knee and tossed his rifle to his right. The snow seemed to be falling harder.

In his left hand he drew his knife, a modified SOG Seal 2000, made with a 9-inch blade especially for him, the 7 inch blade on the one he'd been issued looked comically small in his huge hand. The 9 inch blade wasn't much better. In his right hand he pulled his Heckler & Koch VP9SK. He had no idea what VP9SK meant but it was the only pistol he'd ever had that he could comfortably use. Standard trigger guards were too small but the VP9SK was constructed with fully figured hands in mind.

Static in his earpiece was followed by the triggerman beginning the countdown. In 5 seconds the IED's would be set off.

Upon detonation the TNT would experience a rapid exothermic chemical reaction. Releasing an astonishing and life shattering amount of stored potential energy by transforming the explosive material from the solid it was to the highly compressed superheated gas it was destined to be. From its housing in the IED the superheated gas would rapidly expand reaching up to 3 million psi and attaining a temperature as high as 6,000 degrees Celsius. This gas expansion would instantaneously compresses the surrounding ambient air, forming a blast wave that propagated supersonically and radially from the detonation site. The air would be highly compressed at its leading edge and this compressed wedge of air would move out into the convoy. The wedge interacts with the vehicles and human bodies by causing a rapid change in pressure at the moment of impact, transferring all of that energy from the air into the people and the vehicles they felt so safe in.

The internal organs of the luckiest would be instantly liquified, their bones would be broken in thousands of places and they would die before you could say 'Boom'. The unlucky wouldn't take the blast directly. They would suffer damage from shrapnel in the IEDs and whatever loose bits of their old vehicle that felt compelled (by the force of the explosion) to join the rest of the shrapnel. Casualties would be high among them but not all of them would be killed or even wounded. That was what Urijah was for, dealing with the unlucky.

The large man closed his eyes and held his hands over his ears bracing for the explosion. When the triggerman said "One," the expected explosion did not come. A beat later he heard him say, "Fuck." Instinctively the giant of Vanguard, the model soldier, knew that their daisy chain of IEDs had malfunctioned. Good, he thought to himself. He rose from his knee to his full height of 6'9. 6'10 on a good day. At that moment it felt like a good day.

The lead truck was closing fast, he had a few seconds. He raised his pistol and fired three rounds. Three holes opened in the windshield where the driver sat, three holes were punched into the drivers body.

Urijah stepped into the road, the truck was heading for the ditch and the car behind it sped up with the intention of going through or around him. Gunfire erupted from two spots on the hillside, marksmen who had been placed to pick off any stragglers that lived through the blast. Now they were taking aim at drivers and tires, trying anything to salvage the op and finish off the OE. Cars in the convoy started to slow down and swerve along the line. Bullets were finding their marks.

Now less than 20 feet in front of him, the leading vehicle was slowing down, it looked as if it would come to a rest soon. The chatter in his ear was maddening, Urijah reached across to his ear with his left hand, pulling the earpiece out as he fired into the little red truck again. Three more rounds aimed low into the passengers side of the windshield, in case they were ducking. He fired two more rounds at movement he saw in the back seat. The truck was now rolling past him. He fired the last five rounds of his magazine into the two people riding in the backseat. The truck hit the ditch and was done moving.

Standing in the middle of the road, welcoming death with open arms, Urijah surveyed the clusterfuck before him. One car behind, five in front. Scattered all over the stretch of road that was the kill zone. The rest of his squad on the hillside, firing down into their enemy. There were reported to be four or five combatants in each car, that meant as many as 25 people left to kill him. He prayed that they were up to the task.

Urijah dropped the empty magazine and placed his blade in his teeth, reached to his side and grabbed another mag, ramming it home and chambering a round. He removed the knife from his mouth and trotted towards the nearest car, a now stationary beat-up blue station wagon.

The drivers-side window was half shattered and the bloody pulp of a man sat in the drivers seat slumped against the steering wheel, leaning to the left, his head resting on the bit of the glass that wasn't blown out. The front seat passenger was struggling with the door, he was obviously hit but not dead. Urijah sent two rounds center mass. The man stopped trying to open the door.

The passenger side back seat door was open, he saw figures moving to exit and fired. A miss. He kept moving forward, sliding gracefully to the side of the road on his left. A head peaked up at him, the person was near the front wheel, he fired twice. Misses. He advanced. When they rose over the hood again trying to level their rifle at him, he fired twice, hitting them. It was a her. His bullets took her high in the chest and in the lower jaw. She fell back and he heard the thud even with the gunfire all around him. He heard her struggling to breath, gurgles sounded out into the starless skies.

Urijah rounded the front of the station wagon. There was a man, hunkering over the woman he'd just killed. He aimed at the man's back hesitating. He fired into the ground by the man.

"Avenger her!" He pushed out a breath. He felt dizzy. Since he'd first fired his pistol he wasn't sure he'd taken a breath.

"Come on!" He yelled as kicked snow towards them.

"Get up!" He pled, kicking more snow onto them.

"Kill me!" He begged, banging his pistol on the hood of the car.

The man turned his head to look but cradled the woman's body. Not fully looking at Urijah the man scooched closer to the dead woman, taking her in his arms, pulling her close to his body, looking sideways at the man that had murdered... his wife? His sister? His friend? Whoever this woman was, he'd loved her and Urijah had taken her life.

The snow fell, heavy. Heavier than even a minute ago when the bombs refused to explode.

Paying no attention to the gunfire all around him the giant moved slowly forward, his pistol drooping at his side. He advanced on the man and the dead woman. The man did nothing but cry and hold her body tighter.

Urijah wished he had the strength to turn the pistol on himself. Instead he stepped within arms lengthen of the crying man. He held his knife in hammer grip, pommel protruding from between his pointer finger and thumb, blade pointing out below his pinky. He swung with all of his might. His anger, his self-hatred, the pain he'd caused himself, the pain he'd wrought on the world, he pushed it all into his swing. The knife found itself hilt deep in the side of the mans head, cutting off the top of the ear as it plunged into the brain.

The knife wielder yanked the blade out, not bothering to clean it. He skirted around the entangled bodies that he had so heinously crafted. His eyes were blurry. Was it the snow in his eyes? Yes. It had to be the snow. He wiped his face in the crook of his left arm.

The next car was deep in the ditch on the left side of the road. Another station wagon. This one was grey with wood paneling. He emptied his magazine into the windshield. Not aiming. Not trying to kill, just pouring his anger and hate through the barrel of a gun. The slide locked back, empty. He had more magazines but no more use of his sidearm. He dropped the pistol in the icy road and moved the knife to his right hand.

The night was alive with gunfire. He heard bullets whizzing by him. He saw the snow kick up near his feet. What hell was this? Could no one kill him? Was he cursed?

Urijah felt that he had instinctively tried to make himself a smaller target, hunching his shoulders down and crouching a bit. He stood upright, his full height. He walked deliberately around to the passenger side of the grey station wagon. There was a man running into the woods. Impulsively Urijah threw his knife. He wasn't an expert knife thrower and was reminded of that when the hilt hit the man instead of the blade.

The OE operative spun to face him. It was an older man, as wide as shoulders as he'd ever seen and a greying head of hair. Piercing blue eyes looked up at him from the trees. Before he could take another step the man pointed his pistol at the gigantic Legion trooper and fired. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Finally. This was it.

But he didn't fall. He felt hard horrible impacts on his chest but he wasn't dead yet. The old man's pistol clicked and he reached to his side and froze. No more ammunition. Urijah, resplendent in what he was sure was the end smiled, he tasted iron and felt blood in his mouth. The old man pulled a knife. Curling his fingers into fists and lurching forward Urijah welcomed death.

And that was where his memory cut off.

The next thing he could remember was waking up in the hospital. He was told that the IEDs had gone off belatedly. As best as they could tell all of the OE members had died and the mission was a success. Their only casualty was Urijah.

While they never officially removed him as a soldier of Legion, his reckless actions frightened them. They claimed his injuries, which were surprisingly minor, made him incapable to act fully as a member of Vanguard. A car door had hit him squarely across the back and head, knocking him unconscious and giving him a severe concussion. The bullets that hit him had been so tightly grouped that they shattered the ceramic plate in the middle of his chest. The first two were stopped entirely but the third bullet glanced off of bits of ceramic before grazing a rib with enough force to break it and finally finding a resting place in his lung. He would fully physically recover. His reputation would not.

Two weeks after waking up, he was told that he would most likely work at a guard post for the rest of his days. During his weeks of recovery he bounced all over the place on what to do. One minute he was sure that his survival meant that he was on the right side, that he should do his duty and continue to fight the good fight. A few minutes later he was dead certain that he was a monster and that everyone hated him and that he should be dead.

His mental state vacillated wildly. That was when his aunt found him.

He was on the edge. The literal edge. His toes hung over the edge of the hospital building. Ten toes out in the open air, six stories from the concrete. A lot of things had failed to kill him but gravity would do the trick. He hoped.

He froze. Inside he aflame. He felt like an erupting volcano wearing a Urijah suit.

"No." A voice behind him said. It was a woman's voice. The warmth melted into him. He had never felt so warm.

Though it was just a single word he knew who it belonged to. He had called the woman his aunt as long as he remembered. She had been close with his mother, so he had been told. She had been the only person he truly considered family. The old woman had been there for him during every graduation and accommodation. A sympathetic ear when he felt unheard. After the nursery, he had denied himself the centering comfort she provided. Something was different now. She had always been warm, she had always brought the warmth. Now it was bigger. He had never felt his magic like this.

"Come. Steep bek." She called out to him.

People born of this world would think her an immigrant from some defunct European country. He knew her accent as that of an original transplant. One of those that had skipped here across the multiverse.

Her being here and seeing him like this shamed him. But it didn't push him any further. He couldn't be lower. Physically he could be lower. About 60 feet lower by his estimation. The heat he felt inside of him sapped the will to end it all.

Urijah did not immediately respond to his aunt. He didn't jump either. He turned to her. She opened her arms and tears ran down his cheeks. Stepping towards her, his strength gave out. He fell to his knees and sobs wracked his body. He enormous shoulders shuddered and shook. He covered his face with his hands and cried harder into them. He felt her cheek press into his cheek. Her hand stroked his head.

All of the thoughts and emotions that had brought him to the roof poured out of him in a word vomit he didn't think she would be able to understand. He babbled and explained, cursed himself and begged for a chance to be better.

A light rain began, he gently pushed his cheek into hers. His arms dangling at his sides he pulled his head back and looked at her face, he looked into her eyes. She took his cheeks in her hands and kissed his forehead.

"Cam, cam vis me. Ve be ok." She leaned down in the rain and grabbed his hand. Her strength surprised him as she squeezed her tiny wrinkled hand around his thumb, that's as much of his hand she could fit into hers. She pulled up and he followed, getting to his feet.

"Purpose. I haff purpose for yew. Cam, ve taak." He followed her out of the rain and she led him down the stairs, back down to his room, into his bed. As he lay there, she spoke to him.

Baba Kay spoke of things he only dreamed. Baba Kay promised things that he could only hope for. Baba Kay talked of a grand purpose to make his life worth living.

She was who had saved him. She had given him a reason when the only thing that he wanted was to die. He could never make right the things he had done but, he would never stop trying while she and her warmth pushed him forward.