The Lover's Parable Through A Seven World Journey (47 page)

Leading them down the edge of the walkway, keeping them on the outside of the stony wall, John made certain that they were always hidden in the shadows, out of sight from the lights that decoratively flooded the open grounds.

With the entry to the compound only a few meters away, the two trespassers straddled over the low-lying wall, and stood at the base of the mansion’s pillared face. The white-gray, marbled steps leading to their man were coated with a heavy layer of powdery snow that crunched under the weight of their boots.

The stairwell was intricately crafted with statues of animal foundlings and playful children, artificially exuding a meek appearance with regards to the occupier of the house. It was a stark contrast to the personification of evil that they were expecting to find.

A broad doorway made of fine wood, smooth and lacquered, and adorned with brass fixtures, blocked their entry into the compound.

“Breaching the target’s HQ. How copy?” John whispered into the mic.

There was no answer from the Captain. Aiming from the hip while turning the handle, to John’s surprise the door slid open without any resistance. He and Sofia were immediately greeted by the warmth of the interior air and the brightly illuminating lights that escaped through the slight opening he had created in the threshold. As the expanding entryway revealed the mystery of simplicity behind it, John fully shouldered his rifle, taking aim throughout the room.

Devoid of life, it was curiously quiet once they were inside, and John pulled Sofia closer to his body, but slightly shielding her at his rear. The walls were decorated with a blood red, fabric covering with wooden trim, giving a nightmarish atmosphere of doom. There were several hallways, long, narrow and dimly lit, a virtual crimson colored maze within the madman’s house. A staircase built into the side of the opposing wall led to a walkway that extended into another hallway that continued beyond their line of
sight.

Unable to assume the time of day, as there were no points of reference to glean that piece of data from, John could not even deduce whether the possibilities for the target to be upstairs sleeping, or downstairs eating, were reasonable.

Relying on chance, he randomly chose the hallway at his right hand, hoping that he was not leading them into a trap.

Proceeding down its path, Sofia held onto the tail end of John’s coat, occasionally stumbling over her own feet. The sweat was beginning to drip down John’s forehead, saturating his eyebrows before falling across the lashes of his eyes. He wanted desperately to remove the insulated, outer layers of clothing, to release the pent up heat from his body, but he knew that losing the precious articles would make his escape virtually impossible, as he could not survive so tenuously clothed for any extended period of time in such an icy environment.

Despite the multiple layers of covering wrapped around her body, Sofia continued to shiver uncontrollably. Although she was attired in the same material as John, her cold weather outfit felt much too thin to keep her warm.

As they reached the middle of the door-less hallway, John recognized by the varying shades of red reflecting off the walls that their path continued around a corner approximately twenty meters ahead. The stillness of the atmosphere was eerily calm.

As Sofia followed John to the edge of the wall, he peered around the corner, making sure that they were safe to move on. Their movement was slow and cautious. And with each new turn, and each new threshold to pass through, there were simply more hallways and staircases in abundance for them to follow.

Being led to unknown locales within the monstrous structure, John had become quite disoriented by the lack of variety found within each newly discovered area. It was as if they were going in circles, only to return to the same place from which they had started… and yet, John was not sure if they had returned to any of the same places or not. It all looked the same.

Thirty minutes or more had passed, and they were unsure if they were nearer now to their destination than when they had first begun. Whatever the answer, they were lost within the labyrinth. Was the entire compound designed for the unlikely event that foreigners would find him, John thought. It seemed as if only blind luck would get them to the target now, if they were to get there at
all.

The longer they wandered, the more pale and dusky Sofia was becoming. The ruby color of the walls was playing tricks on her mind, and she began to fear that death was stalking her, but she refused to let John in on her fears.

Not ready to give up, John stopped in the middle of the
hallway.

“Did you hear something?” he whispered suspiciously.

“No,” Sofia replied, listening to the ringing silence.

Knocking the butt end of his rifle upon the floor, John could feel the vibration of the wood planks beneath his feet. Pulling out a bladed weapon he cut into the plush carpet, tearing a hole out and exposing the wooden sub-flooring beneath. As he continued to expand his work area, Sofia moved out his way, sitting back against a wall, blurrily watching him from a short distance away.

With the tang of his knife, John hammered at the ground, creating a crack into which he placed his blade. Prying the floor apart, he tore through several wooden sections until there was nothing visible but a concrete slab.

Dropping the backpack from his shoulders, John rummaged through the varying sizes of explosive bundles that Central had packaged for them. Unsure of their individual, destructive yields, he removed the smallest clay-like block he could find, along with a single, timed detonator. Connecting the two components together, he set its timer to countdown from twenty seconds and placed it upon the exposed surface of the floor.

Grabbing Sofia by the hand, he threw the pack over his shoulder and lifted her up, forcing her to run with him down the hall and back around the last corner from which they had come. Ducking down and covering her under his body, John huddled over Sofia just at the moment that the deafening explosion tore through the house. Plaster and wood fell from the ceiling, cracking off the walls around them. The quaking of the structure had loosened more than just its superficial covering as the echoes of splintering wood and breaking glass resounded everywhere around them.

As John allowed the time for the smoke to clear and the domino effect to cease, Sofia, her skin tactilely ultra-sensitive, bathed in the comfort of John’s embrace. It was something she had not felt for so many years.

As the dust began to settle, John stood up brushing off his clothes. He offered his hand to Sofia, but she was too weak to take it. Sickly and frail, she held onto her leg and began cry, sobbing and pitiful.

Up until this very moment John had not taken notice of how dreadfully ill her appearance had become. He had not been observant to Sofia’s rapidly deteriorating condition. Neither her pale, moist skin, nor the distress in her laborious breathing had caught his attention to such an emergent degree as now. He had been woefully indifferent to her suffering. Kneeling beside her and placing his hand upon the back of her neck, he could feel her skin burning, as if she were on fire.

“Let’s abort this mission and head back to the transporter,” he said. “Maybe we can find some medicine at the airship.”

Sweating profusely and finding it difficult to swallow due to the cottony, dryness of her mouth, Sofia slid her hand out from under his and placed it upon his cheek. His skin felt so cold and dry.

“You’ve got to find him,” she said. “There are so many people counting on you, John.”

“No,” he dissented. “We’re leaving right now. You need help. You’re very sick, girl.”

The nickname was so sweet and familiar. She had adored hearing him use the term
girl
since they were children. Perhaps, he was correct. There could be medicine at the airship and she could be saved. But, Maryanne’s selflessness was such an inspiration to her. Sofia could not let her own safety stand between the freedom of millions and the destruction of the purveyors of their misery. She struggled against her own selfishness, even upon hearing the soft wind blowing through the grassy fields of Labor, calling out for her return. Taking hold of it, she drowned her self-preservation in the waters of liberty, wiping it out for all eternity.

“I’m going to stay right here,” she whispered through a hoarse, fragile voice. “You need to finish this. Maybe this is the answer you were always seeking, John. Don’t give up now. I’ll still be here waiting for you when you return.”

Seeing her in such a pathetic state caused the wall of burning to rise within John’s heart and mind. One part of him wanted to hold her, the other part to destroy the ultimate cause of her misery. Standing upon his feet as she closed her eyes, the baser side of John’s soul had won again. Without saying a word he walked away from Sofia, disappearing around the corner.

Folding her arms across her chest, Sofia’s teeth chattered behind the sunken skin of her cheeks. John would return for her, she thought. He always did.

Approaching the gaping wound of the mansion floor, John aimed his weapon down into the hollowed out room that existed below the hallway that they had been standing in just moments earlier. He flipped the light of the rifle’s foregrip on, moving its beam across the shattered remnants of the once hidden compartment. Certain it was clear, he hopped down, landing hard upon the uneven floor. Computer terminals were blown to pieces, and furniture was split and splintered, piled against the walls from the blast of his explosive. As far as he could tell, there were no casualties within the immediate area.

A door on the far end of the wall from which he stood was torn in half, leaving the lower portion intact upon its hinge. Cautiously moving towards the pitch dark unknown awaiting him on the other side, John crept along the wall. His steady aim was only useful within a single meter or less, as the smoke of the smoldering ash wafted through the beam of his light, obscuring his vision.

Pushing the half-door aside, a sudden motion to his left caused his reflexive action to subconsciously take over. He instinctively swiped his rifle towards the moving object with a burst of gunfire.

Sofia awoke with a startle. She was certain John had called out to her, taking her out of her feverish dreamland. Crawling to the corner of the hall, she peered around it. The opening in the floor silently awaited her entrance.

As his body returned back its control to his rational awareness, John could hear a sound as if something heavy was being dragged along the floor. Spotting a splatter of blood upon the wall at the far end of the hall, in an area that had been out of harm’s way from the blast, he followed his light to the crimson stain.

Approaching it, he could see that it was shaped like a hand with its fingers spread out. Through the unhindered flood of his light, smeared streams of blood led him up the hall and into a room that was shimmering like the reflections of light off of a pool of bluish-white waters. Rotating his rifle along the sling to his back, John withdrew his pistol and began moving with haste towards the illuminated room.

As he neared the doorway, he could hear the heavy, gurgling breaths of someone suffering under the might of his former weapon. Entering in, John found himself surrounded by a network of computer screens brightly lit. Fallen upon the floor at his feet, lay a man, shot through the chest, bubbling in his throat as he drowned in his own blood.

Dangling by her hands several feet above the blast room floor, Sofia began the arduous search for her love. Releasing her grip, she fell to the ground below with such a force that her knees crashed into her chest, knocking the breath out of her. Scooting back against the wall behind her, she flipped the switch of her flashlight on. The half-door before her was ajar. It had to be the path from which John had called to her.

If this was the
Top Man
, then he was not as old as John expected him to be. And at this point in time there was nothing unique about him, either. He was rather thin and pasty. Perhaps if he were not wounded and bleeding out, John thought, he could possibly be someone that people looked up to, someone with a fair complexion. But as it stood, he was nothing special at all.

John stood over him, waiting to leave until after he had died. He was almost joyous at the thought of seeing the so-called Top Man so humiliated through his suffering.

“Are you the
Top Man
?” he asked with disdain.

“I… am he,” the man sputtered.

John wanted to spit on him, to rub the dying man’s face in the fact that his entire, rotten existence was coming to a close.

“You,” the man choked, “must take my place… now.”

Crawling with anguish and pain to the button-faced console beside him, the agonizing creature reached his blood-soaked hand out, extending his lanky fingers towards a red knob that was encased under a hinged, glass covering. Grabbing the man’s finger, John snapped it to the side, deforming it in his rage as the man screamed out in pain.