To Be Free (27 page)

“
I know,” I
breathe, my voice breaking with the strain of pain. His eyes never
leave the line-up, and neither do mine. “What should we
do?”

“
I have a
trick,” he tells me. Before he can clarify, one of the Officers
cuts him off.

“
Down on your
knees! You have all of five seconds before we shoot you!” he
threatens, and they each ready their weapons, the hum of the
machines in their hands almost deafening as they fire up. Quinn's
skin heats up, almost to the point of being painful, as the wind
picks up around us, threatening, a warning.

“
Stop the
bullets, love,” he requests, and I nod, swallowing thickly. I can
put my weight on my leg now, but I'm still a little woozy from the
experience. “I'll only need a few seconds.”

I already know what he's doing.
I can smell the ozone, the thunder rolling menacingly over our
heads, and the thick clouds rolling in, promising hell. The Officer
counts down from five, and when he reaches one they open fire.

I sweep my free right hand in
an arc in front of us, a wall of red smoke springing forth from the
ground and looming menacingly, encompassing the scene in front of
us like a tsunami about to crash down onto the shore. It does just
that once the bullets are held in its snare, the shells being
dragged with it to the ground and smoking faintly. Quinn turns my
head to his chest, and I protest.

“
Don't look,
Seb. This'll get ugly,” he warns, and with a nod I snap my eyes
shut, sensing how he presses his face to my hair and mutters a
quick prayer – to what, however, is beyond me. The scent of ozone
and rain is stronger against his skin.

A moment later, the ground
splits apart.

That's what it feels like,
anyways, the orange-brown smell of ozone so much thicker with every
ear-shattering thunderclap. My ears are ringing, unable to take the
sheer strength of the sound, and even through my eyes I can see the
bright flashes of lights. There's a heavy rain that cascades from
the heavens, and the earth shakes with every strike of lightning
touching her surface.

This goes on for longer than I
presume I could pinpoint, eventually dying down to the point where
it's as if nothing happened – but the soaked clothes on our bodies
tell a different story. We pull apart, looking to where the
Officers stood a moment before.

The ground around us is
littered with smoking crevices, the charred earth gouged out as if
a giant hand pulled fistfuls of it. There's rain collecting in the
shallow pools, and I see no sign of the men and women who pointed
guns at us so readily. Not even a shoe.

This is the
power he has, without reaching his potential,
David whispers, standing to my left, ethereal.
He is a dangerous man, and his potential has the
power to shatter the heavens. God help us, I hope he never falls
into their hands – it's the end of humanity should that
happen.

This is the power the New Order
fears – the power I rescued, and allowed to develop.

I wonder, for half a second, if
I should've left him at the facility.

“
Let's go,”
he whispers, and I turn to look at him. Nodding, he releases his
hold on me but takes my hand instead, looking back once to the
graveyard before we walk towards the ruined toll gate. It stands in
pieces, charred remains still smoking as we step around it. Quinn's
helping me through the rubble when his head snaps up and he quickly
pulls me through, onto Canadian soil, and holds me against him
tightly. I manage to turn my head enough to see the silhouette of a
man standing in the pool of the headlights of a Humvee, pointing a
gun at us.

“
We're free
men now,” Quinn shouts to him, holding me protectively to his
person. “If you shoot, you're starting a war. Can the New Order
really pay that heavy a price?”

“
You Goddamn
bastards,” the man snaps, his hands shaking so much I doubt he'd
get a clear shot anyways. With an angry shout he throws the gun on
the ground, and I idly wonder why his voice sounds so familiar.
“Don't you think this is over! We'll capture you both, and harvest
that power in your mutant blood!”

Quinn starts backing up, never
once turning his back to the man. I feel as if I know this man, but
I can't pinpoint from where.

We hit a small copse of trees,
and are finally out of sight. Only then does he let me go,
breathing a sigh of relief before looking my way, smiling
warmly.

“
We made it,”
he whispers, looking all kinds of relieved. “We did it, Seb. We're
free.”

My hands
start shaking, the leaves around us dancing in the trees as if to
celebrate the occasion with us. The wind picks up, warm, and
everything tastes so,
so
sweet as I fall to my knees, a heaving sob
ripping through my throat. He falls with me, holding my face in his
hands and pushing my hair back, laughing hysterically as it finally
settles, as the wish makes itself reality.

We're free.

The words echo through my head,
and I start laughing alongside him.

We're finally free.

He kisses me,
hard on the mouth, and I laugh into the kiss, leaning against him
and crying openly, because
we made
it.
We survived.

A fine rain falls, making us
both look up briefly from where we kneel, before looking back at
each other and our temporarily warped appearance. The changed hair
colour, the altered eyes... but beneath the disguise, the joy and
the relief, the love. We kiss again.

We're free.

Finally, he
pulls me to my feet and we stand there a few minutes, holding hands
and just relishing the moment. The bliss fogging our minds, showing
us that we fought for it, we fought tooth and nail and we made it.
It wasn't for nothing, and we're both
alive
and
well.

He takes back his hands,
pulling the old wedding band from his partnership with his ex-wife,
Meredith, and slipping it onto my left ring finger.

“
It was my
Pairing ring, before I was taken away,” he informs me, as if I'm
not already aware of its meaning to him. He kept it on his person,
like some reminder of the atrocity he committed against the woman,
a guilty reminder of the liar he'd become. “It's not much, to be
honest, and I'll get you something else eventually, something
that'll actually mean something... but for now, consider it a
promise.”

He doesn't catch my gaze.

“
A promise
for what?” I whisper, and he smiles sadly, finally looking at me.
My heart beats painfully in my chest, and even though I knew it was
coming, somehow I'd convinced myself that it was just a dream,
something that he wouldn't do. I swallow the lump in my
throat.

“
My return.
We'll be together again soon, Seb; I promise.” I nod, unable to say
anything else, and the excruciating pain in my chest comes back
tenfold, threatening to stop my heart completely. “I don't expect
you to wait for me; it'd probably be best if you moved on anyways.
I just... I need to sort some things out in my head,
first.”

I break away from his gaze,
nodding again, and when I gather the courage to look back at him I
force a smile that I know he sees right through.

“
Okay,” I
whisper, my hands feeling cold. It's as if I'm detached from my
body, somewhere else, escaping the pain by leaving my physical body
behind. Locking it all away. “I'll wait for you, Quinn; I'll wait
for a thousand years if I have to. Just... just come home
soon.”

“
I will,” he
vows, capturing my lips with his very chastely. I force myself not
to sob, to keep myself from revealing how much pain I
feel.

Heartbreak is a bitch... I've
never felt such a pain before.

I survive five minutes after he
leaves me in the woods before I crumple to the ground, no support
whatsoever, and press my forehead to the damp earth and cry out a
gut-wrenching wail. I can feel David's presence as well as
Johannes', and both men are trying to calm me, but all I can do is
remain curled against the earth, my heart shattering and leaving me
more broken than when Sarah did all those things to me.

To the point where I actually
throw up. I throw up until there's nothing left, coughing, and when
the initial panic abates I still lie there, breathing through the
pain in my chest I could never hope to explain. Never hope to put
into words.

Finally, I lift my body up onto
my knees and look to the sky raining down water to the earth, and I
let it try to bring life back to my being. I take a deep breath, my
mind jumping through everything we've been through together.

The day we escaped the facility
together, unable to stand the presence of the other; when we stayed
in the lodge and he nursed me back to health; our trek through the
hiking trail; going through the abandoned tunnels; passing through
Yreka and fighting Recon One as a team for the first time;
stumbling through the forests and plains for two days, never once
getting respite with the hounds on our tails; finding Melissa and
Janice, and being nursed back to health again. Going to that house
and spending two surreal weeks together; finally, the drive that
brings us to this point.

Through those days, we fell in
love. We loved and were loved, admitted to our pasts and were
allowed to begin healing again.

I whisper his name into the
rain, opening my eyes. Both men sit beside me, cautious, and I
smile sadly to the sky.

“
I'll wait
until this world comes to an end,” I vow. “I will never rest until
this world pays for what it's done to you, Quinn. Until the day
comes where I can get my revenge for your pains, I'll wait. I'll
wait and continue loving you, and I'll continue to do so even when
it's over.”

I laugh dryly then, my chest
hollow. Gouged out.

“
I won't rest
until they lie, broken and hollow, at my feet the same way we once
did.”

David and Johannes exchange a
look, and then the blond-haired man speaks carefully.

Are you
okay?
he questions, concern evident on
their features.
And don't just say you
are, because I know what that means. Looking sad when you think no
one can see you.

“
You can see
me,” I remark.

We don't
count,
David counters. I laugh dryly,
shaking my head.

“
I'll be
okay. I'll survive,” I affirm, but they don't seem to buy into it
very much. I don't blame them.

We had to fight for a
fundamental human right, something that's ours from the
beginning.

From the time we are born, we
are free, and it doesn't matter how strong those who would deny us
that freedom are. Together, we are invincible.

Together, we will put an end to
this tyranny.

Five years later, standing on
foreign ground with three others by my side, each with the same
purpose as me, is the beginning of the end for those who would
manipulate us and deny us this freedom.

The silence has been
broken.

To be continued