I dropped my bags, recoiled from the fallen man and tried to look as panicked as possible.
And just that exact moment was chosen by the security guard, when he jumped out in front of me shouting “Calm down! What is goin…!”, but he could not finish before echoed a loud clap and he got shot by a soldier in front. The bullet pierced his right side and with a dull clank stuck my armor before falling harmlessly on the ground.
As the man fell, I caught him, ready to reveal my poleaxe at a moment’s notice. The situation had deteriorated too suddenly, and now the tension was thick enough to be cut with knife.
The guard had lost his consciousness, and I pressed down on his wound while feeling somewhat disoriented after his interference. I had not been able to react to the almost point-blank shot, and even if I had tried to move the poor man away, a sudden strong enough push would likely have broken his bones and torn his organs.
Luckily, except for trigger-happy one, the rest of the special forces remained still, although I could feel them keeping pressure on their triggers. One of the men whose face could not be seen behind the tactical helmet visor, quickly crouched down and attempted to pull the lightly twitching bearded big man away.
Unfortunately for him, the mass difference between him and the big one was at least double, so he got stuck. As he stretched out his hand towards the man’s neck, I suppose to check his pulse, the big man suddenly opened his eyes, swatted away the hand in front of him and sat up, bellowing “STAND DOWN, NOW!”.
That shout almost caused the surrounding special forces to push the trigger again, but then one of the soldiers flipped the safety on, slung back his gun and pulled out some rod-shaped gadget from one of the pouches on his vest. He quickly prodded the bearded man with the gadget, pressed some buttons and after waiting for a moment nodded to another soldier: “Clear, Sir.”
“Stand down, all clear.” - confirmed the soldier, as he nodded to the bearded man: “Captain?”
“Good, Lieutenant, you followed the drill well. At any suspicion, check first.” - the beardie got up on his feet, saw the wounded security guard, whose bleeding I was trying to stop, and barked: “Get the medics, you dimwits! You shot a civilian?!”. “Yessir!”- two of the SAS ran off, while one took out a medical kit, but hesitated when looking at me.
---
At the same time, the big man also turned towards me, and as odd as it was, bowed: “I ask forgiveness, ruah, for my weakness. May you allow my man to take care of this poor soul?”.
I shrugged, and allowed the arrived medic to take over the wounded security guard. I also stood up so that my eyes were slightly higher than that of the big man’s. Meanwhile, he ordered for another passage to be opened in a different location, so that the flow of people would not pass by us.
“I did not expect to be shot at here. What is going on?” - I asked when we were finally alone. Apparently the man had felt something from me, so playing an innocent regular human would only backfire at me.
“I’m sorry for what happened to your friend here, we’ll take full responsibility. I’m Captain Aitan Es of the Troop Black of Special Air Service. Unfortunately, even I’m not privy to what regiment we belong to.” - the bearded man introduced himself and fanned the edge of the now slightly dusty shawl on his shoulders: “And as you may see, I’m a rabbi.”
“You may call me Victor. And I just met that man inside, but I guess i owe him now.” - I carefully introduced myself, trying not to give away too much while also keeping the conversation going. To be on the safe side, I also focused on remaining truthful in case the rabbi had some truth check mojo. One can’t really underestimate a member of the clergy of a three millennia old religion, serving in some sort of paranormal SAS.
“Victor, oh, victory, an excellent name. You call me anyway you like. Captain Es, Captain Rabbi, Rabbi Es or just plain Aitan will do.” - rabbi did his utmost to be amiable: “I doubt you owe the poor man anything. I have a feeling, that if you would’ve been the one who was shot instead, we would be much worse off than you.”
“Bravery is commendable in any case, Rabbi Es.” - as I heard myself saying his name, I cocked my eyebrow: “Rabbi Es? Really?”
“That’s what my colleagues call me. From my spiritual job, I mean.” - Rabbi Es laughed lightly: ”May I ask you, esteemed ruah, if by any chance you came to check the disturbance in the continuum of the Veil?”.
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“I was just having a look at the event here. It is a good place for all sort of things to happen without drawing attention.” - I pointed at my bags lying on the ground and picked up a fake fang to show.
I continued: “But a while ago, there was a short power outage and some electromagnetic interferences. Why did you come, by the way?”. What I said, was technically true. I was also busy thinking, what might be a ruah. It seemed to be a Hebrew word, but I had never had an opportunity to come into contact with that language except for “Shalom” which meant “Hello”.
In any case, it seemed that Rabbi Es’ belief that I am ruah was enough to get me an extra bit of respect. And having the respect from a captain of the SAS team surrounding me felt like a good way to reduce the inconveniences.
---
Rabbi looked relieved when he heard that nothing happened: “Good, good. Hopefully nothing managed to slip through. I’m not sure what happened, but that we were just told to seal the area and check what had happened to the integrity of the space. We were not aware of your presence, so I carelessly dared to use my gift on you. I seek your pardon for my rudeness, I will forward your demand for compensation to my superiors.”
I grunted an acknowledgement while wondering if it was alright for them to reveal so much to me. Either his belief in me was so great or such things happen way too often to keep them secret.
“So, you get a lot of tasks of this nature nowadays?” - I attempted to probe into the second guess.
Rabbi Es looked a bit surprised at my question and rubbed his bald head before answering: “How should I put it… We can still keep it from general public, but I guess everyone in the know is aware that for the last year something odd keeps happening. Possessions, disappearances, murders. With the pressure, our funding also suddenly increased, so something must be going on. Could you please share your knowledge with me? I would rather not lose my men in some stupid way, but the higher ups keep everything classified even from us..”
That got me seriously worried as I remembered the sight of the worlds being squeezed together. I had a fairly good impression of the rabbi, so I decided to share some of my estimations: “I believe, it is going to get worse. And I would suggest you to prepare some things for emergencies as well. Oh, and keep yourself and your family from travelling.”
“Travelling? Hah.” - Aitan Es chuckled ruefully: “Can’t even visit my old mother recently with all the emergencies popping up. And for a while now, “officially” there is that volcanic ash cloud interfering with planes, so nobody gets off this old island unless goes through the tunnel and France.”
I remembered what the security guard had said about the restrictions on air traffic and nodded: “And it just might become worse. So, am I needed here, Captain?”
Rabbi shook his head: “No, of course not. If you don’t mind, be so kind to sign the paper, that everything happened here by mistake.”. He turned and yelled at somebody behind the lines. In half a minute, a soldier in light equipment brought a stack of papers and a clipboard.
While I browsed the contents of the paper, which in annoyingly detailed notarial terms summed that the Ministry of Defence of United Kingdom will bear all responsibility for the inconveniences caused, and that I agree to not pursue the matter. I looked at Es, and waved the clipboard in my hands: “What about the poor man your man had shot? He got good reaction, and I think he deserves to know why he got shot.”
Rabbi Es stayed silent for a moment and said: “I can only suggest his recruitment, after all the necessary checks and such. I am sorry, this is the best I can do.”
“Well, he looks quite fit and it seems your people will be very busy now. He can at least help with paperwork.” - I was too worried about my own matters, so just giving a chance to the man who got shot while trying to help me was the only thing I could do. He did get shot because most likely SAS came because of my portal in the first place…
“Can do. Anything else you would like to confirm?” - rabbi offered me a pen.
I took the pen and drew a large, elaborate letter V, which took up almost a quarter of the document’s bottom. I was not going to let the graphologists to easily find connections to my real signature.
“Take care.” - I ignored the offered handshake and turned to leave.
“Peace be with you.” - rabbi Es replied, looking at my retreating back. He was unaware that he was still in my field of perception and his shoulders sagged, as if he had been under tremendous pressure during our interaction.
As I slowly walked, I could also faintly hear him sighing: “I never thought to meet ruah in my lifetime. And for my old self to be so dumb as to check what would happen if we attacked; I could end up idiot this way soon…”. He picked up his radio and the last thing I could hear before he got too far for me to hear was: “You got the image? Use all resources to identify, now! Urgent!”.
---
When I finally got out of the restricted area, I quickly took a note of the street signs and while following a group of people, pulled out the phone that I had stolen earlier.
I quickly disabled the airplane mode and found the map app. A quick search showed my location at Metropolitan University in the northern part of London.
Having confirmed my coordinates, I leisurely moved east towards the river Lea, a tributary of the Thames.While walking, I disassembled the phone and got rid of the SIM card. I kept the phone, hoping that the original owner would be as sloppy as most people, not keeping the phone documents like those that include IMEI code and not bothering with registering the phone for remote lockup.
Now was the time to think and plan.