The Empath was being escorted by American soldiers to an embassy somewhere in Ethiopia. World War 3 had begun shortly after The Ghost had changed everything. Russia and China had advanced upon all neighboring countries coinciding with some “mysterious” deaths of individuals whose names would be forgotten to conspiracy. There appeared to be a very fragile alliance between the two empires. The western empires also waged war against their eastern foes, their leaders said it was a fight against “evil’ and “tyranny”. Lewis noticed that their empires also expanded.
After the first disaster involving The Empath, the U.S. government attempted to hunt her down. Their first attempt was unsuccessful, as she seemed to disappear from the face of the earth. It wasn't until this fateful day two years after the War had started, that American spies caught wind of a woman passing through cities in Northern Africa, helping the sick, training nurses, and planting hospitals. Their hunt was reaching its climax.
Lewis learned that Helen was in danger after two members of the C.I.A asked for his assistance to find her. They had warned him that the search was because she was in danger and that “no harm would come to her.” So, naturally, he told them nothing. He hoped that she was safe in her efforts to subvert cartel drug lords and their reign of terror which she was doing with shocking success. It was four years after he was asked to assist in the hunt for her that he felt the most mysterious of his kin appear, The Omen. An effigy of the Omen's creation, much like his previous works, was floating, dark and foreboding. This time above a cathedral in Southern France as Lewis soon saw on the news shortly after sensing him. For the past century the Omen and his works were puzzled over and studied. He was an artist that shook the world with every production. The premonition (that usually accompanied the Omen’s prophetic sculptures) was vague as it always was but this time it was more dreadful and foreboding than any preceding it. Lewis made for the African continent as quickly as he could.
Before she was to be dealt with, the authorities wanted to interrogate her. They had no idea how hundreds dropped dead simultaneously, but they did know that she was connected to Lewis and that alone was enough cause for panic in their minds. Normally, escaping capture was child's play for one who could sense the emotions and state of mind of every sentient being on the planet and possibly beyond, excepting the other members of her family, God, Ben, and a few others that Lewis had encountered in his journeys. But as did happen in the last disaster, she was caught in the clutches of her own compassion. Addis Ababa was already deeply involved in the Great War and all of its reckless destruction. Helen was administering a blood transfusion on the first floor of one of the many clinics she had started in this city, all of which were beyond capacity. The Americans and their locally hired guns fought the Russians and their locally hired guns, tearing the city apart. There were many conflicting reports as to why the two countries were conducting their reckless war in the African city. Lewis surmised that it was simply a tactical maneuver gone wrong on the part of the Americans. What should have been a skirmish turned into an all out war creating a demand that Helen struggled to meet as best she could. She could feel every bit of the despair and hopelessness in the city, the man before her with a tube in his neck held her immediate attention however. In the background she could hear the other doctors and nurses bustling and the general sounds of a clinic that had not rested for several days. She kept a weary watch for any immediate danger. She still had two days on her clock, she needn’t leave just yet. She had trained her doctors well; and whenever she was present, spirits lifted and hope seemed to fill those that she helped like a warm sunrise after a night of bitter cold.
She was uneasy. It wasn’t the sound of distant gunfights or the screaming and shouting outside that caused it. In these conditions, she was as calm as ever. She was exactly where her heart would be content. There was something else. She sensed minds closing in on her. Her patient needed just a little more time but suddenly the feeling was urgent. She told her doctors goodbye and did what she could for the broken man. It was too late. Her pursuers had all the exits covered and watched. They were here. The urgent need to leave turned into a sense of dread.
She had never felt such fear before- not since the first moment of her existence when she had manifested in front of Lewis at an art gallery in southern Germany naked, alone, and fully grown. The fear experienced from so much information entering a fresh and complex mind such as hers on that day would have driven her mad had Lewis not been there to guide her as he had done many times before for the others. This fear was worse. Danger beyond her circumstance loomed like a heavy fog that clouded her vision and shook her security. First they came like any military extraction, efficient and loud, entering from every side to block an escape. She raised her hands in surrender, her doctors did the same. “Joan Carrigan, you are coming with us,” they shouted with pointed guns. The process was quick, they were in a hurry. She read immediately that they did not know who she was, just that she was a “person of interest” and they were following orders. There was fear, but fear tempered with training and experience. By the end of this story she knew everything about these men without speaking a word of enquiry. She came to love them as she did all whose company she kept for more than a few minutes.
Before they left the clinic, they passed several halls. The floors throughout the building were filled with the wounded and the sick, most of whom were fresh from the chaos outside. Many saw the soldiers and begged them not to take her, others wept. Helen comforted them the best she could as the soldiers hurried the procession along. As they came to the front entrance Helen noticed The Painting. It stood as it always did when it appeared, alone and grim, its black dead tree atop a gray barren hill. The canvas, a monolith amidst the white walls of the hall. She cursed herself for not having seen it sooner but it was too late to make a run for it. Before they revealed themselves she perceived that they were ordered to kill her should the mission become compromised, they would not care who was caught in the crossfire. She was led outside as the sun beat down on them through a windless sky filled with smoke and the sound of war. They made their way through the crowds of people waiting to be admitted into the clinic. There were hundreds of them, most were bloody and bruised, accompanied by loved ones; despair in each of their faces. Many wondered at the scene while others begged her to help them. The soldiers pushed them aside and forced a path, the begging and bloody backed away, fearing the men in green. No one was shot. Helen noticed the guilt repressed efficiently in the minds of her new companions. They came to a street corner, turned left, and walked for a few miles. Slowing their way was people running in terror or cowering in hopelessness where they stood, waiting to die.
The soldiers were very well trained. Every corner was checked, and every route planned out. Explosions and gunfire could be heard at every turn and was ever present. Mainly the noise was heard coming from the north and it was getting closer. Occasionally the troop would encounter gunfire themselves and they would quickly fight their way down another alley or street corner, never staying long if they could help it. The explosions were growing nearer. Part of the urgency Helen realized was that the Americans were losing ground and these men were only there for her, sent separately from those in the ensuing struggle of the city streets. They had been hurriedly making their way through the back alleys, broken streets, and half rubble buildings of Addis Ababa when they came to what looked like a rendezvous point. Helen’s heart started to beat rapidly in her chest as she was told to wait next to two of her escorts in an alley while the others conferred hastily with a commanding officer inside the six story building that loomed above them. Hers wasn’t the only chest that was pounding. One of the two that watched her breathed heavily with a mind pulsing and torn with a decision he thought he had made until its hour drew near as it seemed now to do.
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“You have to let me go” she said finally to him disregarding his partner. “You are putting millions at risk if you keep me here”.
Finally He looked her in the eyes.
“You were ordered to kill me, yes?”
He said nothing but uncertainty grew ever subtly in his tempered expression. She continued, “If you can't get me to the top of the parking garage next to the cafe at the end of fifth street you were ordered to kill me.”
The soldier continued to look into her eyes as she spoke but said nothing. They seemed to pierce his soul like he could hide nothing from them but he held his ground. For now. Helen held her composure as she spoke but internally she felt a storm of anxiety that she could barely maintain.
“Please, my name is Helen,” she said at length.
She was about to explain what she could to make them understand when the other pointed his weapon at her head.
“That’s enough” he said quietly but with a subtle unflinching authority.
“You have to listen to me…” she started again, still looking at the other but now with tears of desperation breaking through.
She was cut off. “Quiet!” he shouted, forcing her to the ground.
She pleaded one last time and a warning shot was fired past her head. She was shaking, tears now leaked from her eyes before she found her composure again. She stared past the barrel into the eyes of its unflinching wielder. The growing fear and terror felt behind the distant screams of the civilians dying and fleeing about them echoed in her mind like Hell itself was singing to her. However this was not the fear that was looming in her mind. She pitied these men, they knew not the sin they were about to commit.
Lewis had flown for 37 hours across the Atlantic before reaching a city several miles from Addis Ababa, the closest he could land without getting shot out of the sky. He was again grateful that the Ghost had lent him one of his flight crafts. After landing, he quickly found an abandoned car with enough gas to reach the capital of Ethiopia. He was a two hour drive away and could sense that Helen had not moved yet. He thought her foolish for having stayed in such a place with her condition. He sped as fast as he could past fleeing civilians and smoking towers. A bullet reached the car more than once, one of them shattering the back window. He did not stop. He felt a pit in his stomach and his hands were shaking at the wheel. He had been driving for some time when he felt it. She was being moved and was afraid. He still had an hour to reach the city. His car screamed across the broken highway.
The rest of the soldiers filed out of the rendezvous point with renewed orders. Helen was dragged to her feet by the sergeant that was holding her at gunpoint. Their pace was once again hurried. They had ten minutes to reach their destination on foot if their path was unhindered. Their numbers dwindled slightly in the past struggles. Three of them had fallen in the gunfights they encountered in their carefully charted course. One of the deaths was a warning quickly heeded to turn from a certain route. These thoughts raced through Helen’s mind as she was pushed forward. The face of the stern sergeant flashed before her eyes like a vision when the wall to their right in the alley suddenly erupted with fire from above them. There followed a deafening gunfire. The shockwave knocked her and several of the marines to the ground. The soldiers quickly composed themselves for a fight and ordered her back, firing at the unseen foes. Her ears were ringing and her vision was blurred. Soon, she was ordered to run across the street as the Russian attackers were suppressed with heavy explosives. They were almost to the end. The parking garage was just a few blocks down. The street was empty. A flare was lit and as they were about to enter the final building, Helen looked and saw the café across the way. Its front windows were shattered and the inside was upturned and covered in shards of glass. Then she saw it again, the gray canvas and the black tree, waiting on the back wall of the café. An invitation. A plea to escape from the Other inside. She had paused to see it and the sergeant behind her shoved her along hastily. She could hear the rhythmic beating of the chopper’s wings as it landed on the top level of the garage. Suddenly, the men stopped and made cover just inside the entrance. In the distance was seen a red car speeding towards them. The soldiers fired at it. It rammed into the entrance totaling the front half of the car. Helen saw the face of the man inside, he was Ethiopian, a resident of the city. She nearly wept as the man now bleeding in the driver’s seat met his sorrowful eyes with hers. She screamed “It’s a bomb!” The soldiers did not question but instantly made for cover, it was almost too late. The explosive was Russian- made and very effective. The southern half of the parking garage was reduced to a fiery rubble, the rest slowly began to collapse. Gunfire rained on them from their flank. Helen, having survived the explosion being furthest back from it and the first to find cover, saw her chance. There were only six of her companions left and all were disoriented and trying to flee out of the crumbling building. They had yet to notice she was still alive and she ran for it. She made it through a clearing of rubble across from the café. The chopper was louder than anything else as it beat like a drum upon the air. It returned heavy fire with a mounted gunman to the attackers at the end of the street but was faltering. Helen made it to the shattered windows, her heart was racing with desperate purpose. She heard a gunshot, there was the cold shock of the wound as she fell in her momentum to the tiled floor of the café. Behind her was the sergeant. She rotated to see his face. His gun was poised for the final blow, she said nothing but looked with pity and mercy into his eyes. The mercy reached him for a moment. The shot was fired. The sky went black.
Lewis was several streets from her when he saw it, he had left the car as soon as it ran out of fuel and had been running for several blocks. He pushed through the crowd that ran opposite of him out of the city. He ran into an elderly man as he turned a corner. They fell to the ground. Lewis nearly suffocated as he and the man were quickly trampled under the feet of the panicked crowd. At length Lewis helped the man up and saw his face. He hadn’t looked at the face of anyone on his journey till now. His purpose wavered in his mind momentarily as he saw the fear in the man’s eyes, a fear he had avoided to look upon. He began again, pushing and weaving through the onslaught when all suddenly fell silent.
The gunfire, the explosions and the screaming voices of dying continued but could not be heard as sound itself ceased to exist around him. The people in their stampede halted in terror. Lewis stood among them, his heart now sinking to a pit of despair. The sun shone like a white moon through the pitch blackness that painted the sky. It illuminated nothing; instead, from where the body of the Empath lay, rose a white tendril like the growing limb of a barren tree. High into the atmosphere it reached until all beheld its dreadful beauty. It did not shimmer or show dimensions, only bright white in its shape. It cast shadows as black as the sky where its dead light fell. The only colors that now showed were the pitch black and the white, all others were drowned out of sight and memory. Every soul surrendered to despair. Sorrow drove all other thoughts and emotions into the consuming darkness. Those in the street surrounding Lewis wept, others went mad. Lewis fell to his knees in horror as he looked up and saw the tendril open like a vale. The black curtains danced slightly as if under a breeze, there was calm. A cold wind rushed softly by like a whisper in the night on the faces of the onlookers. Then, from behind the veil, it emerged slowly, like an angel of death descending from a heaven cold and long dead. As it did, millions fell where they stood like the calming of a sea, unblinking, still, and never to feel again. Birds fell from the sky. Planes descended silently into a fiery wake. Trees withered into lifeless husks. Alone Lewis now beheld the white beauty. He wailed unheard as the horror lasted, until his ears nearly burst from his own voice returning to him out of the black void. Suddenly the image faltered and then retreated into the dark. Light returned to the sun choked sky.
Lewis sat alone among the dead. All was silent.
In the café across the street from the parking garage, one could see what looked to be that of a skeleton, upright and still, its uniform crumbling to a black dust, its gun still pointed at the ground. It was frozen in the moment that sealed its doom. Next to it, Helen was nowhere to be found. Another figure, tall and grim, carrying the corpse of the Empath disappeared into the canvas where could be seen a black tree desolate atop a gray barren hill before a cloud covered sky.