The Afterlife - Chapter 07

Chapter 07-When the sun sets

A wave of silence engulfed the atmosphere as they tried to process what Raina had told them. With their mouths agape, Hailey, Luce, and Eddy stared at him. Both Eddy and Luce could not believe that the man they had respected the most while growing up was the cause for their current circumstance. For Hailey, the revelation was particularly difficult for her to swallow as she had thought she had finally managed to find a new home and more importantly, a family. With a thousand thoughts and emotions flying through her mind, she glanced over to Luce for affirmation. However, she was caught by surprise when she saw the deadpan look on his face. As they tried to recollect their thoughts and emotions, Kayden added defensively that he only helped build the first versions of the bayonetts and the recent ones are entirely different. 

“Just because your fire is smaller than others doesn’t make it any less of a fire” Hailey remarked in a sharp and slightly agitated tone, causing awkwardness and silence to fill the atmosphere once more. Realizing that he could no longer hide this from them, and proceeded to explain why he built them in the first place. Back then, to prove his loyalty to the humans, he was tasked with building a legion of robot hunters capable of withstanding attacks from meta-humans. He did as he was told, but he made them as faulty as he could without it being too obvious, so the five back then could easily get rid of them. He did not expect the humans to have been able to improve the robots so quickly. He hid the truth about him helping to create the robot hunters a secret, as he wanted to avoid causing any unnecessary fear and mistrust among the residents of the sanctuary.

“With all due respect, we have got to get down to bass tracks. Namely, how are we going to find Joren and how are we going to deploy the teams.” Jay reminded them. After much back and forth discussion, Raina volunteered to take Luce, Eddy, and Hailey to search around the town while Kayden and Jay could search for Vampiria to see if she had any info. She warned them that convincing Vampiria to help them might be a tough nut to crack open. Kayden disagreed, stating that bringing the kids was a dangerous idea as Navitia was not exactly a city which was known for its laws and if you so much as look at them the wrong way, they would slice you open regardless of whether you were human or not.

“I'm going,” Hailey said abruptly in a firm and stern tone. At this point, Hailey had spent so much time and effort searching for Joren the past few years, she was unable to give up simply because it was too dangerous and was even ready to fight tooth and nail to go on the mission. Seeing the look of determination across her face, Raina patted her on the back and told Kayden that the mission would be a good learning experience for the kids. Rubbing his temples and sighing in defeat, he finally gave in and proceeded to brief them on the mission.

[Downtown Navitia City]

Pale coloured buildings stacked side by side with barely enough space for the traffic to flow through filled the horizon. Apart from the neon signs that radiated dark light from the buildings and the street lamps that decorated the narrow roads with dim, blinking lights, the city was dark at night. Being cautious as to not draw any unnecessary attention to themselves as they walked through the city in search of Vampiria. As they made their way around the city, a strong pungent stench of sewage coming from the alleyways which were significantly darker than the main road filled the air. Despite the darkness, one could easily make out the silhouettes of the Garbage cans that were littered throughout the alley. Around them they were surrounded by a sea of people dressed mostly in dull, brown and worn out suits busy looking around the city, as though they were searching for something important. Growing wary and cautious of the occasional pairs of eyes that regularly gazed over at them, Raina frequently turned around to ensure that everyone was safe and no one had strayed away from the group. Initially, they had planned to split up so as they could cover more ground but seeing as to how crowded the streets were today, everyone had reached a mutual agreement that staying together was the safer option. After what seemed like an eternity of cluelessly walking around the city, Eddy lamented saying if they even knew where they were heading. Being the sanctuary’s resident king of complaining, no one bothered to reply to him.

Finally, after a couple more minutes of walking and turning around corners, they spotted a tall maroon building with silver tinted glass towering over the horizon. However before they could proceed on towards the building, Kayden was pulled back by a large force which sent him crashing into a nearby shop. Giving him barely anytime to react, the figure launched herself towards his direction. With three fingers outstretched towards the figure, Raina released energy like tendrils which wrapped itself around the attacker and pulled it back with all her might. The harder Raina tried to pull the attacker back, the more she resisted. With the resistance of the attacker growing, each of the inner strands of the tendrils started to slowly give way before the center strand.  Catching her as she lost her balance when the final strand gave way, Jay informed Raina that they should probably proceed on as there is a high chance that the attacker was sent by Vampiria. 

Gazing over her shoulder to check on Kayden as they proceeded on to find Vampiria, Raina asked Kayden telepathically if he was alright. Breathing a sigh of relief as she saw Kayden smile at her, indicating that he was okay. One of the things that he had always admired Raina for was her ability to see people past the face value of people. Even before the war happened, Kayden had a tendency to be blunt with his thoughts and as a result many people disliked him and thought he was being obnoxious. However, Raina believed that he meant well and saw past all his obnoxiousness. Like others, Raina's optimism in people was due to her ability to read minds. But after spending years meeting all sorts of people each with their own unique set of abilities, he came to realise that optimism is not a factor of any powers, but rather of the heart. Out of the mistakes he had made, causing Raina so much grief and sorrow was the one that weighed him down the most. But now that he knew that she had forgiven him, the road to making amends for his mistakes would be an easier one. Creating a rod out of psionic energy, he launched himself at full force towards the attacker.



As they drew closer towards the maroon colored building, the oceans of people grew thinner and thinner until finally, there were no more people around them. Up close, the building was more magnificent than it was from far. At the entrance there was a large garden filled with numerous rows of brightly colored flowers, most of which were orchids. At the center of it all was a large fountain with roses carved onto the sides of the fountain. Unlike most of the buildings in the area, the building was extremely well maintained and not a single weed or litter was in sight in the garden. Suspicious at the lack of security measures in a place this grand, the group took caution and slowly approached the silver tinted doors which towered a few heads above them. Wrapping her hands around the ring which stood in place of a regular door knob, Raina tried pulling the door open with all her might. When that did not work, each of them proceeded to try their hand at opening the door, but it still refused to open. Eventually, the door opened on its own with an excessively loud creaking sound. Inside the building stood a large empty hall with nothing but gray colored walls and a miniature box dangling from the ceiling of the room. From where they were, there was not much they could see apart from the two figures glaring down at them.

Without giving it any second thought, Raina called for the others to follow her, and she made a run for the door, but before she could reach the door, all the exits in the hall sealed shut and a deep and ominous voice echoed the words ‘Kill them’ before disappearing away from the box. Seconds later, segments of the surrounding fall began to lower down and come back up, this time with legions of bayonetts. While they were busy fighting the bayonetts, Vampiria was down on her knees begging a man dressed in a full gray suit to release her daughter.  Scoffing at her, the man shook his wine glass and took a sip out of it. 

“ We’ve been through this multiple times, Lexi, you won’t get to see your daughter till you have captured Kayden and his little friends. Either dead or alive is fine with me, I’m a simple man.” The man remarked as he spat on her face. Now angrier than a bull with a red cloth in its face, she could not control her anger any longer. Leaping up and propelling herself from where she was towards the man, she grabbed him by the neck and using whatever energy she could master, she absorbed his life force. Loud choking noises soon filled the air, and a mixture of joy and satisfaction filled her from within. Her joy and satisfaction was soon replaced with concern and fear when she realized the man had not turned pale even though he had had his life force been extracted out of him for more than five minutes. Typically, the extraction of a person’s life force would have been completed by then, and they would have been paler than a ghost by then. Her fears were later confirmed when the man let out maniacal laughter. 

“Amazing! Protecting your dignity, even in the midst of your tribulations.  I must say, it's a shame you chose your dignity over the safety of your daughter.” the man said as he placed a tablet onto the wooden coffee table next to him as he exited the room. On it, the tablet showed video footage of Lexi’s daughter tied onto a white leather chair as needles slowly pierced through her skin. The screams of her daughter filled the air around them, and it was all Lexi could think about after that.

With her hands quenched into a fist, Hailey fired a bolt of sonic wave towards two bayonetts that were charging towards her. Distracted by the bayonetts in front of her, she failed to realize a beam of energy coming at her from behind. Thankfully for her, Eddy had spotted the energy beam and had teleported her away before it could hit her.  Just as the final bayonett was knocked out, the robot went back down once more. However, instead of being empty, the floor brought up a larger bayonett fifteen times the size of the ones they had just fought. Sighing exasperatedly, Hailey commented that now it would be a great time to use that EMP powers of his. Luce explained that he had to understand how the technology works for him to disable it, and he could not disable it as seeing a 4-story tall robot gorilla was a first for him. The impact caused by the gorilla smashing its fists onto the ground was so strong that tremors vibrated all around the hall, causing them to be knocked backwards. Just as the gorilla was about to raise his arms to attack once more, a bolt of bright blue light came bursting through the doors and smashing through the gorilla’s head, subsequently causing the head to fall off and the rest of the body to come crashing down. Amidst the rubble stood a figure dressed in a red cloak that stood with his back hunched and hands hanging from his body as though he had used up all his energy.

Upon seeing the red cloak, happiness streaked inside of Hailey like a comet as she thought about the possibilities of it being Joren. Ever since she had learned about Joren being alive, she had spent each sleepless night thinking about Joren and the happy times they had shared in the past. Unable to contain her excitement any longer, she ran up to the hooded figure to unveil the hood. However, before she could reach the hooded figure, she was suddenly lifted off the ground by her neck and a breeze of cold air engulfed her body and she started growing paler.

“WHERE.IS.KAYDEN.” Lexi bellowed with her hands still wrapping around Hailey’s neck. Without delaying any further, Luce hurls himself towards the direction of Lexi in hopes to save Hailey from her grasp. To his dismay, he was caught by the neck by Lexi, before he could even land a punch. Shaking her head in dismay, she muttered weaklings to herself as she continued sucking the life force out of both of them.  Trying her best without aggravating her any further, Raina tried to put her to sleep, but giving her a mental spike. Even that wasn’t enough to stop her, Lexi had managed to block the incoming mental spike and sent it back to Raina, knocking her unconscious. The mental battle between them gave Eddy the perfect opening to teleport behind Lexi and knocked her, catching her off guard. Seizing the opportunity, he quickly grabbed both Hailey and Luce and teleported away from her. Now even more enraged, she picked up the nearest debris and threw it in the direction of Eddy and Jay.  Jay did not have any issue blocking the debris and was flicking away each of the debris thrown at him, sending most of it back to Lexi. Eddy, however, was a different story. As he had just teleported back to where he was, he had barely enough time to react and could only watch in horror as it flew closer towards him.

“Enough. You want me? I’m right here, let the rest of them go.” Kayden said, in a calm and firm tone, as he sliced the debris that was heading for Eddy in half. 

“No. Bringing just you to him is not enough. He wants all of you. The more of you I bring to him, the more likely he is to free her” Lexi said, sadness starting to fill her voice instead of anger.

Sensing the grief in her tone, Kayden cautiously tries to calm her down by reasoning it out with her. After a while of back and forth arguments with her, she finally calmed down and Kayden was able to convince her to let them help save her daughter.