Endgame (Book 3)

Chapter 54

Di-Men raised his hands and backed away from me. He did not look happy.

Ms. Loving looked at me staggering to my feet. "You alright?" she asked me. 

I nodded my head eagerly. "You came just in time," I said. 

I took a single deep breath, then began to focus electricity in my hands, stepping over to the nearest group of people. From my outstretched hand, five bolts spread out and sought out their targets, heading straight for the heart. 

Each one crashed into a transparent wall. 

I looked around wildly, at first settling on Di-Men, who only coolly fixed his gaze upon Ms. Loving. The girl who had Metagor by the throat right now was Alissa, and she definitely wasn't the one who had done it. Cassie.

I glowered at her. "Cassie, what the hell? There's no time for this. I have to stop them before it's too late!"

She looked at me incredulously. "Are you seriously going to kill all these people? You must be better than that."

My eyes narrowed. "There are billions of lives at stake." Was I going to have to kill her, too?

"Find another way," she said firmly. "They're all innocent. I got your backup, now do what you came here to do. Stop Di-Men." 

"I think I've got that handled, actually," Ms. Loving piped in. She rubbed her temple with the hand not keeping him in place. 

I blew out in frustration. We didn't have time for this nonsense.

I hovered over to Di-Men, setting myself down in front of him so that we were at face level again. I placed myself between him and Ms. Loving, as there was no point in threatening him if appealing to him was the only way to stop this without killing anyone. 

This whole stipulation was ridiculous. There was no way I would be able to convince him to relinquish his control over the elementals. 

Not directly... 

Jay's father was the one with the power to control minds, and he was being controlled by Di-Men. If I could separate them from each other, I could save everyone. 

Well, almost everyone.

I worked my jaw, slowly choosing my words. "Alright, Di-Men." I slapped my hands against my legs. "You win. Now, what?"

He grinned. "I thought you had me," he said, playing along. "I don't seem to be in much of a position to bargain." He pretended not to have heard my disagreement with Cassie.

"See, the thing is," I said, just as cheerfully, "after all this is done, you're going to need a good host. One that actually lasts. One who is perfectly suited to you--" I crossed my arms smugly. "--not an old man. And I need you to release all these hostages." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, referring to everyone in the room. "So, if I understand correctly, I think we have the makings of a deal right now."

I stretched my hand out towards him. 

Suddenly, the room went dark.   A red light flashed above, and a male voice said overhead, from a speaker mounted above, "Top floor compromised. Containment required."

"Metagor," I said. "He put a hole through the top of this thing. The whole facility will be flooded soon if you don't hurry." If the earth itself was shifting around us, I couldn't imagine what was being done to the sea. 

My voice lost some of its former glee, as I hadn't accounted for such a time-sensitive problem occurring at the moment. That turned this into a rescue mission. 

"Do you accept?" I said, stress straining my voice.

Di-Men remained quiet, giving Jay's father an expressionless look. He was thinking.

I turned around to talk to my would-be teacher. "Ms. Loving," I called.

"Yes," she said, confusion briefly crossing her face at being referenced to as a teacher. 

"How did you get here?" I asked.

Cassie walked over, hand still outstretched towards Sage. "She kind of turned us into fire and carried us with her. Why?"

I held back from making a biting remark. I asked Ms. Loving for a reason. 

"Can you do that for everyone here?" I bit my lip, eagerly hoping she would respond in the affirmative. 

She shakily nodded her head up and down, the color draining from her face. We didn't have time to be worried about pressing her limits, and she seemed to understand that. 

"Thank you." My eyes lingered on hers for just a moment. I felt like I should have said more, after everything she had been through. But nothing came to mind, so I just focused my attention back on Di-Men, who hadn't moved an inch. 

Water began to pour down the walls. It was almost too late for anything else. 

I got as close to his face as I possibly could. Our noses were almost touching. "Di-Men, it's over," I said. "You're not going to get further than this. Your plan has failed. At this rate, you'll only succeed in killing yourself as well as all of us." We wouldn't let him escape now that there were four of us and only one of him, and that prevented the total fruition of his aims. He had no other choice if he wanted to live. 

He looked down at my outstretched hand, and, with one fluid motion, clasped it with both of his. 

I looked up at his face.

Black mist poured out of his mouth, landing on the floor between us. Instead of turning into a pile of goo, though, it formed feet. Legs. A waist. A torso. 

A whole body formed. In seconds, my view of Jay's dad had been obscured by Di-Men, in the...flesh?

He had no mouth, and no nose--save for a small bulge below his eyes that may have been one--but he did have eyes. Empty pits of white. No pupils. Just blank. 

But that was the only thing about him that wasn't black. Every other part of him was, down to the edge of his rounded, toeless feet. He seemed ethereal, and, strangely enough, I didn't feel threatened by him at all. More in awe than anything else.

In that moment, I saw both halves of me. I was everything that was supposed to be good, a bright blue, willing to do whatever it took to save the world. He was the deepest, darkest black, unrelenting in his pursuit of ending it. 

It was his hand that was now in mine.

"Ms. Loving," I said, my voice catching in my throat. "Ms. Loving!" Surer now. "Take everyone except Cassie, Sage, and Metagor." Cassie gave me an alarmed look, but she didn't argue. She knew I had a reason. 

Sage and Metagor were regaining control of themselves, but no one else was. 

My heart was pounding in my chest. Why were they still doing this? Jay's father wasn't controlling them anymore. 

He became visible behind Di-Men's left and grabbed my shoulder. "I wasn't controlling them remotely," he said, breathless. "He forced me to put a command in their heads. They won't stop until they're dead or they've finished the job." 

I glared at Cassie again. Everything that happened now was on her head. 

Before I could respond, Ms. Loving spread her arms to her sides, fire erupting from her palms and spreading over her entire body. Then, a wave of flames rolled over the room, and in a flash of light and intense heat, they were all gone.

We were left with the roaring of water and the rumbling of the earth. 

I fixed my eyes upon Di-Men once more and nodded my head, hating him even more for this new twist. He had won after all.  

Without a word, he dived into my chest and disappeared inside of me, merging with me.

We were one.