In the house, Ben was alone but calm, sitting cross-legged upon his bed in his room, dust littered the carpet. The roof had not exploded - it had simply disintegrated. Ben was oblivious to the dark winds and stormy skies swirling above. Underneath the saucer-shaped craft hovering above him, all was calm. The storm’s pelting rains and winds did not seem to affect the craft or the area underneath it.
Lightning continuously discharged itself all around. Seismic reverberations shook the ground at irregular intervals. Where there should have been ceiling, there were now only dark clouds. The air had a murky war-torn atmosphere.
The entire roof structure had been shredded after the disc-craft had reformed itself and then taken off. It now hovered just above the remains of the house. Above that disc there was now a second craft, also waiting soundlessly. Coloured lights moved in circular patterns underneath the lower of the two discs.
Ben sent out a telepathic beacon of energy encoded with patterns of himself, Danny, Jodie, Orb and Golf. He hoped to contact his friends and to summon help from the crafts above.
‘This is Aleya. I am a ship mind-entity. I note your distress. Do you wish to be retrieved?’
‘Yes,’ replied Ben telepathically, ‘do you have the other’s locations?’
‘Not yet, but I recognise the pattern for the entity called Golf.’
Golf had trespassed upon the ship's mind storage facilities some time earlier. Aleya had then traced Golf back to this very area, which also happened to be the central vortex of the storm. Aleya began to search for the other energy signatures Ben had sent. She found some signals nearby that matched the patterns Ben had provided. They were in severe distress.
‘A transport beam is ready but the signals from the other life forms are too weak. This environment is too chaotic to distinguish them accurately. If you locate them telepathically I would have a greater chance of success,’ she explained.
Ben's mind ran everywhere in the local Thought Realm. Everything was muddy with fear. Out of the blue, Ben remembered the sound that the future Mountain-Spirit had spoken. It was from when they had been in the Akashi library and had searched the future in his life-book.
The sound was still there lurking at the very bottom of his mind. It was merely waiting for the right time to appear. Ben tuned into it and amplified the signal. He beamed the sound out and it became his vision. His psychic sight cut through the chaos like a knife.
He saw a tiny pip of blue light. The ruro, which Jodie still had within her chest had become a telepathic lighthouse. Ben homed in on the light. Thank Goodness, Ben thought. Danny was very nearly dead. Nearby was Jodie, unconscious - also critically ill. Within Jodie's mind was both Golf and Orb. Ben transmitted the co-ordinates to the entity called Aleya.
The Leader tightened the cord around Danny's neck and calmly watched his face go blue. It was not raw hatred. He was just calmly, psychotically, doing his job.
Outside the wind continued to rock the truck that doubled as an operating theatre. Lightning and rain pelted the ground. Danny prepared to die.
Back within the Elif’s mind, the young woman, Jodie's energy self, touched her second finger and thumb with Danny. They were both sat cross-legged facing each other. The room smelt stale. The house, or rather the museum, of the Last-borne had not been aired for some time.
Time disappeared into a world of feeling. They lost themselves in their combined mind. The sound of the recombined, true Nemesis code burst forth beautifully. It permeated the whole of the Elif's mind.
The Elif screamed. It shattered into a billion, myriad pieces.
The grey light shot back into itself. It was as if the sky was an ancient TV set that had been flicked off late at night. The seas calmed, the tornadoes dissipated and headed back out to sea harmlessly. The winds gradually abated.
The people came out of hiding from their basements and cellars and underneath their desks. Buildings stopped quaking. The sun peeked out from behind the huge black clouds; grey swirls fluttered in the sky like torn ribbons. The daylight returned. In the church across from Danny’s house Sarah breathed easier.
Above Danny’s house, exposed without its roof, two star-ship-shaped saucers hovered. The two discs were connected by an electric blue aura. A transport beam fell from the higher disc. It split into three and alighted upon the unconscious bodies of Danny and Jodie amidst the twisted wreckage. The third stream found Ben.
As the Leader tightened the cord to deal the final constriction, Danny and Jodie's twisted bloodied bodies turned to a shimmering heavy light. The silver light became a gossamer water which drifted upwards to form two tiny balls of light. The balls of light continued up out of the twisted wreckage of the lorry. They were drawn magnetically along the blue traction beam in which they travelled. A third tiny globe of light also made its way from the wreckage of the nearby house.
The Leader was alone. Only the shattered Elif, the unconscious soldier and the sticky drip of blood kept his vigil with despair.