Chapter Ten
The Cauldron
“She won’t boil!” Screamed the maddened scientist.
Swinging around in his chair he myopically addressed his attending professionals, “Well, why is this? Speak up you imbeciles!”
To a one, both men and women of this underground realm of horrors untold, shook their heads in perplexity.
“She seems to have some shield that keeps her from realities circumstances and yet she is not altogether unaffected by our experiments. She does grow wearier. Perhaps given enough time and similar torments her shell will crack and we can see what makes her work more closely upon surgical examination.” One of the staff personnel put forward in a hopeful tense of manner meant to help pacify their irate leader.
The crotchety head scientist, half bent over from both age and the general distaste of his flesh for himself, huffed out, “This is the best you can come up with? Boil the egg until it’s past any ability to see what makes it special!” He screeched out at the last in high temper.
Turning back to the screens lit up with the form of a woman harnessed fully submerged in a tank of boiling water he called out into a microphone, “Stop the experiment. Haul her out and bring her down here. We’ll give it another shot at trying to cut something off of her.”
Turning back to his unsettled staff he hooted triumphantly, as if he had just received an epiphany, “We’ll scrape the egg and analyze the specimen from the outside, but in reverse.”
“How do we do that sir?”
“What do you mean how? The same way we’ve created all the others you idiot! Now get the diamond cutting bits out. All I need is a piece of hair or dander or simply just anything I can get my hands on in regards to this unique specimen. Who ever heard of a personal shield so complete as to keep one from boiling, let alone drowning or even being crushed and so on and so on. I must know how it works! The possibilities are endless if we can but crack this latest show of design by the old dictator up there. Can you imagine how it will be? Lucifer himself will grant me his favor! Why with a shield such as this our forces will storm heaven itself and take it by force. Now get to work!”
*****
Desirée watched from her strapped down position as they worked fiendishly to create the copy of their hope into deciphering what it was that gave her protection from all their tests.
Fools! They had eyes, but couldn’t see.
Just then she felt a stirring within her spirit. As if in echo the lights of the state of the art facility flickered. The scientists looked up in alarm.
“What was that?” One exclaimed.
The lights flickered again. In alarm the scientists began straightening from their unholy task altogether.
“Back to work! No distractions!” The lead scientist groused nastily, but as his subordinates’ heads lowered to their work his look of annoyance turned to worry as the lights continued to flicker. His eyes met Desirée’s, as a scream rang out from somewhere beyond the laboratory.
“Oops.” Desirée said with satisfaction. It was the first time that she’d said anything at all to her tormentors that had tried everything to part her from the protective shield that God had erected around her in the form of her ministering angels.
“What’s that? What did you say?” The scientist asked loudly stepping closer to her.
“You lost.” Desirée said simply.
“Lost what?” He groused out in reply.
“The war, a very long time ago.”
The scientist’s face wrinkled up in disgust, “I hate you Christians! I couldn’t say how many of you stupid believers in a dead Messiah that I’ve had strapped across examination tables and always it’s the same! Always so hopeful and all! Life’s not like that sister! No, it’s not and when I find a way through to you it will be chop chop chop!” He laughed out maniacally, as if in jest to some private joke and Desirée turned her head away being at a complete end in terms of attempting to rescue and aid these disciples of darkness and crookedness into seeing the light.
They to a one were solely invested in what does not profit at all. More screams broke out and then the whole place rattled hard like a plane experiencing prolonged turbulence.
“What the ….” Exclaimed a scientist foully.
“What is going on in this place? How do they expect us to accomplish work under these circumstances? Frank, go check out what’s going on. The rest of you make up some clothes for her. Just print them out. Now let me see. Nice, very nice! I wouldn’t mind having a go at her myself.”
Desirée turned her head away with disgust, as the others laughed and said much the same.
The lab door slammed shut abruptly and all the scientists turned to view the return of Frank, as to ascertain a clue, as to what was going on outside. He was as white as a sheet and looked about on the edge of a psychotic break, as the facility rattled hard again.
“Well, what is it man?” The lead scientist demanded.
The man stammered unintelligibly all the while pointing down the hall from where he’d just come from.
“Spit it out man! We have work to do!”
“A storm! There’s a windstorm!” The man stammered out intelligibly at last.
“What nonsense! We’re 5000 feet below ground man!”
“No you don’t understand! It’s devouring the facility!” Frank insisted, as he stumbled to a nearby screen display and with a few clicks of the mouse brought up a television security feed of the main staging area of this underground city complex.
A storm was indeed ripping the place apart. In shocked disbelief those within the lab watched as a dark swirling mass of wind swirled about destroying all that it touched, even as lightning flashed within the storm itself.
Everything that the storm winds touched literally became nothing. Even as the storm was wrecking a terrible vengeance upon the underground city, figures could be seen swirling around within the storm. Some of them seemed apart from the storm’s vengeance, while others were bearing the brunt of it.
One scientist whispered, “A whirlwind of God?”
“What? Impossible! Why I’ve never heard…….”
The whole facility shook, as many of the figures only seen before in the swirling mass of darkness, suddenly went hurling all about colliding with the architecture of the city with the force of missiles going off.
“Oh my …” The lead scientist remarked in the speechless aftermath, as he and all the other viewers in the room saw the forms of demons and other entities of darkness picking themselves up out of the rubble of their landing positions to then only be seen fleeing through the facility as fast as they could go in the opposite direction away from the whirlwind of destruction that had descended upon this foul place of man’s misguided creation.
The fleeing minions of darkness mowed down security forces closing in on the site of the disturbance that seemed to stretch up through the rock layers like an invisible stairway to heaven.
“It must be about her! God doesn’t want us to get our hands on the technology that shields her! Get her out of here!”
Desirée was abruptly hustled from the room. She went grudgingly, which slowed the advance of the flabby lab technicians taking her to yet some other undisclosed holding area.
Silently she prayed for Victor, as she felt that he was somewhere very near. Something amazing was occurring and she wanted to be a part of it just as her man even now was.
He had come for her, but even more so God had intervened in the matters of the corruption of this place that had seemingly gone unchecked through the years of its deplorable exploitation of the masses of clueless people that populated the surface of the Earth. She prayed heartily for the places destruction all the while hoping not to be destroyed with it.
Seeing her chance she elbowed one technician in the face. He let off a scream of gurgled pain as blood squirted from his broken nose.
Desirée twisted free of the grip of the other lab technician and kicked him in the knee cap. He fell and lay clutching at his knee sobbing, as she danced back away from the others, who had been following, and alluded their grasps for her as she took off down a side hallway intent on returning back towards the storm ravaging apart this inner Earth hell hole.
*****
Victor
I somersaulted toward the floor below. It was a near thing that I managed to land on the stairway landing and avoid the flight of stairs beyond.
People in general were flocking about as if they were birds caught within a net. To the security details however it was clear that I constituted an invading force.
Arriving like this wasn’t what I had planned for, but the key was to go with it. Pulling the trigger repetitively I walked down the stairwell pumping three and half inch magnum buckshot round after round into any security detail officer brave enough to stay around.
On the thirtieth shotgun round fired I tossed the now useless Russian-made Saga shotgun to the side, as I had no more barrel magazines to load it with, or the time to load it should I find some shells. It had done its purpose though in clearing a way through the initial confrontation.
I pulled out two large pistols and made my way further into this underground labyrinth that was being decimated by the storm behind me. It had become quite the day.
I’d gotten thrown into a war in the spirit realm, only to have it then spill over into the physical realm. I kept walking in the direction I felt led to go all the while praying for Desirée’s safety.
My mind didn’t want to even go into analyzing what they might have done already to Desirée in the brief time that they’d had her, but just the same my mind ran wild with scenarios to foul to even want to contemplate. Those very scenarios now drove me forward quickly and made me shoot anything that moved out of pure dislike for anything or anybody affiliated with such a place as this.
I heard a familiar voice cry out and I bounded around a corner only to see Desirée cry out not 20 feet away from me as she pointed at an open doorway along the side of the hall further up past some interconnecting hallways in between. Relief at seeing her shot through me and then she looked at me and without hesitation I shot her three times in fast succession.
Her eyes flashed in surprise before sparks erupted and the whole object of superimposed fakeness after the likeness of living flesh collapsed to the floor.
Quickly I closed up on the corner of a nearby adjoining hallway that I would have had to cross in front of to reach the imposter of Desirée. I peeked around it and an old professor type dude started blasting away.
Bullets went everywhere, but directly at me. I didn’t even feel the need to duck my head back around the corner so badly off was the old man’s aim.
The gun clicked empty and I stepped around the corner and lifted my own gun to take aim.
“Oh God please no! I….I….I don’t please! I’ll do anything! I have money! I… I can get you out of here! Just don’t shoot me!” The old man wailed pathetically.
Taking my revolver in hand I shucked out all the magnum powered shells, until only one remained. Approaching the scientist who’d now fallen to his knees arthritically and had lapsed into dribbled pleas for mercy I said, “You and I, let’s play game. You like to play games down here. Games with people’s lives. Let me know if you like new game. It’s a game I play much in my past. I never lose.”
I spun the cylinder of the 44 Russian Magnum revolver and pressing the barrel to the scientist’s head I pulled the trigger to his insaned plea for me not to.
Click!
“Ahh you win round one. Best-of-six wins. Only five more to go.” I encouraged.
I spun the cylinder again and placed the barrel back against his head. Pleading in desperation, tinged with the cunning that I knew such a man possessed, I heard him say, “You said it was a game! I had my turn now it’s yours!”
Leaning down I said point blankly into his face, “I don’t play game anymore.” And with that said I pulled the trigger.
It clicked hollowly again, but the master of torture never heard it, as he had fainted dead away already.
“Victor you really shouldn’t be like that. It’s not good to be cruel. It doesn’t become who you are now in Jesus Christ.”
I spun around to see Desirée. The real Desirée!
My breath had left me as my eyes traced over her looking for injuries or signs of harm. Nothing!
My God had preserved her just as He had said that He would. Feeling overcome I tried to frame words, but instead I found myself falling to my knees still at a loss for words. She was okay!
For the first time in my life something was turning out good. She came near and hugged my face to her stomach and I breathed in the familiar smell of her that I had been absent from for far too long.
I hugged her to me as tightly as I could and I was not ashamed of the tears that her shirt soaked up. Pulling my head up she smiled down into my face and softly said, “You’ve been on quite a journey haven’t you my love.”
Shaking my head affirmatively I said, “Yes! Your God now my God. I do as He says and I no longer apart from life. I have new life like you, only inside and yet everywhere.”
Tears falling down her face she said, “I’m so glad to hear that Honey! I’ve prayed so hard for this day for you and now look at you. Your eyes now seem like fire in some way! What have you seen?”
I blinked, as memories of a place out of time and yet connected to my own reality lit up vividly across my mind and recollection.
“I will tell you, but not here. We must go.”
I started to rise, but she pressed on my one shoulder, even as her other hand jingled the ring on the necklace about my throat suggestively.
Reaching for it I broke the necklace from off my neck and fingering the tiny ring I held it poised at her ring finger. Looking up into her eyes I asked, “Would you do me great honor and be mine? I love you! I want you! I need you like plants need sun and grass the rain! I……”
Her other hand closed ever my lips, as her tears dribbled onto them. She was smiling though, as she said, “Honey you don’t have to say anything else. I will be yours and yours alone. I love you with all my heart and I thank God every day for the man who shot me and yet whose life is now mine to share!”
I slid the ring on her finger and standing up I twirled her around as from within something joyous and new about life began occurring in a way that promised to never end.
The corridor shook and the sounds of the place being torn apart broke through the private reverie that we were both having in the moment. I set Desirée down and taking her hand I led her quickly forward.
Passing the body of the synthetic replication of Desirée I heard her ask in marvelment, “How did you know she wasn’t me?”
I glanced to her and briefly reaching a finger out I caressed the scar on her forehead, “She not have the scar that I gave you. Your scar maybe save your life.”
She chuckled and said, “Now that’s irony!”
I smiled and continued on.
The place seemed devoid of people and quickly we made for what looked to be a portal to the surface. There would be security of some sort for sure, but I had a means of dealing with that.
I could already see a warning laser beam, which was only one of several for sure. The others would likely all be invisible. It did not matter though as I had the means to be invisible to them.
“Don’t let go of my hand, “I said authoritatively and Desirée quickly nodded.
With my other hand I felt at my waist at the belt that was there. Slipping a finger beneath it I depressed the cloaking pin that would render me and anything biological in nature I happened to be touching entirely invisible.
Alexi had hoped to escape the life of the hitman by having an asset such as this in his possession, but through an unfortunate event now turned fortunate the belt was now in my possession. A glimmering veil appeared around me and Desirée and with confidence I stepped toward the lasers.
“Strange thing about implements manufactured for the use of Darkness’s gain.” Called out a familiar voice casually.
I stopped dead in my tracks, as my gaze switched over to where Denaleal stood within the range of the invisible lasers. He walked unimpeded through them.
He gave a smile and a courtly half bow to Desirée, who in cautious stillness watched the representation of my guardian, visible now in the form of a man. Denaleal’s gaze came back to mine with directness as he finalized his previous statement by saying, “They always have a way of completing their creators tasks despite the good intent of others along the way.”
With that said Denaleal disappeared from view. Immediately I reached down and unsnapped the belt and pulled it from my waist.
Bringing the belt up to my mouth I spit on it and then I threw it forward toward the hidden lasers with the invisibility mode still actively switched on and my spit acting in my place as the biological agent. The belt was immediately fried and sliced into pieces by the hidden lasers.
“God I’m sorry! Please forgive me for putting my trust in something other than You to get me out of here.”
It had never occurred to me how important it was not only to make the right decisions in life and to be wary of the consequences of the wrong ones, but to also be aware of simple commonplace objects and the curses spoken into them unawares. Truly the ways of darkness were deceptive.
Something else began occurring to me as I stood there staring at the ashes of the belt. Something that was extremely troubling.
So troubling it was hard to even ask God for verification of what I was beginning to surmise within my spirit. I asked anyway and received the answer that I feared I would.
“What is it Victor?”
Opening my eyes I took in Desirée’s concern for me and softly said, “We should go back the way we came.”
“But the storm?” She said hesitatingly, but I’d already started out and immediately she followed along saying nothing more.
Denaleal appeared again and glancing to him, as he walked alongside of us, I asked, “Will you help?”
“It is my purpose in being here my friend.”
“Even when it’s not in regard to me?” I asked worriedly.
He laid a hand on my shoulder and with a directness that signaled he already knew of what it was within my mind to do he said, “I will do it.”
“Thank you!”
“Thank the Father for He is the Master of us both.”
“Could I please be let in on what’s going on?” Desirée asked.
Without hesitation we both said, “No.”
Desirée blinked, but said no more as we entered the lab where her torments had been enacted in order to divest her of the shielding presence of God’s Spirit about her physical form.