Chapter 42: Chapter 42

Ka “He took her!” shouted Les as he ran in from the hallway. “He took her, he’s a traveller, he took her!” he ranted on, still making no sense.

“Took who?” asked Rob, already by Les’s side.

“Ellie, Brian took Ellie, he’s a traveller, they lied!” Les was red in the face now, and looked slightly unsteady.

“Ellie’s gone?” Ka gaped in disbelief.

he thought. Silence descended between their sentences, like a thick shroud that stopped time.

“Why Ellie?” asked Rob, leading Les to a seat. “What did you see?”

Ka stood in front of the sofa watching his friend, trying to unscramble his brain. Ka looked at Maya and Joe on the other sofa, so vulnerable in that state, but knew he couldn’t pull them back during whatever ceremony they were going through. He had no idea what the repercussions could be, and wasn’t prepared to live with the consequences.

Ke moved to beside him, also staring at the unconscious forms.

“Ellie was on the phone, then Brian appeared in front of her, and took her through a portal,” Les’s voice shook with emotion, and Rob moved in to comfort him.

“Did he see you?” asked Rob urgently, clutching Les’s hand.

“No, he had his back to me, but it was him.”

“She must have been on the phone to him,” The Ka’s said simultaneously.

“Why? Why would he do that? Why would he lie to us?” Les was waving his hands around dramatically, but it didn’t seem to help answer his questions.

“She told him about Joe,” Rob said suddenly, sitting up. “He knows about Joe. He’s got to be Brecht.”

“Which makes Steve William,” stated the Ka’s, comprehension dawning on their identical faces.

“It can’t be,” Les muttered, as the weight of the world fell on their collective shoulders. “Why didn’t he take Joe? Why Ellie?”

“I don’t know,” Rob shook his head. “But what if he comes back?”

“He knows where we are. What if he wants Maya?” Ka looked straight into his own eyes seated in Ke’s head, seeing panic mirroring his own.

“We’ve got to bring them back,” urged Rob. We’ve got to leave here, now.”

“But what if?” Ka stammered back at him. “What if, we might lose them, we don’t know.”

“I know if we stay here we die. Steve knows where we are, he’s already taken Ellie. Do you want to take the chance? There are people with the power to kill us and we can do nothing about it. We’ve got to go. NOW!” Rob’s voice rose in a crescendo, jumping to his feet as Les stared at his uncharacteristic display in surprise.

Ka stood motionless, trying to work out the lesser danger. The decision made, he moved to Maya’s side, gripping her hand and shouting ‘Maya’ over and over. he felt her hand contract, as Maya and Joe awoke.

“We’ve got to go, there’s no time,” urged Rob. “Come on!”

“What’s going on?” asked Maya, still blinking.

“Brian took Ellie. He’s a traveller, we think he’s Brecht. They’re going to come for us, we have to go.” Rob informed them briskly. “Joe can you take us somewhere safe?”

“What does he look like, red hair?” demanded Joe, struggling to his feet.

“Yes and Steve is really short, dark brown hair, wife called Zinia,” Ka told Joe, holding onto the last shred of hope that it wasn’t them.

“That’s them. We need to go. Out the door, his wife is a tracker, she will be able to follow us wherever we go, so we set out on foot then portal,” Joe was looking around wildly, since he didn’t know where the door was.

Then they were moving. The six of them made it out of the flat and down the stairs in record time. They ran up the road, the Ka’s assisting Joe, while Rob pulled Les along. Maya’s face was contorted with hatred and determination as she ran beside them.

“Down here,” shouted Rob, dragging Les down an alleyway. “Right, Joe, do your thing!”

A portal opened in front of them, and they all ran through it. They arrived on a bare and barren hillside at half light, where Les promptly collapsed on the grass, gasping for air after his exertion.

“Where’d she go!” shouted Ka, as Maya vanished out of the corner of his eye.

“She portalled,” said Joe, facing him. “She has the gift now, I gave it to her, it belongs to her.”

“She’s still got the power?” Ka stared at Joe in astonishment. It suddenly struck him that he could still be in league with Steve, and he’d had her kidnapped.

“I don’t deserve it. Maya has only used it for good, I used it for so much evil. She gave it to me and I gave it back. It didn’t resist, it wanted to remain with Maya.”

The old man looked so earnest, and Ka couldn’t think of a reason why he would turn against his rescuers by having one kidnapped, especially when he had given his gift away.

“She’s gone after him,” Ke said heavily. “Brian. She’s gone after Brian, and probably Steve too.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Joe’s voice broke. “Nothing I can do.”

He was right, Ka realised, as he dropped to his knees in the dirt.

“I can’t protect her,” he heard the words said, then realised it was him thinking out loud.

“We’re stuffed,” Rob spat, voicing what everyone else was thinking. “If she doesn’t come back we’re stuck god knows where. Our lives are over, we have lunatics after us, we can’t go home and we can’t go back to our jobs, our lives, everything we worked for taken away in an instant!”

Waves of hopelessness crashed over Ka as he kneeled in the grass where Maya had abandoned them to their fate, while she suffered hers.

“How could we not have realised the two men were the same?” Ka looked up to see Les sitting near him with his head in his hands. Rob had his arms around Les and was just holding him, motionless.

“Maya has a fire in her,” Joe started speaking unexpectedly close to Ka’s left ear, his lined face creasing with emotion. “She has a destiny. The gift chose to stay with her, I could feel it when I gifted it to her.”

“How can she have a destiny if they kill her?” demanded Ka, tasting salty tears as he spoke.

“The gift will not let her die, it will save her,” Joe pressed, his face inches from Ka’s.

“Of course,” Ke bobbed down to Ka’s level, a memory suddenly stirring. “Steve said his power took him to a hospital when he was injured.”

“Pah, who knows if everything that came out of that arseholes mouth was true!” Les spat as his mind whirled with the knowledge he might never return home as Rob silently agreed.

Nevertheless, the thought that the gift might save Maya offered Ka a little comfort. His head was still spinning from the very fact that she still had the power. He placed his hands palm down on the grass, grateful that their fate was no longer in the hands of the wizened stranger with the wild eyes whose hand was weighing heavily on his shoulder.

Shaking Joe’s well meaning gesture off his shoulder, Ka thought of Maya, out there all alone. She’s gone off to fight mass murderers, leaving them on an unknown planet in an unknown universe. He had that feeling in his gut, somewhere between pain and nausea. That feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.