Chapter 28: 28: A Better Man

In the few minutes since Wilson had made his entrance, the fire had coursed through my veins. Anger and fear had been making me stronger by the second, but I knew all of my strength was no match for Wilson’s speed and training. I’d already tried to hit him once, back at Section 13’s base, and then he hadn’t even been pointing a gun at me.

So the only real advantage I had was surprise.

As far as Major Wilson was concerned, I was an average teenager. Normally the huge wooden table that was between us would have remained rooted to the spot no matter how hard I tried to budge it. In my heightened, powered up state, I sent it flying towards Wilson as easily as if I’d thrown a matchbox at him. Plates and cutlery went flying everywhere. As fast as Wilson was, he couldn’t dodge a ten-metre long solid wood table. It smacked into him and he stumbled back into the floor-to-ceiling window behind him.

His rifle sprayed bullets wildly at the ceiling as he roared with anger and shock.

Without hesitating, knowing this was my only chance, I vaulted over the upturned table and smacked the weapon out of his hands. I was ready to pummel Wilson into the ground for everything that he’d done. Pointing guns at me and my friends at school, the execution back at Section 13. Now he’d possibly killed a girl that I liked and was threatening my new friends, Victoria and Vincent.

I had to stop him, by any means necessary.

Wilson was backed against the window, which had cracked in a few places. Shock was written all over his face at the sudden attack.

“What?” Wilson shouted, disbelief and fury in his voice. He reached for a pistol at his hip. Before he could grab it, I barged into him shoulder first. Wilson grunted in surprise as we crashed through the second-floor window. Another flash of lightning lit up the sky as we smashed through the windowpane and into the torrential rain.

I was acting on instinct, moving with a speed and confidence that surprised me. My first goal was to get him away from the others as fast as possible.

My second goal was to beat the living hell out of him.

We fell fast and hit the ground below hard. The rain lashed around us, thunder sounding off in the distance. Wilson roared with pain as we landed and I came down on top of him. He tried to get a swing in as I rolled myself off. More by luck than anything else, I got my arm up to block him before his punch landed. Wilson reached for a spare pistol in his tactical vest. I grabbed it from his hand and tossed it aside. Wilson snarled and aimed another blow at me.

I caught his fist in the palm of my hand. Held it immobile.

“What the hell is wrong with your eyes, Ethan? What are you?” Wilson spat at me through the driving wind.

I pulled a fist back, rearing up.

Kill him, a voice raged in my head. Kill him now!

I hesitated for a split second, just enough for a small voice of reason to kick in through the fury. Did I really want to be a killer? Was murder something I could ever live with myself for?

Or would that make me just as bad as Major Wilson? A cold-blooded killer with no remorse, convinced of his own right to take someone else’s life? Convinced they were fighting a monster, justifying everything they did?

And then, in that split second before I killed Major Wilson, something my mum often said came back to me;

“Just make sure you’re doing the right thing, Ethan. Whatever you do, make sure you are doing the right thing.”

The rage was still screaming that I should kill Major Wilson. The fire inside wanted me to do it, to use my power to commit murder.

But I shook my head.

“What am I?” I shouted back, “What am I? I’m a better man than you!”

I brought my fist across his face, pulling my blow just enough to knock him out without breaking his neck.

I sat beside the unconscious Major, the rain coming down hard, soaking us both to the skin. I felt the fire die down and I became weak and tired as it drained away.The danger had passed, it was over.

Something Wilson had said about my eyes puzzled me, but I was too drained to think about it.

It took me a second to realise there was something wrong with Wilson’s body. Something extra was sticking up out of him, below his chest, pressing through his tactical vest.

I unzipped the vest and saw what it was. As we’d gone through the window, one of the thick wooden bars between the glass panes had broken off and stabbed through his lower torso as he’d hit the ground. It had stabbed straight through him, and the wound was gushing.

Blood was draining out of him, washing away in the rain and running into the mud. I looked at the wound in shock, realised some of Wilson’s blood was on me.

I stood up shakily as three of Victoria’s men showed up, running towards us in the dark.

“Sir, are you alright?” one of them asked.

“Sir? I’m not...yes. I’m fine.”

Victoria appeared behind me as one of her man checked for Wilson’s pulse.

“Are you injured, Ethan?” she asked.

“I’m fine. Alice, is she…?”

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“She’ll survive. We’ve got her some blood to feed on. It’ll take her a day or two to recover from the wounds, but yes, she’ll live. You saved her, Ethan. You saved all of us.”

I shivered in the cold and the rain.

“I got lucky,” I said, “Again. If Wilson knew about my powers, I wouldn’t have been able to catch him off guard like that. It was only because he thought he knew me that I managed it.”

“Ethan, you must stop selling yourself short. You assessed the situation and saw the only way to respond to it, no matter how dangerous it was. That was incredibly brave of you, regardless of what Wilson knew or didn’t know. Not to mention using the table as an improvised weapon. That was quick thinking.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure if it was brave or reckless. That was another thing about my powers, it was like they wanted me to take risks, get into dangerous situations.

“We’d better get you back inside,” Victoria said.

“Wait, I want to know if he’s going to live.”

As much as I might have hated Major Wilson, I didn’t want to have his death on my conscience. He was still a human being. Sure, he might well be a murderous lunatic and maybe I shouldn’t have cared, but it mattered to me.

“He’s alive, but badly injured,” one of Victoria’s men reported. “If we don’t get him some medical attention, he won’t make it. He might not make it even if he’s seen to. That’s a nasty wound.”

Victoria narrowed her eyes.

“Let him bleed out,” she returned, “And then dispose of the body.”

I’d heard Victoria make bad jokes before.

This was not one of those moments.

“What? No, Victoria, you can’t do that! You have to help him.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” Victoria shot back as the rain spattered down upon us.

Suddenly, all warmth had drained out of her voice, replaced by icy resolve. “He broke into my house, assaulted my men, he threatened us all at gunpoint, nearly killed Alice and shot at my brother and you want me to, what, try to save his life so he can do it all over again?”

When she put it that way, she kind of had a point.

Maybe Victoria was right in everything she was saying. That didn’t change me not wanting to be a killer, even in self-defence.

There was another side to this. Although my misgivings about Victoria Pryce had been dissipating over the last few hours, I still needed to know that she was on the side of the angels. Both Wilson and Moorecroft had said she might have been behind the attack on Section 13. I’d heard her lie to Major Wilson so convincingly that I’d almost believed it myself. I’d known her less than two weeks and I wanted to trust her, but there were enough doubts circling my mind for me to need proof that she was who she claimed to be.

That she was better than Wilson. That she was all about saving lives, not taking them.

As weak and tired as I was, it still mattered to me. My mum’s words came back to me again;

Whatever you do, make sure you’re doing the right thing.

“I know what he’s done, Victoria, but we can’t just let him die. Isn’t that what makes you, what makes us better than him? What was it you said? That you save lives. Your words.”

I stood facing Victoria, my body weak and trembling. Victoria stared at me with cold, ruthless eyes.

Then an inscrutable look crossed her face. An expression somewhere between, I guess, a kind of affection and a wish to indulge me, even if she thought I was being unreasonable. Her eyes softened.

“Ethan...” she began, trying to persuade me not to ask her this one thing.

“Help him, Victoria,” I insisted, “Please.”

 

 

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