As she strode away from him, back into her bedroom, his eidetic memory grasped every last detail of what he'd just witnessed.
'It just can't be,' he thought. Moving round the sofa, with one hand he swept away enough magazines to enable him to sit down. Head in hands, he went over and over what he'd just seen, barely able to comprehend it. Impossible, and yet he'd seen it with his own eyes from only a few feet away. An underlying feeling of sadness washed over him. Of course he'd known all about the injuries she'd sustained and just how hard the doctors had worked to restore her to full health, and the toll the side effects of the alea had taken on her body. Given all this, the scar tissue should have come as no surprise, but it had. There was more than he could have believed possible, more than he thought anyone could have survived. But that wasn't the unbelievable part. Why had nobody else noticed what it had formed? Why had Richie not noticed? Perhaps she had, and thought nothing of it. Or perhaps, given that she was about to become fully human in only a matter of days now, she had more important things on her mind. Perhaps she refused to look at that part of her body because it was all too painful or had just chosen subconsciously to block the whole thing out. In any case, it changed everything. How, he didn't know yet. But it did.
Just then she walked back into the room, fully clothed in her lacrosse gear, kit bag in one hand, two sticks in the other. Grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl on the wooden sideboard as she passed, she turned to face him.
"Ready?" she enquired.
Nodding, his mind whirling with thoughts of what he'd seen, he followed her down the narrow staircase and out to the car on their way to a local school that had offered up their facilities on a temporary basis to the hockey and lacrosse sections of the sports club, wondering how best to proceed. Once again, the fate of the dragon kingdom might well rest with him.
16
Surprising Resistance
Mumbling a few inaudible words as she tossed and turned, sweat pouring off her in the underground cellar, warmed by the lava, guarded by a contingent of nagas, Earth's body might well have been in the present, but her mind was most certainly stuck in the past.
Even in the pitch black, the old, wooden, two storey barn seemed to stand out. Maybe because there were no clouds, the stars and the moon all shone brightly, or perhaps it was because, for as far as you could see, the land was all flat, mainly grass, with the odd field of crops mixed in and only a very few, solitary houses dotted around the landscape. Sneaking through the wooden fence, they hurried across the grass in the direction of the barn. No lights could be seen inside. Heavy panting alongside her jolted her back to the moment.
"I'm sure they're still following us," puffed Earth, running alongside the slim, overcoated woman. "How much further?"
"Not far," replied the latest in a number of new Resistance officers that Earth had got involved with, concentrating on controlling her breathing for fear of getting a stitch.
As they ran, the woman beside her offered out her hand. Rather reluctantly she took it. A small trickle of nausea dribbled down inside her as she did so.
They were a few miles outside the town of Bourges, south of Paris, and over the last twenty minutes or so, things had gone very wrong, or very right, depending on which way you looked at it. Earth had been passing the valuable information over for nearly a month now, and had turned up to their prearranged meeting dishevelled and scared, claiming that she was being followed, which was very much part of her normal routine. Right on cue, her contact had rushed her off through the streets of Bourges at first, and then out into the open countryside in the direction of the barn, the unofficial, and temporary, home of the local Resistance.
Heavy breathing from the pair of them was the only thing that could be heard for miles around. There was simply no other noise... NOTHING! After climbing through another fence and skipping around a disused chicken coop, they eventually made it to the barn. Both women looked back in the direction they'd come from, which showed no sign of any movement at all. So the Resistance officer turned and rapped on the door twice, and then three times more. Then they waited, still catching their breaths. Silently, above them, a head appeared through a tiny little gap in the wall.
"What are you doing back so early?" it enquired, agitated.
"There was a bit of a problem. Let us in... please!"
Muffled whispers echoed from inside the barn. Neither woman could make out what was being said. And then the sound of wood on wood from behind the door made them take a step back. As it inched open, a hand poked out and beckoned them inside. Both women stepped into the darkness of the barn's interior.
Half a dozen men and women appeared in front of them, some from behind hay bales, others skulking from the shadows. Knowing it was close now, she could feel her heart beat faster and faster, only moments away from another stunning victory.
"Who's this, and what's she doing here?" a voice barked from out of the darkness.
Her contact started to reply, but Earth cut her short, having already sent the signal.
"I'm here to put a stop to your so called... operations!" smirked Earth, pulling a cigarette out of her pocket and sliding it between her lips.
Just as Earth thought about bringing her power to the fore, the female Resistance officer, whose name she'd never bothered learning, did something both surprising and remarkable. Clutching a syringe she had dragged from her coat pocket, in one swift motion she pirouetted with the speed and grace of a ballet dancer and then stabbed the needle smack bang into the back of Earth's neck. Never in her life had Earth been so surprised. Instantly she crumpled to the hay scattered floor, trying to fight off the effects of the drug, trying to access all her magic. But it was too late and unconsciousness washed over her immediately.
That's all Earth could remember, but things in and around the barn had carried on.
"Good work," announced a deep male voice from deep within the darkness. "But it's time to go. The Nazis are already closing in on our location. Allsop!"
"Yes sir," replied Allsop.
"You're in charge of her. If she shows even the slightest sign of waking up... knock her out. And none of this... it's wrong to hit a girl nonsense. Understand?"
"Yes sir."
"Good man! Let's go. Everybody out. As we practised it!"
From the back of the room, hay bales were shifted out of the way very precisely, to reveal muddied steps leading down into the darkness. Two of the men went first, followed by two women, Allsop carrying his charge, and then the rest, with the last man (a captain) making sure the hay bales were firmly back in place. It was a squeeze to say the least, with all of them having to duck down. There were no lights, there didn't need to be. It was only really wide enough for one, and it only led to one place.
Accompanied by a dozen of his finest men, they closed in on the shabby looking barn, pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Since her first operation, he'd accompanied 'Earth' as she liked to be known. On that occasion he'd been more than a little sceptical about having a woman in charge. But that had all changed with the results that had come, time after time. No other German unit had captured so many foreign spies. Their record was simply magnificent. And this operation, he knew, was just the next of many. They couldn't be beaten; in essence... they were unstoppable. Not knowing how she did it, ultimately he didn't care, he was only concerned with serving the Führer and leading his country to the victory they so deserved.