Staring at him with incomprehension, the Apostle considered. Her eyes widened slightly and she took a step forward, lowering her sword.
“What will happen?”
“The general consensus is the end of the universe. I won’t let you do that, even if it costs my life.”
“What good can a dead man do?”
She was the absolute last person he would have expected to say something like
that. She was right, and her words hit him very hard. He could feel a lot of the anguish that had been crushing him since the Children of the Chosen melting away. What could a dead man do? Nothing. A living man, however, could work to make things right again.
If he died here, how could he ever make up for killing Allison?
A life for a life might seem like just punishment. It was what he’d been taught to believe was fair in all his years of studying law, but it was the easy way out. A dead man couldn’t pay the price for his actions. A dead man couldn’t suffer, and drag himself through the trial of repentance. He had to live. If he didn’t, how could he ever make things right again?
“Good advice,” Gabriel said. “Look, you and I both know what will happen if
you win. Everybody, including you, loses. What do you say we both just leave off and go home?”
She didn’t reply.
Once Gabriel caught his breath, the Apostle stepped forward, twirling her sword in both hands with an intricate pattern. Though she seemed to ignore whatever wounds Marius had inflicted on her, they were still affecting her performance. She was slow and had none of the demonic grace she’d displayed in their first meeting.
Still, she was very fast, and stronger than he was. Her blade sparked off of his knife, and the pistol barrel that he used to block when he couldn’t get the knife up in time. Her blade sliced cleanly through the catwalk and the railing when he deflected it into them.
Continuously blocking, Gabriel dodged backward steadily. It was all he could do to keep one of his weapons between her sword and his flesh. Neither of them scored any hits on the other, but Gabriel could feel himself tiring, while the Apostle showed no sign.
Thinking back to his favorite movie of all time, Gabriel thought it rather amusing to find himself fighting a black-armored foe on a catwalk like one of his childhood heroes. It hadn’t turned out so well for Luke, and he had a very bad feeling that it was going to end even worse for him.
Things seemed hopeless as the two of them danced backward across the catwalk,
their bodies strangely distorted, making it harder to attack and defend. Their weapons sparked against each other as they dueled. Even as his endurance began to flag, Gabriel’s newfound desire to survive pressed him onward. He was not going to let her win. Sam was waiting for him, and he’d promised that he’d return to her. He always kept his promises.
Falling steadily backward under the ferociousness of the Apostle’s relentless
assault, Gabriel began to feel real fear. Death held no fear for him, as he’d already died once before and it hadn’t been so bad. Not even the thought of the end of the universe caused his mouth to go dry. He was utterly terrified that he would never see Sam again.
He loved her so much. She was the reason he’d come back here to fix things in the first place, and he was never going to lay eyes on her again.
Pushing Gabriel ever backward, the Apostle unleashed a flurry of attacks that he only just fended off. That was when he noticed the pattern in her movements. Every time she increased her speed to shower him with attacks, she would take a step back to recover before jumping into it again. In that Gabriel saw a very small chance. Though he couldn’t trust all of the bullets in his pistol, it was a better chance than hoping she would tire before his own strength dried up.
Stepping into another flurry of attacks the Apostle pressed Gabriel against the railing hard. Just as he’d observed before, she stepped back, and that was when he struck. Jumping forward, he jammed his knife into her wrist. Jerking it hard to one side caused her to drop her sword. Smoothly catching the falling blade with her other hand, the Apostle drove it into Gabriel’s thigh just above the knee.
Ignoring the explosion of pain that shot up to his groin and hip, Gabriel thrust his pistol past the Apostle’s blade into the gap between the armor plates on her left leg and pulled the trigger several times until it fired. All four remaining shells were duds, but the first one to misfire went off this time. Blood exploded from the Apostle’s knee, splattering her face and breastplate, but miraculously, none hit Gabriel. Unable to remain on their feet with their respective wounds, they both dropped to the catwalk bleeding.
“I’ve never fought so hard,” the Apostle panted as she extricated herself from Gabriel’s knife, dragging herself out of his reach and pulling her blade free of his leg.
Blood welled from Gabriel’s wound, soaking his pants and the leather chaps over them. Snatching the spare gunbelt still hanging by the console, he tightened it around his thigh to stop the bleeding. Dragging himself to his feet, Gabriel emptied the misfired shells from his pistol and reloaded from the shells on his belts, careful to use ones that were less likely to have gotten wet. He prayed that they fired.
“Gabriel,” Allie said urgently. “The computer. You have played action hero long enough. While she is incapacitated I need to finish and get us out of here! Preferably before you bleed to death.”
“Right,” Gabriel nodded. He’d almost completely forgotten their work at the
console in the heat of the fight.
Keeping one eye on the Apostle at all times, he limped back to the console. She seemed content to lick her wounds for the time being, figuratively speaking of course.
“You might have done well in the arena,” the Apostle said in a husky tone.
“Though you are slow and weak, you know your way around a knife, and you have a good mind for strategy.”
Ignoring her, Gabriel whispered the activation word for Allie’s Sa’Dhi and she took control over his hands to use the keyboard. Seconds later a bolt of lightning widened into a Gate at the end of the catwalk where it met the inner ring. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said it would only take a few seconds longer.
“Everything is ready,” Allie said. “Press the E key to execute lowering the
containment field. After that you will have thirty seconds to make it to the Gate before the black hole is freed.”
“Could you have put the Gate in a worse place,” Gabriel cried. “I have to go
through her to get to it!”
“That is the closest I could create a Gate without any gravitational interference.
There’s no way of telling where and when you would end up if you stepped through a Gate that was made in the distortion field.”
Gabriel nodded with an annoyed growl.
Getting back to her feet, the Apostle didn’t even limp. There was no pain in her expression, and her eyes had gone blank again. Her wrist seemed completely healed as well, and the hole in her ear was gone. Regarding the Gate for a second, she turned back to Gabriel and raised an eyebrow.
“I’m going to destroy this place,” Gabriel said to her. “But I have a way of
balancing things so that it doesn’t get out of control and destroy all of creation. Will you let me pass?”
“I wish I could, but he won’t let me,” the Apostle hissed. “Your bullets may have chased him away, but the wounds are healed and he is back!”
Raising his weapons, Gabriel looked down at his injured leg. If they fought, he would lose. He could not run past her to the Gate, nor would she stand aside. He either had to kill her before hitting the E key, or hit it and pray that he could dodge past her to the Gate before the containment field went down. With his wounds, neither option looked particularly feasible.