Chapter 21

Chapter 21

          Loqi ran towards his home without being seen. During a catastrophe such as the barracks and surrounding homes burning, it was easy to move with very little illusion. It was too bad he had not had time to enjoy Jacen’s dying breaths. That boy would be livid when he found out Loqi had duped him again, and Loqi looked forward to facing him again. The next time he hoped he could enjoy the torture and stalling as he took him down for good.

          He entered his house to servants who were watching the fires from the windows but were doing nothing to stop it. They were hoping the house would not be burned to the ground, that someone would come and save them before it came too close. In the end they would evacuate and leave the house to burn, not protecting anything of his before they left. They might steal a few things on the way out, how would he know if they stole it or if it had burned in the fire.

          It was not worth his time. He cared not for the material possessions that filled his home. There was only one thing that he had to protect, that he had to make sure Bastian did not get his greedy hands on. One red rock, the red rock he had chipped at and added to the earring that he constantly wore, the one Bastian never saw. The reason Bastian did not know when he was using illusion in a minor capacity. He had come into the stone during a torture of a man long ago, something he had hidden away and never let Bastian know. What could Bastian do with a rock that could make someone’s gifts override even Rafe’s gift to dampen the gift?

          Loqi went into his room and leaned down, opening the safe that the rock had been in. He had to hurry. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins, telling him to move faster, to run, to go to who were now his friends. Friends. Had the rock been the cause of that or had opening his eyes to what Bastian was been the cause of that? He reached into the safe and wrapped his hands around nothing. He panicked and bowed his head down, reaching back further into the safe. Nothing. It was gone. There was absolutely nothing in the safe, not even the money he stored in there just to keep something else inside of it.

          One of the maid’s stood at the door. When Loqi turned on her she asked, “Is there something wrong, sir?”

          “Who was in this room?” Loqi asked.

          “Only you, sir,” she said to him.

          “Wrong answer.” He reached out and grabbed her by the throat, pulling her off of her feet and pushing her into the wall. She winced, but did little more than that, shuddering against the wall. “Who was in here?”

          “You,” she told him again.

          “Fuck.” He dropped her, allowing her to crumple to the floor and rub at her throat. He wanted to kick her for being stupid enough to be tricked, but it was not her fault that someone had manipulated her mind, he just was not sure who had done it. But what it meant was that Bastian had the rock. The little chips of it in his earring was all he had left, and it would not be enough.

          Go, go, go his mind was yelling at him. He knew he had to run, but since he was at the house he would grab one last thing. He pushed the maid out of the room and slammed the door. He went to his closet and saw at the least his guns were still there. He pushed aside clothes and looked at all of the hand held weapons, wondering how many of them he could carry without overloading himself. The answer was only five before the explosions started. The sound of the fires blazing outside was just a warning that everything was going to Hell.

          Loqi opened his bedroom door and looked disgusted at the maid who still stood there, waiting for him. “Why haven’t you evacuated yet? Are you really that stupid?”

          “No,” she said. “You are.” She held up her own gun, the barrel pointed at Loqi’s shoulder. He let out a sigh and she no longer could see him standing in front of her. She blinked, and though she should have been used to him disappearing on her when he had no interest in being interrupted by the servants of the house, it never seemed to stop from surprising her when it happened.

          Loqi walked past her and knew his staff had been compromised. Had they ever not been compromised? Probably not. Bastian hired the staff for him, why would he have expected anything better from them?

          He walked down the stairs to the first floor of his house and came across servants looking alert. They were waiting for him. He had to walk past them with illusion, to make them not even see the door open as he gripped it and let himself outside. He was not going down, not like this.

          A sting in his neck told him yes, he was going down. He reached up and felt the needle in his neck. He pulled it, watching a blue liquid drip down the needle and wondered how much of it went into his system.

          Panic set in. He looked around, looking for who had shot him with the needle, but he saw no one. He looked behind him and the servants still stood watching the staircase, waiting for him to descend, waiting for something to happen.

          He moved, taking large steps in his dash away from his home and towards the burning buildings, to go through them to the gates. He wondered how long it would take the poison to set in, and what kind of poison was even in the needle. Would it kill him or was it a paralyzing agent? Was it neither? Was it a tracker of some sort? He could not lead them to Eleanore.

          Moving again he stumbled, already feeling the effects of the drug. He refused to stop, his feet moving forward even as he slowed. Burning sensations seeped into his veins, moving slowly. Deep down he knew he was only feeling the effects this quickly because he was trying to move fast. If he simply had walked out and walked down to the barracks it might have taken longer for the drug to kick in, giving him more time to have gone to the gates.

          Loqi slipped to his knees on the pavement. Dr. Meridion stepped out of the shadows, having followed him until his stopping point. Loqi had never had a doubt that it was Dr. Meridion who had attacked him. Even if the man had not shot the needle at him, he was behind the poison that was in it.

          “Am I going to die?” Loqi asked of Dr. Meridion.

          “No,” Dr. Meridion said coldly. There was no fire in his eyes, no life, he had always been a cold man who cared only for his experiments. “President Gentile needs you alive for the next experiment.”

          Two soldiers came forward, grabbing Loqi’s arms and dragging him to his feet. In his own head Loqi was creating an illusion of disappearing, but it was not projecting. Stupid needle, it was keeping Loqi from focusing as drowsiness took over.

          Loqi was taken to the manor, and despite his protests and attempts, he could neither escape or create an illusion. He looked to the gates, sadly hopeful that Rafe and Sloane would manage to escape and keep Eleanore from danger. He would see her again, somehow.

          In the manor Bastian was waiting, his purple suit clad body visible through the fog in his head. Bastian’s sneer on his lips was apparent through the fog as well. “You thought you could trick me?” Bastian asked. Bastian lifted his cane and struck across Loqi’s face, not holding back his strength. If Loqi was not as old as he was, drawing on the near immortality the gift offered him, he would have died from the blow, it would have crushed in his skull. As it was he felt teeth come out and he was sure due to the drugs he swallowed them, he was too weak to spit.

          “Don’t waste your blood quite yet,” Bastian said.

          “You are the one who struck me,” Loqi gurgled out, not sure the words could even be heard.

          “Drain him as much as you can that will keep him alive,” Bastian instructed Dr. Meridion. “Do not let him die. I still have plans for him.