Star Rebellion (37 page)

              My eyebrows unconsciously furrowed as I considered the predicament Erik and I were now in. The best thing to happen would be for Firestar to take Mister Moscow to Rome by himself and leave Erik and I to fend for ourselves. Knowing Firestar as well as I did, though, made me think that that would be the last course of action he chose. Fire was obsessed with being seen as the bad-ass hero.

              It wasn’t precisely a bad trait to have; he just always felt the need to rescue people. Like when he took Ice, Forest, and Sunstar down into the Underworld to get Waterstar and me.

              I just hoped he would be a bit more subtle this time. We didn’t need yet another species ravaging the Earth.

WATERSTAR

              I was looking out the window of the helicopter when I realized something.

              It was night time.

              We had a time limit.

              That happened during night time.

              “Hey Huang,” I said into the headset. “What time is it?”

              I could hear him in the cockpit, and I could kind of see Huang moving around to see the clock in the helicopter.

              “Just after seven. I don’t know why the sun has set so early, it is summer.”

              I nodded my head to no one in particular. “How long is a flight from Beijing to Rome?”

              Huang paused for a moment. “Around nine hours with current technology, I believe, though there is a seven hour time difference.”

              Nine minus seven… my brain quickly did the math, but I berated myself for falling behind enough that I actually had to think about what the solution was. “So if we left right now, we would barely get there before the ten o’clock deadline?”

              “Yes.”

              Well that’s fantastic. I leaned further back against the seat. This wasn’t good, this really wasn’t good. I didn’t have a way to contact Arctic either, to say that I would be late with Mister Beijing. Or to tell him about what happened with the demons and me falling, well more so the fact that my powers were weakened here, but Ice’s weren’t. Icestar was still pretty out of it, though I would have to wake him soon. We were almost back to the military base.

              Icestar was startled awake when the helicopter landed, so it saved me from feeling guilty about waking him up at least. He too asked about how our timing was going, and wasn’t that happy that we would be late either.

              “The pr- I mean, Mister Beijing will have his personal jet fly everyone there, it would be quicker,” Huang had told us to try and stop the worrying. It hadn’t helped much.

              Mister Beijing was actually waiting for us at the military base. We found him standing at the edge of a very high building and staring across the sky. When Icestar and I came up to him, he finally turned away from the horizon. I could faintly see the glow from the fire we had started.

              “You, you Calshians are amazing,” Mister Beijing said ecstatically, shaking both of our hands. “You have assisted with eradicating portions of these demon hordes. Already my men are saying that they have decreased to a more manageable number.”

              I was caught off guard by all of this. It was a total contrast to how he had been acting previously, and I almost suspected that someone had drugged him or something along those lines. It was kind of creepy.

              “Uh, thanks,” I mumbled. I was also a bit alarmed to hear how much we had helped eradicate the demons. I didn’t think it would actually take out that many. It was more or less a last minute idea, and I had hopes that we would get an A for effort, and he would come with us anyway.

              When I voiced these thoughts, Huang translated it for one of the military leaders to understand. He nodded at once and started speaking in rapid fire Chinese; Huang even had to ask for clarification before translating it.

              “He said that the area where the apartment building had been was one of extreme poverty. There were many citizens homeless there, so it was easy pickings for the demons. Many had traveled there for the convenience of a meal, so many were there to smell your miracle mixture. You can go there and see it for yourself,” Huang eventually managed to say, after a slower speech from the military leader.

              Icestar and I shared a look. “We really need to be going soon. We have an appointment to meet, and it really is not something we can be late for,” I said, trying to sound apologetic. I normally was one for destruction and mayhem, but really, I didn’t want to see a poverty stricken area. That just sounded terrible.

              After Huang translated it yet again, it seemed like we weren’t going to get off that easy. “No, no, you must see it. It is not out of the way for the airport.”

              I took a deep breath and glanced back at Icestar. He shrugged, as if to say there wasn’t anything we could do otherwise. “Alright, seems like we will see this area then.”

              The military leader started firing orders off. I really wished I could speak Chinese so that I could understand what was happening. It was like watching an ant hill after a kid had kicked dust into it.

              Except on Calsh, you didn’t mess with those ant hills. I have heard that the ones on Earth aren’t quite so severe.

              Icestar, Mister Beijing, and yours truly were eventually brought into a car that then also had a five car escort, along with Huang in the helicopter above us. They weren’t taking any chances on us getting killed by demons. It made the supply of weapons I had at my fingertips feel almost useless.

              It took longer to drive to the apartment building than fly, and I was starting to get really jittery about timing and all. We really,
really
could not be late to this. You know, the fate of the world kind of resided on this working.

              My mind was distracted from this grim fact, though. If that was possible, we were now facing an even grimmer situation.

              I have heard stories about poverty before, and I have seen some of the rural settlements of Calsh where poverty is strong. It isn’t a pretty sight.

              But this, this was worse.

              “Stop the car.” I barely had those words out before I was opening the door and stumbling out of the vehicle, not even waiting for it to stop. It’s a good thing they had already been driving slowly.

              I felt the contents of my stomach leave my body and swallowed back the acidic taste of vomit. That had been pleasant. I felt someone patting my back and whipped around, a hand already reaching into a hip holster.

              It was only Icestar, though, and I shrugged weakly at him.

              What could cause such a reaction in the fierce and brave Waterstar, you ask? The decay. The rot. The filth. The half eaten bodies.

              Yes. Half eaten bodies. You know when your mother tells you to eat all of the food off of your dinner plate? Well, apparently no one has ever taught demons the same morals.

              Chunks of flesh were missing from bodies that had been carelessly left everywhere. It made the Mr. John Baker look like a daisy back at the NOPCW. Bones poked out of skin and they were licked clean, while torn open stomachs still displayed remnants of the organs inside.

              I’ll spare you the rest of the details, though. But believe me, I could go on about this, and it will probably never leave my mind. I cannot even describe how revolting this was.

              I let Icestar lead me back into the car. We both had our hands over our noses. The stench here was terrifying, and on the dead bodies, I could see the layers of filth that lined the dead people’s skin.

              Poverty wasn’t taken lightly here. They went full out.

              Mister Beijing gave us a look of sympathy before he patted me on the knee. “I know, it is saddening. As the Japanese say, Shou ga nai. Nothing you can do.”

              I nodded my head, but avoided looking out the window for the rest of the way. I didn’t need to see this destruction and mayhem.

              My stomach was still feeling queasy as we finally made it to the airport. I hadn’t really noticed or cared whenever the demons had come after our car; the five escorts had done a wonderful job at picking them off. Not quite as good as Soulstar and his team, but pretty efficient. For Earthlings.

              I mostly followed the back of Icestar’s shoes through the airport. I wasn’t really in a ‘holy fudge! Shiny new things to see’ mood and didn’t really care what was going on around me. I wasn’t even really aware of the fact that we were finally going to be on our way to Rome after all of this stuff had finally become the past.

              I mean, really. Our mission was just to talk to Mister Beijing, be like “Hey, care to go to Rome with us for a few hours? Really? Great, see you at the airport.” We weren’t supposed to douse an apartment building in oil and acid rain. I didn’t wake up going, “I really want to fall out of a fifty story window today!” I doubt Icestar had been looking forward to trying to use up a massive amount of his power all at once.

              Right now, I didn’t really understand why people enjoyed traveling. It has all turned out to be a really crappy experience.

              And I should be the one who knows about crappy experiences.

              “We are here,” Mister Beijing said, suddenly pulling me from my dead-like trance.

              I looked up and around where we were. I assumed we were at the back of the airport, because through a wall of windows, I could see the airplanes landing and taking off. Apparently the demon crisis hadn’t stopped the flow of traffic. It had probably increased it, if nothing else.

              “We are outside of a jet terminal. It will take us quickly to Rome. We will be there before midnight.”

              I never realized just how choppy simple sentences sounded until I met someone who could only speak in simple sentences. It was kind of starting to drive me insane.

              “Cool stuff. When can we take off?” I asked as Beijing led us down the connecting pathway that led out to the jet.

              “Soon.” The Chinese man hadn’t even turned around to state his reply.

              “How soon?”

              “Soon enough, child.”

              He called me a child. That’s it; I’m done talking to him.

              I moodily crossed my arms, and I swore I saw Icestar smirking at my reaction. Jeesh, guys could be complete dumbasses at times.

              I took a seat in the back of the jet by myself, glaring at a man who looked to be close to my age that had come to sit near me. After that, no one else even ventured closed to my section of the jet. At least, not until we were a couple of thousand feet into the air and Icestar made his way to the back.

              “How are you doing?” he asked cautiously, not even hiding the fact that he was studying my reaction.

              I shrugged, still looking out my window at the blanket of clouds that separated us from the ground. I could see the sun barely on the horizon from this height.

              “I’ve been better.”

              “We all have.” Icestar settled into a more comfortable position in the chair next to me. “It will all work out, sometime in the end.”

              I nodded my head and leaned back against my own chair. It was as close as I was going to get to relaxing; I was still being a bit moody.

              I had nine hours to kill now on the way to Rome. Most of them would probably be spent on sleep. It had been a long day, that was for sure.

              I felt myself drifting off into sleep, and somewhere in the back of my mind I registered my head lightly falling onto Ice’s shoulder. I was too far into my sleepiness to really think much of it though, and settled into a deeper subconscious, letting the dreams take hold of me.

              Miraculously, I wasn’t plagued by the gruesome scenes I had beheld today.

Chapter 22: Let Us Have Some Fun

FIRESTAR

              I followed the line of SUVs, letting cars pass in between us more frequently than not.

              It’s a good thing that I had been taught to drive on both sides of the road, because here in Russia, they drive on the right, while in Calsh, we drove on the left. Why couldn’t all of the roads just choose one way to do things and everyone followed it?

              The SUV in front of me kept turning onto more and more deserted paths, so that it got to the point that I just got out of Erik’s car to follow them more discreetly by foot. I was the only car there besides them, and that really would look suspicious.

              I more so followed the sound of their cars instead of the actual vehicle. It was easier to stay hidden that way, and I needed all the secrecy I could get. I just really hoped that they didn’t have any security cameras lining the area. That would mean that they were also a really crappy terrorists, which is what I have been assuming. These guys really didn’t seem to know much. I wondered if once upon a time, these guys had actually meant something to the underground world. That’s what Erik had made it sound like, and maybe after the government finally regained power, they just kind of went to hell.