Chapter Four

Occulte groaned as they approached the main gates in the small electric car. A contingent of security guards from the base were milling around, all of them glaring daggers at the two of them. Evidently their escape had not gone unnoticed.

“Do you mind letting us through?” One of the guards had stepped in front of the car, blocking the gate.

“Step out of the car.” The guard looked at him as if he was a particularly juicy piece of meat.

Occulte stepped out of the car, Diamond following close behind him. The guard that had blocked their way grabbed Occulte’s shoulder, shoving him towards the opening entrance. Unfortunately for the guard, Occulte did not like being shoved around. The guard had a half-second to realize his mistake as he saw the nine millimeter exit the folds of the boy’s trenchcoat. Two blasts cut through the air, the guard falling. Both of his feet now had rounds buried in them.

The other four guards didn’t tolerate this very well. One of them rammed his shock stick into Occulte’s backside, sending him sprawling to the ground. The other three came in with their sticks swinging hard into him, utilizing the weapons like nightsticks. He attempted to roll over, to try and fight back, but all it got him was a blow to the gut that caused his breath to explode from him.

Occulte got a temporary reprieve from the abuse as Diamond came in with a side kick to one of the guards. While it may have bought him a few seconds, it did no real good. The guard responded out of wild anger, swinging his shock stick across her face. She dropped to the ground like a bag of cement, her nose obviously broken.

The guard’s life had effectively ended then. Occulte rolled away from the guards, grabbing his dropped pistol as he went. When he came up, he let off a single Teflon coated round into the man’s skull. He had no time to fire a second as the two uninjured guards came in at the same time, one of their metal sticks colliding with his spine, and one with the back of his head. Lights exploded before Occulte’s eyes, the pain forcing him into blissful unconsciousness.

*******

Occulte awoke very slowly. At first, the only sensation he could experience was pain. It was like his brain was doing a self-diagnostic; as consciousness began to return to him he felt only the sharp, drilling ache in the back of his head. Most likely a concussion. He then noticed the shooting pain every time he took a heavily labored breath. Probably a few cracked ribs, and maybe a collapsed lung. The rest of his body was incredibly stiff, and entirely unwilling to move correctly. This was probably best explained by the fact that Occulte could feel he was laying on hard concrete. Judging by the dryness in his mouth, and the stabbing hunger pangs in his gut, he had probably been out for a day or so. He was most definitely not in the best condition of his life.

As Occulte attempted to open his eyes, he found the other reason for his stiffness. He was in one of the sub-basement cells. It was probably about forty degrees, and even colder on the floor he was on. The only light came from a harsh red bulb that burned the eyes to look anywhere near it. The cell he was in was most definitely inescapable- it was made entirely of reinforced concrete, with no windows and only one nearly impossible to open door. It took about eight men tugging at the spokes on the other side of the massive would-be wall to force the thing open. Even if Occulte had been at full strength, he would have stood virtually no chance of opening the door within any reasonable amount of time… and as it was, he wasn’t even close to half of his normal strength.

Occulte now knew that his only chance rested with his jailors. If they opened the door for anything- to feed him or to retrieve him- he would have to take his opportunity then. Perhaps he could take a guard hostage and negotiate his way out of the compound. No matter how he did it, he realized that in his condition he would have to have the element of surprise. Keeping that in mind, he jammed his body into the small corner at the beginning of the massive door. He would have to leap out and grab whoever came in first. He desperately hoped that his body would not fail him.

After two hours of standing crunched up in the small corner, Occulte finally sat down, relieving his shaking legs. It was another six hours of the absence of any change before he moved to the center of the room and began meditating. Obviously he was not going to have any energy to do anything if all of his muscles seized up on him because of lack of rest.

Occulte was pretty good about keeping the time in his head, letting him count out twelve hours before he finally fell asleep out of the wave of exhaustion that had swept over him.

Even his dreams were no solace from the nightmare he was living out. His mind responded to the pain in his body by imagining himself into a body cast, paralyzed and bound to a hospital bed. It had always been Occulte’s worst fear that he would someday loose control of his faculties or his body. That was the worst fate he could imagine, for some reason. He had absolutely no fear of death; what was the point? Everyone is guaranteed to die at some point, so death is something that is assured. There is no escaping it, and therefore there is no logical reason for fearing it.

Occulte’s dream suddenly shifted, plunging him into a painfully dazzling white light. He looked around, but there was nothing to be seen. Wherever he was, it was completely empty of anything and anybody. There wasn’t a speck of matter to be seen, not even a floor beneath his feet. The various pains were gone from his body, and his dream had become a thousand times more vivid.

He then realized that he was aware he was dreaming, and as soon as he realized that, it also clicked that he probably wasn’t actually dreaming.

“Occulte.”

Occulte whirled around in surprise, caught off guard by the beautiful woman that had managed to somehow sneak up on him without making a noise. Of course, since he couldn’t see any floor, it might just have been that there was no solid contact to create a sound in the first place.

“Who are you?” He asked in a shaky voice. He didn’t like this place; he knew nothing about it, and was therefore at a tactical disadvantage.

The woman smiled at him. “Always thinking with a military mind, aren’t you Occulte? Don’t worry; you have no reason to fear me.”

Occulte was unsettled by the way she had responded to his thoughts. “Can you read my mind?”

She nodded. “To some extent. My name is Tara, by the way. It is nice to finally see you again Occulte. It has been a while.”

“We’ve met before?”

She smiled again. “Of course. I’m your mother. You were taken from me when you were only a week old, snatched by a squadron of men sent by the Fulfiller. Your father and I had no desire to surrender you to them peacefully, so we were gunned down.”

“Uh huh,” Occulte muttered in a disbelieving tone, “now could you perhaps tell me how I wound up in a sanitarium?”

Tara laughed. “You’re not crazy, and neither am I. I have brought you to the Plane of Crossover… a barrier between your realm and mine. I can’t give you any specifics as to the dynamics of how our realms interface, or exactly what my realm is, as that information has been forbidden to be passed down to any lower-dweller.”

“Yeah… “ Occulte muttered as he began slowly backing away from the woman, “I think I’ll just be leaving this particular fantasy now…”

He bumped into something soft and turned around in surprise, only to see Tara standing there. He hurriedly turned his head back to where she had just been, to check and make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

“How the hell did you do that?” He demanded.

“I know you have many questions, Occulte.” Tara rested her arm on his shoulder, trying to settle him down. “And I swear I will answer as many of them as I can before you leave. But for right now you have to trust me. I can make this much easier, but you’re going to have to let me enter your mind.”

Occulte slowly nodded, only now beginning to grasp that he was either entirely insane, or that this woman was telling the truth.

“Okay, what do you want me to do?” He asked.

She smiled and placed her hands on either side of his head.

“Just relax, listen, and learn.”

A bright flash of blue light twisted reality around Occulte, and he found himself immersed in his mother’s thoughts, filling himself with her knowledge.

‘Occulte, soon you will have to take upon much responsibility.’ Tara’s voice echoed throughout his mind, soft and gentle, and yet subtly powerful. ‘You have been chosen to undertake a great task… many, many beings will be relying on you. Do not take this lightly… if you are ready, open your body to me, and I will fill you with the power you will need to accomplish your grand mission.’

A wave of energy swept throughout Occulte’s body, flowing through him as though it had a will of its own. He could feel it as it sharpened his senses, awakening his mind from its dull state into a powerful consciousness.

He couldn’t help but let his trademark smirk overcome his facial features. It was time for revenge. It was time to show the Fulfiller exactly who controlled who.

It was time for war.