Legacy of the Birds: Book One of Spark(A MPHFPC Fanfiction)

Chapter Eleven

Three people stood in front of a rather humble motel.
Hanging on the door was a faded sign that reads "Peculiars Only."
"Really? That's what this Mandrake guy is hiding?" John mumbled under his breath.
"It does have nightshades planted by the door, just as Liam told us." Blanche shrugged.
"Don't let your guard down," Emma told them, and pulled the door open.
The inside was simple, a counter was placed next to the door, facing the opening, a circular staircase at the end of the room.
There's pretty much nothing else.
An old woman sat at the back of the counter, face hidden behind a computer.
Emma cleared her throat.
"Anything I can help you with?" The woman raised her head.
"A room for three." Emma said.
"We only provide accommodation for peculiars here." The woman said.
Emma raised a hand, sparks of flames dancing on her finger tips.
"Very good," the woman said, "anyone counts as two?"
"No." Emma quickly answered, before John can start asking questions. The confusion on his face was visible.
"Your room is number 825, upstairs." The counter woman handed Emma a key.
At the end of the circular staircase was a half opened door. Emma pushed it open and stepped into a long corridor.
Weightlessness engulfed Emma, a void that tried to hold onto its visitors.
A second later, the void gave her back to the real world.
The light had become dimmer, now, accompanied by an orange hue. The bulbs that used to fill the corridor with white electrical light were now replaced by kerosene lamps.
"What happened?" John asked in low tone. "We are in a loop now." Blanche answered. "Don't act so clueless right now." Emma whispered, "We don't know who may be watching."
*
"I know Floria was full of swamps, but I never thought it would look this beautiful." Blanche marveled at the view outside the window. "You have been doing security checking for twenty minutes already, Emma?"
"We can never be too careful." Emma frowned at her. "It might save your life. But I think this room is relatively safe."
"What time are we now?" John asked.
"February third, 1979." Emma gestured at a calendar on the wall. "43 years ago."
"Seems a lot happened in 43 years." Blanche said. "The view outside looks nothing like present day."
"War happened." Emma responded. "After Caul took over Europe, the peculiar clans in America formed an alliance against him. The wights force couldn't get past their defense at first, so Caul used extreme weathers to break their line, and eventually destroyed pretty much everything on the Atlantic coast."
Emma closed her eyes, the apocalyptic days were so vivid as if they were just yesterday. Rain ceased to fall for months. Lightning bolts struck out from behind the clouds and ignited anything flammable. Tornadoes picked up vehicles and trees and pieces of houses, and crashed them down on anyone or anything still standing. Forests turned into burning inferno, city ruined after disasters after disasters.
Needle Key Bridge washed away by the unnatural tides that trapped people on land.
Jacob's home crumbled right in front of her eyes. His parents' car exploded under a strike of lightning, its owners consumed in flames.
Another two lives she failed to save.
Emma shook her head, she didn't need to remember those things now. The present wasn't any better, but at least focusing on it allowed her to escape from those memories, if just for a while.
"We should search this loop." Emma finally said. "Looking for anything related to nightshade flowers, first. It's the rebel's secret symbol after all."
John looked out of the window. People dressed in vibrant colors with clothes which type John never even heard of. The streets on which countless colorful cars roamed was no longer covered in layers of sand, the asphalt was new and fresh with a beautiful kind of black John had never seen.
43 years apart, a pair of eyes stared at the motel room across the street.
*
Emma sat down across the counter. The clerk woman raised her head, "Anything I can help you with?"
"Have you heard of a man called Mandrake? A friend of mine told me he lives around here. And I figured, maybe I should pay him a visit."
That was stupid, she thought.
"Never heard of him." The clerk woman replied briefly.
"Is there anyone who knows almost everyone here? I really need to find this Mandrake guy."
Dammit Jacob, you should be here. You always know the right question to ask, Emma thought.
"Sorry miss, If you don't even know this person you're meeting, I'm afraid there's nothing I can help you with. Word of advice, don't go looking for those you don't absolutely know, you might find unwanted trouble instead." The counter woman finished her sentence and turned her attention back to the newspaper on her desk.
Oh Jacob, I really need you here, Emma thought.
Frustrated, she finished the awkward conversation quickly and started wandering around in the present. Sometimes you just have to go through a door, she thought. What she didn't realize is that, ten years ago on the same day, Jacob Portman thought of the same thing, on the other side of the world.
The present landscape was still a desolated wasteland, but this time buildings and man made structures somewhat covered up the nothingness that extended into afar. A least a little bit.
Shouts from not far away caught her attention. She followed the sound to a dark alley. A man grabbed a little girl in one hand and held a knife to her throat with another. "I warned ya if ya try escape one time I will stab this in your throat!"
"What are you doing?" Emma asked.
"Piss off, none ya business." He said. The man turned to face Emma. "Get the hell outta here, now!"
"Help!" The girl cried out and punched the man from the back and made a run for it when he lost balance.
"Stop you bloody whore!" The man lunged at the girl and slit her throat. She laid on the ground, blood streaming out from the cut on her neck. The man stood up, and saw Emma starting at him in shock. "The hell ya looking at?" He shouted at Emma.
Emma's shock turned into anger. Her fists clenched.
"Move." The man said. "You're on my way."
Emma replied with a punch to his face.
The man pulled out his knife and lunged at Emma. Emma dodged it, and kicked his leg. The man fell to the ground head first. Emma stomped on his hand and kicked his knife away. The man groaned in pain, and roared, "I have a peculiar friend, he will kill you when he hear this!"
"I'm sure he will," Emma replied coldly, and lit one hand on fire and grabbed his hair while the man screamed in agony. Then Emma slammed his head against the wall with his hairs aflame. The man struggled, his shoulder hit Emma's abdomen. Emma stumbled and let go of him. He leapt and grabbed for his knife, then lunged back at Emma with the knife while his hair still aflame. Emma drew her gun and fired. The man tottered backwards and smashed his head on the wall, blood and brain spattered.
She looked at the bloodstains on the wall, then to the lifeless girl and the smoking corpse on the ground. The girl doesn't seem older than twelve. Normal kids that age used to only have to worry about schoolwork and friendship and crushes, not how to survive this god-forsaken world.
And she could have saved her, but she didn't. Her hesitation gave the man a chance.
Another live she failed to save, Emma thought miserably.
*
"How long are we gonna keep walking in this bloody corridor? It's not like we can find any rebel activist just by looking around." John complained quietly to himself.
"How about we go look outside? Surely the loop covers more than just this motel." Blanche suggested. "I'm tired of these corridors, too."
They pushed the door open. The sky was clear, sunny but the weather was cool.
John couldn't help but looked around, overwhelmed by the strange feeling of being in a different time. The buildings were taller now, tiles on the wall shining under the gentle but bright daylight. There's more cars and people on the street than the present day. Vendors and shops arranged at both sides of the street. People walking on the sidewalks in pairs or groups. Customers coming in and out of stores. John could only vaguely remember a world like this from his childhood.
"What's wrong? You seem shocked." Blanche asked.
"Nothing. It's just I never really time traveled before, I wasn't expecting this period to be so... different." John replied.
"Trust me, it still happens when you do this on a daily basis." Blanche assured him, and grabbed his hand. "Let's go look around."
The air pressure shifted when they stepped into another block. We crossed the loop boundary, John thought.
"Should we really go outside the loop?" John whispered to Blanche.
"Don't worry, you can't really change anything here. The past can't be changed." Blanche replied.
"I mean is it safe to do this?"
"What could go wrong, anyway?" Blanche shrugged. "That's go get something to eat, I'm tired of the awful food in present day America."
They stopped by a burrito vendor and bought two tacos with the money Emma gave them. John gulped down the taco. "I never thought anything can taste this good."
"Take it easy, you got sauce on your hand." Blanche laughed and took a bite on her taco. "What exactly have you been eating back in England?"
"Well, you know, can't be too picky when you're being hunted by monsters every day."
*
Emma returned to their room, still processing the display of brutality of this world she just witnessed.
To her surprise, the door wasn't locked.
Emma drew her gun and peeked inside. All three of their personal bags were emptied, their stuff all over the floor.
Emma stepped into the room and closed the door quietly behind her. She checked everywhere, no one was here, now.
The suitcase in which she put all the weapons from Abe's gun cabinet remain locked in the corner. There's no sign of fighting, no blood, no bullet, Blanche's acid mark wasn't present, either. They probably haven't even come back.
Emma had a feeling something was wrong with their stuff on the floor but couldn't tell what it was.
She looked around and saw an envelope on the desk. Five claw marks were left next to it. She picked the envelope up, and turned back to the messy scene on the floor.
Then it occurred to her, John's doll was gone.
Pensevus was gone.
*
"It feels so good to go back to somewhere that's air conditioned." John said right after they entered a supermarket. "The outside doesn't feel as scorching hot as the present, but this is way better."
"It kinda weird, you know?" Blanche said. "The past now seems way more advanced than our time."
"Guess World War Three does have some effect." John said, as if this is something as casual as what the dinner would be.
Maybe if you live in hell for too long, the purgatory becomes something to joke about.
They stopped by to look at the products on the shelves and taste the food samples. John stayed at the bakery area for a while, just taking in all the fragrance. When was the last time he came across the smell of freshly baked bread? He can barely remember.
Next section was the frozen food area. A sampler offered them each a small cup of ice cream as they walked by.
Upon swallowing the ice cream, John felt a burning sensation in his palms.
He started running towards a freezer someone left open. His hands grew red and swollen and hot, so hot that he couldn't help but grabbed onto the frozen cheese bag in the freezer to cool down. But then the cheese melted and the entire bag caught fire.
John let go of the bag, and it fell to the ground, still burning. John tried to extinguish the fire by stomping on the bag while flames in his hands gradually grew weaker and eventually died out.
Blanche and the sampler watched in horror, then the sampler screamed. Blanche rushed to silence him, but it's too late, many customers had already heard it and gathered to the aisle. "What's happening here?" A man in staff uniform asked.
He pushed through the crowd and came face to face with John and saw the smoke on his hands. "Stop playing tricks with your hands!" He shouted. "Did you do this?" He picked up the melted cheese. "You think this is fun? You think it looks cool to ruin our cheese?"
"Sorry sir, I didn't mean to, it's an accident!" John said.
"You young people think you can do things like this and get away with it by calling it an accident—
"We really didn't mean it!" Blanche said a little too loudly.
"Are you with him?" The man turned around.
"Yes, I'm with him, and he really didn't mean it." Blanche stood straight, staring at him.
"And you think I will buy that? You're not the first teenager coming here to break things!" The man roared.
"I don't care if you believe us, because this never happened." Blanche said.
"What the—
"All of you here is just part of history now, nothing we do matters, and nothing you do can change a thing."
"You're psychotic!"
"Your comment never existed, so I will forgive you." Blanche said.
John watched the scene, wondering if Blanche was just having some fun with these normals.
"Enough," someone said.
An old man joined them. He wore a pair of sunglasses that covered half of his face. "I'm sorry my grandchildren here brought you so much trouble. I will pay for the loss they cost."
John noticed a purple metal flower on the ring he's wearing.
"He's not—"
Before Blanche could say anything else, John spoke. "I'm sorry grandpa, I shouldn't get myself into trouble again."
"What is going on here?" The staff man asked.
"I'm taking my kids home, that's what's happening," said the old man.
*
"What are you doing?" Blanche whispered to John.
John looked at the old man, making sure he can't eavesdrop, then replied, "You see that ring he's wearing? That's a nightshade. It's the symbol of the peculiar rebellion."
"But he's also wearing sunglasses back in there, he's clearly a wight!" Blanche protested.
"We have to take a little risk, or we're never gonna find out where the rebel loop is." John argued.
"Fine, just make sure we can kill him whenever we have to." Blanche said, and then turned her gun's safety off. John did the same.
"Hurry up, you two." The man said but didn't look back.
They followed the man back to a house next to the motel they lived.
"You can't just tell those people they're a part of the past! They may be unchangeable, but they are still able to kill you." The man closed the door behind them. John thought his tone sounded like an annoyed teacher scolding two four-year-old children.
"And what do you know about them being unchangeable?" Blanche asked.
"Don't play dumb, you two are the most obvious peculiar bunch of peculiars I've ever laid eyes on." Said the man.
"You are peculiar, why do still you live in the 70s?" John asked.
"I said he's a goddamn wight!" Blanche murmured.
"Yeah, that's what they call me." The man said and took off the sunglasses. His eyes were completely milky white, where used to be pupils was now just blank nothingness, an eternal scar on the soul. "I am a wight, and I chose to live here because the present is terrible."
"Yeah, you can say that. You guys made the present days hell yourselves." Blanche said resentfully.
"And I regret that happened." The man replied. "I saw you making fire with your hands, boy, that's quite impressive."
Blanche reached out for her gun.
"Don't act like I said something crazy, everyone saw that back in the market." The man said.
"I don't know what you're talking about." John quickly replied and mouthed "no" to Blanche.
"You see, I'm completely unarmed. There's nothing I can do if you decide to kill me." The man gestured Blanche, and said, "But maybe you should listen to what I have to say first."
"Let him talk, Blanche." John said. Blanche nodded reluctantly but didn't remove her hand from her gun.
"Thank you, boy. It started in early twentieth century, a group of peculiars call Claywings believed in peculiar supremacy and that we should be ruling over those inferior normal people, not hiding from them. And I, growing up during a time when normals are the main problems of our survival, was naturally drawn to this ideology. A year after I joined the Claywings, the leader, Jack, decided to conduct an experiment that will free us from the confinement of loops and allow us to start our crusade against the normal kind. And you probably know what happened there."
"Tunguska, 1908," Blanche said, "the event that turned you into the first hollowgasts."
"Yes. I don't remember much of what happened when I was a hollow. In fact, I don't remember anything when I first became a wight, but as time went on, I started to remember some fragments, the strongest of those memories is my dream of a safe and free world for all peculiars. Later, I joined Caul's organization as a wight, however, I started to question what he's really after. He became obsessed with taking down the ymbrynic system, and eventually turned on the Peculiardom as a whole. The last straw was ambrosia, when he started manufacturing those drugs, I realized he no longer cared about peculiar kind, he just wants control over it. So I left them, and crossed the sea to America and lived a rather peaceful life here. Until the war broke out, and Caul turned the present into a living hell." The man sighed and finished, "We were supposed to save the Peculiardom, instead we dragged the whole world down with it."
"So you want to help the peculiars fight Caul, to make up for what you did before?" John asked.
"Yes, I do. But more importantly, I have seen normals persecute peculiars and peculiars oppress normals, and I don't think either is better. If this world is to be better, we need to stop treating each other with fear and hatred. And I believe if one day, the peculiars and normals can unite against the tyranny of wights, a world of respect and compassion won't be far away."
"It does sound pretty ideal," Blanche said, "But how do we know you are not an agent from Peculiar Security Bureau who just made those up to trick us?"
"Well, Liam didn't mention you guys are so skeptical. But I guess that's a good thing." He said. "I know you guys just broke into an illegal ambro factory near Englewood, I know you met one of our field agents Liam Brown, and his father was just killed by an unidentified peculiar. I'm supposed to be known to you as the Mandrake, because that's what Liam told me. Also, I know Emma Bloom is with you, where is she now, anyway?"
"I think he's telling the truth," John said. "Yeah," Blanche agreed, and removed her hand from the gun.
"So, Mr. Mandrake, I suppose Liam told you about why we were here?" Blanche asked.
"He said you were looking for a rebel loop," Mandrake replied, "And that's what I can help you with."
*
In a temple not far away from the train station.
"Today we gathered here to pay our respects to our almighty king! The god of glory and peace!" A priest on the shrine exclaimed.
"Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul!" The crowd roared.
"To our eternal lord of life and authority! The ruler of heaven and earth! Of peculiar and normals!"
"Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul! Caul!"
Thomas Griffiths watched it all on the attic of this temple.
Pathetic, he thought, those idiots have now started worshiping the very monster that enslaved them.
But then again, those normals don't deserve his compassion.
He heard steps closing in from behind.
A woman in a black coat came to his side.
"About time we properly meet, Miss Bloom." Thomas said.