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

Chapter Twelve

"Look at these people, worshipping a god that enslaved them. I wonder how their ancestors that burnt us on sticks would think about this." Thomas said thoughtfully. The normals down stairs were still chanting the name of their oppressor.
"They're worshipping a murderer." Emma said.
"To you maybe. But to me, Caul never killed anyone I care about, but the normals did. Even your ymbrynes aren't any different from them."
"The birds never commit genocide." Emma replied.
"Ha, you know nothing." Thomas laughed. "I grew up in Cornwall, like you. When I first manifested peculiarities, my town abandoned me, chased me into the woods and killed all my families." His claws knocking softly on the wooden railing. "When they finally killed my girl, I swore to avenge her and the rest of my family. I came back to the town that night, and killed everyone there. No one survived past dawn. And guess how your precious ymbrynes react? They wiped the whole town from everyone's memories. And locked me up in a god-forsaken loop."
"They won't do that." Emma said. "You are lying."
"I was locked away the moment I was introduced to the peculiar world." Thomas ignored her. "Because your ymbrynes don't want to deal with someone who has hatred towards normals. They would rather hurt our own people than do harm to the ones driving us into hiding. They are the reason we were oppressed."
"Preventing you from killing people is not an act of protection." Emma said. "It's called maintaining order."
"You can say that to millions of peculiars normals crucified."
"The normals today have nothing to do with that."
"But their ancestors did, didn't they? I would say they deserve what they got today."
"No one deserves this," Emma shook her head.
"They don't deserve your compassion, Emma, much less fighting for them."
"I'm not fighting for them." Emma said. "I'm here for my friends, and if you try to stop me, I'll kill you."
Thomas felt the tip of a gun against his back.
"Now, where's Pensevus?" Emma asked.
*
John and Blanche exited the loop and saw the counter woman reading her newspaper as usual.
"Hey! Who has been to our room? Why didn't you stop invaders? And where's Emma?" John shouted at her.
"Claim down." She said. "Emma told me to give you this." She handed them an envelope.
Blanche took and read, "Meet me at the temple near the third entrance of the train station at six thirty. T.G."
"Who is T.G.?" John asked and looked at the clock on the wall. "It's already six thirty-three."
The counter woman said. "I think Emma went to the temple to meet this T.G. guy. Maybe you can find her there. Oh, she also wants me to tell you to 'bring what's in the suitcase.'"
They went back to the room and took out the weapons in Emma's suitcase.
"Seems Emma took a lot." Blanche said.
"And she should." John exclaimed. Blanche rushed to his side and saw the claw marks on the desk.
"She really should." Blanche agreed.
*
Before Emma pulled the trigger, Thomas hit her with his shoulder, causing Emma to miss her shot.
The crowd down stairs panicked upon hearing the gunshot.
Emma kicked Thomas away and fired again. Thomas ducked and dodged as Emma emptied her mag. Then he pounced at her when she's reloading. Emma threw herself sideways and grabbed a table runner. The cloth caught fire upon her touch.
She swung the burning cloth at Thomas's face, forcing him to stumble backwards toward the railing. Emma lunged forward and pushed Thomas down the attic.
Emma ran toward the stairs and lifted the clothes in the corner, revealing the rifle she hid there when she came in.
Emma picked up the gun and came back to the railing. She scanned the crowd below, no signs of the bird man.
Then a shadow soared up and lunged at her. She fired at him, but Thomas dodged and jumped onto the open window on the opposite side and then pounced down at her. His arms had turned into what resembles a raptor's wing, with claws extending from them. His face had lost all the human features, what used to be his mouth was now replaced by a sharp beak.
He had turned into a giant owl.
Thomas screeched at Emma as he flew into her direction with claws stretched out. Emma threw herself aside as Thomas's beak slammed into the wall behind. He pulled his beak free immediately, sending debris flying. Emma fired several rounds, but Thomas charged head first at her, deflecting the bullets with his beak. Emma quickly rolled aside and Thomas crashed into the floor, generating an impact that shook the whole building, but also caused himself to smash into the railing and fall down the attic along with the broken metal beams.
Emma got up and saw him disappear in the crowd, then she ran downstairs toward the exit.
*
John and Blanche rushed to the temple. The building was surrounded by men in black uniforms.
"Let us go, officer!" A woman in the crowd shouted, "Someone is shooting people inside!"
"I can't let you leave this building." The police said. "There's a criminal inside. Before we find her, NO ONE LEAVES THIS BUILDING!"
Then a they heard a loud Bang and the police fell to the ground, blood gushing out from the hole on his forehead.
The remaining police force tried to keep people inside, but they poured out like flood discharging.
Police fired at the crowd and people started attacking anyone around them in the chaos.
Emma hid her rifle under her coat. She could still feel the heat left from firing at the police earlier.
Thomas resumed human form and hid in the mass, looking for Emma.
Emma pushed through people, hunting for any sign of the owl man.
A man charged at her with a stick. Emma grabbed his arm with one hand and tackled him to the ground. Another man stabbed her shoulder from behind. Emma groaned and turned to knock him down with a kick to stomach. She pulled the knife out of her shoulder, and stabbed down at the attacker. The man grasped the blade right before it touched his chest. So, Emma pressed down with the weight of her entire body and pierced the knife deep into his heart. She pulled the knife out and walked toward the first attacker. He picked up his stick and swung it at Emma. Emma ducked and threw the knife at him. The blade penetrated his right eye, pierced into his brain. He fell to the ground.
Emma bent down to retrieve the knife.
After making sure her attacker is dead, she raised her head and saw Thomas lunging at her.
Then a woman tripped and knocked him out of his way.
Emma raised her rifle, ready to fire, but the mob around her make it impossible to aim. Before she had a chance to pull the trigger, Thomas disappeared into the crowd again.
She covered the rifle with her coat, then felt someone grabbed her arm.
Emma turned and punched. John flung up his arm to ward it off. "Emma!"
"Sorry." She said apologetically.
"We found the loop!" Blanche said, knowing fully well that no one can overhear them in this chaos. "We should go back to get our stuff now," John said.
"We need to kill the owl man first." Emma said.
"You can't find one particular peculiar in this mob!" Blanche argued, "We need to go, now."
"We can't go back, he already knows where we live." Emma said. "We have to go to this loop now!"
A woman was pushed into them, John shoved her away. A police followed her and stopped in front of them. He stared at them for a second then raised his gun, "Don't move! Hands up!"
"What?" John exclaimed.
"Don't move!" The police pointed his gun at John. "You're under arrest for treason against the Peculiar Republic of America!"
While all his attentions were on John, Emma took a step forward and punched his head, his face melted the upon making contact with Emma's burning fist. The police roared in agony and fired blindly at the mob. Emma slammed him into the ground and shouted at John and Blanche, "Let's go! Lead the way." And all three of them started running while pushing people aside.
Blanche led them forward as they fought their way out of this crowd.
Suddenly, John said, "Wait, not there!"
"It will take a lot longer to get there if we go by the road! Not to mention someone will definitely spot us and follow!" Blanche said without slowing down.
"What's going on?" Emma asked.
"I'm leading you to a less noticeable way." Blanche replied.
Blanche led them to the end a dark and empty alley. "Here." Then she started pushing the garbage tank. "Dammit." John said. Then he joined her to move that tank full of litter. They pushed it aside, revealing a manhole.
"Really? That's your 'less noticeable way'?" Emma asked in disbelief and a bit of amusement.
"Mandrake told us this passage. It's better hidden and faster." John explained. Blanche handed them each a flashlight. They attached the light to their rifles and climbed down the manhole.
"Well, it can't be worse than the surface, right?" Emma said to herself.
Then she climbed down into the darkness after John and Blanche.
*
The narrow, damp tunnel pressed in on the group as they waded forward in the calf-high water. The smell of death and decay permeated the air. Their footsteps echoed off the grimy, molded walls, amplifying their discomfort with each splashing noise.
Less than ten minutes into the sewer, they had already started to regret their choice.
When they came to the first junction where the tunnel split into several passages, John felt him step on something in the water.
"What is this?" John mumbled and shone his light at the ground. Then he gasped. A half decomposed corpse laid there, staring back at him. "Why is this thing here?" He looked around, dead bodies were everywhere.
"Don't think about it, just look for red arrows on the wall. Three red arrows then we look for blue ones." Blanche said.
They shone their light on the wall. Arrows of different colors pointing at different directions seemed to have been painted there for ages. The paints of some had started fading.
"This place feels weird." John said, glancing nervously at the flickering shadows casted by their flashlight beam.
"The second red. One more and we look for blue arrows." Emma pointed out.
They soon found the last red arrow and the three blue arrows and, finally, moved on to yellow ones.
"Just three more to go and we can leave this god-forsaken place." Blanche said, forcing a smile. But even she felt the unease that had settled in on them. "Stay close." Emma reminded them. "Be careful."
They shone their light around, looking for arrows. Then John caught something in a glimpse. "What's that?" He said.
"What?" Emma and Blanche turned to him.
John shone his flashlight at a tunnel. About twenty meters away, something stood there.
Or a someone.
Emma raised her rifle, "Who's there?"
It didn't answer. That thing just stood there, staring at them. Then it let out a screeching cry that echoed between the walls. John and Blanche covered their ears while Emma unleashed volleys of bullets at the creature. It fell down and never got up again.
Then the corpses around them started to stand up.
"What the— " John exclaimed. A corpse pounced onto him and closed its jaws on his shoulder. John groaned and blew the corpse's head off. Its hands kept grabbing on to him. He smashed it on the wall, and fired at its chest. The corpse struggled for a moment and stopped moving. More and more dead people swarmed at them.
"We need to find the yellow arrow faster!" Emma said as she blasted a way to the wall. Then something grabbed Emma's feet and she tripped over. More corpses swarmed on her.
Blanche fired at the corpses, blasting their head off. But they kept coming.
"Shoot their chest." John shouted as he slammed one to the ground and blew open its rib cage.
Dozens of corpses were now biting and clawing at Emma, pulling her into the water on ground. She struggled to fire at them, but her rifle was pulled away. She tried to get up, but the corpses pressed her whole body into the water in an attempt to drown her.
John caught a glimpse of a spark of orange light coming from inside the pile of corpses on top of Emma. He slammed a corpse with his emptied gun and kicked it away. Then he jumped to Blanche's side and knocked her down into the water, covering her with his body.
Then the corpse pile on top of Emma exploded as the flammable sewer gas caught her fire.
For a full second, the whole section turned into a fiery inferno. The scent of burning flesh hung in the air, mingling with the pungent stench of dead bodies. Flames consumed the corpses hungrily. Their grotesque form twisted, their already unrecognizable faces deformed in the heat, and their tattered skin sloughed off in charred chunks.
"What the hell?" Blanche pushed John away and saw the burning corpses. "Oh... sorry John. Thank you."
"I didn't mean to cause an explosion." Emma pushed the smoking corpses aside to get up, "We're lucky John acts fast."
"Just try to warn us next time." John said, breathing heavily. "Any of those things left?"
A few meters away, a corpse was trying to crawl towards them, but the fire had burnt its tendons. Its limbs fell off.
Emma approached it slowly. With a pistol at one hand, she grabbed the body's neck and flipped it over. Then she pried its rib cage open, revealing a beating heart wrapped in some sort of membrane.
"How's that possible?" John exclaimed.
"Dead-riser's work." Emma said. "The most powerful dead-riser I have seen." Then she blew a hole on the beating heart and the corpse stopped moving.
It took them another hour to found the right arrows and eventually arrived at the exit.
When they finally got out, Emma pulled the pin of a grenade and threw it down the manhole they used as exit, the explosion shook the whole sewer system.
"No one can wake them up to come after us now." She said.
Then they all turned to face the wasteland ahead.
*
It was a desolated landscape. The air shimmered under the scorching sun, disorienting their visions. Every building has windows broken or great chunks of tile missing. The streets were covered in sand and dust so thick that each step left a footprint. Vehicles left behind by owners that never came back were everywhere, their metal frames eroded with each passing moment. There's no sign of life, not even a bird flying by. A street sign laid on the ground, covered in dirt, its writings just barely visible.
Welcome To Swamp Town.
"So, that's the swamp we're looking for." Emma said. "Who would see that coming."
"We need to find the Greenwood Medical Center," Blanche said, then she looked at the ruins around, "Or what's left of it, anyway."
To their surprise, it didn't take long for them to find the hospital. The building may be deserted, but it's still in better condition compared to what's around.
They passed through the gate into the building. "It's too smooth," Emma pointed out, "Someone has been using this door very recently."
"Then we found the right building." Blanche said.
The floor was covered in glass cullet and dirt, with bags of unknown items lying around. For some reason it reminded Emma of what their bombed house looked like after seventy years.
Facing the entrance was a reception counter connected to another room. They shone their lights into it, prescriptions and paper bags scattered across the floor. On the shelf, hanging from cobwebs, a lone folder, the owner of which missing in the unstoppable torrent of time.
The other floors weren't much different. Waves of heat invaded the deserted rooms through broken window. On the wall, decades-old paint peeled off, exposing the bare structures beneath. Untended equipments laid strewn about, covered in countless layers of dirt and rust.
"We can't just walking around forever." John complained, "The loop entrance can be anywhere."
"This loop is supposed to be created before this hospital closed. The entrance won't be somewhere normal people would go." Emma said.
"The morgue?" Blanche suggested. "It's probably in the basement."
They climbed down the stairwell. When they arrived at the second floor, they saw someone climbing the stairs just below them. "Get out now," Emma whispered. They ran out of the stair room as quietly as they could and hid behind the wall. Two sets of footsteps passed them by and moved upwards. "Follow them." Emma said, and quietly went back to the stairwell, using stairs to hide herself from view.
They kept following the two strangers to the fourth floor, and then Blanche tripped and knocked a metal plate down the stairwell. The plate hit the stairs below, making a loud clicking sound that echoed across the stair room.
"Who's there?" Someone on the fifth floor asked.
"We mean no harm." Emma said. "We're just urban exploring." Blanche said. "What about you?"
"We are travelers, we just come in here to avoid the sun." They answered.
Then, they heard the sound of glass shattering and explosions. Someone was shouting and firing at something.
Emma, John and Blanche stared at the two strangers upstairs, and they stared back. Then they all pulled out their guns and fired. Emma hit one person and he fell down the stairs. The other one hid in the corner where Emma couldn't see.
"What's the situation outside?" Emma asked. The gunshots and explosions continued to be heard. John peeked out of the stairs room, "I don't see anyone."
They hurried out of the stairwell, and saw a bolt of flames flying past them and ignited a wooden board on the wall. More rounds were fired at them, Emma shielded Blanche and John with her body and unleashed a barrage of bullets at whoever fired at them. Her clothes caught fire, but she remained unfazed, until she heard a groan from her attacker and the bolts of fire ceased coming.
Emma extinguished the flames on her clothes and approached the person she just shot. He tried to fire his empty weapon at her, but she took it away effortlessly. "I shot his chest." Emma said, "Put some pressure on it, Blanche." The girl pressed his chest, she could feel his heartbeat stabilizing. "Who do you work for?" Emma asked. The man moved his lips, but before he could answer, a giant black figure smashed into Emma, dragging her into the stairwell.
John and Blanche were frozen in shock for just a second, but it's enough for their hostage to pull out a knife and stabbed into Blanche's side. Blanche screamed in pain and slashed at his throat with her own blade. John raised his gun to fire.
Before they can kill the man, a shockwave knocked them down.
John got up and aimed at the source of this shockwave, but a bullet hit his shoulder before he could pull the trigger.
Then John saw a man in mask throwing something at them. It exploded into black smoke and filled the entire room.
Darkness devoured him.
*
Emma was falling. The thing on top of her held her down with its sharp talons like a bird of prey grabbing its prey. She couldn't move a muscle.
Then the air shifted. The gravity was gone.
Emma struggled with the strength of her entire body, causing Thomas to lose his grasp and slammed into the stair railing.
Emma grabbed onto his neck from behind in midair, and then the gravity came back. They fell together.
Thomas slammed into the ground with Emma on his back.
Emma unhooked the submachine gun on her belt when Thomas pulled himself up and rolled in the air. Emma fell to the ground. She raised the gun to fire, but Thomas broke it in half with a slash of his claws. He then slammed downward at Emma. Emma rolled over, and swung a gas cylinder lying around into Thomas's face.
Thomas stumbled back and Emma slammed the cylinder at him again, but this time he caught it with his giant beak and bit it in half. Highly concentrated oxygen gas escaped from the broken cylinder.
Emma pulled out her pistol and fired at Thomas. He dodged around and instead of hitting the owl man, Emma's bullets smashed into other cylinders scattered across the floor. Hyperbaric oxygen poured out from the holes.
Emma fired volleys of bullets, blasting open gas cans and cylinders, until finally, her gun was emptied. Emma cursed and pushed the magazine release when Thomas soured up and dive at her and turned the pistol into pieces of plastic and metal in one bite. He bit down at Emma again, but she plugged a magazine into his jaws and slammed a fist into his face.
Emma got up and ran toward the stairs while Thomas crushed the mag in his jaws and spit the pieces out. Then he lunged at Emma and slashed her calf. Emma stumbled and fell. Thomas advanced at her and clawed at her back. Emma groaned in pain as Thomas flipped her over and stabbed his claws deep into her abdomen. Emma screamed as Thomas held her down with one hand on her neck and the other raised, ready to deal the final blow.
In her desperation, Emma lit her hands on fire and grabbed onto Thomas's arm, a final attempt of defiance.
The moment her flames encountered the air full of concentrated oxygen, it exploded.
The blast knocked them apart. Emma hit her head on the wall and lost her consciousness.
*
A few seconds later, Emma opened her eyes again. She tried to stand up, but a sensation of intense pain shook her entire body and she tripped again.
"Emma?" Someone called to her.
She slowly crawled towards the source of the voice. Then she saw him. Thomas Griffiths, the person she was desperately trying to kill just seconds ago.
Thomas had returned to his human form, the only evidence of his peculiarities were the broken claws on his fingers and the feathers on the floor.
He was impaled in the chest by an exposed rebar.
"Do you believe you can win this fight?" Thomas asked feebly.
"I don't know." Emma admitted.
"If you win... make sure peculiars don't have to suffer anymore..." Thomas said faintly.
"We will." Emma assured him.
"Forgive me, Lydia..." Thomas murmured, and then he was gone.
Emma struggled to stand up. She could feel the puncture wound on her abdomen being ripped open with her every move. She leaned on the wall and pressed on her wound with her hands.
It's over now, she thought. She will soon bleed out and won't have to fight anymore. This is how the story of Miss Peregrine's peculiar children ends.
Then she saw someone shone a flashlight at her direction.
"Velya? Is that you?" Someone said. But Emma couldn't muster the strength to reply.
Then, the person shut off the light.
Wait! Don't go! Emma wanted to say. But her voice had failed her.
Then she felt something hit her neck, and her world turned into nothingness.