Return to Atlantis

Chapter 20 - The Siege

For a few seconds with her eyes closed Ava felt like she was trapped inside her skull. 

There was but the disconcerting sensation and the drowning silence. Her head fell low and her temple furrowed. If she were facing a mirror, she would have seen a diamond-like mark flared on her temple for a fleeting moment...the Atlantii symbol...a quick display of light...

The VIPs had removed themselves from the stage. Everyone fell in a throng as they hustled out of the auditorium; the seats emptying out, the aisles in a crowded jam, and the 4 exit doorways spread across the large hall slowly became a bottleneck of bodies.

"What the heck is going on?" Alec muttered. He took out his mobile and started dialing Sybil. He was halfway in doing so when he and everyone else heard it. A chorus of necks arched up towards the glass dome above.

'Is this for real?' Alec exclaimed in his head. He saw an all-too familiar scene minus the backdrop of the black blanket of space and twinkling stars. A battle scene between the WDF and the aliens is happening right above his head, amidst Earth's blue skies. He watched as WDF space fighters, most of them in their converted two-legged mecha forms, and invaders chase and attack each other: red fire lights flaring from the adversaries' rock pod-like contraption of a battlecraft with metal tentacles whilst blue laser lights shoot out of Earth's defenders - the Cyrus watching the whole thing like a passive spectator as WDF and adversaries were locked in battle with each other. Booming and whirring noises blasted loudly in the sound space. It's the sound of war that Alec had always imagined in the vacuum of space - the sounds you will never hear in deep space.

"My God! My eyes are deceiving me!" Alec heard Sanders on the line thru his earpiece.

The whole room immediately burst into chaos. The crowd that assembled at the aisles became agitated and aggressive, pushing and pulling at each other. Alec faced a stampede of people heading to where he stood near...the exit! He saw Edward among the herd, frantically elbowing people on his way...

It was all but silence....until the sounds of the world returned to Ava so suddenly it was like a sharp blow to her head. The chaotic shrieks of people and the loud rumblings and boomings of flying crafts overhead all came to her all at once. She snapped her eyes opened---and the contacts that rested comfortably in her eyes, rendering the brown-eyed illusion, suddenly blasted out into shattered powdered pieces, revealing her bright cyan eyes.

Alec quickly replaced his mobile in his pocket, jumped infront of Edward, grabbing him by the shoulder. 'Edward, where's Lindsey?'

For a moment Edward stared at Alec, unthinking, then he shook himself away. "I don't know. She's down there somewhere -" Edward said as he pulled out of Alec's grip.

Alec didn't join the rush of people. He jumped and hurdled his way down across the chairs when he heard the loud groaning noise from above. He looked up to see an enemy battleship blistering from incapacitation and overcomed by gravity. It was falling at a rapid speed towards the glass dome on a slanting trajectory. "Oh hell no," he uttered...

'What in the world was that?' Ava asked in her mind. It felt as if a great amount of energy had escaped from her.

Then she stood stun at what she was witnessing at that very moment. People are panicking all around her, running out of the auditorium like herds gone wild and looking up in great fear and trepidation above. She finally look up just in time to see the bulk of a battleship burst through the glass ceiling, raining shrapnel all over the place.  The battleship violently tumbled its way down to the side of the auditorium. Almost immediately, she realizes what has been going on. The ill sensation...it was all but the familiar feeling she had in Atlantis...at a greater intensity...