Project Gemini (WATTYS 2016 WINNER!)

Chapter Fourteen - The Illusionist. (Part 2 of 2).

HE WASN'T A Pariah anymore.

But that didn't mean he didn't know how to fight. The first memory seared in his mind's eye as the Illusionist's grip tore through him, unfurling across his body. Invisible fingers raked his skull, pain danced over his crown as power slammed into him. Electricity shot through his spine and seized the air in his lungs, merciless, brutal, and lacking that sweet, sweet mental seduction that the guilty part of him craved.

This wasn't the touch of a being with time to play with. No, this was the grip of something out to get him. No time to waste, no time for crooning or coaxing, no time for those little white lies that would run through his imagination. The Illusionist was far too brutal for that, instead its hold seeped across his skull, white hot nails that dragged through his brain. Each strike cut deeper than the last.

Kingsley fought for a breath as the thick haze descended, clouding his vision. Any second now.

All he had to do was resist.

Three minutes, he could withstand three minutes.

Zebediah circled him, muttering quietly to his lackie, like a predator waiting for him to cave. The real world flickered, the frozen rain jolted and jammed as the rooftop started to melt. Kingsley couldn't get another breath, his body enslaved. Shadows crept up on them, reality disappearing. No no no, not now. Fight it. Fight, goddamn it.

Another flicker.

This was it.

Cold fingers found his wrist, tethering him to the others.

Resist.

The Illusionist forced, its power lashed at his skull.

Resist.

Kingsley's mind split into two. He arched up as the gun fell from his hand, a scream choked up his throat. The world crumbled around them, reality failing by the second as they fell into the memory. The rooftop washed away in the rain as the cruel cruel past crept back to haunt him.

RESIST.

The memory hit hard.

They arrived in the middle of a riot. A busy road formed around them, the black tiled walls of Downing Street bleached as distorted voices filled the air. Bodies—faceless photographers, journalists, and civilians—swarmed around them, rushing to open up the crowd and swallow them into the chaos.

Kingsley hit the pavement hard, his leg buckling out from beneath him as Zebediah's grip on him vanished, the crowd tearing them apart. He sucked in a deep breath and shoved himself to his feet, ignoring the grazes on his palms as he forced his way through the throng of the crowd to the front.

Police held up the metal barriers, shouting something back at the angry sound of too many dead languages he didn't know and too many accents he'd long forgotten that hurled abuse at the staff waiting by the door to a house on the row. Then he spotted him, the younger him—darker hair and less wrinkles—waiting with a group of officers by the door to Number Ten. His hand was on his baton, no revolver in sight.

A flood of nostalgia hit him.

When he was still powerful. Still a Pariah.

The noise sharpened, the details coming back to life. Snarling protesters rattled the wrought iron gates at the end of the street, overcoming the guards that kept the elite from the poor. A group started to climb, pushed up by those beneath them as people rammed the base of the gate, teetering it dangerously. All those families torn apart, all those men and women driven to rage, all those lives never the same.