Chapter 11: Rescue

Gabi stumbled several times as she was led to the van. She suspected that the two men leading her were guiding her so that she would stumble. Each time her bare foot hit something, the men would snicker.

"Why don't we use their eyes, so we can see where we are going?" the gentle voice in her head asked.

Suddenly, Gabi was seeing the chairs and other obstacles in front of her. The view was a little off center, but she stepped around the next chair the men tried to walk her into. She also felt the man's surprise when she did it.

"Thank you," Gabi told her benefactor.

"I'm your Companion," the voice in her head said as if the simple explanation answered a world of questions.

The words were accompanied by a warm feeling of being loved, and protected.

"Everything will be fine, now," the voice continued. "I was worried earlier, when you were unconscious. I was able to reach Al, and he started the search for us."

"How could he find us?" Gabi asked.

"He can find me," the voice corrected, with what felt like a smile. "Companions are not restricted by these short distances, or walls. Every Companion knows where every other Companion is, within the local sphere. Al can explain it better than I can."

"Is he really close by?" Gabi asked hopefully, as she deftly stepped through a doorway when the men tried to walk her into a wall.

One of the men punched her in the kidney, drawing a gasp of pain from Gabi. He spun her, and examined the headpiece of the burqa. The man happened to be the one Gabi was using for sight, and she was suddenly examining her own shrouded body. He was ensuring the slit in the head piece was still turned backwards. The man finished the inspection, and spun Gabi so she was facing forward again, then shoved her.

Gabi stumbled before the men grabbed her arms, and continued moving through the room they had entered. They didn't try to make her stumble again, and the view through her captor's eyes allowed her to inspect the contents of the room. It looked like a storage room. Long wooden boxes lined one wall. Boxes lining another wall had warning symbols against fire on their sides.

"I've had about enough from these two," the voice in Gabi's head said angrily. "I'm not supposed to attack them until we are away from the Mosque. We don't want to alert anyone about the raid coming. Al's close, less than a quarter mile from us."

"We're with you, too," Caleb assured her. "You'll be in the garage in just a few moments. Then you'll be out of there, and we'll set you free."

The men jerked Gabi's arms, and she stumbled again, but managed not to fall. She didn't want to give the men any reason to jerk her erect again. They laughed at her, and continued leading her towards the garage.

"It looks like a silver van," Gabi reported.

"We see it," Caleb replied. "We're ready."

"You drive half way," the man that punched Gabi ordered. "Then we'll switch. There is no reason for us not to enjoy the ride," he said with a laugh at the double meaning that chilled Gabi to the bone.

Gabi could hear the hungry leer in his voice and shrank from him.

He jerked her towards the back of the van, opened it, and roughly shoved her inside. He climbed into the van, slammed the door behind him, and began pulling at the burqa. The man was almost frantic in his effort to disrobe Gabi.

Gabi heard a growl of anger in her mind, and Caleb said, "Easy Singer. She'll be out of there in a moment, and we'll stop him."

"He's mine," a strange voice growled in her head. "He will hurt before he dies."

"How about if you stop him, and let Gabi hurt him?" Caleb's voice asked reasonably. "That is, if Gabi leaves him alive. Believe me, she can hurt him much worse through his mind than you can with your fists. After your Companion is active, you will have other options, too."

"Uncle Caleb, both of these men may have Companions," Gabi told Caleb, her mind shrinking from how that could have happened.

Caleb was silent for a moment before gently asking, "How many were with you when the portal was opened."

"Four, I think," Gabi replied. "These two, and a tall man with a beard, black hair and blue eyes, and a short man with black hair and a beard," Gabi said hesitantly.

An image appeared in Gabi's mind, and Caleb asked, "Was this the man?"

"Yes, except he has a short beard now," Gabi answered.

Throughout the questioning, the man had continued jerking and pulling at the burqa. He was finally successful in finding the opening as the van began moving.

"I've had enough of this," the voice in Gabi's head said.

The voice had been gentle when speaking to Gabi. It sounded very angry now.

"I can't do it alone, but we can stop him together," the voice explained to Gabi.

"Link like this," Al ordered before Gabi and her 'voice' felt the connection to other Companions.

Gabi mentally nodded, and savored the power at her command. She looked at the man's face. He was grinning in anticipation as he reached for her. His eyes weren't looking at Gabi's face, so he didn't see the hardening of her glare.

Thought has no time. It doesn't have a speed limit like light. Gabi had an eternity to consider how she should respond, and then take action. They didn't need the man alive, but that other voice, the stranger, had wanted to hurt this man, too. Gabi decided not to kill him immediately, but she had no qualms about making him feel the fear that she had experienced, and more.

Gabi froze him in the first instant, so he couldn't alert the driver. She could tell they had left the Mosque garage because of the light shining through the windshield. She only had to hold him like this for a few moments, and Gabi was determined to make that few moments seem like an eternity to the man. She dug deep into his memories, and dredged up atrocities he had perpetrated on men, women, and children throughout his life. She forced him to live through each of them, as the victim.

Thought is timeless, and the man experienced each degradation he had caused others over and over again. It was like a looping film clip, except this film included the taste of blood in his mouth, and the sounds of his own screams of pain. This film included the pain of each knife cut he had inflicted. Each nail he had driven into living flesh to crucify a person was felt. Each rape, and each murder was experienced over and over again.

Gabi dug farther into the man's mind, and touched something dark. Her mind flinched back from the noxious miasma that was slowly consuming the man's consciousness. She felt more soiled by that touch than she had by what the men had done to her.

Al screamed at the touch, but Gabi couldn't tell if it was a scream of fear or hate. It could have been both. The alien screamed again, and focused all the power at their disposal. He gathered all the memories of pain that Gabi had gathered, and formed it into a knife, before shoving it into the man's brain and exploding it.

How long is eternity, and can an eternity fit in a few moments of time? For that man, eternity was the rest of his life, and followed him, screaming, into death. But the darkness didn't die as easily.

Gabi felt the black miasma reach for her. Al helped her Companion form a mental shield to hold the darkness at bay. It wasn't enough.

"We need more power!" Al grated.

Gabi felt her mother's and father's loving touch join the connection, and the power surged. The darkness was stopped, and it began shrinking as the cells in the man's brain died.

Al formed a different knife, behind the shield. He slipped it through the barrier. The previous knife had seemed to explode in the man's mind, killing him. This knife sucked power from the still living brain cells, and the darkness vanished.

The van jerked to a stop, and the driver's door was jerked opened. The driver was shoved out of his seat, but he didn't resist. He acted like he had fallen asleep. A man that Gabi didn't recognize jumped into the driver's seat. The passenger door opened, and Bill jumped into the passenger seat before slamming the door. The back opened and Caleb climbed in, pushing the still upright body of the Jihadist aside.

The stranger looked over his shoulder and met Gabi's eyes.

He smiled and said, "Now that is what I call a punishment fitting a crime."

"Drive, Singer," Caleb ordered impatiently. "We need to get out of here before the cavalry arrives. I have some questions for these two ... um ... for our friend up there. The one back here has answered all the questions that he's going to answer in this life."

"Sorry, Uncle Caleb," Gabi said, as she drew the folds of the burqa around herself.

"Don't worry about it, Gabi girl," Caleb said gently. "I was about to do something stupid and go too early to keep him from touching you again. That would have alerted the Mosque. Besides, I liked your style. I'll have to remember what you did. He was one of those people who deserve to experience their victim's pain and suffering."

Caleb keyed a radio, and spoke into the microphone clipped to his collar.

"Perimeter set. Assault team, go," Caleb ordered crisply.

Caleb looked back at Gabi before saying, "I don't understand what that last bit was. That blackness ... Al, what was that?"

"I don't know," Al replied so all of them could hear. "I know it was dangerous, from very old memories, but the memories aren't complete."

"How can you not know about something in your memory?" Gabi demanded angrily, sitting up, and trying to focus on something besides the ordeal she had just endured.

"Gabi, it is a very, very old memory," Al replied, obviously agitated. "Hosts don't always have the amount of room for Companions that humans have. Occasionally, we must leave some memories, or parts of memories behind. When a new host is prepared, we have time to selectively prune our memories so we have room to grow in the new host. Pruning often leaves bits of memories associated with other events, but the original memory is erased. Fortunately, over the last few eons, the minds of my hosts have been complex enough that few memories had to be left behind. That was not the case in the early universe."

Gabi's mind flashed back to her recent history; the wall, and the portal. Her soul withered slightly and her Companion groaned in the flash of tainted light from the portal. She felt the Companions still linked with her flinch back from the memory of that unwholesome light.

"What was that, Al?" Caleb demanded.