Book 2: Chapter 70: An Ending, of Sorts (1/2)
Dan settled on a tree as his weapon, a thick oak whose trunk his power effortlessly carved into a massive pillar. He pulled the gargantuan chunk of wood into t-space and let it fall. While it built speed, he checked the neighbor's houses and found them empty. That wasn't unexpected, but it was a relief. The neighbors had probably vacated their homes soon after Matilda's arrest, in a mirror to Dan's own housing situation. Collateral damage accounted for, Dan squatted in the woods and began to plan.
The thick wall of sleeping gas surrounding Bartholomew was the first, and largest threat. Dan considered simply ripping the lot of it into t-space, but quickly disregarded it as an option. For one, Bartholomew had apparently learned from their first encounter. The gas was easier to grasp than air, but not particularly dense. He simply could not pull all of it into t-space at once, nor could he do it with any kind of speed.
It was still possible to deal with. Dan had plenty of options. For one, he could continuously trigger a thin layer of his veil, pulling in air and gas alike at high speeds. It would basically act like a vacuum cleaner, suctioning in the vacuous material around it. It was an amusing thought, but not something Dan would use. The possibility that Bartholomew could control the gas was too high. He'd demonstrated that ability before, in their first encounter. If the sleeping gas was part of his body, he would know the instant Dan started ripping it into t-space. It would probably feel like being flayed alive.
Normally, Dan would be delighted by this fact. Unfortunately, he had no idea whether or not the gas needed to be inhaled to be effective, nor did he want to give any kind of warning to Bartholomew. These two issues limited his options greatly. His current plan was to alpha strike the house so viciously that the gas was dispersed in every direction. He figured a tree traveling at Mach 3 ought to do the trick. But it wouldn't kill the terrorist. No amount of physical force would do the trick, or so Dan assumed.
Things were even further complicated by the fact that Bartholomew's body may very well be composed of the same gas. The anesthetic mixture he'd used in the past had been easy for Dan's veil to grasp; it had been dense and almost liquid in its composition. Dan might find it far more difficult to mutilate Bartholomew this time around.
Not that Dan wouldn't give it his best shot. It might just take a little longer, is all. And that was dangerous. Every second that Bartholomew had to react to Dan was a second he might turn things around, or pull something nasty out of his hat. With that in mind, Dan's veil began to peruse the house once more. This time, he searched not for life, but for technology. Dan would strip the place dry before attacking.
It took Dan approximately thirty seconds to find the basement. It might have been a wine cellar, once, but it had clearly been expanded. It was deep beneath the house, far deeper than Dan's surface probes had been capable of reaching. Dan explored it with trepidation, fully aware of the varied and horrifying possibilities of what could lay within. His veil crept along cold concrete, seeking out whatever it could find.
He found... something odd. A pair of copper crescents embedded into a steel frame. They were maybe seven feet tall and placed four feet apart. They each curved inward, facing each other. Dan got the feeling that, were he to look at it with his own eyes, the full structure would look an awful lot like a gateway to thin air.
Every bit of the device was packed with electronics. A trio of thick power cords ran from the base into a series of heavy duty wall sockets. The whole thing felt cludged together; Dan's veil could make out where metal had been crudely welded, or roughly pulled into shape. The material was straining to hold itself together.
Yet its shape gave Dan chills. It reminded him far too much of Marcus Mercury's window into the Gap. It wasn't the same; it was even more ambitious. Not a window, but a door. A way in and out. It was Dan's veil, built by a madman's hands and twisted to some unknown and undoubtedly malicious purpose. Dan didn't know where the sudden epiphany had come from, but he knew instantly that he was correct.
With a silent snarl, he sent his veil crawling into the guts of the machine. At such great distance, he couldn't tear the whole thing out of the ground like he wanted to: his veil was simply too thin given the enormous tree it was holding in t-space. The tendrils were like a spider's threads, weaving through the delicate machinery. Dan's veil was a scalpel, delicately making millimeter thick cuts within the device with all the precision of a surgeon. He cut the power cords, the delicate wiring tracing the edges of the gate, every piece of electronics he could find. He carved them into pieces, and left the remnants within the machine. None would be the wiser, right up until someone tried to use it.
Not that Dan would give anyone that chance.
He swept the rest of the house, doing the same. He left only the wiring leading to the kitchen where Bartholomew worked, as to not give away the game. Then his veil worked its way through Bartholomew's clothes, carefully cutting into anything even vaguely dangerous. Dan found an odd cylinder in the man's pocket, packed to the brim with electronics, and he hollowed it out. There was a box cutter in the man's other pocket, and Dan removed its blades.
He pulled separate tendrils away from the man, wrapping gently around the parts scattered across the table. Dan gave a silent thanks to the terrorist for being so accommodating; this would have been impossible if the man hadn't been so immobile. Bartholomew was clearly fully absorbed in his work, only his hands moving here and there, while the rest of his body remained almost completely immobile. He was wielding some kind of spot welder, and Dan's veil snagged the cord where it connected to the wall. The thread was thin, they were all so very thin, but they were enough.
Dan felt for the chunk of wood blitzing its way across the great emptiness of the Gap. He felt its blistering, world shaking speed. He considered, briefly, what the impact might do the houses next door. He considered, briefly, the idea of unleashing what amounted to artillery within a suburban city neighborhood. He considered these things, acknowledged their consequences, and moved on. His course was set, no point agonizing over it.
Dan was tired of running away. He was tired of waiting for others to solve the problems affecting him and his. He was tired of being afraid, of being uncertain, of fearing the results of his own actions. So, he let it all go. He'd settle things here, and live with whatever came after. He could only do what he could do, and he could not walk away.
It wasn't the wisest decision, it was the only decision.
”No more,” Dan whispered, and triggered his veil.
The welding machine died on Bartholomew. Dan could picture the man's confused face as the lights in his room died an instant later. In that same instant, Dan appeared in the sky over Matilda Fairbank's old house. He knew exactly where Bartholomew was standing. He knew exactly where to aim. Dan gestured downwards, flickering in place as he briefly fell into the Gap, retrieved his siege weapon, and reappeared. He was gone a moment later, whisked away before the shockwave could pulp his insides.