Guardians: The Triplex (The Guardians Series, Book 4)

  “What has no legs but can run?” I ask her.

  “Time!”

  “Yes, time can “run” out!”

  “The answer is ‘Time,’” I tell Kairo.

  He shakes his head and suddenly, Emmy is gasping for air.

  “No!” I shout.

  “You have two more chances, Guardian” Kairo informs me with delight.

  “Don’t look at him Emmy. Focus.”

  “It’s not time…maybe it’s…it’s…” Her voice is getting weaker. The lack of oxygen will be effecting her brain soon, if not already.

  “One minute left,” Kairo announces.

  “Shut up!” I blare at him. His only reply is to laugh even harder.

  “What has no arms?” I say to myself.

  “I don’t know…can’t…think,” she whispers. She’s turning slightly blue.

  “Could he mean the ‘hands’ of time? No time is the wrong answer,” I say, thinking out loud.

  “Sun…chair…go…” Emmy is getting delirious. She has no idea what she’s saying now.

  “It’s the hands of time!” I call out to the Demon.

  “Wrong again!” he says in a sing-song voice.

  Emmy’s eyes are rolling to the back of her head. I turn away from her knowing I will never be able to concentrate if I see her withering away. I force myself to focus only on the riddle. I read and reread all the clues. I feel like I’m missing something that’s right in front of my face.

  Then I look down at the third clue. That’s when I realize it’s not a clue at all. It’s more of an omission. Yes, there’s something about the third clue that is going to reveal the answer. I just need to focus in and drown out the steady laughter coming from Kairo.

  “Why does it say ‘I’m not water’ is that because it is?” I ask out loud to no one. Emmy is now too weak to remain standing. She slinks down to the bottom of the glass. She is barely conscious.

  “Emmy wake up! Emmy, please wake up!”

  “You have ten seconds!” Kairo says, with utter glee.

  Why does he take the time to point out that it’s not water? When is water not really water…? When it’s an image of water. An image that ‘hangs’…on the wall?

  Got it! A painting “hangs” on the wall through it has no arms, it’s a painting of water, so it’s not wet, and what kind of water always runs?

  “It’s a painting of a waterfall!”

  Kairo points the Loop at the glass and Emmy is freed instantly. I quickly get down on the floor and check on her.

  “Em, wake up,” I beg.

  She opens her eyes, shocked that she is now able to breath. She coughs for several minutes. I hold her hand and help her breath normally.

  “So touching. You have ten seconds before the next game,” he says.

  “Marcus, I don’t know if I can do this,” she admits.

  “You can. I know you can. He’s too far away now, but If I can figure a way to get him to come closer to the force field, I can use my power and reflect his fear back to him.”

  “We’re not gonna die here, right?”

  “No, baby. We’re not,” I promise her.

  “Okay, folks, now time for round two!” he says, throwing a jagged, crude-looking stick on the floor towards her.

  He tells her to put it in her mouth so that she doesn’t swallow her tongue. He doesn’t want her to choke on her own blood and that kind of death is too quick.

  I don’t give a damn what the Council does to me. I’m going to end this guy…

  “What’re you going to do to her now?” I ask.

  “It’s simply shocking, I tell you,” he laughs and points the Loop at her.

  The glass box appears. Although this time there is a keypad underneath the riddle.

  “Are you suffocating her to death again?” I ask, studying Emmy inside the glass.

  “And what, repeat my work? Please, have you ever heard of Mac reissuing products without some delicious new upgrade?” he brags.

  “Just tell me what the hell you what me to do,” I snap.

  “She gets shocked every two minutes she’s in the box. That is, until you key in the right five-letter word answer to the riddle, engraved above. Other humans have lasted ten rounds. But your human is significantly smaller and weaker. So, I would hurry.”

  “Fine, anything else?” I ask, trying not to lose my temper, knowing it won’t help.

  “You only get one chance with this one. If you key in the wrong answer, I’m gonna deep fry her like butter on a stick at the state fair.”

  I look over at him, perplexed.

  “Human activities amuse me,” he says.

  “Just start,” I counter.

  “As you wish.”

  He points the Loop at the glass and the keypad lights up.

  “It has the entire alphabet printed on it. Given the number of spaces on the screen, the answer is a five letter word. There’s a timer next to it. It counts down from 120 seconds,” I explain to Emmy.

  “Read the riddle,” she says.

  On the Way Home…

  A mother is walking home with her 3 children

  One is an Angel

  One is a demon

  One is human

  She encounters a beast which blocks her path.

  The beast demands two of her three children as a sacrifice.

  Who makes it home?

  ? ? ? ? ?

  As soon as I am done reading the riddle, I look over at the timer and we have only ten seconds before Emmy will be shocked. She reads the express on my face and tears flood into her eyes.

  “Let me do it, Kairo. Let me be in the box!” Emmy shakes her head. Kairo just laughs and says he’s having too much fun to switch victims.

  She looks as me with sheer terror as she puts the stick in her mouth. The timer is down to three seconds. We look at each other knowing nothing can stop what’s about to take place.

  The timer hits zero.

  The jolt of electricity rips through her body. She convulses uncontrollably from side to side. Her jaw clenches and drool drips down the side of her face. Enraged, I bang on the glass and curse Kairo. I vow to the heavens that I will kill him.

  The electricity stops just as easily as it came on. The timer starts up again and gives us two minutes.

  She falls to the bottom of the glass box and weeps heavily. I tell her I’m sorry this is happening but that I will get her out. She looks up at me and tells me she’s okay.

  I’m okay until I spot that her fingers are now a morose blue-black color and blood is dripping from her nose to the front of her shirt.

  “Read,” she begs me. I pull myself together and reread the riddle. Emmy thinks hard and replies:

  “Okay, okay. The mother gave two of her children away. Which one would she have held on to? Is it the Angel? Or the Demon?” she says.

  “I would say the Angel but then again, we have to consider who’s asking the question. It’s from a Demon so in his eyes, the child that should be kept is the Demon, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Emmy, we can’t guess! We only have one shot. If we’re wrong…”

  The timer reads five seconds.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the human?” she says.

  “They’re all five-letter words. It could be any—”

  The timer is down to zero.

  She didn’t even have time to put the stick in her mouth before the bastard turns the electricity back on with the Loop. Immediately, Emmy’s body violently jerks around like a fish ripped from the water and flung onto a fisherman’s boat.

  A small river of blood leaps from her mouth onto the floor of the glass box. I smell urine and searing flesh. Emmy has lost control of her bladder and there are welts all over her. The girl I love is being cooked within her own skin.

  The timer starts up again and gives us two minutes.

  “I’m gonna tell him we’ll do whatever he wants. I can’t let this happen to you,” I plead with her.


  She crawls up to the glass and whispers something to me.

  “Are you sure?” I ask her. She nods yes.

  The timer gives us five more seconds.

  I do as she says. I go up to the key pad and press the keys that spell out:

  “No one”

  The timer goes off. Nothing happens. Emmy had the right answer.

  Kairo stands up and is livid.

  “How the hell did you guess that?” he demands.

  “Get her out of the damn box!” I scream.

  He uses the Loop and the glass box disappears into the floor.

  Angry, Kairo gets up from his throne and takes a step closer toward the force field. Then he uses his powers. He can move things like Ameana can but his ability is far more advanced. He lifts Emmy into the air with just his index finger and without touching her, he is able to force her to spread her arms and legs out wide so he can examine her. He rotates her three hundred and sixty degrees.

  “What are you?” he shouts.

  I yell at him to put her down. He warns me if I interfere, he’ll kill her on the spot. Then with the slightest move of his little finger, he slices Emmy open.

  In complete horror, I gasp her name.

  “Relax, she’s in suspended animation. She can’t feel anything. At least not until I begin the third game.”

  “Put her down!” I demand.

  “I just want to see if she’s really human. She has freaky eyes and she’s been able to withstand more than most. And she knew the answer to a riddle that no one else was able to guess.”

  Kairo slides Emmy’s heart, lungs, and kidneys out of her body and over a few feet to the left. It’s like he’s playing some bizarre touch-screen game where he can add or remove organs from his victims as he sees fit. Emmy’s eyes are open but she seems frozen.

  Moments later, Kairo puts all her organs back inside her body and she falls to the floor. I rush to her side.

  “How did you know the answer was ‘no one’?” he asks her again.

  Then Emmy does something so strange, at first I thought my girl had truly lost her mind. She starts laughing at the son of all things evil. Her laughter is hysterical and filled with delight.

  “You dare laugh at me? I will break you human!” Kairo vows.

  She laughs harder and whispers to me to get ready. I nod although I’m not really sure what’s going on.

  “How did I guess your stupid little riddle?” she asks in a small, cracked voice.

  “Tell me!” Kairo orders.

  “Marcus told me to think about the person telling the riddle. That’s when I remembered that this is all about you. You’re nothing but a mama’s boy,” she laughs again.

  He walks even closer towards us. And now I understand what Emmy is trying to do: lure Kairo closer so I can use my powers on him.

  “What did you say to me, human?” Kairo asks venomously.

  “You’re a mama’s boy. All this is about you missing your mommy. You called the castle ‘abandon.’ I thought you were talking about leaving hope behind. But that’s not it at all. You call it that because Lucy made you then discarded you like trash. She abandoned you.”

  “She only sent me away because the Council forced her to.”

  “Please, she’s the source of all evil. She could have fought for you but she didn’t and you want to know why?”

  “I am going to kill you. It will be slower than I have ever killed anyone. You will beg me to end your life!”

  “Blah,blah. Do you what human trait Lucy created you with?”

  “Know one knows what the human factor was.”

  “I do - Love. She knew you’d be powerful. She created you, so that was a given. But she didn’t want you to ever overthrow her. That’s why she gave you something she doesn’t have: The ability to desire love. That way she would always be able to defeat you.”

  “I will break every bone inside you and feed it to you,” he promises her.

  “That’s why the answer to the riddle is “no one.” Because the mother in the story loved her children so much, she would rather the beast kill all of them than abandon any of them. That is unlike your mother. Wow, how much do you have to suck for your own mom to give you away?”

  “I’m going to cut inside you and display your remains on my wall.”

  “Here’s what you and you’re your dumbass mother don’t understand: While love destroys you, it’ll keep humanity going forever.”

  “ARGH!!!” He runs into the force field with Loop in hand.

  He’s so focused on killing Emmy he doesn’t even see me coming toward him. By the time he does, it’s too late. I grab hold of his neck and bash his head into the floor. The Loop falls beside him. Before he can counterattack, I look him in the eyes and reflect his fear back to him.

  It is much more difficult to penetrate Kairo’s fears than a normal Demon. It requires more concentration. He’s trying to block me out of his mind. I call out to Emmy and tell her she has to get out in case Kairo breaks free.

  “I can’t, the force field is still up. Anyone can get in but getting out, I need the Loop. And only Kairo’s hand can use it,” she protests.

  “Find a way, quickly,” I warn her, as it gets harder and harder to control my reflecting powers.

  Emmy looks around and spots the stick she was forced to bite on. She goes over to it and without the slightest hesitation, sinks the sharp edge into Kairo’s wrist.

  Kairo screams so loud, it echoes back to us endlessly. Emmy looks like she’s about to throw up as she severs Kairo’s hand from the rest of his body with the crude instrument. Unable to completely take it apart, she stomps on it with her foot until the hand is no longer attached.

  As Kairo yells and curses, black oil-like blood seeps from his bloody stub. He’s lost focus so reflecting his fear back at him is getting much easier now. I enjoy going further and further into the abyss of his psyche. I will render him no more threatening than a newborn.

  Emmy bends down, grabs the hand and picks up the Loop with it. She holds it out in front of her. She finds the other piece of the stick and hurls it across the room to see if the force field is gone. The stick lands on the throne: The force field has broken.

  There is nothing Kairo can do now because I am in control. As he struggles under the weight of my power, Emmy calmly climbs to the top of the throne and reaches for one of Kairo’s knives.

  “Marcus, you are forbidden to kill him,” Emmy reminds me.

  Kairo is gasping for his last breath but even then he manages a sneaky little smile, knowing I can’t kill him without incurring the wrath of the Council.

  Emmy bends down on the floor and addresses Lucy’s son.

  “I have a riddle for you,” she says.

  He looks up at her with disgust. She leans in real close and smiles.

  “What has one hand, two legs and won’t ever finish?”

  “I don’t kn—”

  She sinks the knife into his chest.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS

  After I pull the Amulet off Kairo’s neck, we make our way outside the Castle. The team is approaching and Ameana is among them. Seeing the state Emmy is in, Tony goes into his knapsack and tries to find something that will help her.

  She is still shaking, badly bruised and very weak. So weak in fact, she passes out as Tony examines her. Isabelle advises us to let Emmy rest while they extract various plant mixtures to treat her.

  In the meantime, I recount the events to the team. I leave out the part about Emmy urinating because I know she’d want me to, although I’m sure the team figured it out. The Fire Swans are now flying over to the castle. Apparently the force field over the lake is down as well.

  When it’s time to go, I ask Rio to carry Emmy as I have yet to gain back my full strength. A few hours later, we stop at a hotel where Emmy takes a hot shower. Miku insists that Emmy goes shopping as well.

  “No, let’s just grab a maid’s uniform from the cart in the lo
bby. We don’t have time to shop,” I remind Miku.

  “There is always time to shop,” Miku, Ameana, and Isabelle all correct me.

  I look to Rio for his help but he agrees with the girls.

  “It’ll take fifteen minutes,” he says.

  The guys wait while the girls go inside a small shop and pick out a few items. What was supposed to be fifteen minutes is actually an hour and a half. But I didn’t complain because well, when you get electrocuted repeatedly, the least your boyfriend can do is wait while you shop.

  When Emmy comes out of the store she has on new clothes, smells like spring flowers and the color is slowly coming back to her face. I hold her close and ask how she is feeling.

  “The way any girl would feel after taking down a super Demon—hungry,” she says.

  I hold her tighter than I should given what she’s just been through.

  “That was…close,” I whisper to her.

  “Very.”

  Next, we drop off Tony and Isabelle before we head to Adam City. Although Tony doesn’t say it out loud, I can read the relief on his face when he lands safely on the ground.

  “Hey, thank you for helping us,” Rio says to him.

  “You showed a lot of courage for a Seller,” Ameana agrees.

  “It was nothing. I was never scared.”

  We all look at each other and agree to let Tony think what ever he wanted. After all, he was instrumental in us getting the Amulet. He saved us with his mixtures and his knowledge of the market.

  “You guys wanna stick around for a little while?” he asks eagerly.

  “We have one other matter to see to,” I respond.

  “Oh yeah, the secret part of the mission,” he replies.

  “Yeah, kind of,” Emmy replies.

  We turn to leave when he calls us back.

  “Hey, you remember the story I told you guys earlier?” he asks.

  “You mean about your best friend?”

  “Yeah, could we keep that just between us?”

  We all agree to do as he asks.

  “I don’t feel bad about it or anything. I mean it was a long time ago. Who really remembers their human lives anymore, right?” he says mostly himself.

  Then Emmy walks up to him and hugs him. He’s surprised by her affection but returns it nonetheless.