Wendy and Adam take flight with incantations that blow chunks of dirt up from the position where they were standing. Adam is covered in a red glow and he has a smirk on his face as he flies over the high gates of the CZS and toward the high stairs that lead up to the entrance.
Paul, Falon, and Manuel, covered in blue, indigo, and golden outlines of glowing energies, fly after Wendy and Adam and when they land at the door, and Wendy blows it off its hinges, Paul and the others fly inside and up to the second floor.
Wendy and Adam walk inside just in time to see Rhode and Miriro follow after her friends to the second floor and Adam stands ready as Adang, possessed by the energy and knowledge of Aile’s ancestor Fang, ready to fight when they see Tin standing in the large lobby area. Tin looks weary and there is considerable commotion on the floors above that they can hear from the first floor. Before any of them speak, some of the red energy separates from Adam and comes to the form of a tiger that stands as tall as his hip.
“Why are you back here?” Tin asks, yelling over the commotion as security forces run up the stairs and others come tumbling down.
“I want my Great uncle,” Wendy says.
“If I give him to you, will you go? And take your friends? You avoided the mind control and the alien war, you can thank me for that later, but the Board will be here soon to celebrate the successful launch and they’ll make me take you. And your friends. It’s all you, isn’t it? You’re helping to sustain these possessions to give your friends power. You are truly amazing Wendy. I’ve heard of the Brave Chimutengwende in my travels, and I didn’t believe that any medium could be so powerful. But you could crush me even now, even with everything I know about pre-human magic. I want to teach you. But this place isn’t right for you. This place is bad.”
“If you know that, why are you here?” Adam asks.
“This organization knows things that no other humans on Earth have access to. So I am their pawn, their Tin, in exchange for that.”
Wendy is disappointed that she won’t get to see Adam’s tiger attack Tin. She knows that he is being sincere, he seems to dislike the CZS as much as she does.
“You sent Ivan and Clay into space?” Wendy asks.
“They just left, but understand, this wasn’t my thing. I came here to help Dr. Worthington do his work, and that’s what I did. He wanted your friends for their abilities, they are very strong First People descendants, and the other men, Kevin and Danny, both for the alien technology in their bodies that give them special abilities.”
“Can we get them back? Where are they going?” Wendy asks desperately.
“I don’t know, it’s not my job to know, and honestly I don’t care. But if you want to have a chance of ever seeing them again, then leave, and trust me, I will find out, and I will let you know. We don’t have to be enemies.”
Wendy shakes her head. “We came here to burn this place down. What you do here is evil, and I can’t let those inhuman incantations you know get out and fall into the wrong hands. You can stand against us and see what that tiger does to you, or you can let us destroy this place and free any innocent people.”
Tin sighs loudly and then looks at his watch.
“You have three hours. How much do you have to destroy to be satisfied?”
Adam looks back at Wendy curiously.
“What?” Wendy asks Tin, just as confused as Adam apparently is.
“I will give you your uncle back, your friends can continue beating up security and you can destroy whatever you want, but when the board gets here, you have to be gone so I can make my lies work. I’m sure it won’t be hard for you all, but you’ll need to rough me up as well.”
Tin closes his eyes and yells loudly. Adam and Wendy tense, ready to attack, but the spirit of an old black man appears before Tin and he faints when the old man recognizes Wendy.
“Anesu!” he screams with excitement and runs to embrace Wendy.
“You can trust him,” Great uncle says to her. “There is no one to save here. We should leave.”
Wendy nods and she and Adam take off for the second floor while Great uncle checks on Tin. When they reach the second floor, they see Manuel and Falon battling Rhode’s soul dragon, while Paul and Miriro fight intensely with long sticks made of soul energies. Manuel shoots golden balls that bounce when they hit anything that isn’t the dragon, but explode when they connect with it and each explosion leaves deep pits in the dragon’s scales, causing it to roar with agony. Falon works to redirect the dragon’s fire that explodes from its mouth each time it opens it, and she collects it before throwing it back at the dragon.
Paul and Miriro seem to be evenly matched; he is possessed by the energy and knowledge of Isheanesu, who has battled with Miriro for centuries. Wendy watches as Miriro incants to imbue her soul staff with the light of first creation, the white light that had evaporated a portion of Isheanesu’s spirit. She charges Paul, who dodges her easily and spins, smacks her hard on the arm, causing her to lose the staff. Then he drives his staff deep into Miriro’s back and she wails loudly. The sound causes the dragon to stop, and then it suddenly shrinks down to Rhodes body. He tries to run to Miriro’s aid, but Falon and Manuel incant to trap him in a spirit energy cage.
With the staff deep inside of Miriro, Paul tries to get information out of her, but Wendy approaches.
“We got all the info we need from Tin,” she says. “There’s no one left to save.” She looks to Falon. “I’m sorry.”
“I want to see his body,” Falon says, and she yells at Miriro, “where are they keeping my father.” She is possessed by the knowledge and energies of Anesuishe who helps her to show Miriro an image of her father, a mental image that she forces into her mind and causes considerable discomfort to Miriro.
“He was in the room with the others, they couldn’t use him. He must still be there.”
“Show us!” Falon yells and they all follow Miriro who is still impaled by Paul’s staff. The energy of Isheanue inside of her form inhibits the use of her powers and she knows that she is at the mercy of her enemies.
She takes them to a mostly empty room and Falon sees her father strapped to a bed with a fishbowl like helmet over his head. As she runs to his side, his head explodes inside and she screams, then bursts into tears. Wendy hugs her as she sobs into her shoulder, and after a few minutes, one of them notices something strange about Falon’s father. She doesn’t want to look at him, the memory of his head exploding was still fresh, but when she finally looks at the body, she is surprised that a new head is growing right before their eyes, and before long, a completely new head has grown and he looks like the man that Falon knows to be her father. Before she can muster hope that he is alright, his head explodes again.
“What is happening?”
“They couldn’t use him,” Miriro said. “They brought him back to life, made him invincible, but they don’t know how to stop that from happening. He’ll just keep exploding over and over.”
Falon doesn’t understand but she knows her father is dead. Even if this is his body, no human can survive this experience, and she is ready to let him go.
“We should finish up here,” she says. “We can’t help him.”
They leave the room and they decide to fly out as Manuel, possessed by the knowledge and energies of Xiaoming, an ancestor of Aile, throws fire after them like napalm to burn the building to the ground. As the building is engulfed, Great uncle drags Tin out of the front door and he rejoins with him at the bottom of the large stairwell.
Wendy leads them back to their cars and they all decide to head to Wendy’s house in Georgia.
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