Beyond the Sword

[John Lester]

John crashed through the window with a shower of splintered wood and glass. The momentum of his fall carried him across the floor until he slid to a stop at the foot of the staircase. His shirt was filthy and torn and scuffed knees poked through his frayed trousers; fashion statements indicative of an altercation with the unstoppable Marshall Godfrey. Nothing of this was new to him, of course, all the dance steps were the same, only the venue had changed. Then why, he wondered, as he scrambled clumsily to his feet, could he not find his rhythm? And despite his advanced years, Marshall was still hitting his stride, quite literally too, as he closed in with thunderous force through the front door. Chandeliers jangled, pictures were dislodged, and John raised his hands as if the promise of diplomacy would stunt his assailant's advance.

"Now, Marshall, we had an agreement. Not in the h-oof!"

It had been the kind of half-hearted backhand to swat away pestering grandchildren, except John was anything but a child, and yet, the blow swatted him like a fly. He found himself transported to the dining room via the dining table, and as empty plates and silverware clattered around him, he felt the tremor of Marshall's approach. The old man was surprisingly quick, but he was hampered by creaky joints and weathered muscle - John had no such disadvantage. The opponent he faced was tough, not unstoppable. All he had to do was get behind him and- he concealed a steak knife fast against his arm, that was enough.

Yet as John rose to go another round with old Kizin, there was a creak of wood, and in the sliver of space behind the kitchen door he spotted Jace. Mercifully, his presence had gone unnoticed by Marshall, who was living evidence that even the X-Gene was no substitute for a good hearing aid. But, for the first time since he and his old friend started exchanging blows, he was afraid. Protect the Harriman kid - that was his mission. And this intruder had the power to kill him in an instant. It was one instant he'd never get. John threw himself at his opponent and was flattened against the chimney breast for his trouble. But he had Marshall's undivided attention, and in that his plan was a success. Strange, he thought, as his ragdoll body tumbled from the brickwork, it didn't feel like success.

[Jace Harriman]

John's efforts had given Jace the opportunity he needed, and he didn't waste a second of it. Louise bundled in his arms, Stephanie only a few paces behind, he burst out of the back door at a sprint, long strides eating up the paving slabs of the patio and propelling him out onto the gravel drive. His gaze settled on his target - thank god this house had a big enough front lawn to mean the car was a relatively safe distance from where John and their visitor were engaged in aggressive internal redecoration - and he thought of nothing else but the rhythm of his footfalls and the placement of his next stride.

Jace's boots skidded against the gravel of the driveway as he struggled to a halt, anxious not to collide into the side of the car. The lights flashed and the locks clunked, triggered by Stephanie who had just successfully fumbled the keys from her handbag, a few paces behind. He ripped the door open and, shielding Louise's head he settled her into the car seat, fastening the seatbelts with practised speed. She looked at him, a mix of confusion and terror in the baby blues that were still too large for her face; he mustered a smile, a finger stroking down her cheek to sneak away a few stray tears.

"Don't worry, Lulu," he said, mustering his most reassuring paternal grin. "Everything is going to be fine."

Stepping back, he closed the door; heard Stephanie opening her own. He however remained still, eyes transfixed on the dining room window. He could see the surprisingly hulking frame of the impossibly menacing old man that he'd spied through the crack in the kitchen door, but things looked worrying calm.

"Jason," Stephanie's insistent voice cut in. "Get in the bloody car!"

"No."

The word tumbled from his lips before he even knew he was going to say it, but he didn't take it back; didn't reel it in. Disbelief was thick in Stephanie's voice.

"You can't go back in there."

The muscles in Jace's jaw bunched. "Get out of here, Stephanie." He could feel the protest radiating off her; Jace didn't give her the chance to transform it on to works, rounding on her and raising his voice to his wife for quite possibly the first time in their whole marriage. "Go!"

Something passed between them, transmitted by Jace's gaze, and from Stephanie's reaction he knew that she understood the thoughts running through his head. Whoever or whatever this juggernaut attacking them was, an escape at legal speeds down winding roads that only really went to one or two places worth going to, in a car that their attacker had probably already seen the plates on probably wasn't going to be all that effective. And even if it was, they'd be abandoning John: whether he was just doing his job or not, Jason wasn't about to let an almost stranger sacrifice his life to save his family, while he ran away like a frightened child.

Jace turned - Stephanie wouldn't go if he just stayed standing there - advancing up the drive as slowly as he could muster in the hopes that a plan would form in the meantime. Nothing did, but blessed relief settled as he heard the car engine rumble into life, and the gravel crunch beneath it's tires.

He stepped over the threshold, past a door that hung half off it's hinges, just in time to see Marshall looming over the worse-for-wear bloodied and torn form of John Lester. Jason drew in a breath, mustered all the motivational thoughts he could. It'll be easy, he tried to reassure himself. Just like play fights with Tom.

"Hey!" he shouted, and the old man turned; Jace lashed out with his arms like claws, straining as his forces wrapped a bulky antique bookcase and, with a wrench that strained his muscles and his mind, tore it from it's mountings and deposited it on top of Marshall.

Jace didn't wait to inspect his success; a moment later he was crouched beside John, a hand on his shoulder.

"You still alive?"

[John Lester]

"If I had a quid for everytime someone said that."

John managed a thin smile, and rose heavily to his feet. First, he surveyed the wreckage, beneath which was buried a vulnerable old man. His first instinct was to finish the job; a quick wrench of the head, a machine gun rattle of snapping neck bones, and it would all be over. In that moment, his entire body felt like stone, like it had clenched itself into a fist, and he remembered his old strength. And he remembered the price of it. Harriman was his priority. One hand planted on Jace's shoulder, he guided him forcefully towards the nearest exit, be it a door or a damn hole in a wall. A twinge of pain. He glanced at his feet and scowled.

"That old fucker gave me a limp!"

[Jace Harriman]

"You're lucky that's all he gave you," Jace grunted back.

He could feel the forceful insistence in John's body language; by rights it should have been Jace carrying the limping soldier out of the building, and yet still he insisted on being the protector, the guardian. Doing his job, his duty. Jace wasn't sure whether to be impressed, or to roll his eyes at the idiocy of it all. A fragmented snatch of movie dialogue floated through his mind.

Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed.

Or themselves, Jace mused.

A sound from behind made him falter; a shuffle of books, a clunk of wood, the grunt of someone struggling free. Jace didn't need John's encouragement to move faster; no way in hell was he sticking around to see how quickly the old man was able to recover. He looped his arm across John's back, a little extra support for the man's shoulder to help with his limp, and a bonus discouragement against doing anything else stupidly gallant.

"We need to get out of here," Jason muttered, stating the obvious.

[John Lester]

When Jace attempted to steer him out the front door, John resisted, and insisted upon an exit through the east wing instead. Once outside, in the long shadow of the house, he shrugged off his arm and hobbled onwards at speed. It was not that he was unappreciative of the kid's assistance - Harriman's intervention had in fact been most opportune - but a man in his position couldn't be seen needing help. Certainly not from the man he was supposed to be protecting. Slate shards were scattered all over the gravel, remnants of roof tiles that had been shaken loose during the fight. There was a tremor from within Rudloe Manor and another shower of tiles clattered around them.

"You have cheated death once already and, for all we know, that lunatic is here to finish the job. I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen."

Suddenly, John strayed from the gravel path, and waded into a nest of thick underbrush. He took long strides through waist-high thickets, carving a route through ranks of trees, and swatted aside the drooping branches that obstructed his view. The last veil of greenery was parted to reveal a small and gloomy clearing, and at its heart stood a rickety old outhouse. It looked like something out of a fairytale; the wood was sun-bleached and rotten, with a fur coat of emerald moss, and a crown of knotted ivy. On the door was a rusted padlock which had surely gone untouched for years. It broke off with one quick tug. When John returned his attention to Jace, and saw the expression on his face, he frowned. There was the stubborn defiance of a Harriman. He was undoubtedly his father's son.

"Look, Jace, you have a wife and a child. You are a father. That's your job. Please, let me do mine."

Somewhere beyond the border of trees rumbled Marshall's voice. If it was something he was looking for, John wondered, then why was he still in pursuit? Then his gaze snapped back to Jace with renewed urgency, and he clamped a hand on his shoulder.

"Now quickly, inside the privy."

[Jace Harriman]

If up to that point John had managed to sound heroic or noble, those last words burst the illusion in an instant.

Whatever it was that John hoped to achieve was behind him: the only vague fragment of logic that he could possibly think of was that John had hit his head pretty hard, and was taking the phrase built like a brick shit-house a little too literally. Rickety, rotten, one way in and no way out did not sound like the kind of place where they could make an escape, or even make a passable defense. This was the kind of place that you went to hide. The kind of place where one of them went to hide.

"No."

Jace's refusal was resolute. He squared his shoulders, trying to draw upon all the things his father had instilled in him when he'd been trying to groom Jason as the next generation of RAF Harrimans. Clearly, this was some frustrating blend of John's sense of duty and responsibility hand in hand with the perception that Jace needed his protection; that he was too much of a civilian, an amateur, to be any use. He felt his hands balling into fists; thought back to all the times when he and his brother had fought. He remembered the escalation, the tactics of discouragement the two had adopted to try and be the more intimidating sibling. Jason had joined the rugby team; Tom had learned kung fu. Jason had joined the Air Training Corps; Tom had joined the actual Army. There'd been a point Jason had grown up, stopped the petty bickering, and let Tom overtake. There'd been a point when he'd thought that being the bigger man, the better man, the more successful man with the fancy job, the loving family, and the actual dad title of his own would give him the winning edge.

But one painful, bitter truth remained: If Tom were here, you'd let him help.

"You already tried taking him on solo," Jace countered, as defiant yet logical as he could manage to be. "That didn't seem to go so well. I may be just a lawyer, but even I know that sticking to a losing tactic is a really stupid idea."

[John Lester]

"I'm not going to fight him. I want to-"

Behind him there was a loud crack which robbed the words from his lips. He turned around in alarm, expecting to see his old enemy, but instead he watched as the tree canopies started to sway. A long weary groan followed by a tremendous crash confirmed that Marshall was closing in, and he was felling trees to do so. When John looked back at Jace, the lines of frustration that had once creased his face were gone, replaced instead with an expression of dispassionate resolve. He opened the outhouse door and helped Jace inside with a firm hand. As the door closed behind them, there was a second, louder crash from the trees.

Inside, instead of a cramped and mouldy old lavatory, they found themselves faced with a steep and narrow staircase. There was a cold draught coming from below, where, through the gloom, a single steel door was visible. The sight appeared to have temporarily robbed the young Harriman of his momentum, which was enough of an inconvenience to renew John's grump, so he encouraged him onwards with a prod.

"You're a right stubborn pain in the arse, you know."

[Jace Harriman]

Of course the outhouse concealed a hidden staircase into some sort of hidden underground hiding place. Clearly that was abundantly obvious with the total lack of information that he had been provided with, and anyone in their right mind wood automatically have assumed that there was a secret bunker underneath the toilet.

Jace uttered a grunt. "I'm apparently in good company."

Squinting against the gloom, Jace advanced warily down the stairs. A quick glance at the hinges of the steel door suggested that it swung outwards - which made sense he supposed: better resistance to explosions, battering rams, and all that - and so he reached out with his powers, heaving it open. He descended the last couple of steps, attempted to process what he saw beyond the doorway, and felt his brain begin to ooze out of his ears.

Jace wasn't exactly sure what it was that had shattered his mind so completely, but if he were to guess he'd probably assume it was the sign on the hewn stone wall that revealed he wasn't standing in some convenient fallout shelter designed to service the manor they'd fled from, but was apparently standing on the North West Ring Road of something far more vast. Tunnels snaked off in all directions, the floors were paved and wide enough to drive vehicles down with ease. Cave walls butted up against brick walls, concrete walls, walls coated in plasterboard and painted. Lights that were already on hung from a ceiling swarming with pipes and cables.

The fact that there was a crazed battering ram of an old man in pursuit somewhere behind them was the furthest thing from Jace's mind at that moment.

"We just walked into a toilet and ended up in an underground city. If you've got an explanation for that, I would love to hear it."

[John Lester]

"It's an old military installation from the 30's. It served as an RAF station during the Second World War and the Cold War, but has since fallen out of use and, luckily for us, off the radar. The toilet was an old entrance we-" John paused, and ironed out the flicker of amusement from his face, he shrugged, "It's just in case of an emergency."

He frowned despite himself, and pushed onwards, leading the way deeper into the bunker. Still there was a swiftness in his step, hobbled as it was, for the spectre of their pursuer overshadowed his thoughts. Bomb-proof bunker or not, they were being hunted, and in conceding to Jace's pig-headed idiocy, John had put him directly in harm's way. Inwardly, he cursed himself for not being more assertive, recalling a time when he would've tossed Jace into the bunker whether he wanted to go or not. For everything, he had been asked one favour, and he was failing in his duty.

The bunker was a veritable maze of stone and concrete and steel; large tunnels branched off into smaller tunnels which branched off into concrete passages which became narrow halls of bricks and mortar. Presently, they found themselves in a long dank passage with glistening walls and water sloshing about their feet. Overhead, the lights flickered, and a distant rumble echoed throughout the arteries of the facility. John pressed on, negotiating the myriad tunnels with the fluency of an old hand.

"The old telephone exchange is up ahead. Nathan needs to know what's happening here."

[Jace Harriman]

A telephone exchange. Of course, because what self-respecting secret bunker disguised as an antique toilet to hide it from the Nazis didn't have it's own telephone exchange?

A clattering crash that sounded an awful lot like twisting steel and cracking stone echoed down the tunnel from behind them, ushered on by a feral growl of frustration. Jace's heart rate tripled; for all his sarcasm towards the bunker, he had felt a few minutes of reassurance and safety being inside it. The bunker's entrance was as baffling as it was concealed, and they had been far out of sight by the time they had entered. The overgrown path that had torn cuts in every patch of exposed flesh had swallowed their trail behind them; there was no way that their assailant could have followed them with such swiftness if he had been forced to search.

The knots in his stomach tightened irrevocably as realisation dawned. The only way Marshall could be so hot on their heels was if he already knew where they were going.

Jace's eyes darted around, drinking in the details of the tunnel systems that sprawled off in each direction. A cry for help would be futile if the response was anything less than instantaneous: Marshall would be upon them before they'd even had time to utter an SOS.

Or at least, he'd be upon one of them.

"Whatever this guy wants -" Jace could already feel the strange mix of dread and resolve being poured into his stomach like concrete. "- I'm guessing it would be a very bad thing if he found it."

He released a breath.

"You know how to contact Nathan... I don't, and unless there's a whole ton of bookshelves in this phone exchange of yours, I'm not going to be much use to you in a fight. But maybe -" He squinted down a tunnel, his choice entirely arbitrary. "- I can lead him off. Create a distraction. Buy you enough time so that you can get a message out... and then come save me."

[John Lester]

While Jace pitched his half-baked proposal, John stewed in irritation. And he held his tongue thereafter, partly because he was struggling to determine their position, but mostly to stop himself saying aloud the first words that sprang to mind. They stood in a corridor of white-washed walls which appeared to go on with no end in sight. There were no signs to help them and on either side there were unmarked doors. Every moment they lingered, Marshall closed in, and there was no doubt in John's mind that he, being the man he was, knew where they were going and that he would beat them to it if they didn't get a move on. He tried a door but it was locked, his palm was black with dust. So instead he used his foot. The door frame splintered and the door, in its entirety, fell to the ground with an almighty clatter. Once the resounding echo subsided, John thawed and advanced into a long room populated with rusty bunk beds.

"My mission is to protect you, Jace. Now, if I were to offer you up as bait to a very dangerous mutant, I wouldn't be doing a very good job, would I?"

When they reached the end of the room, there was another closed door, so he opted for a gentle approach. A slight shoulder barge did the trick, with nothing more than a soft crunch of wood the door came free. There were signs again, and John lead the way through a labyrinthian network of offices, where everything was all crumbling brickwork and chequered floors. It was eerily quiet, which made it impossible to ignore his needling doubts. Even if they got the jump on Marshall, their victory would be fleeting unless they killed him outright, and the chance of that was too slim to justify putting Jace at risk. Not even an underground city of concrete and stone could contain such a juggernaut of a man. They needed Nathan. Once he'd made a quick phone call, all that was required of them was to stay on the move until backup arrived.

One last corner turned, and they arrived at the telephone exchange. John stopped at the nearest station and gave it a quick once over before pressing on down the line, inspecting each switchboard along the way. His brow furrowed as he reached the last station; he bent double over the myriad little switches and buttons, and after a moment of deep scrutinisation, he said:

"Oh, shit. This is going to take a while."

Slowly, he rose. Jace's words returned to him and, wrestling with his better judgement, he reconsidered their worth, and the man. By the time he turned to face him, John had made his decision and, to his credit, Jace looked ready.

"Powerful though he may be, Marshall Godfrey is still just an old man: keep him at a distance and you'll be fine. Look out for signs for Passenger Lift 2. Follow them. That's where I'll meet you."

Done with his briefing, John returned his attention to the switchboard. He heard footsteps and afforded Jace one last glance:

"And son, don't get yourself killed. You'll make me look bad."