The stillness following Siegfrieds shout was deeper, than any silence. It was like a breath paused. Within that calm no words were exchanged about the plans; they were simply grasped. Jacques stationed himself at the huts sturdy door his frame a shield of strength and determination. Arthur and Isabella started shifting objects—the table, the cast-iron grate of the stove—to create an additional defense. Maria pulled salt from her bag. Started to draw complex quiet designs, on the stone ground her mouth forming a noiseless chant.
Giovanni remained motionless in the middle of the chamber powerless. His armaments were not tangible. His flesh represented the trophy the script, the arena. The blurred maze, on his limb seemed lifeless a connection.. Beneath the dimming pigment, a fresh dreadful consciousness pulsed. It was the consciousness of the pursuit itself of a danger. He could nearly sense the direction from which it would arrive—a piercing tip of evil intent gliding among the pines, beneath like an arrow piercing a tapestry.
"He's correct you know " Giovanni remarked, his tone breaking the silence. "Siegfried. I am connecting with it. I don't merely sense falsehoods nearby… I sense motives. I can sense her. She is approaching. From the ridge. She is… exact.. She isn't furious. She is void."
Maria lifted her gaze from the salt lines her eyes opening wide with a horrifying realization. "The emptiness, at the heart of Osbornes falsehood… it belonged to him.. The tool creating that emptiness… it belongs to her. She does not speak falsehoods Giovanni. She performs silence. She is the embodiment of the eraser."
The idea hit him as if it were a strike. Helena wasn't a woman who lied. She embodied denial itself. Wherever she moved truth wasn't distorted; it was erased. His curse, fueled by the power of deceit would find no source in her. She represented a void, a counter-archive. Facing her his main perception was powerless.
"How can we battle something " Isabella murmured, expressing the fear gripping the room.
"We don't oppose her " Jacques declared, his tone a deep growl. He examined the blade of his knife. "We endure her. We ensure the price to get to him is prohibitive."
The following hour dragged on as a span of tight stillness. Then the boundary gave her away. Not through noise. Through a lack thereof. The symphony of insects, from the southeast ridge ceased, not gradually but in an impeccable expanding ring of silence that advanced toward the hut.
"She's present " Giovanni whispered.
The initial strike wasn't against the door. It targeted their light instead. A rock, hurled with precision broke the solar-powered lamp outside casting the clearing into dim moonlight and flickering fire. Moments later the small window on the southern wall burst inward. Not from another stone. It was, from a canister that landed on the floor with a clatter and started releasing a thick scentless grey smoke.
"Gas!" Arthur yelled, covering his mouth with his shirt.
Maria was already, in motion. She threw a handful of the salt-and-herb blend from her pouch into the center of the expanding smoke. Uttered a solitary guttural word. The smoke appeared to strike a barrier then gathered and settled onto the ground like lifeless dust. "It is a veil " she breathed. "Meant to confuse, not to kill. She desires sightlines."
The door trembled from a blow. It wasn't a kick. It was a hydraulic pressure. The sturdy timber cracked near the lock. Jacques steadied himself muscles tensed. Another strike. The wood creaked.
"Fall back!" Jacques. They fled from the entrance as it burst inward in a spray of shards.
Helena Helga remained amidst the debris. Clad in matte tactical attire her fractured wrist was now secured in a smooth rigid brace that appeared to serve as a weapon, in its own right. Grasped in her hand was a small menacing pistol fitted with an extended suppressor. Her gaze was not icy; it was vacant. Their gaze roamed the room gliding past Marias salt formations Arthurs first aid supplies, Isabellas posture and settling on Giovanni with the detached attention of an artist examining a piece of marble.
"There is no way " she declared, her tone emotionless. "The ridge trail is rigged with wires. The road is, under surveillance. Yield the anomaly. The rest of you do not matter."
Jacques shifted. He avoided attacking her. Instead he hurled the iron wood stove grate as if it were a discus making her retreat, into the room. Then he lunged at her a whirlwind of fury his knife aiming for the hand holding the gun.
She reacted quicker. She transformed the duck into a spin her steady wrist rising to deflect his blow with a startling clash of metal against carbon fiber. The gun in her hand pointed slightly beyond him not at him but toward the ceiling, over Giovanni. She shot once. An unnoticed rope snapped. A weighted net, concealed in the rafters descended toward Giovanni.
Maria stood present. She refrained from shoving him; instead she chanted near the net. The atmosphere shimmered. The net dropped gradually caught in its own threads and slipped down gently aside. The exertion drained Maria; she wobbled, a stream of blood flowing from her nostril.
Helena's vacant gaze shifted to Maria. "The translator. A variable." She fired more. Arthur shouted, grabbing his leg as he lunged before Isabella. He fell, crimson spreading across his pants.
"ARTHUR!" Isabella shouted, collapsing next, to him.
The lapse lasted milliseconds yet it sufficed. Jacques, furious delivered a strike, to Helenas kidney. She emitted a grunt the human noise she had uttered and faltered. However her actions were entirely efficient. She utilized the force of the hit to roll rising with the gun now directly pointed at Jacques torso. Her finger pressed harder on the trigger.
Giovanni took the action available, to him. He moved ahead into her shooting path positioning himself between the weapon and Jacques.
"Hold on " he said. His tone wasn't raised,. It resonated clearly. He rolled up the sleeve of his sweater revealing his forearm to the flames' glow. The blurred worn maze wasn't a scar. In front of this living emptiness it was responding. The gray, bruised core was moving more but not with the shade of Osborne's city. It was moving with the light, from the fire the moon shining through the shattered window and the final remaining lamp. It was capturing the reality of the moment—the dread, the allegiance, the anguish—and keeping it.
Helenas finger paused. Not, from compassion. From curiosity. The irregularity was acting erratically.
"He desires me to stay alive " Giovanni stated, maintaining her stare. "Siegfried. For his research. You fire and the bullet passes through me into him " he gestured towards Jacques. ". It breaks apart. You might harm the specimen. Is that effective?"
For a moment her unwavering conviction faltered. Siegfried's instructions were explicit: recovering the living specimen was preferable. Ending its life was a fallback plan.
In that pause Giovanni acted in a way he never had previously. He didn't merely accept a falsehood. Instead he conveyed a comprehension. He concentrated on the emptiness that was Helena Helga. He delved into the space beyond her gaze not with deception but with reality—the reality of her very purpose. He revealed to her, in a metaphorical surge what she truly was: not an individual but an instrument. A delete key. A device designed to end life for others rendering her own existence a flawless empty void. He revealed to her the silent screaming emptiness reflected back, in Siegfrieds admiring gaze. He caused her to sense the emptiness she harbored within.
It wasn't a lie. It was the deepest, most awful truth of her.
Helena Helga held her silence. Her weapon remained firmly in hand. Yet she recoiled. A total body recoil that froze her seeming as if her entire nervous system had malfunctioned. Her vacant gaze grew large with a shock that was purely painfully human. The muzzle of the gun tilted, if slightly.
Jacques was present, at the beginning. His knife hand extended swiftly not to thrust. To swipe. The blade sliced through the back of her gun hand severing tendons. The pistol fell noisily onto the stone floor. Helena stumbled backward holding her bleeding hand to her chest her breathing uneven and uncommonly strained. She gazed at Giovanni not with anger. With a sort of shocked, never-before-seen acknowledgment. He had not battled her. He had shaped her. And the definition was a prison.
She spun around. Escaped, disappearing into the shadowy pines as quietly as she had appeared leaving behind nothing but broken timber, the metallic smell of blood and her firearm.
Quietness resumed, interrupted by Arthurs labored breaths. Isabella was swiftly ripping fabric to create a bandage. Maria, worn out knelt beside her salt lines. Jacques loomed over the dropped pistol his chest rising and falling rapidly.
Giovanni dropped to his knees, his sight blurring. The strain of what he had accomplished—employing his curse deliberately as an instrument of truth—had completely exhausted him. The maze etched on his arm glowed with a silver radiance its patterns briefly crisp and luminous the core a swirling galaxy of seized reality. Then as the rush of adrenaline waned, the glow. The mark returned to its dull scarred appearance.. It felt altered. It was no longer just a record.
He had transformed into more, than a repository. He had turned into a portal.. He had recently discovered that he could not only be accessed, but also at great expense retaliate.
Arthur, pale yet awake glanced from his wrapped leg, to Giovanni. "What… what have you done to her?"
Giovanni gazed at his hands, which were still shaking. "I spoke the truth to her " he murmured. "It felt heavier, than any falsehood."
Outside, the first sirens began to wail, far below on the mountain road. Raphael Ronald, it seemed, had chosen his side. The battle with the void was over. Now, they had to face the law.