image created by JulieOh

Chapter 5: Hell
(Five Minus One Equals Four)

Chris kept his eyes and ears open as he led the way through the dark corridors of the power plant. His entire body seemed to be vibrating with nerves and adrenaline, and Lance's warning was forefront in his mind. Somehow, he had ended up the leader of this unlikely band of superheroes, and he was determined that none of his brothers would get hurt on his watch. "Justin," he whispered, holding out an arm to halt their progress. "Use that superhuman sight and hearing of yours and give us a clue, man. He's got to be around here, somewhere."

"Good idea," Justin said, and stepped out in front of him, slowly looking around, his head cocked as he listened for any indication as to the whereabouts of the young girl and her captor. "I hear two heartbeats," he murmured. "One's kinda fast, I think it might be the girl. She's... she's crying, guys."

"Son of a—" Joey cut himself off, but Chris could hear him mumbling under his breath.

"The other heartbeat...." Justin frowned slightly. "It's nearby and coming closer. I can hear his footsteps, but everything's echoey in here. I can't tell exactly where—"

The relative silence was suddenly broken by the impossibly loud sound of an airhorn. Justin screamed in agony, his hands going to his ears as his knees buckled and he fell, writhing, to the floor.

"Shit!" Chris was immediately by his side, holding the shivering body as the others gathered around them, shocked and concerned. "Justin! Justin, stop... turn it down, or something.... Justin, can you hear me?" He cursed himself for not thinking of this—everybody knew about Justin's hearing, and it was the most obvious way in the world to cripple them immediately.

Chris struggled to pry Justin's hands away from his ears. "Justin, it's stopped. Justin...?" He froze, his heart beating out of his chest as he saw the blood that was slowly trickling out of Justin's ears.

"Chris...." Justin was sobbing now, his eyes wide and terrified. "Chris, I can't hear.... I can't hear anything...."

"Don't worry," said an unfamiliar voice, directly above them. "You won't suffer long."

Chris looked up to see the man who had been their guide just the day before as they had toured this very plant—the man who had left them to "make a phone call." All at once he realized that the comforting presence of the other three had vanished, and with a sinking heart he turned to see three unmoving bodies on the floor behind him. "No.... Oh, no...."

"Yes."

The man reached out for him and everything went black.

~*~

Lance came to slowly, in stages. First he became aware of a great discomfort that bordered on pain. He flexed his arms experimentally and realized that he was restrained somehow. As he started to become more alert, he also realized that he was extremely tired and weak. Just opening his eyes took a tremendous effort.

As soon as the room stopped spinning, he took stock of his surroundings. Chris, Justin, and JC were tied up next to him, propped against the wall in seating positions identical to his own. All three were still unconscious. Across the room, Joey lay unrestrained on the floor, looking as though he had simply been dumped there, uncaring. He wasn't moving. Of the little girl and her kidnapper, there was no sign.

Lance closed his eyes and tried to remember what had happened. After Justin had collapsed, they had all gathered around him. Then Lance had felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck—a warning of impending danger. He'd turned, but it was too late. A hand had reached out and grabbed his shoulder, and then there was nothing.

He frowned and pushed harder. Maybe if he couldn't remember, he could at least "see" it, using his powers. It took much more effort than he would have thought. It felt like trying to think through molasses, but slowly, the images began to come to him. After he had been taken care of, the tour-guide-turned-kidnapper had taken out JC and then Joey, in quick succession. Rather than moving on to Chris and Justin immediately, the man had simply stood by and watched, smirking slightly, as Chris frantically tried to comfort a deafened Justin. Eventually, though, he had knocked out the both of them and dragged them all here, to this room.

Lance opened his eyes again, breathing hard. Just the effort of "seeing" what had happened seemed to have drained what was left of his energy.

"I see you've awakened," came a voice out of the shadows, and Lance struggled to lift his head. The tour guide—what was his name? Oh, right, Keith—walked out into the center of the room, smiling cruelly at him. "Comfy?"

Lance moaned despite himself, his eyes sliding shut.

Keith laughed. "Good. Take your time, I want all of you to be awake before I... well, I won't tell you, yet."

"Where's...." JC spoke weakly. "Where's the little... girl?" It was obviously a great effort for him to get the words out.

Keith turned to him, grinning. "Oh, you too? About time."

Lance looked over at his friends. JC was just starting to come fully awake, and Joey, Chris, and Justin were beginning to stir as well. "Well?" he asked, tiredly. "Where is she?"

"I kept my end of the bargain," Keith shrugged. "I pointed the way out and told her to go. I have what I want right here."

"You'd better be... telling the... truth," JC panted, struggling weakly with his bonds.

"And what if I'm not," the man scoffed, hands shoved casually in his pockets. "You're not in any shape to do anything about it."

"What did you do to us?" Joey asked, his voice a mere shadow of itself. He tried to push himself up onto his elbows, but didn't quite make it.

"I drained your energy," Keith answered, matter-of-factly. "A handy little power I gained in that explosion. I guess I should be grateful to that weasel for betraying me. Oh, and there was a nice little side-effect that I hadn't quite anticipated." He gave a lazy grin... and turned himself into a Bengal tiger. The large cat roared at them, paced around the room a bit, then sat on its haunches and became human again. "I seem to have absorbed your powers along with your energy."

Chris drew in a sharp breath, the first sound he had made since he'd awakened.

"You like that?" Keith addressed him. "You'll like this even more. I plan to kill you all, one by one. And I'm going to start with him." He gestured to Joey, who was still struggling just to pull himself into a seated position. Keith leaned in close to Chris, smiling cruelly. "I guess you make a pretty awful leader, don't you?"

Chris turned his face away.

Lance cursed under his breath, knowing instinctively what the man was doing. If he had absorbed their powers, he could read minds. That meant he had probably picked up on Chris's feelings of guilt and inadequacy—which Lance could see easily, just from knowing him so well—and used them to cause him much more pain than any physical attack would have done.

"Chris," JC said quietly, shifting his body to nudge Chris with one of his bound arms. "It's not your fault, man, don't let him get to you."

Chris kept his gaze focused somewhere across the room and didn't answer.

"Enough chatter," Keith decided, clapping his hands and rubbing them together eagerly as he turned and approached Joey. "Are you ready to die?" He twisted his fists into Joey's collar and heaved him up easily, bringing them face-to-face. Joey didn't answer, so Keith simply hauled him to his feet and drew back one clenched fist. "This is gonna hurt you a lot worse than it hurts me," he chirped, and let it fly.

~*~

Chris was struggling frantically with his ropes. His face was red and dripping with sweat, but he hadn't made any headway. None of them had.

Lance cringed as he heard another one of Joey's bones break. It sounded impossibly loud in the small room. He found himself envying Justin, who couldn't hear anything at all and was sitting stock still with his eyes screwed shut, hiding from the world.

Lance could feel his energy and his powers coming back, but much too slowly to do Joey any good. Chris, too, was obviously recovering as well—his ropes were smoldering just a little bit—but again, not enough. Neither JC nor Justin had made much of an attempt to break free. Lance guessed that they were saving their energy. Well... maybe JC was. Justin was still simply hiding.

Keith finally seemed to tire of beating on Joey. He dropped the limp and bloodied body to the floor and stood, not even breathing hard. He cast his gaze about until it fell on a small-ish metal spike that may have once been part of a machine of some sort. He grinned that sickening grin. "As much as I was enjoying this, I really should get a move on," he told them, conversationally. "I can feel your powers starting to fade. Not quickly enough to save any of you, but enough to cut my fun-time short." He hefted the spike and tossed it up and down a few times, testing its weight. "This will do," he decided, and strolled casually back to Joey, kicking him savagely so that he rolled onto his back, glassy and pain-filled eyes staring unflinchingly at Keith's.

Keith lifted the spike high, aiming it like a spear at Joey's heart. "Bye bye bye," he crooned mockingly, and the weapon sped downward unerringly.

"No!" Chris's scream echoed off the walls, and his ropes finally burst into flame, falling away from him as he shot across the room, slamming into Keith and knocking him away, the two of them rolling on the floor, grappling for the spike. "No," he was growling, teeth clenched. "No, I won't let you...."

Keith growled back at him and wrenched it away from him too easily, savagely slamming him down and pinning him to the floor. "That was a very stupid thing to do," he roared, batting Chris's flailing arms away without effort, brutally shoving a knee into his gut. He lifted the spike and brought it down, shocked when Chris's hands shot up and grabbed it, inches from his chest.

Everything stopped. Chris stared up at Keith as the others watched, holding their breath. But then Keith smiled cruelly, and once again wrenched it away, bloodying Chris's hands. "You lose," he said, lifting it high once more, and the spike plunged down, impaling Chris right through the chest. Chris's body jerked, came up slightly as Keith wrenched the spear from him, and then fell, his limbs akimbo, eyes wide and sightless.

Lance screamed. He felt it, deep inside, the moment of Chris's death. It enveloped him. A warmth that wrapped around him, intelligence, humor, laughter... and then it was gone, ripped away, leaving a gaping hole deep in his heart. He screamed again, drowning out Keith's laughter, and something broke within him. Something snapped, and he felt his mind flex, the ropes that held him bursting outward in threads of destroyed fiber. Keith looked up, shocked, as the ropes that bound the others met a similar fate.

Justin's eyes flew open, glowing bright blue, and outside, a thunderstorm suddenly exploded into being, the rain pattering loudly against the roof and echoing throughout the room. The walls trembled with the force of it.

The spike lifted itself into the air and spun away as Lance advanced on Keith, Justin and JC behind him. The fatigue had drained away, their bodies fueled by grief and rage. Keith stood to face them, but was knocked down by a laser blast from Justin's glowing eyes. He screamed as his arms were wrenched around behind him by an unseen force, the bones creaking at their rough treatment. JC took him by the shoulders and flipped him over onto his stomach, and Keith let out a strangled gasp as JC's weight suddenly increased ten-fold, pinning him painfully to the floor. He could barely breathe. Above him, he heard the warning roar of a large jungle cat. He stopped struggling.

~*~

Lance watched numbly as JC, in the form of a sleek black jaguar, pinned Keith to the floor. He turned to see Justin on his knees beside Chris's still body, one shaking hand reaching out to close those staring eyes for the last time. Justin turned tear-filled eyes to Lance, and he had to look away.

Joey moaned, and Lance quickly went to him, feeling his own tears sliding down his cheeks. Now was not the time to grieve, he told himself savagely. Joey needed help, and he needed to use what was left of this adrenaline-fueled energy to heal him. After all, his premonition had told him that only one of them would not be walking out. That meant he had a lot of work to do, to get Joey back in walking condition. He lay his hands on Joey's chest and let the energy flow from him, flinching slightly at the slight sucking-and-popping noises that resulted as broken and caved-in ribs began to curve back upward, knitting back together one-by-one.

Joey's hand came up and grabbed his wrist, pulling his hands away. "No...." His breath was coming in gasps now, not the labored, liquid wheezes from before. "Chris...."

Lance shook his head, fighting back the sobs he could feel waiting to burst forth. "Joey.... I can't. He's... he's dead."

Joey shook his head. "Try." He took a deep breath, wincing at the pain it caused. "Please.... Try."

Lance bowed his head, his hand curling around Joey's. What could it hurt, just to try?

He made his way back over to Chris and couldn't meet Justin's hopeful eyes as he knelt there, his knees being quickly stained with blood. He placed two hands over the gaping wound in Chris's chest, and concentrated. He could feel the power inside pushing outward, flowing from his mind to his fingers and down into the wound, where slowly the broken blood vessels began to mend themselves, and the torn and ravaged flesh began to regrow. But his energy was draining too quickly; he could feel it fading. It wouldn't be enough.

"I can't.... I'm so sorry.... I can't...."

And then Justin's hand touched his shoulder and he jerked, a sudden flare of energy surging through him. The new energy was alive, humming with electricity, youth, and brashness. It was as though Justin's own essence was being drawn into him and out through his hands, into Chris. "Wait," he gasped, sudden hope flaring. "Wait, Justin...."

He forgot that Justin couldn't hear him, but the younger man seemed to understand what was happening. He kept a firm hold on Lance's shoulder, never wavering. Then JC was there, human again, his own energy coursing through them, slinky and passionate, and Lance only gave a fleeting thought to Keith before gratefully taking what was offered and concentrating all of his efforts on Chris.

The wound was nearly healed now, but it still wasn't enough. The heart beneath those healing ribs still wasn't beating. The energy was beginning to fade once more, and Lance knew that none of them could take much more of the drain. And then he felt it. Another surge of energy. Warm, this time, like Chris's had been when it passed through him on the way to the other side, but comfortable and flirty, almost... cuddly.

Joey.

Joey looked up at him and smiled just slightly before passing out, his bloodied hand still clutching Lance's knee.

It was enough. Chris's body arched upward and he gasped, his pain-filled eyes flying open as his hands went to his chest, feeling for a wound that was no longer there.

For one breathless moment, they all stared at him, and then they pounced on him, all of them talking at once, holding onto him for dear life. Chris let them, and Lance gathered Joey's limp body into his arms and tried to reassure himself that they were all alive.

It was Lance who noticed Keith first, once again warned by that prickly feeling on the back of his neck, but it was Justin who moved. His head whipped around and he pinned Keith in place with his gaze, just as the man had started to move toward them. Keith must have seen something in Justin's eyes, because he gulped and started to back away.

Justin stood and walked slowly toward him, his eyes never leaving the other man's face. The others watched silently, knowing somehow that it was Justin, this time, who should be feared.

Keith's eyes widened in fear. "No... get away!"

The others all turned away at the first screams.

Chapter: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Epilogue

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