Wanting to answer Sara but knew what her reaction would be he shrugged and said, “Soonish?” in an obviously unconvinced tone in hopes to give Katrina a laugh and Sara something to focus on during the flight in hopes she would ruin the chair she was sitting in. Sam hadn’t taken the jet as fast as it could go since the upgrade but with Sara in the back seat…. Pushing the throttle forward the jets on the jet boomed letting out a loud scream as his stomach was forced into his spine as the jet continued to accelerate. “Lot faster!” was all Sam could say till he adjusted to the speed.

It had been a while since take off and Sam leaned forward after hitting the autopilot on the jet so he could not only use the bathroom and get a water but check the bag his son had brought for him to make everything was there. Going through its contents Sam looked through a change of clothes, a large Led flashlight, a pair of binoculars, some snare wire and a large rope and a small lighter. All was there including the gun that he had been keeping with him since the day he was attacked by an adapted before he went to prison. The last item however was not something he had packed. It was a small folded up piece of paper.

Unfolding the paper Sam’s eyes started to water slightly as he read a note that his son left him. To Dad: ThAnks fOr being thE best DaD in the WorLd and wathing me and Chelsea Love you so much! it was a short note full of spelling and grammar errors but it got the point across and the illustration of him and what he thought was Sammy was flying in the air holding what looked liked hands as a small black dot which he thought was Chelsea was under them. Wiping his eyes and putting the paper back into the bag with his other gear Sam joked, “What do you teach again Sara because I am truly looking forward to the parent teacher conference.”

The jet engines screamed as the air passed through them Sam leaned the plane forward. “Ladies and gentlemen we will now be making our descent if you could be so kind and turn off all electronic devices we will be landing shortly.”

As the jet descended into what looked like a perfect landing site in the Himalayas Sam lowered the jet onto the ground that was actually perfect for landing a jet. As the engines died out the jet leaned forward and slanted slightly only to rest crookedly on what the Sam assumed the uneven, “weird…” thought Sam as he opened the hatch and was hit with a strong smell. “Ugghhh Rank!”

One of the perks to being the pilot meant you got to touch down on the ground first. Unfortunately when Sam touched down on the ground it wasn’t the kind of ground he wanted to step into. “…Think this was a poor choice as a landing field…” said Sam as he looked at the ground to see a small skeletal hand unearthed by the Jets landing. Looking over to the bumpy field Sam saw small shovels and various other digging equipment. “Think I found the source of the smell…” the feeling of the water he had on the ride over coming up to his throat slightly as he sucked it back down.

Soonish… OK. So Sara had known what she was getting into, when she climbed into the jet. She was getting into a tiny space with no doors or windows that could be opened safely at the speed of what every the number of miles per hour that Sara really didn’t want to think know. Technically humans shouldn’t be flying. Only mutants who had been graced with wings should really attempt it but Here they were. Sam in the drivers seat, and Katrina next to her, and her tail was so fluffed it looked to be four times it’s normal thickness.

Sara’s heart was beating so hard, it drowned out most what ever else had been said during the flight. Once her body had adjusted to the G-force, Sara leaned forward. Focusing on the small bit of air space between her knees, and breathing deep. She didn’t want to see threw the windows, and used her hands to cradle her forehead. She really hated flying. It wasn’t till Sara was aware that Sam was moving around the jet, trusting the jet to just fly it’s self that Sara let her hearing work to pick up other sounds. Bad idea really because every slight sound that the jet made, caused her to be even more uncomfortable in it. However she did pick up the crinkle of the note left in Sam’s bag. Slowly she lifted her head to look back and try to see what Sam was reading.

“What do you teach again Sara because I am truly looking forward to the parent teacher conference.”

“Art and English.” Sara said simply. Her head returned to staring at the space between her knees before she could even lift an eye brow at his question.

Landing was unnerving to Sara but it wasn’t as disturbing for her as when Sam opened the hatch and the air that should have been fresh hit her nose. She knew that smell. It was an awful smell that made her thing back to when she was a child, and then to the registration camps 10 years ago. Her mouth went dry, and her eyes squeezed shut for a moment. One arm reached to gently grab Katrina’s wrist, to slow her down. “Katrina, you might want to take a minute before stepping out there.” Sara finally let her eyes ease back open and she leaned back in the chair to look up back into Katrina’s. Showing that the feline’s eyes were completely dilated from the mix of fear, then concern and regret.

It wasn’t that Sara was trying to baby Katrina, but that smell meant death. Sara felt that if they were going to do this war zone stuff, that they needed to focus and focusing was hard to do when you are, one, worried about someone you care about, and then, two, walk out of a jet, surrounded by death.

“Think I found the source of the smell…”

Sara stood and squeezed herself between Katrina and the seats, as if she’d done nothing but step around a table. Bumping neither Katrina or the other seats in her smooth, fluid, strides. She reached the back hatch and with a flick of her tail, was on the ground next to Sam looking out over the graves. “Thank you Sam.” She sighed and her eyes fell on the small set of bones that made up a hand. “There’s been entirely too many deaths already.” Please don’t let any of these be my students. Sara preyed silently.

(Kat. If I need to edit this, tell me and I will.)

(Slate's voice god modded with permission.)


Even in the late winter weather, the smell that rolled into the cabin of the jet was nearly unbearable. Even Katrina, who did not have the experienced nose that Sara had could instinctively recognize the smell of rotting meat. She'd created an illusion of that smell to go along with her seemingly ineffective warning to the Chinese government at their announcement of hostilities against the Russians at the beginning of the fall. The smell of death that overcame their nostrils now was no illusion, this was the real thing. What hell had they landed in?

Katrina pushed her way out of the small door behind her two companions, she didn't need their protection, she needed to see. She had to make sure.

It was a grave; not the usual kind seven by three and six feet deep. The measurements of the size of the pit they had landed in didn't register in Katrina's mind as cubic feet or meters. It registered in bodies. More bodies than Katrina could count filled the giant pit tucked in between two mountains, freshest on top, their weight crushing those down below.

Oh God.

How could something this horrifying exist? It was too real. These people were sleeping, but this was no place to sleep. Some were twisted in horror, as if they were dreaming a nightmare even more terrifying than the one Katrina was trapped in. Other faces were impossibly serene, as if they had escaped into a realm more peaceful than this one.

She was drowning in a sea of faces. They were all around her, dragging her down with them. Each face demanded her attention, begged to be seen one last time before they disappeared into oblivion. Faces that were strange, faces that almost seemed familiar, each demanded their turn in her ashen gaze. Faster, then faster she scanned the faces.

No.

Here in a country half way around the world she actually knew a few of these people. This was a woman that had escaped during the night, leaving her human husband behind, but hoping to meet with him again once she reached Europe. There was a girl, no older than twelve, who had escaped and followed the second underground railroad over fifty miles all by herself before being found by the bloodhound of the Pax senior class. There was the woman who had flapped her crow-like arms and told stories that entranced a class of seven students from a foreign country then helped them organize an escape route that would eventually lead refugees out of the country.

No, no, no.

She had known these people. Just a month or two ago, they had traveled together through the mountains. She had left them on what she had thought would be a safe path with guides she thought would be able to lead them to safety. She had abandoned them. She had failed them.

Katrina was shaking. Her entire body was shaking as she ran. She had to make sure, she had to know. The Russian soldiers that had crossed the border in the incident that sparked this war. No one had mentioned what happened to the refugees that had been involved, because the Chinese government didn't want anyone to know they had ended up here. Unless they had escaped, this is where her students would be. Unless he had escaped, this is where Slate would be.

She couldn't find them. Her heart was beating in her throat.

Slate?

She listened as hard as she could for any whisper of a response. Her breath was catching, but she still ran.

SLAAATE!!

If he was still in the country, her call would leave his ears ringing from the illusionary yell. If he was listening, it would also be shouted psychically in his mind. Her mind was swimming with images of the faces, and it was possible he could see those, too.

She stopped, bent doubled over, unable to catch her breath in the befouled Himalayan air. She couldn't breathe in this air any longer. She couldn't survive with this much death suffocating her.

Katrina. You have a job to do in Beijing. Searching for us is not what is most important at this time. Go do what you need to do.

Katrina jerked when she heard the voice in her head. What about you? I've got Cold Steel here, we can pick you up and I can still go to Beijing after that. Where are you?

There was no further response. Had she imagined his voice? No. She couldn't have. She of all people knew what was real and what was illusion. If that was really what he wanted her to do, she really had no choice in the matter. There was no way she could find them if they didn't want to be found. After all these months, they knew how to hide in these mountains. They wouldn't let themselves be found again.

She had no other option. She started quickly back towards the plane, trying to avoid thinking about what she was stepping on. Even throwing her shoes away, burning her clothes, and boiling herself in hot water would never make her feel clean again.

“Sam! Sara! We need to get to Beijing. Slate will take care of the students.” At least she thought he would. So help him if he didn't.

“Sam, get us out of here please. I'll make sure no one sees us. We don't want to get caught here.” Katrina started to try and calm herself down. Slate was alive and she had a job to do. What she had to do now was keep their plane invisible enough that they could escape this hell hole. Though she would never escape the memories of the faces of the victims here. This never should have happened, and yet someone had let it happen, even caused it to happen. And she was going to go see that person. He would pay.

The stench was now even getting to him, for some reason it reminded him of burrito night back when he was in prison. Scratch that Burrito night came to a close second with this stench. The sight was something else Sam wasn’t a fan of. Even with killing people when he was a kid the looks of these peoples faces still made his stomach churn. It was then that Sam regretted ever setting down on this hollowed land. One of pained and anguished faces. Even if they did go to a better place it didn’t look like they went there peacefully.

Almost all the looks on the faces were in Sam’s opinion of fear. He killed his fair share of people and they all had looks similar to this. It was disturbing, for a time all he did when ever he felt scared or sad he would turn to a bottle of alcohol but two years clean meant little to his thirst. Even now in this massive graveyard the first way he thought about how to cope about it was drowning away his feelings in a bottle of whiskey.

He watched emotionlessly as Katrina ran around and looked at the faces. Part of him wanted to knock her out and toss her back on the jet only to pretend that it was a bad dream one that she was safe from. But he didn’t, she wasn’t a little kid anymore and Sam needed to stop seeing her that way. She was an adult now and she seemed to be more involved in this mess than any of them.

This was reality, a sad reality but people did this and until they tried to understand one another this will continue to happen like it always had. It was a cruel sick twisted joke of the world. One that Sam saw no humor in what so ever. Some at this point would curse the heavens or have a break down but not Sam, he just remembered something that Kevin told him back when they were at an AA meeting. “Did you miss them before you met them? They only returned from the place they went to.” Sam never fully understood that concept till now.

Even if Sam were here before they all died there probably would have been little he could do to stop this mass genocide. However with the knowledge he had now there were things he could do to prevent this from happening again. Using a few of his connections Sam would give the location to the UN along with a telling of what he saw. Only then could the monsters for this be properly punished.

“Beijing?” Sam asked curiously as he and the others climbed back into the Jet. They were close to Beijing already, so the jet ride wouldn’t take to long but still something was unnerving Sam. Like they were being watched. Reluctantly Sam hit the jet to full speed before coming to Beijing. “Sara keep an eye on Katrina…” he wanted to say more but his voice didn’t project right away, instead as he brought down the jet in the outskirts of the city.

In a quite tone he simply stated, “The UN need to find out about what happened, so I am going against my better judgment here…you guys stay safe I’ll be expecting a call for a ride in the near future…”

Sam said his peace and waited till Katrina and Sara both left jet hatch before taking off again. Reluctantly Sam looked down and started to dial for the mansion hoping he could get in touch with someone who could patch him through to someone in the United Nations they had to know about this travesty.

A muffled voice picked up on the radio as Sam tried to get a better frequency with no luck. “The Location is…” Sam rambled of the coordinates and repeated it twice as he quickly began his climb. “Oh god…” Sam muttered as he looked at the radar and spotted two red blips on the screen.

Hitting the throttle Sam made an attempt to out run the rockets with little luck for they were gaining faster than the jet could accelerate. Sam’s heart paused for a second as he ran towards the bag his son brought him letter and all. Tuning around and hitting the distress signal ice already forming on his body Sam waited for the impact. His thoughts on Sammy, Airyn and Alexandra.

BOOM!

Sara forced herself not to look at the faces. She either stared up at the trees in the distance or at her feet but even those weren’t save places to look. The distance away from them only confirmed the size of the grave sight. The number of the bodies that were crammed in the one area and her feet were close to a set of hands that poked out of the ground, bent, like a dying baby tree. If you didn’t know who someone was by looking at their face, you could look at their hands. Calluses told of days at work. The size told age, the skin and wrinkles told age. Sara felt her stomach tighten and all too willingly went back into the jet.

Before long, they were off again and when Sam asked Sara to watch out for Katrina, Sara tilted her head. “Of course.” Was Sam not coming with them? For some reason when he started the jet, Sara knew this part of the mission was for her and Katrina, but for some reason she expected Sam to stay with them.

The second landing was another relief. Sara really hated flying, but fighting the air sickness was a relief from fighting the sickness that came from the dead bodies. Sara could deal with it, just by bowing her head and holding her gut.

“We’ll call when we’re ready, Bro.” Sara said as she said her fare well to Sam. But it wasn’t good bye. It didn’t even occur to Sara that there was trouble coming this soon till Sam was in the air.

Sara had turned and gathered her duffle bag, and she was starting to walk away from the make shift landing strip when the jet’s sound changed. Sara’s fur on the back of her neck, stood on end, and she felt the fur around her mouth bristle, when she turned around to see.. .. .. “no.. .. ..”

Sara couldn’t see much, two lights from who knows what type of weapon exactly, were following the light of the jet, Sara’s eyes widened and her mouth went dry. Swallowing only felt like one side of her mouth was sand paper, rubbing against another piece of sandpaper. “Pull up.” Sara preyed softly. Willing the jet to stay air born. Her heart was hammering against her ribs as if she was about to sprint across a NasCar race track, but in actuality, her feet couldn’t move. They wouldn’t move, and when Sara forced them to, her balance tipped and she only managed to stumble one step. Maybe two. Who really knew. Sara wasn’t able to pay attention to her feet she was paying attention to the jet. That little flying box that was currently defying all common laws of sense, and gravity.

“No!” Sara demanded as she stared at the little dots in the sky. The word was clear and said much louder before her voice became nothing more than a choke, again. “No. Please, no.. .. .. no,no.”

The fleshy area of Sara’s nose went pale white and gray. Her heart hammered in her head demanding that she do something. Screaming at her brain to think of something and tell her body to do it. To help even though her head was the practical one, and knew there was nothing else she could do. Sara was helpless.

“Sam!”Aside from Ayesac, Sam was the closest thing Sara had to a possible family. So what if they only met when Sara was twenty. “No!”

BOOM!

Sara stumbled and hit her knees. She was shaking uncontrollably. Her eyes became fuzzy and she blinked, not even realizing that they were so wet, because her mouth was so dry. Her heart felt like she was taering it in two as she struggled to look at the explosion. Trying to see if there were signs of life because Damn it! Sam could fly. He didn’t need the jet to do it. He just had to be awake. He survived the explosion, so he had to be awake and Sara would see him flying and waving at her and Katrina with a goofy grin on his face. A grin Sara hated so much and wanted to see again. The other side of her heart struggled to pull her gaze away from the wreck. She didn’t want to see the proof that Sam might be.. .. .. That he was.. .. ..

Sara bit into her lower lip.

. ..Dead. Sam was dead and it was all her fault.

All she had been able to do was watch. As soon as she had heard Sara's “No” she had spun around on the runway to see what had made her react that way.

Time had slowed down. Katrina had followed her gaze up into the sky where Sam's jet ducked and dodged and tried to escape the missiles that were on its tail.

Katrina's eyes opened wide, disbelieving. She couldn't be seeing this. Someone was trying to fool her with some sort of hologram or illusion. Except she would have been able to tell if they were, and this was far too real.

Why hadn't she made the plane invisible as it took off as she had done when they left the graveyard? How could she have let something like that slip her mind? Now, Sam had to dodge the missiles that she could have helped him avoid. Katrina tried all she could now to make the plane disappear from the radar or whatever it was the missiles were using to guide themselves closer to the plane, but it was no use. Illusions didn't work on missiles that were already homing in on their target. They were just machines that didn't have any senses of their own.

Time sped up again. Sam's plane had exploded, flaming shrapnel fell from the sky over a mile away from where they stood, and Katrina couldn't tell where it landed from this far away.

She couldn't escape death. It had lured them to the graveyard and it had followed them back to Beijing. Death was hungry and greedy. A pit full was not enough souls, death had to take one more from her. Sam.

It was her fault. She had been careless with that takeoff, as her mind turned forward, thinking only of the path before her own feet and forgetting the paths that stretched before others. What's more, she had brought him here. She had asked him to take them to China, and it was Chinese missiles that had shot down his plane. She might as well have pressed the big red launch button herself.

Tears filled her eyes and she could not watch the sky anymore. All she could do was reach for Sara and cling to her, holding herself close to the lioness woman. Her breath came in chokes. Why did such terrible things happen to everyone she came near? She swore to herself as tears made trails down her cheeks that would do a better job of protecting Sara during this mission than she had done with Slate, with her students, and with Sam. No one else would get hurt because of her.