Bitesize 4.8

Bitesize 4.8

Back in England Ed found himself once more in the hands of the doctors. The damage to his shoulder was minimal, mostly cosmetic, but it still got him a couple of stitches. For the time being they'd kept Max away from Odolf, isolated in his own mirrorless room. the balance of power had finally shifted and now the whole base was on high alert expecting a counterattack from Crowley. Guards had been posted in varied locations and equipped with the Raddick electric guns in addition to the more traditional automatic wepaons. Ed doubted that Crowley would send Raddick after Max. He was too organised for that. He knew they had weapons to take Raddick down. If anything Ed guessed Crowley would send either Leclair or Jean Federicq. It occurred to him that they still had no idea what Fredericq was capable of either. Crowley would have wasted no time in awakening the poor man's slumbering demon and as the world was still free from invasion he clearly held some power other than the 'key'. The next step was to see just what Max knew. The ball was in Crowley's court and Ed didn't want to sit around waiting for him to realise it.


Max's room was pretty spartan but had the basic luxuries. Max was sitting on the bed when Ed arrived, his head hung in his hands. He looked up as Ed entered and looked apologetic.
"Hey. Sorry man, about earlier."
"It's ok Max." said Ed, "Could have been either one of us. He does that, Crowley, gets in your head, saps your willpower."
"But you fought him off?"
"I'm not so sure I did. It may just be that you were trying to fight off both Crowley's will and that of the onigawa inside you. You remember don't you? What Crowley did back in the war?"
Max nodded.
"Yeah I remember it. How can I forget. I see it every night. I was only a kid back then." he laughed, "Well, I suppose I'm still a kid now. But I was young and naive. Crowley got us all so worked up with that speech of his. How we were gonna be the first of the New Aryans. Stronger, faster, deadlier. He took our patriotism and wielded it against us just as Hitler had done in the first place. We wanted it at first, all of us. When we saw Raddick and that other prisoner, the French guy. Christ, he bust clean through a brick wall. Who wouldn't want that strength when you're fighting for your life against half the world? We were gonna be supersoldiers. True German heroes. But when it was over and Crowley was all freaking out... I dunno, it felt wrong. Dangerous. Me, I feared for my sanity. Crowley was like an infant, writhing round on the floor babbling. I didn't want to end up like that. After Raddick and the French guy escaped we all realised that whatever Crowley had done had failed. We weren't like them and all we wanted to do was get away, just escape from it all while we still could. But then as the years pass by, it starts to dawn on you. Something did happen. Crowley succeeded. I didn't keep in touch with the others but I could tell pretty quickly something was wrong and I figured Crowley was gonna hunt me down so I kept moving. I've been all over, America, Egypt, Japan, Australia. I just kept on going. But as the decades slipped by I thought maybe he wasn't coming? Maybe he'd died or gone crazy. Eventually I came back. Guess I shoulda kept my head down after all."
"If you had we might never have found you."
"So what happens now?"
Ed sighed and sat down on the bed.
"It's like this..."


Ed explained as much as he could, about Crowley's plans, the search for the 'key' and their efforts to find the others.
"So that's what's kept me young all these years? There is one of those things inside me?"
"I'm afraid so. And one of you we think, has the power to seal Crowley back in those mirrors. We just don't know which one, but thankfully it seems, neither does he."
There was a long period of silence and then Max spoke again, hesitantly.
"I think... I think it might be me."
"We can't know for sure."
"I have these dreams." Max carried on, "Some weird place filled with mist. It's dark except for occasional flashes of bright white light and there's voices, hundreds of them, all chattering at once. No faces, just voices, but it's like they're all waiting for me to do something. And with each flash the mist looks different, like it's concentrating in front of me into a huge dense circle. The thicker it gets the more the voices talk, the louder they get and then they start chanting and the circle solidifies. Jet black, like rock or something, but so smooth, so smooth I can see my own reflection in it only it's not me, it's the demon..."
"And then?"
"And that's it. The face always scares me and I wake up."
Ed put a hand on his chin and mulled this over. Max stood up.
"Wake it up." he said, determination in his voice. "Wake it up and if it's me we can stop him."
"And if it's not?"
Max shrugged.
"We can't wake it anyway." said Ed, "We don't know how. Only Crowley knows."
"Well..."
"Don't even say it." said Ed, "I didn't come and grab you just to turn you straight over to Crowley. It's risky. Besides, he'd be suspicious. He knows we wouldn't just give you up."
Max thought for a while.
"What if... What if we made it seem like he'd got lucky?"
"What do you have in mind?"