The next morning, Tamar awoke with a start. She flung herself to her feet; her startled eyes trying to dart in every direction at once. Then she remembered where she was and relaxed, but didn't feel any better.
"Are you okay?" Malachi asked, bringing his head up from a book he's been reading.
A man, reading? He's stranger than I thought. Tamar thought as she walked over to stand beside him.
"What's that?" She nodded towards the book in his lap. He was sitting cross-legged, with the book laying across his legs.
"This is a Bible. It was my grandfathers. This book is now well over three hundred years old." He held it up to her. "It's an antique now, like me."
"A Bible? Wow, I've never seen one before. No ones read them for over a hundred and fifty years. What's it about?" Tamar stopped, realizing her innate curiosity had gotten the better of her.
"Tamar, don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm glad you're interested.
Like a playful kitten, Tamar sat next to him, looking into the pages.
"Do you know that there is a passage in here that speaks of a woman by your name?" He asked her while flipping through the old pages with the deliberation of someone holding something of immense value.
"Here we go, Second Samuel 13. It's a tale of rape and vengeance, not a pretty tale, but the rapist got what was coming to him."
"What happened?" Tamar's curiosity had her trying to look past Malachi's arm as much as she could.
Malachi marveled at the change that had come over the young woman who sat beside him.
"Tamar's half brother Amnon tricked Tamar and then raped her. When Tamar's full brother Absalom heard about it, he avenged his sister by having his servants kill Amnon because king David did nothing." He turned to her. "It's a sad story, but you do have a lovely name."
"Why do you read a book filled with fables and myths?"
"Because they are not myths or fables. Everything in this book took place just as it was written." He thumped his chest with a finger. "My God gave the inspiration for every word written here. I have seen with my own eyes lives transformed, hearts healed, and darkness dispelled."
"You're nuttier than a fruitcake, you know that?"
"You're not the first to think that. I doubt you'll be the last."
Tamar sat next to him for a long time, deep in thought. How could this man, dressed all in black, study a book that was written over two thousand years ago? Her mind had a hard time wrapping itself around a man she couldn't read at a glance. She was so used to being able to know what any man was thinking the instant she saw them. Malachi, on the other hand, was so closed off as to be unreadable. He kept himself locked away from her, which just made her want to know more. At the same time, she wanted nothing to do with him. He was nothing more than a means to an end. He'd keep her away from harm until she was far enough away from the city to get back to what she did best, being by herself.
"Where are we going?" Tamar asked for what seemed like the hundredth time.
"We are heading north."
"You already told me that. But we're too close to the water. I can smell it." She shook her head in disgust.
"What about it, it's just water? I'm keeping it on our right to make sure of what direction we're going."
"Don't you have a map in your head or something?"
"I do, but I like to do my orienteering on my own. It keeps me sharp."
He stopped so fast, Tamar almost walked into his back. She'd seen him do that only one time before, and knew what it meant.
"What is it?" She whispered, while crouching.
"I have twenty-six contacts converging on us from the south, west, and north. They're forcing us towards the water. Come on." He ran off to his right and, without realizing where she was heading, she followed.
Coming out from an alley, Tamar froze. Before her stretched the largest body of water she'd ever seen. She knew it was Lake Michigan, but that didn't prepare her for the sheer size of it. It stretched as far as she could see to her right, to her left, and out in front of her. The panic seized her, rooting her feet in place. She couldn't move. As hard as she fought her body, it would not obey her command. Malachi stood feet away yelling something about a research facility on the lake bottom, but all she heard was under water, down at the bottom, and she broke. All the years of abuse, of the punishments she'd endured. Her head being pushed into ice cold water until she lost consciousness, then being revived to start it all over again. Water in her hair, down her back, in her ears, everywhere.
"NO!" she screamed and bolted back into the alley, straight towards the onrushing Saltek.
"What is she doing?" Malachi asked his on-board.
"She's running straight back towards the Saltek. What do we do now?"
"A little more practice never hurt anyone." Concentrating for a second, Malachi gathered energy from inside himself. He envisioned this as if he was drawing on a shining core, the energy his body now produced after being bonded with his prison.
Every time he drew on the power, it became a little easier, kind of like exercising a muscle. The more he did it, the more energy he could draw, and the more easily it flowed.
With the suit powered up, he flexed his leg muscles and squatted. Like a giant spring he lept, and as if his legs were now huge springs he was shot up and forward as if out of a cannon. Landing on the top of an eight story building, he ran across the roof with lightning speed. From the other side, he watched Tamar sprint in an uncontrolled rush past the building front and out into the intersection.
He noticed she was running blind, his vision zero in on the side of her face. Even from almost two hundred yards, he could see the tears streaming down her face. She was crying her eyes out while running at nearly fifty miles an hour. Seeing the tears opened something in his chest. He didn't know exactly what this girl had been through, but he knew it had to have been horrible. That realization galvanized his will into something sharp, sharp and hard.
A flex of his will and his suit shaped a rifle from itself and slid it into his awaiting hand. Snapping it to his shoulder, he waited until the red dots he saw on his HUD became visible to his eye. The first massive shape came around a corner just ten yards in front of Tamar. At the speed she was running, there was no time for her to dodge, but she tried. Dropping to all four of her claws sent showers of sparks off the concrete sidewalk, yet she still slides towards the alien.
Malachi stroked the trigger. The rifle's muffled bark sent a single energy round down range, and the Saltek staggered and fell to its knees, then onto its side. A single smoldering hole between its eyes. Startled, Tamar tripped, went sprawling, recovered, and kept running.
Letting the rifle melt back into his suit, Malachi jumped again, landing on the side of the building Tamar had just passed. Leaping off the vertical surface, he landed in front of her and out of her line of sight. Four Saltek were converging on Tamar from two directions. They were so intent on her that they never saw the six flat discs flying towards their heads. Four solid thunks later and Tamar's way was clear once again.
Malachi called all the discs back to him where they absorbed back into his suit as well and was off again. Checking his HUD, he saw three more aliens were on a convergent course with Tamar. Sprinting around a corner, he called a sword out of his suit. It congealed out into the palm of his right hand until the hilt rested in his fingers as if glued there. He beat the Saltek to the corner and took the first one off at what he figured was its knees. The creature's bellow of pain was short lived as Malachi's next strike chopped the top of its massive crested head off. Its companions brought massive duel handled blades from back scabbards and readied for combat.
"I don't have time for you." Malachi growled. He didn't want Tamar to see him, so he wanted to finish them as quickly as possible.
The first died without even knowing it was under attack. With the blade brought into a defensive posture, it advanced slowly. Malachi's blood red blade shot out from his hand so fast it was nothing but a red blur. The hole it left in the Saltek's throat spurted orange blood while it pawed at it, attempting to stop the flow. Its attempts proved futile. The other broke and ran, calling into a small devise on the back of one wrist.
"Not good." Malachi spat and was on the creature before it took five steps. With an adder quick strike, his blade carved its chest from its body. It hit the ground in a spray of blood with a wet smacking sound.
Catching movement out of the corner of his vision, Malachi saw Tamar gaping at him from across the street. Before he could move, she turned and bolted, running off to his left and back into the shadows.
"Where is she going now?" Taking a glance at his HUD, he saw that she was moving at an angle to his position off to the north west. The nearest enemy contact was over eight miles away, so he decided to wait until she stopped.
Tamar ran for over three miles before she came to a stop. Malachi, following at a discreet distance, made sure she was alright. He knew she could take care of herself and would take offense if she knew he was protecting her. But against the Saltek, she was over matched, and even she knew it.
Huddled in her hole, she waited, she waited until he left, until he'd leave her alone. Everyone else in her life had, even when she been on a base with well over five thousand people, she'd been all by herself. Her feline side was fine with that. Solitude was what it wanted, what it needed. But she was so much more than a cat. She was a person, and that person wanted friends when she was young, and as she grew, she'd wanted more. She wanted someone she could trust, someone she could talk to about all the thoughts running their way around in her head. Only, where she was raised to show weakness was a death sentence. The way to survive was to be strong. Show strength and everyone left you alone, weakness, and you were bait for the alpha predators. So she'd become the thing she'd hated most, an alpha. Fast, lethal and utterly ruthless, she'd been feared and hated, all the things she didn't want, but at least she'd survived.
Until she'd realized there was so little of herself left. She'd done everything they'd wanted, molded herself in the image they'd wanted, and in the end she'd come so close to being one of the very persons that had forced her into the situation in the first place. So she'd escaped, knowing they'd hunt her down and take her back, but not caring. She'd had to escape while there was enough of herself left that she could remember. The part of her that wanted protection, that didn't want to fight. The part of her that wanted to find out what kind of man resided behind those glowing red eyes.
So when she felt something approach her hiding place, she tensed. It couldn't have been a Saltek. They were about as stealthy as a bulldozer. It had to be him, it had to be. For an instant, her temper flared. Why did he have to put her in a situation like this? He would come in and invade her little sanctuary and ruin everything. If he did, she vowed to fight him tooth and nail, no matter how powerful he seemed to be. So when he sat down at the entrance to her hiding place, folded his legs, placed his hands on his knees and just sat there, she was at a loss for what to do.
Tamar had chosen her hiding place with great care. She was at the end of a tunnel, made when one of the many structures in the area had been toppled over onto an adjacent one. A space, just big enough for her to crawl into, had been created in the enormous pile of debris. She had found it and wedged herself as far into it as she could.
Now Tamar was trapped. There was only one exit from her hiding place, and Malachi sat right in front of it. She was not going to crawl out to him. There was no way in hell she would be seen as crawling to a man, she rather die. So she sat and waited, and waited, and waited some more. What was with this guy? Was he made of stone? He'd been in the same position for the last two hours, and her patience was beginning to run thin.
"Go away." She whispered, knowing he'd hear her.
"No." He didn't move. Not one muscle in his body even twitched. His mouth hadn't even moved. It was as if his body had spoken.
"Go AWAY!" Tamar put more volume behind the words.
"No." Again the one-word reply.
"Why won't you just leave me alone? I don't want you here. I don't want anyone here!" Her voice rose in pitch and volume, all the while her heart prayed he wouldn't leave.
"Because no one wants to be alone forever. Take in from the king of introverts."
So, he just continued to sit and stare into nothing. Tamar couldn't tell what he was looking at or even if his eyes were open. All she knew was that he hadn't left, for reasons that were all his own, he had stayed.
Tamar would see just how much that was worth. Thus began a battle of endurance, her seeing just how long he would stay there. Tamar had been on missions where absolute stealth and silence had been requirements. The ability to lay motionless for hours had paid fine dividend in those situations. Now she put those abilities to the test. She wanted, no, needed, to know how much he would endure, how much he would go through for her. Tamar had heard more than her fair share of fine talk and empty promises. This time, he would have to prove what he said was true. Malachi would earn her trust, or he wouldn't have it.
He'd been sitting in his prayer position for seven hours, seven. He didn't mind. The night was clear as crystal and the time gave him time to pray. He hadn't had much time to talk to God in the last couple of days, so the abrupt, almost jarring slow down was welcome to him. He was deep into his reading of the book of Proverbs when he heard a noise. Turning towards it, he saw Tamar had worked her way closer to him. She was moving with great caution, trying to make as little sound as possible as to keep her movements secret.
Malachi had brought the book of Proverbs up on his HUD and was on the fifteenth chapter when his threat display showed him movement to his left.
"Are you alright?" He asked in as gentle a voice as he could manage.
Tamar didn't answer, she didn't have an answer. How could she tell him that no one in her life had ever asked her that simple question? The people she'd grew up with had told her how she was, and she had to accept it and mold her feelings and physical self to fit what they wanted from her.
So having someone ask her a question like that to her was jarring. Tamar stopped moving. She had to answer him, but what could she say? He knew she wasn't fine. She'd freaked out and ran straight back towards the very things they'd been trying to get away from. And again, he'd had to save her life. What was that, the fourth time now?
So slowly, ever so slowly, she crawled her way back towards the dim light. Though it was only from the half moon and the stars, the light was brighter than where she was. Sliding her way towards the entrance, she kept her eye on Malachi. He was silhouetted in a beam of moon light, sitting with his legs crossed, hands on his knees.
"What are you doing?" She asked, trying her best to sound lighthearted.
"Waiting for you, and reading."
"What are you reading?" Tamar asked. Anything to get the subject off of her actions.
"I am studying the book of Proverbs, the fifteenth chapter."
"What's it about?" She needed to keep him from talking.
"It tells of things that are foolish and things that are wise. That's the main subject of the chapter, of the whole book, actually."
"How long have you been studying that book?"
"We need to get moving." He stood in a single fluid like move and walked away from the pile of debris that used to be two buildings.
He hasn't even asked about why I ran. He's gotta be curious about it. Tamar thought as she followed.
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