NCIS: Parentage

Still unaware of Leanne’s resurrection, Tom went about his everyday life, his belief that she was still alive slipping away. He had woken up on this particular morning from the same dream that he had become a recurring occurrence during his hours of rest over the previous few weeks, although he never fully understood quite what was going on within the dream.

During the dream, he would awaken from sleep in the middle of his school, the entirety of the upper area burning, the lower area a war zone between freakishly familiar enemies that were familiar and yet unknown. Then there was the rest of the deformed town, glowing with a weird, eerie, white light with a large purple blob of energy floating high up into the sky.

His father was stood to his right, Emma was to his left. Without control over his body he glanced at both of them, and both of them had a look of terror in there eyes that he could not explain. Emma’s presence also confused him further as he had watched her die, and if she was dead then she couldn’t be in a possible future.

Without any clear warning the old, worn down maths block caved him revealing a portion of the catacombs in which Naomi, Jack and Maddi were all cornered by the same creatures that had attacked him shortly after he had killed Leanne. Another reason for it not to be a vision of the future – Maddi was in it.

Above him, around the purple blob, Cydonian, Vinto and Zoombian ships all materialised simultaneously and began charging their weapons at the blob. Before they could fire a series of missiles and extremely high-tech energy weaponry rushed from the ground and blob, obliterating them all. Only a handful of the lasers came from Protectors, everything else came from the bird creatures that had attacked Tom.

Before he could see anything else he usually woke up, but this time he remained asleep to be greeted to another variation of himself, trying to warn him of something, something approaching faster than anyone could possibly predict.

While no noise could make it through, two words did: “Newton Abbot.” Everything else was non-audible.

Then he woke. Dizzy and confused, his mind racing as it tried to piece the two words into the rest of the puzzle. But nothing came to mind.

*****

Connie was still not thrilled about her father volunteering in her class as she believed it to make her a target to the serial killers; Tom disagreed, believing it easier to protect her, or else they may kidnap her and bring her ready for execution to his lessons.

Both of them were probably right. Both were probably also very wrong.

However, he had grown on the rest of the class, the majority of them forgetting that he was in the same room as Maddi and Emma when they were killed. All of them forgetting that he was responsible, at least some what, for the death of Sarah, all forgetting Connie’s killing of Faye.

The class was half empty today however, apparently many parents didn’t want to send their kids to a school where serial killers murder students and buildings randomly collapse with all of the people inside already dead, some of whom were decapitated. Those parents were the smart ones. Those who remained walked straight into a memory dome that Tom had had Connie place over the school, it basically erased any memories of Felix, Penny, Faye or any of the deaths upon entry. This worked to some extent because most parents came to the school to pick up their kids on the day that Tom destroyed the tech block, effectively wiping the majority of their memories.

After the failure of Faye’s part to kill Connie, Tom was expecting another attack for the first few days. He was not expecting it to occur two weeks after Faye was killed trying to murder Connie.

The door suddenly swung open while Tom sat with Connie. After which, not one but two people walked in.

            “Do you two do everything together?” Tom asked, shocked to see both Penny and Jackie in the room, expecting it to be Felix.

            “Yep,” Penny agreed. “I’m here to make sure she does what she has been told to do. Don’t want a close call like last time.”

            “I would have thought that Felix would have wanted to avenge Faye that is all,” Tom shrugged.

            “Maybe he did,” Penny snarled. “Maybe he was unreachable to give the mission to.”

            “Anyway,” Jackie snapped. “Connie, my darling granddaughter, come here.”

            “Like that is going to work,” Connie retorted smugly.

            “Worth a shot,” Jackie shrugged while forming a small ball of fire.

Tom formed a small invisible force field just in the nick of time as his mother threw the fireball straight at Connie’s face. “Now, now. No cheap tricks,” Tom warned as he formed his sword in his right hand. “Which of you dies first?”

            “You,” Penny informed, drawing both her knifes and running at Connie. She struck Connie only to find that she suddenly flew backwards and straight into Jackie.

            “I killed Faye idiot,” Connie laughed. “I can now do exactly the same as what she and Felix can do.”

            “My turn,” Tom snarled, his face going dark.

Before his mother could react, he was in front of her, his sword ready on her chest. “Get up,” Tom snarled. “I’m going to do this properly; you will face your monster.”

            “Gladly,” she smiled before standing and forming her own sword of temporal energy. Tom looked at the sword, baffled. “I mimic, just like Penny does. Did you not know that?”

            “Nope. But did you know that I’m immune to that energy?” Tom retorted with a smile before swinging his sword at her.

            “What? Si…since when?” she stuttered.

            “Since I was born,” he smirked as he forced her into a corner.

Meanwhile behind him, Penny and Connie were in the middle of a standoff, both waiting for the other to give in and rush for the much more efficient weapon in the heart of classroom: Tom’s gun.

Jackie’s sword crashed to the ground before disintegrating. “I should have done this when you snuck into my room all those years ago,” he snarled dominantly as she fell to the floor.

            “Please,” she begged. “I don’t want to die…”

            “I gave you plenty of chances to leave and start anew, but you keep on running back. I kept you locked up but you just broke out. I’m out of chances to give,” Tom stated without any indication of emotion.

The sound of a gun shot shocked both sides of the equation. But Tom kept control over his mother as she begged him to spare her life. “I am out of chances to give. And you are out of time,” he warned before slowly pushing the sword into her chest causing the area around it to slowly turn to dust and blow away in the wind.

He turned to head back into the room from whence the gun shot came, expecting to find Penny towering over a dead Connie, he instead found his daughter clutching her shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding from the bullet. Penny meanwhile lay at her feet, her eyes blood shot. “Connie!” he called and rushed across the room.

            “She got to the gun first,” Connie noted. “I managed to fry her brain by opening up the floodgates to release a flood of memories. I didn’t release enough though. She is still alive just trapped within her own mind.”

            “How long will it last?” Tom asked as he pulled a first aid kit from his bag.

            “A week, maybe? I can’t be certain that she will even wake up. For now what do you want to do with her?” she asked as Tom wrapped a bandage around her shoulder wound.

            “We’ll put her somewhere she can never escape from. At least not without a little bit of effort on her own part,” Tom smiled. “You meanwhile are going to go to the hospital and have your arm done properly.”

            “Please, lock her up somewhere she can never escape,” Connie stated. “And find Felix before he can come after me. I don’t feel a third attempt on my life would end particularly well for me.”

            “Will do,” Tom promised. “Your mum will stay with you at the hospital, she’ll keep you safe. I’ll work on taking down Felix.”