Luke seized the moment. "Why kill them? Just leave. You have what you came for. There's no need for more bloodshed."
Beleth commanded that stillness as he stared at Luke. "Someday you will understand. One can never leave a cancer to spread." He flicked his wrist and the soldiers open fired on the IPI agents and crew, carefully avoiding Luke and Lucy.
Luke threw up another shield, and the bullets once again stopped mid-air, even as more joined them.
The pow-pow-pow of a hundred bullets deafened Lucy's ears. More and more bullets cluttered the air, stopping at Luke's shield point, but Lucy could tell Luke's energy was draining. The bullets shook, wavered, pushed forward as if fighting against the shield. Luke wouldn't win the fight for long, she knew.
With another flick of Beleth's fingers, the shooting stopped as suddenly as it had started. He addressed Luke. "Join us. If you come peacefully, we'll let the crew live."
Agent Morrison stirred under Lucy's hands. His eyes sharpened to focus. "No! Luke, Lucy, don't go with them."
Before Lucy could register the movement, Beleth raised his gun and shot Morrison in the head, silencing him. Lucy choked back a sob. "No. What did you do?"
Beleth spoke as if she hadn't said anything, as if he hadn't just killed a man. "What is your answer?"
Seriously? He thinks we'll go with him now?
Luke had the same idea. "We're not going anywhere with you scumbags. Ever."
Beleth sighed without any melodrama, then nodded once. Robert lifted his hand. The sphere thrummed again and Luke flew through the air and was pushed into the airplane wall. His limbs spread apart and Lucy could hear cracking.
"Leave my brother alone!" She looked to Beleth, then Robert, but they did nothing to stop.
She looked back to her brother. His mouth opened in a scream of pure agony, but no sound emerged.
Beleth gestured to Luke. "Your brother's lungs are collapsing. If Robert releases him soon, he will not suffer permanent damage, but wait too long and he won't recover. Consider your choices carefully, Lucy."
His fingers bent back, pushed to near breaking by the invisible force that controlled him. His limbs twisted in unnatural ways. Lucy tried to run to him, to help him, but a force stopped her, paralyzing her and forcing her to watch her brother be tortured to death.
She couldn't move toward Luke, so she moved to the side, grabbing Morrison's gun from his detached hand, fingers slipping on the blood. She lifted it, aimed and shot Robert in the chest.
Luke collapsed to the ground and groaned in pain.
Lucy shook and dropped the gun as her body went into shock. The plane shifted down, and Lucy slid across the floor.
Robert was dying and could no longer suspend the plane in the sky.
Beleth and his men grabbed onto seats to steady themselves. Soldiers and IPI Agents fell. Everyone drew guns, shooting at each other. Lucy knew Luke was too exhausted to stop the bullets. More people died as the plane tilted in the sky, suspended by metal cables attached to the helicopter above.
Robert writhed on the floor, the bullet to his chest killing him slowly. Lucy didn't want to watch, but couldn't seem to pull her eyes from the scene.
Beleth knelt next to his dying friend, his voice low but still commanding. "Robert, you have served us well and now, your mission has come to an end. Rest assured, your family will be well cared for, and you will be missed."
Robert grunted, unable to speak, but nodded his consent to a fast death.
Beleth placed his gun under his friend's chin. A tear, shiny and black, leaked from Beleth's eye as he pulled the trigger, and that one bullet sounded louder than the hundreds that had come before.
Lucy's stomach lodged in her throat as the plane plunged forward more, the cables attaching it to the helicopter above stretched beyond capacity. Bethel looked at her, not with anger or despair, as she'd expected, but with that same stillness that so aggravated her.
His voice boomed in the cabin. "You've made your decision."
A flicker of doubt plagued her. Had it been the right one? She looked around at the dead men, agents and soldiers piling up at the back of the plane as it hung from the sky. How could this have been the right choice? But giving in, going with them, that wouldn't have been right either.
Bethel's words from earlier haunted her. "Sometimes there are no right decisions."
The plane shook and strained against the cables, until one snapped, jerking the plane into a twisted limbo in the sky.
Bethel let go of his seat and allowed himself to fall toward Lucy, grabbing her. He yelled to the only soldier who survived the massacre. "Get the boy."