Wind-Scarred (The Will of the Elements, Book 1)

by Sky Corbelli

  Chapter 7

  Irritation, Interrogation, and the Truth

  Ezra woke up groggy as the door to his holding cell opened.

  “Come with me,” grunted a uniformed DOLT officer.

  So he was in custody. Well, at least whoever the other people were, they'd have to go through DOLT to get to him. He climbed to his feet slowly, muscles aching.

  Mental note: avoid electrocution in the future.

  He followed the guard through the building, where people in uniform were moving about briskly and efficiently. The guard left him in a room with a table and two chairs facing each other across it. He walked around the small room warily. Five minutes later, the door opened to admit a hard looking man in his early forties, a translucent public workspace hovering before him. He gestured to the chair on the far side of the room.

  “I'm Lieutenant Jeffries, a detective for the Department, and I'd just like to have a quick word with you before you go on your merry way. Have a seat, Mr. Hawkins.” He managed to convey a tremendous amount of disrespect in the slightly emphasized honorific. Ezra sat down.

  Jeffries touched the table, which began displaying holographic depictions of the state in which Ezra had left the museum. They sat in silence and watched the pictures of broken glass and overturned display cases scroll by.

  “What were you doing in the university district tonight, Mr. Hawkins?”

  Ezra blinked. Surely Miss O'Donnell had already told them this. “I was setting off a glider for an experiment.”

  “That's funny, because no-one saw a glider being launched from anywhere near there tonight at all. Do you maybe have a different story you'd like to try?”

  “Nooo, that's why I went there. I took a shuttle to higher ground but I-”

  Jeffries slammed his hand down on the table, killing the images. “Don't screw with me here, kid. We have records of your wormhole travel to the plaza. We know you went to the city Center with a large, unmarked package. We know you went back into the inner workings of the space station wormhole generators and didn't come back out and we know that you had several generators turned off tonight for 'inspections.'” He made quotes in the air around the word. “We know you had a radiation badge in your pocket. What were you testing Ezra? Now we have several wormholes that have been unlinked from the network, and a package that was not on your person when you were brought in that we cannot find anywhere in the Sanctuary Center or the Conservatorium, the only two places we can reliably put you tonight. What was in the package?!” The detective's face had turned red as he practically shouted this out at Ezra.

  “It-it was just my glider.”

  “Okay, you want to play it that way, that's fine. And where is your 'glider' now?”

  “Back in my lab, assuming my experiment went fine. It may still be out somewhere past the barrier, and then I'll have to-”

  “Wouldn't that just be convenient? We're already getting a warrant for your home, so we'll know soon enough. A package that no-one knows anything about, that you drag halfway across the city, and now it's just gone. What did you take from the museum Ezra? We'll find out eventually, but things'll go a whole lot smoother for you if you just some clean now.”

  Ezra stared at the man in front of him. He didn't understand what was going on. “What are you talking about? I didn't take anything from the–”

  “Ah-ha! So you left it there, is that it? Just going to mess around with the ports, maybe have a little fun at everyone else's expense? You freaking Legacies.” The man scowled in disgust. “You think that just because your mommy or daddy had one good idea that now you're god's gift to the Sanctuary. Well, let me tell you, you're all a worthless bunch of leeches, keeping us down under-”

  “Excuse me?” Ezra's voice had taken on a cold, quiet tone. “What did you say about my parents?”

  “Oh, did I strike a nerve there Mr. Hawkins? Maybe you were sabotaging the space station wormholes. A little revenge for mom and pop. Well, I hate to say it, but we ruined that plan. We had those shut down the moment we heard you were running loose.”

  “My parents were geniuses.” Fury was building in Ezra. He clenched his teeth and continued. “You will take back what you said about them.”

  “Or what? You wanna add assaulting an officer to your charges? Go ahead, be my guest, tough guy.” Jeffries sneered, sticking his chin out across the table. “Take your best shot. If you ask me, the Millennial explosion was the best thing to happen to the world since Founding. Put all those data banks the the public's hands, where they belong. Only one real problem, and he's sitting right in front of me.”

  Ezra's hands balled into fists and he started trembling with rage. Jeffries flashed him a malicious smile and whispered, “Go on Ezra, do it. I always thought you Legacies were a bunch of pansies. Prove me wrong.”

  “That will be quite enough, Mr. Jeffries.”

  The door to the room slid open, revealing a slight, unimpressive man with short, unimpressive medium blonde hair swept back from a widow's peak. The dark glasses that obscured his eyes and well-tailored suit practically screamed 'government'. Jeffries jerked up from where he had been leaning over the table.

  “This is a legal interrogation over a matter of Sanctuary security. I'm going to have to ask you to leave Mr...”

  The man smiled slightly. “My name really isn't important here.” He pulled up a virtual document with the Chancellor's seal on it. “However, according to the Chancellor, I will be taking over this case.”

  Jeffries snarled as he received the document and scanned it, eyes lingering on the signature at the bottom of the page. He turned back to Ezra, leaned back over the table and said in a low voice, “This isn't over, Mr. Hawkins. I will find out what you are up to, and I will see you burn for it.” He whirled and glared at the other man in the room before storming out.

  The slight man sighed and walked to the door, locking it shut. He then went and checked the small bump that denoted the camera on the wall. “Ah, I see he already disabled it. How thoughtful.”

  Ezra stared at the man who had just come to his defense and wondered if he would have had a better chance with Jeffries. He was clearly not DOLT. That really only left one group of people who knew where and who he was. If that document was legitimate, it meant that they were backed by the Chancellor. He had a sudden sinking feeling as he realized that he wasn't getting out of this.

  “Ezra James Hawkins. Named for your grandfather and your father, I believe. You've had a rather interesting Founder's Day. Slipping away from home and bluffing your way to the space elevator. Flying a glider out of a sector where you had already told DOLT you would be doing it. An admirable display of competence and resourcefulness, by the way. Setting a wormhole through a wormhole and documenting evidence that the world outside is not only inhabitable, but inhabited. Sneaking into and back out of a secret base. Granted, it was mostly empty due to your earlier endeavors but still, quite the accomplishment. Rerouting a wormhole to prevent immediate pursuit and apprehension, thereby forcing an agent to reveal herself to you and leave you in the hands of the more... traditional authorities. Quite the Founder's Day indeed.” He paused to access the table's holographic drives and glanced over the images playing there.

  Ezra gave what he hoped was a roguish grin. “You should see what I do for Christmas.”

  He received a very direct look. From behind the glasses. It must have taken practice. “Mr. Hawkins, while I appreciate the ability to keep one's wit in the face of insurmountable opposition, I happen to know that you spent last Christmas attempting to appear horribly sick so as to avoid a second date with Miss Mitzi Parnasus. I also know that you failed. I heard the crepes were delicious.”

  Ezra stopped trying to smile. “Who are you?” he whispered. It was probably only the residual anger from his earlier confrontation that gave him the nerve to ask the question.

  “Ah, good, I see we understand each other. It's always nice to meet a young man who can keep up. You may call me
Mr. Blair. I have a few questions for you, Ezra. May I call you Ezra?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Mr. Blair, or whatever his name really was, smiled again. “Of course, Ezra, you have all kinds of choices. In fact, that's why I'm here. But first I need to ask you: what do you know about the history of Sanctuary?”

  Ezra blinked. He had expected thinly veiled threats, maybe, but if this was a threat it had clearly put on its winter clothing. He answered hesitantly. “Well... much of our history has been written by the Legacy houses. A house is elevated to Legacy status by developing some new and note-worthy technology and keeping it in their genetically encrypted data banks–”

  Blair waved his hand dismissively. “No, no, earlier than that Ezra. What do you know about the founding of Sanctuary?”

  “Um, the Founders were a group of men and women dedicated to science. They stayed out of the Great War and created Sanctuary as a safe haven for mankind to live in peace. Only, after the war, there was no-one left. There was nothing left. They put up the barrier to protect themselves and tried to preserve as much of humanity as they could.”

  “That's very good, exactly what they teach in the history classes.”

  “But...” Ezra took a deep breath. “But it's not like that anymore. There are people outside. I saw them! Healthy people! The world is healthy again! There's no reason for us to be stuck here, hiding in our city like... like hermits or some kind of–”

  “Prisoners?” Mr. Blair gave Ezra a sad little smile and took off his glasses, setting them on the table. His light brown eyes initially seemed unimpressive, much like everything else about the man, but on a second glance Ezra glimpsed a hard, fierce intelligence behind them. “Unfortunately, Ezra, prisoners are exactly what we are. What we've been since the beginning.”

  “What do you mean?” Ezra's voice wavered uncertainly.

  “There was a Great War, Ezra. We lost.”