Brid found a place to park some distance from the Federal Building and got out to put some coins in the parking-meter. We didn't want the car to be chocked before we had our chance to get back to it, but I seriously doubted we would be driving out of here this night. Once the alarms within the Federal Building were sounded, all hell would break loose. Federal Agents coordinating with the local Police would close down the entire city as fast as the radio could call in reinforcements. We would have to go out on foot.
“We'll have to make some new arrangements.” Sonafi said to Brid. “Any place a Vampire has ever stayed in the past is out of the question. We have to assume they know everything about us.”
“It wasn't so bad.” I said, hiding my surprise, though I shouldn't have been surprised in the first place. Brid had become much matured recently. He had devised the strategy which we would use to attack the Others, engineered the Low Emission Field Generators and even constructed the apparatus which was the Resistance. So I should have been surprised at nothing he did. In only a short time he had already done far more to engender the success of our struggle with than I had ever done. I was very proud now of Brid. I had wholly and entirely underestimated my youngest son. Here was living proof of living Evolution.
We left Brid's car and moved off on foot towards the big Federal Building we could see several blocks distant. We left our shoes behind to scurry up an old brick building. Soon we were atop the twelve story structure and looking across the expanse separating us from the Federal Building. We worked our way across the roofs of two adjoining buildings and when we could get no closer jumped from the last. We landed silently and Brid, Volga and Nikita found shadows to blend themselves into.
The roof of the Federal Building was mostly covered by the heliport landing pad. The landing pad itself, the raised lamps which illuminated the pad, the coiled and unattached buoy cables and the eye bolts protruding from the concrete rooftop. Like our own home, it had a rectangular roof-access doorway, which was a short distance from the helipad. There were also the air-conditioning units and vents that all such buildings possessed. Even as our feet touched the concrete, Sonafi and I were beside the roof-access entrance.
Brid, Volga and Nikita joined me as I tried the door handle. Not unsurprisingly it was not even locked though that would have proved no hindrance. I looked quickly around my small group and then pulled open the door. I went in without looking back to see who followed. I plunged down the stair into the fully-lit building.
The stair had a landing between the roof level and the topmost floor of the building, which separated the two short flights of steps. As I went down it I noted the camera mounted in the corner at the juncture of ceiling and walls. A man watching that camera would not see us pass, but a slow motion replay, depending on the resolution of the recording, might show a blurred glimpse of me or even an entire snapshot of one of us as we passed. I did not like the idea that we were leaving visual evidence behind but I did not believe we would have the time or resources to find and eliminate the recording which had been made when I was aware that such data would be backed up the moment it was recorded. It was simply something that could not be helped.
The first corridor was empty but well lit. I had been keeping my mind closed but now I opened it. Let the sea of sensory input wash around me in its ebb and flow. There was no one on the topmost floor. On the next level I found James Ray, along with three others. James Ray was drugged and incoherent. His mind a collage of thoughts, ideas and concepts shape-shifting and attempting to morph into coherency but unable, due to the effects of the drugs they had administered him. They weren't wasting any time. The others I sensed were his questioners and the pharmacologist who had administered the truth serum. The questioning had not yet begun, but when it did he would not be able to lie or hold anything back. He was, after all, only Human, and the drugs more than effective. He would not consciously betray us and I would not have held it against him once he had, under the influence of the drugs. It was obvious, since he was under the influence of their Truth Serum, that he had not volunteered his knowledge. As things were, the issue of fault or betrayal would not matter. We were here. His interview was about to come to an end.
As the others flanked me, taking up positions to guard me while my conscious mind was mostly elsewhere, I quickly slipped into the pharmacologists mind to see how much time we had and to determine if the doctor was aware of any trap that might have been laid for us, but they were not expecting to be attacked within their own stronghold and in any case there were security personnel manning the street entrance on the first floor. They were inviolable, they thought. The Doctor was waiting with a certain amount of professional glee the opportunity to question James Ray. I did not like what I saw when I looked into his mind. He was not a nice man.
Following the schematic of the building I found in the doctor's mind, I sped down the hall to the staircase entrance, through the door, down the stairs, and on into the level below. Sonafi followed me step for step, the others only slightly farther behind. I knew from the Doctor’s mind that the door to the interrogation room, at least, had been locked but it was too little precaution far too late. I lowered my shoulder and went through it, snapping the steel lock as if it were a dry twig. The door exploded inward and I went in with it.
What I saw in that first moment, when I saw James Ray strapped in a chair, with his two interrogators and the good Doctor hovering over him, and his battered condition, decided me then and there that these Humans did not deserve to live.
James Ray was not young but that fact had not been taken into consideration. The beating had not occurred with any thought that James Ray would talk. The drugs would make him talk. These were Humans who did this for a living but more so for the personal enjoyment. The beating had been merely to amuse. James Ray would now have no place among mainstream humanity. He would be hunted whether he was Human or Vampire and so there was no further reason to withhold his request.
I reached and took the pharmacologist first. He was nearer the door, cleaning implements on a tray. With one hand I reached out and snapped his neck, even as Sonafi rushed past me and attacked the two interrogators. A quick flick of her right hand crushed one’s larynx even has her left reached to snatch the second from his feet. Then did for the remaining interrogator time return to normal.
The stunned Human found himself dangling above the floor in Sonafi's merciless grip. He was taller than she, Sonafi is after all only a tiny thing, and his feet barely cleared the ground at the full extension of her arm, but he had an immediate sense of the power of the being into whose clutches he had somehow fallen, and he did not struggle. I know that if it had not been for the door hanging from one hinge at a cockeyed angle, the thunder of its having been smashed open, it would have seemed as if we had materialized out of thin air. Still it did not seem possible and his eyes bulged at the incredibleness of the situation.
“Marcel!” James Ray said groggily as his drugged mind slowly became aware of my presence. He had a dreamy, ethereal look on his face that told of his befuddled state.
“We are here.” I told him. Then I turned to Sonafi and the Agent dangling from her grasp while the others moved to release James Ray his bonds. The Agents eyes bulged even further as I approached him, if that were possible, but he had the sense not to struggle or attempt to get away. That would not have been possible.
The FBI Agent was a telepath. That was why Sonafi had not killed him outright. He was not powerful, as compared to a Vampire, but Humans in general were becoming more telepathic as time passed. As the Others continue to add their DNA to the Human gene pool. Time seemed to pass so quickly that sometimes I did not notice how drastically they were changing. There were short periods when Humans with pronounced, obvious features of the Others appeared, as the Others' DNA was installed in humans, then longer periods as those traits were slowly dissipated out into the general public. Here was a Human whom I was sure was the product of a recent genetic interference. Ther
e were so few Humans with pronounced telepathic abilities of any level, but he was extraordinarily strong, for a Human.
'What are you?' The Human spoke directly into my mind. 'I know you can hear me.'
'Your worst nightmare!' I told him, but I was going through his mind, poring over his memories. We were the first real telepaths he had ever met. This was his first real mind to mind communication. He had been able to look into the minds of other Humans but never communicate with them. Not telepathically. 'This is new to you.'
'I knew you would hear me!' He thought/said. 'I have never felt a mind so clear and open! What are you?' He asked again.
His telepathy was strong for a Human, but not so strong that he had been able to delve into James Ray's mind, unopposed. He had tried and James Ray had resisted. The years of his acquaintance with Vampires had given James Ray the rudimentary ability to close his mind to telepathic intrusion. The drugs had not been, I now saw, to loosen his tongue, but to loosen his mind. That this weak Human telepath might the more easily see into its depths. There was no question that under these drugs James Ray’s mind would have been as easy to read as an open book by this Human telepath. This Agent Curt Travis Irving, Federal Bureau of Investigations Special Services Sector, Branch 279.
Chapter 17
Branch Two Seven Nine!
“An entire FBI Sector devoted to us!” I said. “Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people!” I said us because the FBI did not yet distinguish between Vampires and the Others. They did not understand there was a distinction, and even if they understood the distinction, what would it mean to them? We are just a different form of the Others. In our own way as bad, or worse, depending on how you look at it. The only advantage to knowing a distinction existed would be that they could, by watching us, learn more about the Others, for the little good it would do them. Humans were constrained by the same technological boundaries as we were. To answer Curt Irving, I said; “We are Vampires.”
“Shall I put him down?” Sonafi asked contemplatively, as if he were a bug on a pin stuck to a board. He certainly had no more say in the matter than that bug in question.
“May as well.” I said, though I wasn't sure yet where this might go. What we might gain by letting him live. She let him go and he stumbled backward before catching his balance.
“Vampires!” Curt Irving said. Whatever he had been expecting, this was not it. Aliens. Extraterrestrials. Martian men. Any of these answers would have been received with frank acceptance, but not this. Not that we were Vampires.
“Yeah Vampires!” Sonafi said sharply. Then turning to me; “We're wasting time. What we going to do with him?” She jabbed a thumb in Irving's direction and he visibly blanched. In Irving's mind had been the dream, spawned by movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and their ilk, that if he ever encountered the Others, he would ask them to take him with them, but the last thing he would dream of doing is to ask the same of us. The last thing he had been expecting us to announce was that we were Vampires. He did not understand, of course.
I opened my mind and let all of my memories pour into his head. I had never attempted to do this in quite the same way before. I did not have to force my memories into another Vampire’s mind, but Curt Irving was not another Vampire and he did not know how to get into my alien mind. To do this I had to raise each memory and then push it into Irving's mind. There was no resistance. He was receptive. He was just inexperienced. He thought he had been the only telepath of his power in his world until only minutes ago. When I was finished, he stood there in shock trying to absorb it all, but absorb it all he would. He already understood enough to change his whole conception of the struggle which had been occurring right under their noses, yet which they had been blind to.
“We thought their intentions must be benign! They have never given us any reason to think otherwise.” Curt said. “We had no idea.”
“It is hard to imagine.” I agreed.
“What do you think you are going to do?” Sonafi asked.
“Maybe make an ally.” I said. I had given him memories which stretched all the way back to the very beginning. I showed him how we lived. That we were social animals who valued family life, though I had not shown him how few of us might claim that status. I also had not shown him what I had been like in the beginning or that some Vampires were still. His high telepathic ability told me that the Human race was drawing desperately closer to the final fulfillment of the Other’s plans. The world had not ceased to spin, the machinations of the Others put on hold, merely because I had withdrawn myself and refused to acknowledge it. The issue would not resolve itself.
“You're letting him live!” Brid exclaimed, but his surprise was tinged with calculation.
“Yes.” I said. The pharmacologist had been an evil man. He had plied his trade for far too long. He had begun to enjoy it. It may have been that he had enjoyed it from the beginning, who knows and it was now too late to know. The interrogator Sonafi had already killed was a pro. He had done this for a living. I felt no remorse for him whatsoever. Agent Irving was a different story. He was a Federal Agent called in because of his unique abilities, for this one case. James Ray was the first subject ever captured in connection to their investigations into the Visitation phenomena “We're going to let him go.”
I turned to Curt Irving; “We are on the same side!” I said.
“We have a common enemy, I'll concede.” Irving said. I had to give him his due. He stood there and looked me straight in the eye. As far as he was concerned, we could be allies, for now. What happened after, if and when there was an after, could and would be decided then.
“That's acceptable to me.” I said, accepting the unspoken agreement.
“How do I contact you?” Irving asked.
“You don't.” I told him. “I'll get a hold of you.”
We left him then and returned to the roof. We could only move as quickly as our slowest member. James Ray. When we got to the roof we were confronted with another problem. James Ray is a big man. His weight was not the issue, but his bulk. I did not think I could pick him up and make the leap back to the closest building without hurting him. Human bodies were not designed to handle the kinds of stresses such an impact would incur. I climbed out upon the wall and bade James Ray to climb down onto me, between myself and the wall and shortly we were upon the ground.
When we reached the ground Sonafi took James Ray from me and threw him over her shoulder and carried him flitting between the buildings. There had yet been no alarm raised by the time we reached Brid's car and we were quickly headed for the Interstate. A few minutes later we were within the anonymity of the busy early evening traffic and no more distinguishable than any of the other hundreds of cars and trucks around us. We had escaped undetected.
We no longer had a place of our own. Once again we were homeless and this time we had lost everything. Or had we? We would not go near the house for now, but it was possible this relationship with Curt Irving could blossom to fruition. It might be to both our benefit if we could engender a relationship based on mutual need. The need to find a way to defeat the Others before it became too late for both of us.
“Where are you taking us?” Sonafi asked.
“I have a safe house.” Brid answered. “It's on the South Side. There is no way anyone could have traced it. I have several, as far as that goes.” He added.
“At least there's that.” Sonafi conceded. “We slept in a hole in the ground in Russia. Just like the old days.” She gave me a look.
“We won't have to sleep in a hole in the ground.” Brid said. “Not on my watch. Not tonight, at least.”
“There’s tonight but I don’t know about tomorrow.” I said. “If we don't stop the Others.” Then I outlined my idea. How I had been able to completely suppress Nikita and that I hoped to be able to suppress one of the Others in the same way.
“That's an incredible idea!” Brid said. We were in a South Side neighborhood Sonafi and I recognized
when Brid pulled the car over to the curb. “I think we had better leave the car here and walk the rest of the way. I don't think I am quite ready to trust our new ally. Not just yet.”
“He may not be able to convince his Superiors of the need of such a relationship.” Volga said. “We have to be prepared for any eventuality. Especially that they are able to track us via satellite to this car. We must presume a worst-case scenario.”
“James Ray will have to be carried,” Sonafi said, “and I carried him last.”
“I'll carry him.” Brid said, scooping him up and short moments later we were there. James Ray sighed with relief when Brid put him down.
“That was even more disconcerting than the run through the city!” James Ray said. He was weaving noticeably on his feet, dizzy from the hyper-accelerated jockeying around, his sense of balance thrown completely off kilter. “I never want to have to do that again!”
“You'll be able to do it yourself the next time.” Sonafi said. “We decided to grant your request.”
“It's either that or kill you.” I joked.
“Thanks.” He said. “What about the rest of my family though? They don’t know anything about this.”
“Let's hope their ignorance protects them.” Sonafi said. “If not, we'll do what we must.”
Brid hunted through a big key-ring with lots of keys and picked out several identical keys on a separately floating ring. He took this ring off the larger ring and handed it to me. Three identical keys. “Front and back.” He said, then he paused and looked at us seriously. “There should be no way they can find you here. I'm really sorry about the other house. I feel like I am completely to blame!”
I could remember a time, not so very long ago at all, when I would have agreed with him and told him so. I had never reacted to any of my other children the way I had to Brid. He always had so much energy, was so precocious, so intelligent and able to find every little way of rubbing me the wrong way, that I had found myself acting out of character, blaming him, becoming angry with him, and that all now flashing through my mind as I contemplated the way he was blaming himself for this.
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