Porthos rolled his eyes. “Come on, sir. Time travel? It’s not possible. It’s a fantasy, an illusion, some invented story to throw you off. And even if it’s true… who cares at this point? He’s still hiding from us now even as we’re about to take his family hostage.”
“What say you, Will Stark?” Arthur called out. “Fantasy, or reality?”
“Predominantly true, Arthur,” Will replied. “There are a few intricacies you missed. But the primary points of your story are accurate.”
Porthos’ jaw dropped.
Arthur beamed. “You see?” He turned to the room, to the guards whose jaws were agape, to the humans who wanted to be away from all of this and riding the monorail back home. “He admits it!” He broke into laughter. “The Alliance are led by a man who’s nothing but a fr—”
Fil’s punch was a blur, smashing into Arthur’s face and sending the older man flying across the room. “You were warned.”
Porthos sighed. “Nice family. Time traveling lunatics, Oath breakers, and alleged grandchildren punching their grandparents.” He glanced at Arthur. “How long have you known this, sir? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That is my question as well, Arthur,” Will replied. “Your guesses have been remarkably accurate.”
Arthur struggled to his feet, rubbing the tender cheek that had begun to bruise over. “Teach your kid some manners, Stark.” He took a step, wobbled, paused to gather himself, and then stood to his full height. “I didn’t guess, Stark. I was told.”
Fil and Hope glanced at each other. “Told?” Fil said. “Who told you?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Arthur replied. He raised his voice. “Bring her in!”
A door opened behind Arthur’s desk. The Assassin, the man who’d tried to kill Hope and Fil nearly two centuries earlier, entered. The blood red eyes remained unchanged. The look failed to terrify Hope, who barely remembered their encounter. Fil had more recent and long-lasting tragedies in his mind that dwarfed any horrific thoughts of the man now. Neither looked at the killer with the bald, scarred head and the blood red eyes.
Rather, they looked at the figure the Assassin dragged forward. A heavy cloak shrouded the face, and ropes bound the hands. The legs were shackled, making the steps short and awkward. No Energy emerged from the person disguised by the cloak.
Arthur’s smile turned oily. “I have to admit, I was a bit shocked by the news. But there’s evidence that I simply can’t ignore. When the dead come back to life and tell me things? I listen.”
He marched to the figure and pulled back the hood. Matted golden hair spilled out, masking the abrasions and bruises marring the proud face.
“I think you know her?” Arthur asked, whirling on Hope.
Hope stared and tears welled in her eyes. “Eva?”
XVIII
ATHOS CHEWED ON HIS FOOD, trying to ignore the angry voices and thoughts around him.
There were times when having the Energy that came with five centuries worth of growth were a curse. This was one of those times. Without Energy, he might be able to tune out the grumbling, the understated threats, the whispered questions about why it was that Athos had fallen for a trap sprung by a spy operating in their midst. It might be difficult, especially if the men decided to act upon their anger, mutiny, and kill their hapless leader. But it wouldn’t be impossible.
With Energy, though, he had no such respite. Their anger—no, their outright fury—slammed into him, rocked him to his very core. His skills amplified those emotions beyond what others might sense in a similar fashion. A mechanism in his mind allowed him to know the truth of a person’s experiences and thoughts without error. It was a skill prized by the Leader, an ability which raised him to the role of Hunter, making him a veritable prince to the Leader’s King. That skill now worked against him. His men couldn’t hide their fury at their entrapment even if they’d wanted to do so.
He closed his eyes and tried to swallow, tried massaging his temples. He could feel the headache coming on, an ailment he suffered in the presence of too much emotional dishonesty, as if the detection mechanism in him overheated and presented itself as a migraine. If it hit, it would shut him down for a time. There was too much to do, too much to overcome, to let the pain incapacitate him. And there was the real risk his men might see him in that state of weakness and elect to attack when he couldn’t defend himself.
He swallowed the water and glanced around at the men hovering nearby.
They stood just beyond his reach, looks of fear on their faces as they recognized that he wasn’t sleeping. He recognized an unexpected advantage, realizing that the men had mistook the look of pain on his face for anger, that he’d been reviewing the events to identify the scapegoat for the failure of the invasion effort.
Inwardly, he smiled.
The advantage gave him the opportunity to reflect on his own fear of the situation. Each new member of the Aliomenti received an orientation session with the Leader, sessions he’d begun after the Hunters started work. It was there the Leader impressed upon the newcomers the authority of the Hunters as second only to his own, ensuring that insurrection was an impossibility, no matter how strong the motivation. The men might grumble and complain, even think vile thoughts, but they’d never act upon those ideas. He was safe from harm at the hands of his own men.
The orientation wouldn’t prevent them from questioning his competency, though. He needed to regain his stature with his men in whatever capacity he could.
He swallowed the water again and set the bottle back on the tray, along with the food he’d not touched. The smells of the meal offered by the Alliance were too potent, ruining an appetite already suffering after the realization of their entrapment.
He brushed off his sleeves and stood to face his men.
“Is there anyone here who’s not angry with me?” he asked.
It was a question they could not answer. They couldn’t lie to him and tell him they weren’t angry. Yet telling him the truth might lead to brutal Aliomenti discipline at a later date. The tension spilled out in the form of heat, and he felt a bead of sweat start on his brow as the temperature rose.
No one replied. No one would go on record by voicing such treasonous thoughts.
Athos nodded after a moment of tense silence. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He paused. “And I will also say that I don’t blame you. This predicament we find ourselves in is inexcusable, and one we should have avoided.”
He didn’t apologize; Hunters never apologized. But his comments had a comparable effect. He felt the anger subside, only if slightly. He’d given them permission to feel that anger, told them they were right to feel it.
And ironically, it made them feel better… about him.
Athos began to pace around the room, and the men parted to allow him movement. “My questions are these: First, how did we get to this point? And secondly, how do we fix the problem?”
He waited. There was little chance anyone would respond. They could provide no answer without suggesting a belief that the Hunter had erred, a belief they weren’t permitted to hold, let alone speak. Despite the modest reassurances he’d just given, few of them would risk a long-term punishment when they returned to Headquarters by providing honest answers.
If they returned, of course.
“If no one else has any ideas, then I’ll talk,” Athos said. He folded his hands behind his back and began to pace once more. “The core problem was the admittance of a mole, a spy, into our invasion fleet. There was nothing to suggest malevolent intent in our initial screenings of Scott years ago to suggest he bore or might come to develop Alliance sympathies. His background checked out. We did not put him through any extra screening, as there seemed no need to do so.”
He’d essentially blamed the recruiting process for allowing Scott to sneak through, pushing the blame off him. He ought to be able to trust the screening process, an assumption the men in the room found reasonable. He was walking a fine line in doing that, ho
wever. Generally, the Leader decided the type of background testing and screening required of each new recruit. If one hadn’t been done, one could argue that Athos had blamed Scott’s treason on a mistake by the Leader. That was a treasonable offense. He’d left his comments intentionally vague for that reason. If pushed, he’d state that he’d blamed the original recruiter, not the Leader, for the mistake.
If they didn’t make it back to Headquarters, though, it was a moot point.
Athos continued his musings, filling the men in on the background reading he’d done on Scott. It was something he’d done for each man in the crew here today. “Like many who join the Aliomenti, Scott had specific skills and interests. He’d worked in a human navy and had extensive experience with all manner of water craft. The Leader wisely tapped into those skills and enabled Scott to use Aliomenti wisdom to enhance what he came to us possessing to create something truly extraordinary.” Again, carefully worded. He had to be careful, because it would be a violation of the many Aliomenti rules and regulations to suggest Scott had brought a human idea more advanced than existing Aliomenti technology with him to the organization. He’d probably avoid punishment if they succeeded here, but the Leader would certainly provide strong condemnation of his statement.
“Scott became a submarine captain. I doubt I need to ask the opinions of any of you as to whether Scott had proved himself worthy to fill that role. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that until we began this journey, Scott had done nothing to suggest anything treasonable was in his future. Or ours.”
Athos paused. The room had gone silent. They were listening.
“Our first hint of suspicion came with Scott’s familiarity with this space, his original home here beneath the Antarctic. We never measured the tunnel entrance, and yet he knew with certainty that our submarines wouldn’t fit. We’d spent little time even contemplating the ideas of sending our own shuttles or commandeering those of the Alliance before he’d pronounced both approaches suicidal. Those were clues.” He paused. “But the strongest clue was that he volunteered to head inside alone.”
There were rumblings. The men looked at each other, considering this idea, trying to understand. Jude finally raised a hand. “Pardon me for asking, sir, but I don’t understand. He offered to travel on a mission that many of us considered suicidal, which all of us appreciated. How would that be a clue that Scott meant to betray us?”
Ouch. “It was less the offer than the efficiency with which he carried out those actions. Let me ask you this question. How was Scott able to teleport aboard one of those spheres? No member of the Aliomenti has ever seen them before.”
Silence.
“I hadn’t considered this at the time, but there were only two possibilities. First, Scott might have tried clairvoyance to get a mental image of his teleportation destination. That’s what I thought at the time. Scott even waited a few seconds with his eyes closed before teleporting. Does anyone see the problem with that now?”
Nobody answered, though the men murmured to themselves. They were impressed with his thinking, how he went through the issue.
“If Scott could use clairvoyance to get an image to teleport himself into the sphere, why couldn’t he—or any of us, really—use it to find a target inside the Alliance base itself? There’d be no need to risk anyone’s life going into a hostile environment alone. Why not make the trip with our minds first?”
There were murmurs of understanding filling the room now.
“The reason he didn’t use, or suggest, clairvoyance in that manner is now obvious. Scott already knew how to get aboard the sphere.” He resumed pacing. “There was another clue he provided as well. Scott seemed to have a very accurate sense about how long the journey through that tunnel would take. But how could he know? We only identified the approximate location of this base a few weeks ago, and just found the mouth of the tunnel less than an hour before he went inside. We had no way of knowing the length of that tunnel or how long it should take to reach the primary base. Yet he suggested we should worry he’d failed if he hadn’t transmitted anything after about twenty minutes. And that’s how long it took.” Athos shook his head. “He either made a very accurate guess… or he’d made the journey before.”
The men nodded. In hindsight, it seemed obvious now that Scott had fooled everyone, not just Athos. They were all to blame. But…
“Sir? How do we get out of here?” It was Jude again.
Athos nodded slowly. When Scott had told them they were trapped, they’d tested it, called his bluff. Efforts to teleport had resulted in men slamming into the impenetrable walls. Energy blasts of every intensity and concentration were absorbed. They’d quickly realized that Scott was correct. They were trapped.
He sighed heavily. “That’s a good question. Let’s be good guests first and send all of our trays back to our hosts in the hopes that, should we be unsuccessful in our efforts to escape and kill them all, they might consider feeding us again at some point.”
That brought a much-needed laugh from the group. If nothing else came of this effort, he’d at least won back the favor and confidence of the men he led.
Athos brushed his sleeves off once more, and then took his tray to the wall. They’d seen the trays come into the room without need of any type of doorway, and had gotten a verbal confirmation from one of the Alliance hosts that they’d be able to push the trays and trash—but not themselves—back out of the room in the same manner.
Athos pushed his tray through the wall, slowly, watching intently.
He watched seconds later as the wall dissolved before him.
Shouts erupted. “He’s done it!” Jude shouted. “The Hunter has taken down the wall! We’re free!”
The men rushed out, full of righteous indignation at their entrapment and overwhelming rage at their enemy. Their surprise ouster from the room would put them on the offensive against an enemy likely unprepared now for their attack.
Athos turned to look back at the wall where Scott had told them they’d been trapped.
They’d never been trapped. The technology the Leader provided to him before departure, the dust sized machines he’d claimed would disable the walls of the “magic rooms,” had been his private secret as the invasion progressed. He’d known there could be a spy among the team, and had thus waited until all seemed lost before brushing the “dust” from his sleeves to the tray.
And it worked.
His lip curled into a sneer as he looked back inside his now-empty temporary prison. “Guess who’s got the upper hand now?”
He rushed out of the room into the Alliance base to lead his men into battle.
XIX
THEY’D THOUGHT EVA HAD BEEN Outside, working in a human community heavily populated by members of the Alliance. She’d been expected to work on building up support for the invasion among those Outside, and where possible encourage them to detach from human society ahead of schedule to join in the fighting.
Instead, she’d provided to Arthur Lowell the secret they’d worked hardest to protect.
Eva hadn’t been rewarded for her efforts. They could see past the bruises to the more natural lines beneath her eyes, suggesting that in addition to physical trauma she’d been denied sleep. They sensed no Energy from her, suggesting she’d spent significant time in the presence of Aramis. They’d no idea when she’d told Arthur of Will’s true birthday… or other secrets of the Alliance.
The damage she’d done could not yet be assessed.
But she’d done enough to fill mother and son with an anger that scarred their faces and brought fire to their eyes.
Eva didn’t shy away from them. She looked at Fil, sympathy upon her face, warmth behind the bruises swelling around her eyes. Her eyes narrowed slightly when she looked at Hope, the deep warmth fading away. She flicked her eyes back and forth, the transformation obvious as her gaze traveled between mother and son.
Fil wondered if the eye movement, repeated so often and in such rapid
succession, might be a signal. Eva’s eyes were fixed on him as the thought entered his mind, and she blinked rapidly.
Fil didn’t know what it meant. He had little time to dwell on the message, wrapping the Tracker in a tight cocoon of nanos, thwarting the man’s effort to draw his sword and advance on the enemies distracted by the sight of one of their own.
Hope spoke first. “Eva… how… what happened to you?” Fil could hear the trust in his mother’s voice, the faint belief that the visible damage to Eva meant she’d not betrayed them, but had been forced to speak through the experience and threat of physical torture.
Eva’s strained voice barely reached them, “I did not provide enough information to satisfy that man.” She nodded toward Arthur, struggling to bring her head back to its usual proud perch. “He found my refusal to speak unacceptable.”
Hope turned to Arthur, who’d walked back toward her, and slapped him across the face, and a second bruise spread across Arthur’s face as the sound of the slap reverberated through the room. The guards jumped. Porthos’ eyes flashed, his face showing added fury as he tried—and failed—to teleport free of Fil’s nano cocoon. “How could you?” she seethed.
Arthur’s hand moved to the freshly bruised cheek. “How dare you strike me!” he roared.
Hope jabbed a finger at him, then nodded in Eva’s direction. “I won’t be disappointed if your face looks like hers,” she hissed.
Arthur pulled his hand free of his face. “So the Alliance supports traitors as well as Oath-breakers? What a pathetic organization. I suppose one can expect nothing better from a group founded by a fr—”
“Easy, Fil,” Will said. Fil’s hand stopped inches from Arthur’s face.
Convergence Page 12