Nothing changed. Shouts continued, Energy bursts sizzled through the air, and metal clanged against metal. The coppery scent of blood filled his nose, and he looked around, taking out Aliomenti fighters with strategic bursts of Energy to sleep centers in the brain.
Gena switched to telepathic broadcasts. The Aliomenti and Alliance need not fight. We need not slaughter each other here this day. We of the Alliance ask only to live in our own way, in peace, without the threat of Hunts or executions by Assassins.
“Don’t listen to her!” Athos shouted above the fray, as he slashed and hacked at his Alliance opponent. “We have our orders! We must do what the Leader commands us to do! Death to the Alliance!”
“Death to the Alliance!” the Aliomenti roared back.
It doesn’t have to be this way! You must resist the programming, you must learn to fight back against what you’ve been told to do. How can you possibly think it right to attack a young child? How—
Adam heard her scream from fifty yards away as he blasted the sword from his Aliomenti opponent and knocked the man unconscious. He looked over at her, his heart in his throat.
Scott stood behind her with his bloodied sword held high, smiling in a deranged manner as he watched Gena crumple to the ground.
XXI
ANGEL COULDN’T TAKE HER EYES off the woman, staring at her as if seeing a ghost.
She opened her mouth to speak as a loud beeping sound filled the enclosed space. Charlie tapped on his tablet computer, read the message, and nodded. He closed his eyes and transmitted a telepathic message to all in the area.
Pay attention, everyone! The human transfer has begun. You’ve got thirty seconds until you move. Be prepared. And everyone… make sure you get back here safely.
Charlie pocketed his computer and grabbed Angel’s arm. “We have to go.”
“But—”
The woman smiled. “See you soon, Angel.” She sheathed her swords as her face took on a look of stony determination.
Charlie teleported her outside the tent before Angel could respond.
They stood between the two tent-like enclosures, having departed the smaller after Charlie delivered his farewell message. They could hear the sounds of thousands of voices inside the larger one, and air hung heavy with the emotion of confusion and fear of the unknown. Several members of the Alliance scurried inside the larger tent.
Charlie held her by the shoulders and stared into her eyes, waving his hand and zapping her with a gentle jolt of Energy to regain her attention. “You’ve got to snap out of it, Angel,” Charlie told her. “I know that shocked you. It shocked me, too. But we have thousands of people relying on us right now, people who desperately need your help. You’ll have plenty of time when this is done to ask the questions in your mind. For now, though, we have a job to do.”
“Right. Right, I know,” Angel whispered. “But—” She shook her head to refocus her attention on the task at hand, pushing the sight she’d seen to the back of her mind. Charlie was right. Answers would come later. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
They moved to the flap door of the larger tent.
Behind them, the buzzing electricity inside the tent filled with Alliance warriors went instantly silent. They looked at each other, nodded, and then walked inside.
There were thousands of humans inside the tent, moving around in unabashed terror. They stared at the familiar faces in the unfamiliar environs, baffled and bewildered at how they had moved from various rooms and sections of the Island to a single place. The air inside this strange space smelled different than on the Island, and the sounds of the surf seemed too near for some, too far away for others. They looked at each other, each of them asking the same questions.
“Where are we? How did we get here?”
A few people asked if they’d all died at once.
The members of the Alliance who’d remained behind moved through the crowds, talking with the people in the room. They welcomed them to this island—yes, it was an island, and not the one they’d been on moments ago. The questions came in a flurry as the humans realized that some people had answers, even if the answers made little sense.
She nodded at Charlie and they split up, moving to bunches on the far side of the tent, where throngs of humans remained without answers with no Alliance members nearby. Angel moved to a group and listened first.
“—was sitting at my desk at Headquarters and then suddenly I was sitting on the ground here and—”
“Hey, where in the Headquarters building were you?” a man asked, his voice eager. “Maybe it’s just an illusion isolated to one part of the building.”
“Fourteenth floor,” she replied, turning to face him. “What floor were you on?”
“The third,” he replied. Their faces fell.
“It can’t just be the building,” another man said. “I’d just gotten out of bed and then… boom. Here I am.” They could see the truth in his statement as he wore pajamas and slippers on his feet.
A man wearing a guard uniform looked around, eyes wide. “I was in the Leader’s penthouse when it happened,” he whispered.
That got Angel’s attention as well. “What did you see?” she asked. Her question mixed in with the others asking the same thing.
“There were people there… strange people… the man who’d set off all of the alarms was there. He was scary, terrifying, clearly evil, and—”
“He’s not evil,” Angel said, her voice quiet.
“I say he was,” the man replied, turning to face her. His name, Rand, was embroidered on his shirt, the uniform marred by nervous sweat. “He did things that were clearly the work of the devil, and the woman that showed up after him had the Leader completely spooked, like he’d seen a ghost or something.”
Angel felt her spirits soar. “What did she look like?” She tried to keep the eagerness from her voice, but failed.
“Loads of white blond hair, looked to be around thirty. Rather pretty, I’d say. But the stories they told… said she was the Leader’s daughter and that criminal’s mother, even though they’re obviously the same age, and—”
“I told you he’s not a criminal,” Angel said.
“I think I know better than you who’s a criminal and who isn’t,” Rand replied in a patronizing tone.
“I think I know my brother better than you do,” Angel said, smiling.
His smugness evaporated, and the crowd turned to Angel.
“I heard about him before it happened. My friend on the dock said he walked on the water and flew above the ground.”
“I was in the lobby when he walked through. The guards shot him like a thousand times and all of the bullets just bounced off him.”
Angel nodded. “That sounds like my brother.”
Rand folded his arms. “What’s his name?”
“Fil. A bit taller than me, black hair, icy blue eyes. He likes to wear sunglasses a lot.”
Rand slunk back into the crowd.
A hand tapped her shoulder. “You… you seem to know what’s going on. Can you tell us? It’s been a rather scary time.”
Angel nodded. “I know.” She paused for a moment. “What if I told you that Mr. Lowell was really over one thousand years old and could do most everything you saw my brother do?”
Stunned silence greeted her.
“Er… I’m not really sure your brother did those things either, miss, with all due respect,” a man replied. “A thousand years old? That’s crazy.”
Angel shrugged. “Thanks for not asking my age; I appreciate your good manners. But I’m actually one hundred eighty-eight years old. Birthday coming up, but people don’t celebrate one eighty-nine like it’s anything special, do they?”
They laughed at her obvious joke.
“But how did we get here?” It was the same woman who’d asked her before.
Angel nodded. “Years ago, a technology was developed that let people transport goods from point to point instantly. Anybody remember that?”
A few heads nodded. “Yeah, I read about it in a history book,” one said. “People didn’t really like it.”
“But you know it existed, right?”
“Sure.” The woman shrugged. “My grandfather was there in the audience the night the first version was demonstrated. Said the presenter was pretty amazing. I think he had a crush on her.”
“I appreciate the compliment,” Angel murmured. She raised her voice. “We took that technology and enhanced it so that we could move people from place to place, just like we could move things. Make sense so far?”
There were shrugs. “Okay, I guess so. But why did we move? Why didn’t Mr. Lowell move if he was in the same room with—” The man glanced around. “What happened to that guard?”
“The enhancements were more complex than just moving people, and moving them a distance of several hundred miles. We only wanted to move the people who are in this room right now. We did not want to move Mr. Lowell or Mr. Sebastian, however.”
“Why?”
“I’ll get to that later. Several days ago, my mother—the one Rand the guard thinks is rather attractive—put a special gel on the palm readers at each monorail train gate. When each of you touched the palm reader, the gel stayed. The gel was actually comprised of small robots called nanomachines. Those machines moved to cover your bodies invisibly, just inside the outermost skin cell layers.”
“That’s… disgusting.”
Angel smiled. “The transport machine was modified to only move the people surrounded by those machines. If you went through the train gate and touched the palm reader, you’re here now. If you didn’t? You’re still back on the Island.”
A man frowned. “But the senior people at Headquarters… none of them ever ride the monorail.”
Angel nodded. “Exactly.”
“So you intentionally picked a means of getting these jelly robots that had no chance of getting to any of them?”
“That’s correct.”
He laughed. “This is ludicrous. This is an illusion.”
Angel cocked her head. “Really?”
Gasps erupted around her as the doubter rose through the air, his eyes widening with terror. “Still think my brother couldn’t float across the water?” she asked.
“I think I’m persuaded now,” he said, rendered meek through his experience.
She teleported him to the ground, generating more gasps. “What you just saw is something that those senior Aliomenti can do, something I can do, something my family can do. I can move myself instantly from place to place with a mere thought. We created technology that would enable others to do the same thing.”
She saw grudging acceptance begin. But not everyone believed. She asked any doubters to step forward, filling them with positive Energy so they knew they’d not be punished for expressing doubt over her words. She levitated and teleported them short distances. Few things were so strong a force of persuasion than direct experience.
“You were explaining why you left some behind?” one man prompted.
Angel nodded. “As I said, many people have learned to do what I just demonstrated. We’ve also taken advantage of our long lifespans to create incredible technology, often centuries before those outside our group made similar advances. Over the years, we developed very different opinions on what we ought to do with these gifts and advanced technology. One group saw these abilities as proof that they deserved to rule, to lord their supremacy over others, even if it happened in a subtle manner. A second group thought that nonsense, and that the advances ought to be shared to make everyone’s lives better.”
“Let me guess,” the man said. “My boss is the one who wants to rule over me. You and your family want to share?”
“Good guess,” she said, smiling.
“Well, he’s kind of a jerk, so…”
Everyone laughed.
“But why?” a woman asked. “I understand the difference of opinion. But why move all of us off the Island?” She paused. “And why is it that even with all of the demonstrations, I still struggle to believe you?”
Angel sighed. “Our gifts enable us to read the thoughts and emotions of others, but they permit tampering with the mind as well. One could rewire or reprogram the mind of an unsuspecting person to act in exactly the way one desired. You could create an army of mental slaves who live to serve you, and who never complained, because to them, they’ve got the best job in the world.”
The woman frowned, eyes widening. “But… you mean… they did that to us?”
Angel nodded. “We brought you here because the people who did that to you don’t respect our different opinion. They send people out to hunt mine down, to imprison and even execute them, for our failure to conform. They see nothing wrong with taking people who’ve not yet received training as slaves.”
“But why am I able to believe you, then?” a man asked.
“Because we’ve learned how to undo that programming, and—”
“You’re not making me want to follow you instead, are you?” a woman cried. “I don’t want to be anyone’s slave!”
Angel shook her head. “No. You’ll be free to love me or hate me as you see fit. I know I can’t make you believe that, either. You’ll simply have to watch each other and see how you react, the stories you’ll remember now, stories I couldn’t know.”
Heads drooped as realization hit. It was difficult to know the life you’d lived, the only one you could remember, had been lived in a fog as a mental slave to another.
“I’ll answer the question that’s been asked several times. Why did we bring you here? Why did we leave the others behind? We brought you here for your own safety, because we didn’t want you hurt or used as hostages.” Rand, several rows back, nodded to those around him, whispering that he’d seen just that situation. “We brought you here because many of my friends have taken your places on the Island, and their goal is simple. They’ll reverse that thought control, destroy that mechanism that prevents so many on the Island and throughout the world from living in freedom, or they’ll die trying.”
The voices quieted, and Angel engaged them in general conversation. They’d all be taken back to the mainland of their births with adequate compensation to help them begin their lives anew. She didn’t know yet and wouldn’t know for a while the whereabouts of family left behind. But they’d do everything they could to ease the transition back to the real world when the fighting ceased.
She then showed the way outside the tent, to the machines they’d set up to produce food and drink, and showed them where they could relieve themselves, bathe, and sleep. When she left them, most were moving to a sense of relief and enjoyment at the unexpected day off and the camping trip under the stars on a tropical island. Several wanted to take full advantage of the many remaining hours of sunlight to explore this new, temporary home.
She made her way back to Charlie, mentally drained. He looked to be similarly exhausted. “I told them about the compensation. I take it Ashley was successful, then?”
They’d planned to use the funds drained from the Aliomenti accounts to provide compensation to their victims, in part for reasons of justice, in part because they’d simply preferred to avoid using their own funds for that purpose unless absolutely necessary.
Angel pulled out her tablet and read the tracking sensors providing an update on the events at the Cavern and Headquarters Island.
She felt her heart skip a beat.
Athos had successfully invaded the Cavern. War had arrived at her primary home.
And Ashley?
“She was successful,” Angel whispered. “But she paid the ultimate price.”
Angel bowed her head, and Charlie wiped away the tear that fell from her eye.
XXII
THE ROOM, SO FILLED WITH tension seconds earlier as Arthur’s surrender demands weighed down upon the disabled Fil and Hope, had taken on a new air.
Confusion.
The guards stood holding guns against
the heads of human hostages no longer there. Their mouths fell agape one by one, and they moved the weapons down, setting the safeties to ensure there were no accidental discharges with all likely targets now vanished. They moved around, looking for the humans, before looking helplessly at Arthur.
Their Leader ignored the agonized cries of his Hunter as he turned from mother and son, taking in the situations as the gasps of shock reached his ears. He assessed Fil’s call for Will as being the second phase of their operation, noted the sudden departure of the human hostages, and recognized the message. He pointed at the guards. “You! All of you! Downstairs! Now!”
“But, sir, aren’t you in dang—”
“I said out!” Arthur shouted. “They’re coming, you fools! The mass of the Alliance! Leave me! Find them! Destroy them all!” His eyes had gone wild, and his voice had taken on a scream-level pitch, touched with a tinge of desperation.
He’d not been in as much control of the situation as he’d thought just seconds earlier. Fil, struggling under the planet-size weight of the netting, watched his lips move, listened to his thoughts. Arthur had finally realized why Will hadn’t been in this room. It had kept Arthur off-balance, wondering where his nemesis might be and what he might be plotting. Even when he’d taunted the leader of the Alliance, Will had remained calm. And now Arthur knew why. He’d held back his primary force until the Aliomenti Leader was thoroughly distracted by his once-dead daughter and grandson. And then Will Stark pulled the human hostages away in an instant, a feat of mass teleportation performed without Energy.
Arthur believed himself perfectly safe here, though. His eyes fell upon Hope and Fil once more, and a cruel smile formed.
New hostages.
Fil turned his eyes to Porthos. The Hunter’s screams had morphed into cries of pain, and he’d fought and squirmed around inside the cocoon to grip the stump at the end of his arm. Fil relented, letting the nanos breathe a bit more, letting the suffering man gain what measure of comfort he may in seizing the wound which had cauterized. Fil shifted a few healing nanos—not a lot, but a few—to his enemy. Porthos seized the long sleeve of his cloak and wrapped it tightly around his arm as best he could to further slow the loss of blood. He’d heal quickly, but would need time even with the assistance.
Convergence Page 14