Three stitches later the saying had stuck in his mind forever.
Until now.
I jumped before looking, Mom, he thought and the memory of his mother taking care of him after that fall calmed him for a little bit. She was always so thoughtful, so caring, and he would have given anything for her to reprimand him about doing this.
As much as he wished to keep imagining or recalling memories, it was impossible with his eyes open—the sight of his grandfather in front of him overpowered whatever his brain could conjure up.
He thought he was going to go crazy and he would have hit himself senseless against a wall had he been able to move.
“Time,” Bolswaithe voice chimed in. “One hour, exactly.”
At last! An hour had gone by since Ratatosk injected him with the venom.
He tried to move, but he couldn’t…not an inch, not even a millimeter.
“It seems that the effect will last a little longer,” Bolswaithe said.
You think? Thomas wanted to yell.
“I’ll put myself in sleep mode,” Bolswaithe said.
No!
“Please let me know when you’ve regained mobility.”
Don’t leave dammit! Talk to me!
“Good luck.”
BOLSWAITHE! DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!
Thomas was going to kill Bolswaithe…well, not kill him, just chew him up for leaving him there. Bolswaithe knew how the centipede venom worked. Why wasn’t he staying to accompany him? Just talking, trying to explain one of those theoretical physics equations he loved? A history lesson? Anything?
Stupid…rooo…botttt! Not a proper word, more like a wheezing sound.
He could make a sound! He tried again. Just push some air out.
“Thomas?” Bolswaithe activated. “You there?”
His teeth rattled.
“The venom is losing its effect. Any moment now you’ll be able to move.”
Thomas tried to move his eyes, and he almost missed it.
The glimpse.
Grandpa’s eyes refocused on him. He was sure of the change.
Now, as he began to regain mobility he strained to keep static just a little longer.
Grandpa’s irises moved, just a tiny bit, along with the rest of the background.
“Thomas?”
Suddenly, Thomas’s body was released from the effects of the venom and he drew in a long breath. “I’m back!” he said, doubling over. He checked Grandpa, whose irises had definitely moved.
“Was it worth it?” Bolswaithe asked.
“It was horrible,” Thomas said flatly. All the anger and anxiety he had accumulated during that hour had been replaced with excitement now that Gramps would definitely know he had been here, and he had seen that the images were real-time memories. Maybe they could work together to find his parents.
Maybe some things could go back to normal.
Fire Team 12
“Now to leave a note.” Thomas approached Joran and took the elf’s sword from the scabbard at his side. It was a thin and light blade, slightly curved at the tip and looked very sharp.
“You still want to do that?” Bolswaithe asked. “Morgan will surely know you were here, but should you alert the others?”
“I have an idea about that,” Thomas said, approaching the wall where the Oracle’s sign had been. “How long does it take you to focus your camera in this time frame?” he asked.
“Approximately forty-nine minutes after being completely still. Why?”
“I want to make a test.” Thomas began to draw symbols in the ice using the sword tip. “I’m leaving something that only he can decipher.”
“Can you do that? Using your powers in reverse?”
“The ancient Cyphers did it.” Thomas kept drawing symbols in the ice wall, lines and circles as he thought of the meaning he wanted to instill in them. “The Guardians’ symbol and shield are full of things the older Cyphers wrote that can only be read by me. I don’t see why I can’t do the same.”
“It’s worth finding out in any case,” Bolswaithe said. “Just leave me somewhere where the camera can see it.”
“And, there…” Thomas finished his writing and stepped back. Although he had moved his hands in strange patterns, drawing more than writing, his brain decoded the message he’d left and he read it in perfect English.
He walked past Grandpa and set the wristpadd on the floor with the camera facing the message he had drawn.
“What does it say?” Bolswaithe asked and Thomas definitely decided that this smaller version wasn’t nearly as bright as the full-bodied one.
“That’s what we are trying to find out,” he said. “You tell me when you can see the image. I'll find Ratatosk.”
Thomas walked away; he tried to follow the trail Ratatosk had left on the snow. The squirrel had been very active—the lines ran to the sides of buildings and up the street, and he had even ventured out into the frozen lake and back.
“Ratatosk!” he yelled, tired of trying his tracking skills.
“Over here!” he heard the squirrel yelling from the edge of a wall. He was on top of a two-story house by the waterfront.
Thomas approached the house as Ratatosk slid down using a water drain. “What where you doing out here?” Thomas asked.
“Just checking around,” Ratatosk said nervously. “But I think I found out why the Norns sent you back at precisely this moment.”
“What do you mean?”
“You did ask me that before, remember?”
Thomas nodded and Ratatosk climbed onto his shoulder. “Check it out,” he said, pointing to the side of the house. As Thomas approached the edge of the wall he saw red stains in the snow.
Blood.
Lots of it.
A sizable pool of blood had formed in the snow. Thomas followed the rivulet as it snaked back from the side of the building. He slowly turned the corner and found a massacre.
Three members of a Guardians’ Fire Team were piled against the wall. Their uniforms stained with blood and their body armor in shambles, they had been killed by what seemed to be bullets from a high-powered weapon. The blood had flowed freely from their wounds. The first one, a chimpanzee faun had been shot through the back of the head. The woman by his side displayed three wounds on her chest, and a man beside her another three or four.
Thomas didn't check them for vitals. Even if they were still alive, which he doubted, the wounds would kill them as time resumed.
“What the hell happened here?” Thomas tightened his grip on Joran's sword.
“It's not only this,” Ratatosk said. “You see over there?” he pointed at the base of a tree trunk. “I think that's what happened.”
Thomas strained his eyes, but he couldn't see anything. “What is it?”
“Get closer,” Ratatosk said. “It's behind the tree trunk, at the base.”
As Thomas approached the tree trunk a form appeared delineated against the background. The long barrel of a rifle, with a thick silencer and a reactive camouflage, made it practically invisible from more than ten feet away. A small cloud of gas was hanging from the end of the muzzle, and a high-caliber bullet hovered a couple of inches away from it.
He followed the barrel toward the shooter; he was covered in the same camouflage, even his face was covered by a mask and wore red glasses over his eyes.
The rifle had just been fired. Thomas knelt and looked down the rifle's barrel. Even though it looked to be aimed a little over his grandfather’s head, he guessed the shooter had compensated for distance.
“One of yours?” Ratatosk asked and Thomas heart sank.
Tony! he thought. This was the assignment! The reason why Bolswaithe had eluded answering my questions about Tony all this time.
The Guardians had ordered his grandfather's assassination! Thomas fell back into the snow.
“What's going on?” Ratatosk asked, but Thomas was in shock, thinking about the implications of finding Tony trying to kill Grandpa.
/> “Aren't you going find out who this is?” Ratatosk jumped in front of his face.
“I don't want to know,” Thomas said.
“What?”
“It might be a friend.”
“Even more important to know if he is your friend or not.” Ratatosk jumped toward the shooter and pulled back the hood of his camouflage jacket, leaving only the mask and glasses for Thomas to remove. “What if he isn't your friend?”
“What if he is?” Thomas asked.
“Then you know what to expect from your friends,” Ratatosk said.
Thomas sighed; Ratatosk was right. He approached the hooded man, and pulled the mask, making the glasses fly away from his face.
It wasn't Tony, but Thomas felt relief mixed with fear, and the ominous feeling that the assassin had been sent by Guardians Inc. hadn't been lifted.
The face had no skin, the eyes were lidless, and instead of a nose a pair of gaping holes rose from the center of the face. It was a human skull, but made of dull metal.
A robot.
And he knew of only one company that made robots as sophisticated as this one.
“So is this your friend?” Ratatosk asked, jumping from his shoulder to take a closer look at the robot's head.
“No, it's not,” Thomas said. “It's a robot.”
“A metal golem,” Ratatosk corrected. “Like your friend from the flying thing.”
“Only one way to find out.” Thomas took the rifle from the robot’s hands, and using it as a bat he hit the bullet toward the lake. He then turned the robot around and undressed its torso.
The robot actually seemed less advanced than Bolswaithe. A hard, plastic frame was formed as a ribcage and it held gears inside. While he knew that Bolswaithe was a modular design and could easily exchange damaged limbs with just a quick connection, this robot seemed to be made as a unit, and there were no obvious disconnection points along the arms.
He struck repeatedly at the ribcage until it cracked and he pulled on the pieces. The inside was a jumble of cables, gears, chains, and a box, which he guessed was the central processor embedded into the spine.
He broke that first.
Then he struck at the elbow joints until one became loose. No great splash of fluids came from it, and it was mostly interlocked hard metal gears and a couple of hydraulics on the arm.
It sure wasn't as advanced as Bolswaithe, the more he looked at it the more it seemed to be a jumble of hastily assembled parts, but it was advanced enough to have killed three members of a Guardians’ Fire Teams.
“Four,” he said aloud, scanning the surrounding area.
“Pardon?” Ratatosk was pulling on the ribcage and making himself a necklace with the colored cables.
“Fire Teams have four members,” Thomas said. “Where is the fourth?”
Ratatosk sniffed the air while standing on his hind legs. “Back there,” he said, taking off toward another building. Thomas ran behind him.
They found the fourth member of the Fire Team on the ground. It was a young woman holding a high-powered rifle, exactly like the one the robot had. Her eyes were closed and she seemed unconscious. Thomas knelt to check her pulse and remembered that even if she were alive he wouldn't be able to feel anything because of the time variance.
He would have to do a physical exam.
“I was about to say that you needed to check her.” Ratatosk said as Thomas picked the woman off the ground.
There was a click underneath her.
There had been something under her body. He saw the flat metal thing and immediately recognized it. He had seen it in movies and in videogames. The shape was immediately recognizable by most teenagers in the United States.
It was a Claymore antipersonnel mine.
And the click could only mean that he had activated it when he picked up the body. They were alive because of the speed at which they moved.
“What is this thing?” Ratatosk said, sniffing at the mine.
“It's a bomb,” Thomas said. “Don't touch it.” All he really knew about Claymores was that once you activated one in any game, it meant game over. He pulled the woman toward the waterway and away from the bomb until he felt it was safe to check her out.
She was in her mid twenties, dark hair cropped short, and freckles dotted her nose. He gently sat her against the small wall of the waterfront and checked her uniform's pockets for an I.D.
“Amanda De Moulins,” Thomas read. “Twenty-four, French National, Id Number, Blood type. Fire Team 12. Red Clearance.”
“Is she alive?” Ratatosk jumped in front of her face.
“She seems unconscious; I hope she's just out.”
“Why kill the other three and leave this one alive?” Ratatosk asked. Her teammates had been brutally killed, but she seemed unscathed.
Thomas had already figured out why—his brain had clicked once Ratatosk had found her in a direct line to his grandfather. “She's the scapegoat,” he said, “and the trap.” He stood up and pointed at his grandfather. “Gramps is shot, and then the Azure Guards look over here and find her against the building, rifle in her hands. They either attack immediately or just check her out and then—”
“Boom,” Ratatosk said. “She blows up and maybe takes another one or two of the Azure Guards with her.”
“The blame goes to the Guardians,” Thomas said, “and in the current state we might have lost the last of the Clans on our side.”
“Brilliant plan,” Ratatosk said.
“And devious.” Thomas opened her jacket; there were no apparent wounds or blood. “At least I think this confirms one thing about the robot.”
“What?”
“It's not one of ours. That outcome goes against everything Guardians Inc. stands for.” Thomas pulled the zipper up on Amanda's jacket.
About two hours later, Thomas was ready to head back to the Mansion. Bolswaithe had confirmed that the message was unintelligible to anyone not possessing Cypher abilities, and Thomas had set up the surveillance cameras from the doomed Fire Team around Gramps and his team. He wanted to see his reaction when time resumed and the cameras were already recording everything.
He had taken the bodies of the Fire Team and buried them under a mound of snow; beside them he had buried the remains of the robot and both sniper rifles. He wanted to leave all the evidence of the assassination attempt ready for Guardian teams as soon as Bolswaithe could connect to them.
He decided to take the robot's head with him though, and he placed it one of Team's 12 backpack.
Bolswaithe didn't know anything about the other robot, although he assured Thomas that Guardians Inc. wasn't working on any military project. All the robots the company made were designed to assist humanity, not to eliminate it.
“I'll be able to tell you more once we are in normal time again,” Bolswaithe assured him. “I'll access the Intra and Internets and the Control Room records to search for any project that involves weaponized bipedal robots.”
“Can you check the government too?” Thomas knew that all governments were aware of Guardians Inc. In fact, all governments had to work with Guardians Inc. one way or the other. The Guardians had existed before any government, and they helped create many of them and even brought down some of them too on occasion.
Although with the signing of the Magna Carta in the 13th Century, Guardians Inc. had promised to keep out of world government and religion. Their presence was pervasive, and their control of the world economy, above and beyond any market or country economy, was undeniable and unquestionable.
Thomas wanted to make sure that those governments didn't want to eliminate his grandfather.
Or himself, for that matter.
“I'll check all governments,” Bolswaithe assured him. “Are we ready to go now?”
Thomas took a last glance around; he had thrown the activated Claymore into the lake as far away as he could. Cameras were set up. Gramps was in position.
He looked at Nardir; the mountain lion gave
him the creeps.
“What's the matter?” Ratatosk asked.
“Nothing,” Thomas said. He was angry and scared at the faun, but angrier at himself for being scared. He leaned to pick up Amanda de Moulins. He couldn't leave the girl behind, not if there was any chance she was alive.
He glanced again at the mountain lion and remembered the threat against not only him, but his gramps as well... I will kill you while he watches, and then he too will die by my hand.
“Aw... screw it!” Thomas said, standing up. He placed his arms on the frozen mountain lion’s shoulders and kneed him as strongly as he could in the groin. The faun even lifted up from the snow a little bit. Thomas released him, and walked back toward Amanda with a smile on his face.
“That wasn't very honorable!” Ratatosk seemed appalled.
“He wasn't very honorable when he gave me this.” Thomas said, showing the scar on his cheek.
“He was defenseless!”
“Thomas was defenseless too when Nardir wounded him,” Bolswaithe said. “He was already beat, and Nardir willfully broke the set rules of combat by drawing blood.”
Thomas lifted an eyebrow to the squirrel. Ratatosk looked at the mountain lion. “Is all that true?”
Thomas nodded. Ratatosk ran toward Nardir and climbed up on his shoulder. His horn sprouted from his forehead, and with a swift movement, he cut off all the mountain lion’s whiskers, eyebrows, and practically shaved a patch of fur mimicking Thomas’s scar on Nardir’s cheek. He then ran back toward Thomas.
“And what was that for?” Thomas asked with a smirk.
Ratatosk horn receded on his forehead. “The honor-less deserve no respect,” he said. “Besides, this way he'll know where the pain is coming from.”
The Rogue
Thomas woke up in a great mood. He anticipated the images the cameras he had set around Gramps and his team would relay to the Mansion after he caught up with normal time. He was even more excited about Nardir's reaction than that of his grandfather.
Thomas had left Amanda on a stretcher in the Medical Ward, and after writing a note about Versoix and leaving it in Mrs. Pianova's lap he connected Bolswaithe for a recharge. Bolswaithe expected to have a couple of answers about the robot in the hours Thomas slept; they would probably amount to only a couple of seconds in real time, but his transfer rate was in the terabytes and then he would have more time to analyze the data.
Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) Page 31