A Question of Will (The Aliomenti Saga - Book 1)

by Alex Albrinck

  “That sounds perfect,” Baker said, and he was sure Adam could sense the relief in his voice. “How long would it take to get that established?”

  “We’d need to figure out what pieces of information the two of you would need, some logic on the initial screening, how to detect people trying to game the system by answering in a way they think you want them to answer, and so on. We’re not doing month end processing right now, so I can probably mock something up in a few days for you and Millard to review. I can test the transfer approach after setting the system up. Wait, you’re probably getting a salary or a stipend, correct? For running the Trust?”

  “Yes,” Baker said, electing not to elaborate on the exorbitant amount.

  “So we test it out. If you have the account information for your account and the Trust account, I can do a quick mock-up site just for you. You pick the amount, it sends that to your account, and you can verify that it came through. Typically it’s just a few pennies at a time for tests like that, but it will show us if it works and how long it takes the funds to clear. You’ll need to tell people receiving grants from the Trust how long it will be until their money is accessible.”

  Baker nodded. “Let’s go back to Millard’s office after lunch. The account information is there.”

  The two men returned to Millard Howe’s law office after the meal was over, as the office served as the acting headquarters for the Stark family’s Trust. Baker explained that, as Howe suspected, Will had given Adam a unique bit of information that had also been shared with Baker, and that information was such that Baker knew Adam was meant to be the third party in their group. With that question resolved, Baker explained to Howe Adam’s idea of automating the request and payment process for those petitioning the Trust for funds. Howe, who was so buried with processing paperwork for the Starks that he was losing other clients, readily agreed. They provided Adam with the necessary information to test out electronic transfers, and over the next several hours the trio sketched out the interface and logic flows for the website. Adam stored photos of the sketches on a secured tablet computer, and the men destroyed the original pieces of paper courtesy of the shredder/incinerator in the law office; they didn’t want anyone stealing the papers and deciphering the logic flows. Adam then headed out to begin his development work.

  Baker and Howe shared a look, and both breathed a sigh of relief. A huge burden had been lifted from their shoulders.

  Adam drove a rental car to the outskirts of Pleasanton, returned it, and walked away. Once he was outside the town and into more sparsely populated areas, he pulled out a small phone and dialed a number from memory. “It’s me,” he said without preamble to the person on the other end. “I have the information. I should have the transfers starting in the next few days.” He listened to a brief flurry of words. “Yes, I’ll track them down when I complete my official duties. I don’t want to leave them with too many problems to deal with in the future.” The voice on the other end of the call spoke again, and Adam nodded. “Yes, I know it’s the only way to handle this, but I don’t like what it will do to those men. They’re good people.” And finally, Adam finished the conversation, simply stating, “I’ll make it as painless as possible.”

  After hanging up the phone, Adam triggered a minor Energy burst which disintegrated the device, eliminating the ability to track the call. He then teleported to the abandoned house Millard Howe had visited a few weeks earlier.

  Despite what the Starks’ lawyer believed, the abandoned house wasn’t disguising a hidden data center. It truly was an abandoned house, accentuated with the general purpose army of nanos controlled by Adam to make it appear that it housed a hidden entrance to a private office and, presumably, a hidden data center of computers and storage equipment. The secret entryway, the mysterious fog causing sensory deprivation, the tables and chairs — all of those were temporary nano-based creations. Only the handful of current technologies like the computers, printers, and portable storage were real.

  Adam was a student of computing technology, earning a living in the human world during the Second Great Depression by offering data storage and security services to those firms still in business. He’d eventually come to the attention of a successful businessman named Will Stark, who heard reports of the innovative young man with a tremendous gift of not just analyzing data, but securing it from the prying eyes of hackers. Adam had remotely taught Will Stark much of the general philosophy Stark used for operating the technology departments in his many business interests, especially the idea of eliminating single points of failure in both technical and process designs. If one person or technology component could fail, and thus bring down an entire business function, it needed some type of backup or failsafe to ensure no loss of operational ability. Data stored in only one place, for example, could be lost or tampered with, and thus multiple copies were constantly created and checked against each other. Stark learned well from these lessons and applied them in other areas, from the design of his highly secure community and home, to inventing the elaborate method of verifying and executing his will, to the operation of his philanthropic Trust after his death.

  He had come to trust Adam in all things.

  Adam, however, was about to rob Will Stark and his Trust of every cent of cash they possessed.

  Patience was in order, however.

  Adam had already created a mock-up of the site requested by Michael Baker, because Adam had used various persuasive Energy techniques to impress on the former police officer the correctness of Adam’s own existing approach and design. And while Adam focused that conversation on the benefits of paper reduction and freeing up time for both Baker and Howe, the reality was that the entire conversation had one purpose: obtaining the information needed to access the Trust’s checking account electronically. Though it had taken a while, his mission had been a success.

  Adam would be long gone, along with the money, before they realized what had happened. He activated the website as promised, and ran a couple of small transfers to Michael Baker’s personal account. Once he’d confirmed the process worked, he set up a script, which would transfer relatively modest amounts of cash at irregular intervals to dozens of accounts he’d established around the world. Each of those accounts automatically forwarded electronic deposits to other accounts, and eventually all of the money would end up in a small handful of hidden accounts in the most secure human banks on the planet. Adam’s script would run, and his website would work as promised, until one day, a petitioner to the Trust would find that a promised transfer never arrived. Baker and Howe would check the balance and discover, too late, that there was nothing left.

  More than likely, both men would go to jail for embezzlement, for crimes that Adam had committed. The public would scoff at their stories of the mysterious man named Adam, a man who had no last name or address, who supposedly worked for Will Stark but for whom no payroll information would ever be found. After all, if you controlled the most secure data in the company, you could vanish from existence rather easily.

  The stories of his existence, told by Baker and Howe, would be considered the desperate lies of thieves caught in the act. That part of the plan was the one that bothered him the most. The larger plan required that he pilfer all of those funds from the Starks’ account, but the historical record would show that two good, decent, innocent men had committed a terrible crime of greed, and the funds would never be found. The two men and their families would be forever shamed. Adam had an idea to make right that injustice while still accomplishing his primary goal; the two men deserved a better fate than that currently awaiting them. He’d figured out the problem two years earlier, after everything was set in motion and it was too late to stop. He needed to finish this side project to preserve the reputations of the two men.

  But Adam also had a job to do. He launched his script, and watched the lifetime fortune of the Starks gradually become his own.

  XX

  Sacrifice

  Will
stopped training with Adam after the attack.

  He was convinced that he’d progressed too quickly, and that as a result he’d not taken the time to assimilate his new abilities; his singular focus on advancement meant that he’d not learned to focus on the basics like Shielding at critical times. As a result, Angel had nearly died. He needed to slow down, truly understand what he was doing, what he could do, and what he needed to focus on. And he needed to stop making stupid mistakes before somebody actually did get killed.

  Angel made a full recovery over the next day or so, and thanked Will for the blood he’d donated. She said she felt stronger than ever because of the gift. Will felt it was the least he could do, and said so.

  Angel simply sighed. “Stop blaming yourself. All of us noticed the leak and we waited too long to correct it. There’s no way you could have known about it.”

  “But I did,” Will protested. “Adam showed me how to Shield that day. I stopped doing it once the lesson ended, and I didn’t even think about it when they showed up and chased us, right before they...hurt you. I was taught what I needed to know, and didn’t do what needed to be done. I hope one day you’ll forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, but if it makes you feel better, I will say the words. I forgive you. They found us long before the lesson occurred, and showed up after it was over. Whether you remembered or not is irrelevant to whether they found us. Stop worrying about it.”

  Will opened his mouth to protest, but Angel held up a hand. “No more. Get back to work.” She winked at him and walked away.

  Will sighed. Women were confusing. He wondered if she’d been difficult as a teenager.

  He did allow Adam to give him the communication nanos, and he was gifted a few hundred billion general purpose nanos to work with. He managed to get his machines to form body armor around him after some practice, but the new toy wasn’t nearly as exciting as it would have been a few weeks earlier, before he’d nearly destroyed them all at the old camp site.

  Their new camp looked similar to the old; the structures used for dwellings built of nanos, the large wooded enclosure, the clearing used as a common area for communication. Will moved to the edge of the clearing and sat up against a tree, watching the interactions of those in the camp, wondering what these people did with all of their time. He got the impression that the 16-20 hours per day he’d spent practicing Energy work wasn’t the norm, and that most of them spent no more than an hour on Energy work each day. He learned that the nanos were used to perform much of the manual labor: gathering food, processing waste, and generating electricity. Adam had, in his typical vague fashion, indicated that most of their time was spent on self-directed research... whatever that meant. Will asked what research Adam was doing, and Adam stated that Will was his research at the moment.

  Will stood and headed into the forest, thinking about the impact of the Energy work he’d done with the tree. Clearly, both he and the tree had benefited from the symbiotic relationship. The tree had grown dramatically during the time he’d worked with it, growing from being one of the smaller and weaker trees in its grove to one fighting for dominance with other trees that had been much longer established. Likewise, Will had gone from a relative weakling in terms of Energy capacity to one fairly strong in the community; the glances he received as he walked through the common areas in his bodysuit with the yellowish-orange tint said that others recognized this. Thankfully, no one seemed to feel threatened by his accelerated achievements, at least not until the hundred or more Aliomenti fighter craft, including the three piloted by the Hunters, showed up and started shooting. Rather, they seemed pleased and encouraged by his growth, proud of him for the effort he’d put forth and the results he’d gotten. It didn’t take much in a small community of telepaths for word of his relentless pursuit of Energy growth to reach the entire population.

  Will found a small tree amid the giants in this forest grove as well. He sat down on the soft earth and watched the tree, the leaves rustling in the light breeze, the branches swaying. The canopy wasn’t as developed here; this tree managed to receive significantly more sunshine that did his tree back at the previous camp. He smiled at the possessive thought. The tree belonged to no one; it merely did what it was born to do, grow to its greatest possible height, competing against other entities for sunlight and air and nutrients in the soil. To fail was to perish; to succeed was to live. The tree did not care what other trees did; it simply made whatever effort necessary to get sufficient resources to grow. Will smiled. Sometimes, though, an extra helping hand could make all the difference.

  He wondered about the tree. Had it continued to grow, stretching high above the others to reach greater quantities of sunlight and air? Or had it stagnated without his efforts? Or worse, had the attack by the Hunters damaged it, perhaps beyond repair? He wished he were there. Will pictured the tree, seeing himself standing near it, hands on the tree’s trunk. In his reverie, his focus lapsed and he felt a surge of Energy. There was a flash...and then he was there, with his hands on the burned-out trunk of the tree he’d nurtured and been nurtured by, a simple link and a reminder of the basics of life. He felt the warm rush of Energy from the tree, though weaker than he’d remembered due to the attacks. He instinctively fed his own Energy back, feeling the synergy and symbiosis as each living thing reprocessed the gifted Energy and fed it back, better and more powerful than before. The tree was healing, and Will’s Energy was growing. It was like old times, before the Hunters found them, before...

  Will backed away again, moving a dozen yards away from his tree. The surge in Energy was noticeable, even for him, new to the experience. It was like a powerful, sweet smell, overwhelming all else. He was worried now. Had he triggered the Hunters’ warning signals again with that burst? It was with some relief that he realized that the camp was some distance away; if they came here now, they’d find no one to capture or kill besides Will. Still, he slapped on his Shield, hoping it wasn’t too late. Again.

  He heard a soft popping noise. A man had materialized where Will had stood only a moment earlier. The man had long, brown hair and wore a dark cloak. It was Porthos, the Tracker Hunter, and the man had found him yet again. Porthos turned around, searching, and finally faced Will.

  A sneer curled on Porthos’ face. “Well, Stark, you managed to escape and hide for some time. But you’re getting a bit sloppy in your old age. You let us find you twice now in, what, a week? A rather poor showing. What’s the matter, lonely from hanging out with all of those losers that call themselves the Alliance? At least you’ve got your Energy levels back to more Stark-like levels.” He chuckled at his own joke.

  Will folded his arms. “Why are you here?”

  Porthos blinked. “Is that a trick question? I’m here to capture you, you fool, or at least slow you down until my friends arrive. Fear not, they’re a bit out of range right now, and they’ll need a few more teleportation hops to get here. But they’ll be here soon enough. I’m sure Aramis would love to see you again. Probably invented a few more crimes to charge you with at this point.” He took a step toward Will. “Or you could just come quietly, and save me and the rest of your old friends the trouble of subduing you.”

  Will frowned. “My old friends? I think not. My friends are the members of the Alliance. Not Athos, Not Aramis. And certainly not you.”

  Porthos put a hand over his heart, covering up the golden Aliomenti symbol, in mock pain. “Truly, my feelings shatter at your harsh words. But I must confess, I don’t understand you, Stark. You lure us to your home. You escape. You hide for a very long time. Now you’re luring us again. Tell me, what’s the purpose of this game of cat and mouse? Has your life lost its meaning, and you’ve become bored enough to risk us killing you? Or is there truly some Will Stark master plan you’re building toward?”

  Will snorted. “Life is never dull. But I prefer to live it under my own terms, without the threat of someone taking my freedom away. I can’t rest, because while you operate under
those rules, the threat is there.”

  “As you said, Stark, life is never dull. Perhaps it is the threat of loss of any type that motivates you. Tell me, how motivated were you after we destroyed your home?” The man’s eyes glinted, and a sinister grin covered his face.

  Will took two steps toward Porthos, and then stopped. “My motivations are of my own choosing, not driven by someone else’s actions. But I’ll never forget that moment, or forgive you for your part in it.”

  Porthos chuckled. “Again, my feelings are truly crushed.” He paused, and then smiled. “Ah, I see the rest of the guests have arrived for our little party.” He glanced behind Will, who suddenly felt the presence of another man. Aramis. The shadow with the top hat gave away the identity, and before Will could react, Aramis grabbed him by the arm. He felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him, as if someone had started crushing his lungs and prevented him from breathing. It was Aramis’ unique gift, known as the Damper, and it was erasing his Energy. The power it provided the Hunter in thwarting those Hunted was immense, and Will knew he needed to free himself and escape. He rammed his elbow into the Hunter’s stomach, and Aramis let go, gasping, trying to refill his suddenly-empty lungs.

  Will darted away, trying to distance himself from both Hunters, but then sensed a third man behind him. Athos reached around him and put Will into a bear hug, and Aramis and Porthos both advanced, with the former ready to slap on the Damper, and the latter prepared to help escort Will back to the Aliomenti prison. Will stomped down on Athos’ foot and slammed his head back in to Athos’ face, snapping a bone in the Hunter’s foot and breaking the man’s nose. Athos let go, screaming, his hands flying to his face and the gushing blood. Will dipped under Porthos’ arms and darted from the tree. He’d wanted so desperately to get to the tree; now, he wanted to get back to the camp, safely, without the Hunters. He remembered the new tree he’d been looking at earlier, and...