The First Ones

by Michael Weinberger

  Ursula just nodded and cupped his face, “I know. I didn’t think it was going to happen so quickly but…” She looked up at his face, her eyes sleepy and almost appeared as though they were glazed over.

  “Um…no,” Jet amended, “I meant the plane. We’re falling out of the sky.”

  “Hmmm? OH!” Ursula quickly spun away, grabbing the stick and righting the Cessna back into a normal flight attitude.

  The two awkwardly looked out the windshield at the darkness in front of them before Jet spoke again.

  “Okay, let me try that again.” He thought about how to put his words into a question that wouldn’t be offensive and said, “You did some rather amazing things tonight against that…thing. How are you able to do stuff like that?

  Ursula smile was one of relief, possibly because she wouldn’t have to expand on her misinterpretation of Jet’s ‘falling’ comment, “That was much better.”

  Jet made a seated, yet flamboyant bow, “Thank you.”

  Ursula seemed to think about her own words in the same way that Jet had, before she answered, “I guess the best explanation is that I’m not… entirely… human.”

  Jet’s mind immediately asked, ‘then what are you?’ but he managed to keep it to himself and only said, “Go on.”

  “I mean…Of course, I’m human, but I do have some ties to the Ancients in me.”

  Jet was up to speed now regarding the Ancients but asked, “What do you mean by having ‘ties?’”

  Ursula shrugged, “I mean that I acquired some of the strength and resilience of the Ancients. That is why I was able to become a Guardian.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing in any of the stories my Grandfather taught me.” Jet shook his head as he concentrated, “In fact, I’m sure of it. So how did that happen?”

  “How did I acquire the ability, or how did I become a Guardian?”

  Jett thought about that, “How did you acquire the abilities? My guess would be that the fact that you had them in the first place makes it obvious why you were chosen to be a Guardian.”

  Ursula smiled as if knowing some secret that she wasn’t sharing.

  “I was born with them,” Ursula answered directly.

  Jet frowned, “How is that possible?” Jet looked at his hands as if he could find the answers written there, “That shouldn’t be possible.”

  Ursula only shrugged and said, “Regardless, it happened. I was significantly stronger, faster and practically unbreakable compared to the other children my age, for far back as I can remember.”

  As incredible as the words sounded, he knew from what he had seen earlier that evening everything she said was true. Then a thought occurred to him and it made his heart drop to ask the next question.

  “Are you immortal?” he calmly questioned.

  Ursula must have heard the emotion in his voice because when she turned to him her eyes once again looked apprehensive, as if she were afraid to tell him the answer.

  “In a sense, yes. Like the Ancients, I can be killed, but otherwise I won’t grow old or die naturally in the human way.”

  Jet felt the disappointment run through him. In truth, he had already known the answer before he had asked and, in reality, it was the follow up question he was actually afraid of asking.

  “How old are you?” Jet wondered.

  Ursula’s look of apprehension turned to fear, “Jet…”

  “Ursula,” Jet said calmly, “I need to know.”

  Ursula looked imploringly at him, but there was no relenting in the soft smile and kind expression in his eyes, as he waited for an answer.

  “I’m…I’ll be eight hundred and fifty-three this year.”

  The breath Jet had been holding burst out of him. It was far more than he had braced himself to hear.

  “Eight…” Jet spoke the word softly as the full weight of the number registered in his mind. When the lump formed in his throat he understood just how smitten he had become in such a short time with this unusual and amazing woman. Now, assuming they survived their immediate ordeal, any future with her seemed impossible. She was…well, for the lack of a better word…ancient. She had seen the rise and fall of empires and watched as the world changed from the dark ages into the Renaissance. She was around to witness the establishment of the English colonies in America and the Declaration of Independence, the United States’ Civil War and eventually had seen the United States rise to become a superpower. She had lived a multitude of human lifetimes, and experienced things that no one with a normal lifespan could possibly comprehend.

  And she had almost certainly loved and lost in those centuries past. Had there been a special soul mate? Or were regular human beings just like dogs to her. Not in a degrading way; rather something to take in to your home, and love as if part of your family with the understanding how, in a relatively short amount of time from her perspective, they’d be gone. Of course, when the end came there would be mourning, but life would go on and eventually the pain would fade. The joy of finding yet another would fill the void left by the previous one.

  How could he ever fall for someone knowing that eventually he’d be replaced by another and that he was just a brief moment in time for her? He would grow old and die, while she stayed young and vital. Even worse, how could she ever truly want or love someone who was so… so… immature, as compared to her?

  Jet cursed under his breath as the thoughts ripped through him. He turned his head away from her, pretending to look out the window and watch the first glimmer of the sunrise break over the horizon. It was stupid, he had just met her, and under obnoxiously unusual circumstances, too. He shouldn’t be feeling the kind of letdown that he was going through, regardless of the intense experiences they had shared. Jet knew that people who go through such violent or traumatic moments share a kind of bond that brings them closer together than they otherwise would have been, but really…

  “Jet,” Ursula spoke his name quietly, but the sound of her voice resonated through him making him shiver, “Please say something.”

  Jet kept his eyes on the horizon, “It’s…I’ll be all right, I think the unbelievable quality of everything just overwhelmed me for a bit.” Jet lied, but then he found himself saying, “I’m going to get you and Aurora through this Ursula. I promise. Afterward…” Jet’s words trailed off and Ursula remained quiet to let him finish, “...when we succeed in whatever it is we need to do, maybe I can go back to my old life knowing that I did my part in something great.”

  Jet turned back to Ursula and any hint of the emotions he had been going through were gone from his face, replaced by a look of professional detachment and determination. Ursula studied his face and pressed her lips together as she nodded at him, as if understanding the unspoken meaning in the words.

  “So,” he broke the uncomfortable silence, “how long before we reach Seattle?”

  “Another hour and a half if the wind keeps constant.”

  “Was that thing posing as your friend back at the airport right about the amount of fuel?”

  Ursula looked down and read the gauge. “Actually, it looks as though we have quite a bit more than it had thought.”

  Aurora’s high-pitched voice called out from the seat behind them.

  “That’s good,” she said, “because we aren’t going to Seattle.”

  Ursula and Jet both turned in their seats to look back at the small figure still curled up in her chair with her eyes shut but her mouth free of her thumb.

  Jet looked at Ursula, who seemed just as confused as he by the information.

  Ursula said evenly, “We have more fuel than expected but even with a full tank we can’t make it all the way to Alaska.”

  Jet turned to her and said, “We’re going to Alaska?”

  Aurora answered, “Yes, but not at the moment. We’re going to stop in Vancouver first.”

  Ursula sucked in a sharp breath, making Jet jump, as she protested, “Wait! No! We can’t just... just…” Ursula wa
s stammering, before Aurora interrupted her.

  “We need him,” the child chided the grown woman, in the most surreal manner, “You’ll have to put the difficulties of your relationship aside.”

  Jet looked at Ursula, who was frowning with what appeared to be genuine displeasure. He had seen that type of a look before, on the faces of other women when they were forced to deal with their ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends, over formerly mutual interests.

  “Oh great,” Jet thought, “I get to meet the ex.”

  Chapter 14: Vancouver

  Jet stayed close to Aurora when they landed at the small air terminal for private planes that was just adjacent to the Vancouver airport’s main terminal. He wasn’t trying to cause any awkwardness between himself and Ursula, but he felt he had distance himself a bit in order to diminish the feelings he had developed for her. Ursula didn’t appear to be struggling with any kind of heart stricken turmoil over what he was doing, but then again, she had seemed to shut down as well ever since Aurora had told her to go to Vancouver and enlist the help of her ex.

  Jet guessed that the breakup must have been pretty bad because Ursula had been a tower of strength since he met her, and now she looked unsure and nervous.

  Jet and Aurora stayed behind as Ursula handled the customs officials, somehow managing to slip all three of them into the country, despite being without passports. They took a shuttle bus to the main airport terminals, only stopping for a moment while Ursula picked up a few basic supplies from the Duty-Free store, before they hailed a taxi that would take them to the one place where it seemed Ursula least wanted to be.

  Maybe it made Jet feel a little bit better, or at least less insecure, when the cab turned into the more industrial area of downtown Vancouver, as opposed to one of the streets lined with multi-million dollar mansions. At least he wasn’t competing with an oil baron or timber merchant. Then again, he had made the decision that he wasn’t going to be vying for Ursula’s affections, hadn’t he?

  The taxicab slowed to a stop in front of a property appearing as though it had been abandoned after being almost totally decimated by a fire. Jet looked at the ruin of a building and asked, “Is this it?”

  Ursula looked concerned, saying, “No, it is not,” and then she spoke to the taxi driver, asking, “Why are we stopping?”

  The driver was a middle-aged man, seemingly of middle-eastern decent, and his accent was thick with an inflection that was stereotypical of others who might have hailed from that geographical location, speaking English only as a second language.

  “I’m so sorry.” he began nervously, “but it isn’t safe for me to drive any further into this part of the city.”

  Jet asked, almost absentmindedly, as the law enforcement agent in him took over, “Troubles with car-jacking?”

  The driver looked at Jet’s reflection in his rear-view mirror, becoming very uneasy as he spoke, “No sir. It’s just that… Well, you see… This part of the city is said to be haunted.”

  “Uh-huh… haunted?” Jet didn’t really believe in such things, but then again, considering all that he had seen and learned tonight, his mind was pretty open to many other possibilities.

  “Oh yes sir, they say the area is inhabited by Demons, and, I’m sorry, but I can’t take you in any further. If you’d like, I can take you to a nice hotel in the city,” he shifted his eyes to Aurora, “maybe one near the beach, or a nice park?”

  “No, thank you.” Ursula said with a sigh, “It’s not far, so we’ll just walk from here.”

  Jet turned to Ursula, “We will?”

  The driver looked shocked in the rear-view mirror, “What?!? Oh dear no, oh dear…”

  Ursula reached down, picking up the small back pack that held the few belongings that they had taken from the Cessna, and was about to open the door when the driver quickly pressed the automatic lock button, locking them all inside the cab.

  Jet and Ursula both turned to the driver and Ursula reached a hand inside her backpack, fingers sliding over the handle of the huge Desert Eagle, before saying to the driver, “What are you doing?”

  The driver was silent as he pressed the palms of his hands together, closed his eyes and said a short prayer, in whatever his native language might have been.

  When the driver finished his prayer, he asked, “You have someone waiting for you at your destination?”

  “Yes,” Ursula said coolly.

  The driver nodded, and then continued, “And you are sure you will be safe there?”

  “Yes,” Ursula again agreed.

  The driver nodded, “All right. God would damn me to hell if I let two fools and a child walk around out in the open here. I will take you the rest of the way.”

  The driver put the vehicle in gear and drove forward.

  “Thank you,” Jet offered and felt strange for thanking a taxi cab driver to be taking them to the place they had asked to go.

  “Just remember this when you tip me,” the diver chuckled nervously, as his eyes swung back and forth across the road searching for whatever he feared might pop out and attack his cab.

  They reached the address without bursting into flames, being engulfed by flies, sucked to death by giant leeches or even jumped by brain eating zombies. On the other hand, the building they pulled up to was far more ominous than anything that could have been conjured up from their imaginations.

  It was an old warehouse that might once have served as a small airplane hangar or boat dry dock and it was comprised completely of steel, concrete and glass. Jagged steel bars with wicked looking points were stacked and piled haphazardly several feet away and rose into the air off to one side, while another pile of what looked to be both large and small broken, jagged shards of some black glass were strewn loosely everywhere else along the front of the warehouse. The rubble gave the entire structure an aura of danger and visually screamed “No Trespassing!” even though no signs were erected on the property indicating such.

  “All right.” the cab driver confirmed, “this is it. Please be careful.”

  Ursula pulled several bills out of her backpack, “Thank you.”

  The driver looked at the bills as Ursula passed them through the slot in the bulletproof glass separating the front compartment from the rear, and his eyes went wide, “Oh! Wait, this is very nice of you, but too much…even to go into this area.”

  “It’s okay.” Ursula smiled, “take it.”

  The driver again pressed his hands together bringing them up to his face, as he said what Jet believed was a quick “Thanks” before he took the money and unlocked the doors, “Allah be with you.”

  Jet looked to Aurora and couldn’t help but smile as he said, “You have no idea.”

  Ursula smiled and punched Jet lightly in the shoulder, and before Jet could say anything else the trio climbed out of the cab and watched as it began to pull away.

  “Decent man,” Jet said softly.

  Aurora looked at him and nodded, “So he seemed”

  Jet nodded, “So where’s the front door?”

  Ursula was staring at the building as if in a daydream.

  “Ursula?”

  Her voice came out, not as a whisper, but still very meek and quiet, “The door is to the right, just past that pile of steel bars.”

  Jet looked, but couldn’t see anything that looked like a door. There was a sound coming from the building that might have been an engine or a generator that suddenly stopped, and the area went totally quiet, until a series of loud clanging impacts reverberated through the air.

  “Well,” Ursula said softly, “he’s home.”

  Jet looked at Ursula and tried to sound cavalier when he said, “That was what we were hoping for, right?”

  Ursula didn’t look at him but nodded as she said, “Sure, but do me a favor?”

  “What’s that?” Jet frowned.

  “Don’t say anything about Aurora being, well more than she appears,” Ursula turned to look Jet in the eyes, “It might set him off.”<
br />
  Jet couldn’t imagine why, as powerful, armed, and just plain dangerous as Ursula was, she would be concerned about setting anyone “off.”

  “This guy inside,” Jet asked, “he knows about the First Ones and the mythology?”

  Aurora laughed, but didn’t say anything, while Ursula remained stoic, “Very much so, yes.”

  Jet was even more confused, but he agreed, “Okay then, keeping that information to myself, but who is he?”

  Ursula looked at Jet, then down to Aurora and said, “No one of importance, anymore.”

  Chapter 15: Trespassing

  The door wasn’t locked when Ursula checked and she didn’t bother to knock before opening it wide and going inside. Aurora followed, but Jet called out in a voice that was half whisper and half shout, “Shouldn’t we wait and be invited before barging inside?”

  “Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Ursula called back to him, without attempting to lower the volume of her voice.

  He shook his head and sighed, before walking through the door as well. They walked into what was probably supposed to be a small office or reception room. Instead, it was though the space hadn’t been used as anything but a storage area for at least a decade. Ursula made her way through another door that Jet thought might lead to the main area of the warehouse. The sound of music grew louder, yet it didn’t completely muffle the noise coming from the space beyond, which Jet now recognized as the sound of a welding torch.

  The trio walked through the interior door and found their view of the main, open floor of the warehouse obscured by stacks of partially sawn or split logs. Ursula began to move a little slower as she passed by the scattered ten-foot long logs and she cautiously peered around the edge of one pile. Aurora followed, but stayed behind Ursula, while Jet made his way over to them and couldn’t help but take his own look.

  At the far end of the room, sitting at a workbench with his back to the trio, was “the ex.” The welding torch was going at full blast and the man was wearing an old-style welding mask over his face that hid any other facial features. He had on heavy leather welding gloves plus a leather apron over his jeans and a simple T-shirt. Jet took in a slow breath and thought he understood why Ursula had been apprehensive. The guy was also one of the largest men he had ever seen. Even as far away as he was from them, the guy looked as though he was almost as tall as Ursula while in a seated position at the front of the welding bench. His shirt barely contained the width of his back, and his muscles stretched the fabric to just beneath the bursting point.