Fearless (Dominion Trilogy #2)

by Robin Parrish

  It was difficult, not being able to see the sculpture, but as his grandfather had taught him, it was awareness that mattered. Not lineof-sight. He pictured the statue in his mind and finally found its shape with the rope, a few feet south of where they stood. He tied the knot securely, and they began the ascent. Julie went first, followed by Grant directly beneath in case she should lose her grip.

  As Grant neared the top of the water, Julie suddenly sprang upward as if pulled out of the water. He climbed frantically until his head popped out of the river. Right in front of his face was a wrinkled but strong hand with a meaty palm reaching down from above.

  Leaning over from the statue's platform was an elderly gentleman with a bushy white mustache and a bowler atop his head.

  "Lend a hand?" he asked casually in his stiff accent.

  There were four of them. Standing side by side, they watched Grant's group once everyone was back on dry land. But Grant felt sure he'd detected five Ringwearers in London ...

  Front and center was a forty-something female in a large red hat. Dressed in a smart, high-end red dress with simple hair and tasteful makeup, she looked more like a Parisian designer than a British native. Her chin was jutted slightly up and out, so that whomever she looked at, she looked down upon.

  Beside her was the older gentleman who'd offered to help Grant out of the water. He had beady eyes that were surveying the newcomers carefully and frown lines etched around his mouth. He looked leathered, as if he'd spent much of life outdoors, and his skin was dotted with liver spots. His attire matched his demeanor. A beige sweater that had been ironed so many times it was almost shiny covered his torso. A pair of neat white slacks gave him the hint of a golfer, though Grant couldn't get Sherlock Holmes's pal Dr. Watson out of his head when looking at him. Grant guessed he only had one expression for every occasion: a frown.

  There was a girl who had to have been in her early twenties, if she was even that old. She wore a white tank top, pitch-black jeans, and had close-cropped black hair that was spackled into hundreds of tiny spikes. She watched them with contempt written on her features.

  The last was a man who brought the phrase "street urchin" to Grant's mind-or maybe what a street urchin grew up to become. Ratty T-shirt, denim with holes in the knees that hadn't been put there for fashion's sake, and basic white tennis shoes. Might have been in his early thirties. His dirty red hair was parted on one side, framing his face in a boyish way that made him look a good bit younger than Grant suspected he was. In stark contrast to the others, his expression was not unpleasant, but filled with curiosity.

  All four of them had gold rings on their right middle fingers exactly like the ones the Loci wore. No differences that Grant could detect. He was reminded that this group of Ringwearers had appeared on his radar only five or six weeks ago, which put them on the map after he'd been given his ring, the Seal of Dominion. Until that happened, he'd been under the impression that there would be no more Ringwearers made. Perhaps Devlin and the Secretum had continued another part of his grandfather's work and started handing out rings again?

  "Hello," he began. "You're the group calling itself the Upholders of the Crown."

  "The Guardian graces us with his ruggedly handsome presence," said the woman in the big hat. Her lips moved very little when she spoke, and words came out with a droll superiority, as if everything in the world was part of some private joke only she knew the punch line to.

  Alex seemed to prickle, coming unexpectedly alive. "Don't get used to the view. We're not here to stay."

  "Easy, tiger," Grant quoted back at Alex, then turned to address the strangers. "I take it you realize that we are just like you. We each wear a ring; we all have unique abilities."

  The woman almost shrugged. "Be that as it may, you are here uninvited. Why?"

  "We mean you no harm," Grant said. "We're investigating the origins of the rings we wear, and those who gave them to us."

  "And your investigation has led you here, has it?" the older gentleman asked.

  "That's right. We need to find a company called-"

  "Our only interest in this matter is your trespassing, sir," said the older statesman. "And there is only one thing we know for certain about the one doing the trespassing. You are a criminal."

  Alex piped up, "A criminal? For what, ruffling a few cops' feathers on the other side of the river?"

  "Your government has placed you at the top of their Most Wanted List," the woman in the hat replied. "Something about a murdered detective in Los Angeles."

  Grant didn't let himself turn in Daniel's direction, though he wanted to very badly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the scientist stagger slightly, as if his entire strength was threatening to fail.

  Grant changed tactics. "How would you know that? I thought there was no contact with the outside world from within this barrier of yours."

  The man in the T-shirt and jeans laughed hysterically, as if Grant had just given the punch line to the funniest joke in the world. Just as suddenly, he stopped laughing and the curious look on his face returned. "It's cold out here I'm bored. My show's on the telly Can we go home?" The man's words seemed to spill out of his mouth in a jumble, as if his lips couldn't keep time with his thoughts.

  The woman in the hat spoke up as if the plain-dressed man hadn't said anything. "There's been no stoppage of information coming in, darling. But we keep a tight lid on what's going out."

  Grant was too tired for this increasingly bizarre exchange. "So you are responsible for the barrier. May I ask why you took it upon yourself to do something like this?"

  "You could never understand," the young girl spoke up for the first time, rolling her eyes.

  Grant was unmoved. "I understand that the same people that put me on the Most Wanted List are labeling your actions here criminal. They're wrong about me. Are they wrong about you?"

  The woman spoke first. "Our loyalty to our homeland is not something you should question lightly."

  "British law does not make allowances for vigilante justice, my friends," Morgan said, stepping forward. Her accent did not go unnoticed by her fellow Englishmen.

  "The New Order was requested and sanctioned under secret order of the prime minister himself," said the woman. "Not everyone is bubbling over with gratitude, but they accept that it's for the best. Life goes on."

  "No martial law?" Grant asked.

  "Heavens, no. People still go to work and pay their taxes," the old man said. "It's just smoother sailing this way."

  "To what end?" Grant asked. "How long do you plan to keep this upT

  "I have a better question," Alex eyed them suspiciously. "What happens to the ones who violate the rules of your `New Order'?"

  While everyone was talking, Lisa quietly walked to a nearby tree. She pried loose a medium sized branch near the bottom and returned with it.

  She whacked Daniel in the back of the head with it as hard as she could. Pandemonium erupted among Grant's people, but their British counterparts remained perfectly calm.

  "What are you doing?!" Daniel cried as the others rushed in around the two of them, some to protect Daniel and others to prevent Lisa from striking him again.

  But Lisa had already dropped the stick, horrified at what she'd done. Daniel felt the back of his head and found a small bloodied spot there.

  "That is what happens," said the woman in the hat in reply to Alex's question.

  Grant got it immediately. Lisa wasn't in control of her actions when she struck Daniel. One of the Upholders had taken control of her. His theory was accurate-one of them was able to control willpower.

  "Don't do that again," Alex threatened. Grant knew then that he wasn't the only person who understood what had just happened; most of his friends had grasped it as well. Alex looked ready to strike.

  Grant had one eye on her and one on Daniel. Morgan had already placed a handkerchief over the back of his head to stop the bleeding. Lisa stood alone, several feet away, mortified. Everyone else
was braced for a fight.

  "Look," Grant intervened, "you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. Deal?"

  "Very well, then," she snapped in a sour tone. "But if you harm anyone . . ." She let her threat fade to silence.

  Grant and his friends leered at their British counterparts as they passed by and vanished into the night.

  The team split up upon entering the city. Grant convinced Alex to accompany him to Trigate International immediately, despite their mutual fatigue. Investigating Payton's lead there seemed crucial, and even though he was still covered in dried mud from the bottom of the Thames, he had no desire to wait till morning. Besides, the cover of darkness was always a better ally than any powers they could conjure.

  Julie and Lisa were to locate the roomiest apartment or hotel room they could find, giving the group a place to call home base while in London, even though none of them expected to be there very long.

  Trigate's home office turned out to be nothing more than a oneroom space located in a single-floor business complex several blocks north of Regent's Park. With Grant's abilities, getting inside the office was simple. No fingerprints or other evidence of their entry need be left behind. Grant removed his still-muddy shoes and left them outside.

  Once inside, a few sweeps of their flashlights across the bare floor revealed the office to be all but empty.

  "If this actually was used by anybody as office space," Grant remarked, "they've been gone for a long time."

  "I love being in London," Alex said, her tired eyes glazed over. Then a stricken look appeared on her face. "I have no idea why I just said that."

  "You're thinking what we all are," Grant replied, walking deeper into the room. "It's something about being inside the barrier. Someone clearly wants us to love the city so much we never think about leaving just like everyone else inside. It's how they're keeping everyone in, just like an unwillingness to enter the city is keeping the rest of the world out."

  "My money's on Queen Fuchsia," Alex said.

  Grant laughed. He examined the blank white walls, ceiling panels, and fluorescent lights. The room hadn't even been carpeted.

  "This sure takes the term `dummy corporation' to staggering new heights," she commented.

  "We flew halfway across the world and walked under a river to see this," Grant said in a take-charge tone. "Let's not get so impatient we miss something important."

  "It's probably the jet lag," Alex said, yawning, "or maybe it's the living Hell we spent the last few days in, or it could even be the delegation from the Psycho Squad that failed to offer us the keys to the city ... but could you remind me what we're looking for, exactly?"

  "Morgan said the file Payton recovered in France referred to Trigate alongside a memo about some sort of `repository' that's connected to the Secretum."

  "Yeah," Alex quipped, "I'm so glad she wasn't in any way vague about that. Just tell me what I have to do to get out of here so I can go to bed."

  "If the Secretum left clues of any kind behind, they'll be well hidden. We need to scour every inch of this place."

  Grant knelt to examine the concrete pavement beneath his feet. He felt along its surface, looking for ... he wasn't sure what, really.

  Alex unenthusiastically followed his lead, inspecting the walls. She began beside the front door and made a slow circle along the room's four walls.

  "I have a question no one's asking," she said, making conversation. "What makes those Upholders people think they have any right to do what they're doing with this barrier? I don't care if she was telling the truth about having the Prime Minister's approval. What is ever solved by putting up walls between you and the rest of the world?"

  "Protection," Grant replied simply as he knelt to closely inspect the floor. "That's what they want. The world has become a very dangerous place, and living in fear is a fact of life now. They did the only thing they felt they could do to keep the danger at bay."

  "But that's ridiculous," Alex replied. "If an earthquake or a tidal wave or some other horrible disaster comes to claim London, what can this barrier do to stop it?"

  "Nothing, obviously," Grant replied. "But I think maybe they're more worried about the human quotient than anything nature might do. Look at what happened in L.A. The world is ready to explode. They want to keep their little corner of it out of the fray."

  "It'll never work-because of the human quotient," she concluded.

  A few silent minutes of searching later, she was done. She found Grant standing in the middle of the room shining his flashlight at the ceiling panels above them.

  She stood beside him and looked up, shining her own flashlight on the ceiling.

  "What do you see?" he asked.

  "I don't know, water spots?" she replied, uncertain what he was wanting her to find. A white foam tile in the center of the ceiling space showed telltale brown stains.

  With a wave of his hand in the direction of the entrance, Grant turned on the room's main light switch.

  "Whoa, what are you doing?!" she said, lowering her voice. They had intentionally avoided turning on the lights to stave off unwanted attention; the room had two small windows on one side, which were completely uncovered by curtains or blinds.

  "I don't think those are water stains," he said softly, still looking at the ceiling.

  She looked up. In the soft white light of the fluorescents, the small stains on the center tile definitely looked several shades brighter than standard brown. In fact, they had a hue that was almost ... red.

  With a mere look, Grant raised the panel from its resting spot atop the thin metal tracks, but once it was floating in the crawl space above the ceiling, it tipped sideways unexpectedly and something fell.

  Alex jumped back involuntarily.

  "Ow," Grant mumbled. The falling object had grazed him on the way down. Something scratched him, causing a tiny trickle of blood to surface on the back of his hand.

  They both looked at the object without saying anything. Grant forgot about the ceiling tile and it fell back into place above them, though ajar.

  "Is that... ?" Alex started but couldn't finish.

  "That's a human hand," Grant announced the obvious.

  "Okay," Alex said, weariness spreading across her frame, "first of all ... ew. Second, I know I'm your partner in the field, but don't even think about asking me to pick that up."

  "Not necessary," Grant replied, studying the hand, which was frozen in a relaxed position. At his gaze, the hand floated up into the air between them.

  "How did it scratch you?" Alex asked, noticing the angry mark on the back of his hand. "Fingernails?"

  Grant examined the floating hand. "Guess so. Don't see anything else that could do it." The hand did boast some sharp-looking fingernails.

  "Doesn't look very old," he observed. "Wait, look-it's the Secretum's brand or tattoo or whatever."

  Alex leaned in just enough to see the tiny, asterisk-shaped mark on the hand's wrist, inches below the point where it had been severed. She fought back a wave of disgust.

  "Yeah ..." she said, taking a step back and looking away from the floating hand. "If you're waiting for me to be impressed, you've got me confused with Payton. He's the one who chops up stuff like this. For all we know, he may have done this one. Can we go now?"

  "No," Grant replied, something about a disembodied hand was very familiar ...

  Of course!

  "It's ..." he said. "It's a left hand."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "The old man at the nursing home back in L.A.! He was missing his left hand!"

  Alex looked at him as if he were crazy. "You don't seriously believe this severed hand we found in London, England belongs to some kooky old man in Los Angeles."

  Grant caused the hand to turn over where it hovered between them. "I'm starting to believe it," he replied.

  Alex followed his stare to the hand's open palm, which was now facing up.

  Two words were cut into the flesh in dried, maroon-colored blood
. Something razor-sharp had been used to carve them into the skin, and probably not long before the hand was removed, since the cuts hadn't had time to scab over.

  The first word was omega and the second word was prime.

  "If a member of the Secretum went to all the trouble of carving the words omega prime into his own hand," Grant said slowly, "then those must be pretty important words, wouldn't you say?"

  Alex put a hand over her mouth, swallowing her supper for the second time.

  "We got what we came for," he said, rubbing absently at where the hand had scratched him. He thought back to when Payton had once given him a similar scar on his other hand, the day they first met. "Let's go."

  She closed her eyes and put a hand to her stomach. "Just tell me we're not taking that thing with us."

  Ethan Cooke had a reputation within the Agency for attempting dangerous stunts. It wasn't an everyday thing for him, but when an investigation called for it, he didn't back down. He was about to attempt one that had the potential to put him in the history books.

  Director Stevens had almost refused to give a green light for this particular scheme, but Guardian's disappearance inside London's mysterious barrier was an unacceptable tactical disadvantage. Not only was he off the grid, he might as well have been off the planet.

  So at the eleventh hour Stevens had come through, pulling every last string at her disposal to coerce British authorities into helping Ethan carry out his plan. Which, he was forced to agree with her words from their last conversation, was a plan that could only be described as "altogether psychotic."

  Then again, he mused, she probably just wanted to see him crash and burn once and for all. This time, maybe literally.

  He stepped inside the subway train. There was only one car, specifically placed alone on the tracks for this mission, thanks to Stevens's contacts. The train's engine was behind the lonely car instead of in front, where it was normally.