Bart looked at me with surprise. “Nevermind that for now. Here’s my best guess. John was right about the thousand years, only it took two millennia to get there. 1066 AD holds the key.”
“The year 1066?” I asked, confused.
He nodded. “In the 1060s, the Duke of Normandy, now known as William the Conqueror, visited the pope before invading Britain. The Duke was a strong man with an open mind. The pope knew this and used it. You see, this pope was also a member of our order. He believed that William’s voyage to conquer England was part of a divine plan. The pope blessed William and his conquest. With that blessing, William sailed his army to Britain. When he first set foot on the ground, he stumbled and fell to his knees. He grabbed the sand in his fists and held it up for his men. ‘Look, I have already grasped my Kingdom.’ Those words came to be. The conqueror got a fifth of all the country’s land. But it was more than that. We believe William’s kingdom served the kingdom of God. His reign over England was no mere shift in the provinces of man. It was a landmark in history’s passage because it heralded the binding of the dragon for another thousand years.”
I had been nodding here and there as Bart spoke. I had tried, as I’d promised Naomi, to pay attention. But Bart was sounding crazy again. Now he was waiting for me to say something. “Thanks for the history lesson,” I said. “You want to tell me why any of this is relevant?”
“That is exactly what I want to tell you,” he replied. “The dragon, the one you have seen, is more than a creature. It is a concept, too. It is chaos and destruction, not by nature, but by man. It is Satan unleashed through man. Man at its worst. Man as animal. The dragon brings war and death and misery. I believe that John foresaw the dragon’s bindings undone in 1066—a thousand years from when he had the vision. But I think the world wasn’t ready. The fall would have been too soft. There were so few people. They were so disconnected. Now the world is ready. Another thousand years have passed. The limits of society, and constraints of law, they will be unbound. The dragon will be unbound. Terror will reign, the world will end, and you will be there to watch it, Elijah.”
He was silent then, waiting again for me to answer.
“That’s dark stuff, man.” I’d rather not believe a word of it, but it sounded a lot more reasonable if the dragon was symbolic instead of a literal creature. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“We need your vision. You can see what others cannot, but you have to believe. Naomi needs you to believe.”
“Why? You expect me to believe your theories?” I challenged.
“Not fully,” he said. “I told you, none of us know all the answers. But you should trust in the gifts God has given to you.”
“You call my dreams gifts?”
“Oh yes, Elijah.” He nodded slowly. “They are gifts to you, for the sake of the world.”
“I think the world’s going to keep on spinning.”
Bart sighed, as if I’d said something profound. “Many think the same thing. Even a few in my order. Call me crazy, but I’ve seen what you’ve seen. He will be unbound.”
“You’ve had the dreams, too?” I had to admit, that would be interesting.
“Yes.” He shivered slightly. “It has been many years. I saw hints of a dragon and a man. I saw hints of what you saw, but I lack your gift of sight. The only thing my dreams showed clearly was you…coming to me.”
“You saw me? How do you know?”
“Because I saw your face, Elijah. And you’re a Jewish son from the Roeh line. A brilliant girl brought this boy to me, this boy with dreams. I could be wrong about the timing, the thousand years, and everything else. But I’m not wrong about you.”
“So what’s it supposed to mean, your dreams?”
“They mean I believe in you,” Bart said, like a declaration of faith. “I believe you are chosen, you are gifted, you are the one who can see.”
“Why me?” His conviction stirred something deep down. No one had ever said something like that to me.
“I wish I knew, Elijah. I wish I knew about Naomi, too. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to enter heaven before I know the Lord’s reasons. We’re just guessing at the shadows with our feeble brains.”
“So let’s assume for a second that you’re right. What am I supposed to see? And what does Naomi have to do with this?”
“I cannot tell a seer what he will see.” He pointed at me. “That is your task. You must stay with Naomi to be her eyes, her protector.”
He sounded a lot like Naomi’s mother in my dreams. Maybe he could answer my biggest question: “Protect her from what?”
“When he is unleashed, he will seek her.”
“Abaddon? Why?”
Bart shrugged. “I’ve said most of what I know. You can know more than anyone, if you will believe.”
“I am trying,” I said.
“Try harder, because he knows your role, and he will seek to corrupt it, just as he will seek to corrupt her. You are running out of time.”
“Can’t you tell me more?” I tried to tell myself that I was asking because I didn’t want to come back to Bart again. No way should I actually want to know his theories. But now I was a bit curious.
He shook his head. “We’ve reached the limits of my guidance. I dare not speak things that are not truth. You must find it out yourself. You must believe, Elijah.”
I left his office feeling more confused than ever. Part of me wanted him to be right. What if I really was unique, chosen? But part of me refused to believe it. This man, holed up in a dungeon with candles, had just told me he dreamed about me! It was too weird—almost as weird as a dragon being unleashed and the world ending this year, and that I most certainly did not believe.
When I woke in my bed at school the next morning, the word believe was ringing in my ears. I could not shake Bart’s words. They hung over my mind like a cloud. Had Bart really just been talking to me, or was he trying to manipulate me as part of some bigger plot? Could this have something to do with ISA?
Charles’s warning sprang to mind again.
I wondered how much Naomi knew, and how much she was hiding. Her steady heartbeat was hundreds of miles away.
IT WAS MARCH 26, about a week after I’d met with Bart. His words and warnings seemed distant on this perfect early spring day. It was the kind of day that crashes the hardest when you learn someone died.
It was after calculus class. I was sitting on an old stone bench outside. The sky was blue and the sun warmed the world. My pale skin drank it in while the birds sang. The bright green blades of flowers sliced up through the earth, ready any moment to flower, to explode into color.
Then I made a bad decision. I summoned V’s briefing screens. They obscured the bright green grass and trees behind them. The center screen showed Naomi’s video message. “Elijah,” she said, her eyes puffy and red. Her voice caught, then she continued in a whisper, “We lost Charles.”
No. That was impossible. I had glimpsed him just yesterday, walking to class.
“You’ll want to know how,” she continued. “And you know I can’t tell you. It was on a mission. That’s all I can say.”
I figured she would stop then, maybe cry. But instead her somber gaze gripped me like a vice while she spoke on.
“I’m so sorry, Elijah. I wish I could be there with you, but I cannot talk to you about this, and I will be away a couple weeks on duty. You will understand in time.”
I doubted that. She would say nothing of her missions. Charles’s death only gave me more doubts about her and the trip to Rome.
“Stay strong,” she said, as if reading my mind across time and space. “Two more weeks, and I’ll be sitting beside you on a plane heading to Rome.” Her eyes were moist as she blew me a kiss. The message was over.
I turned off the screens without checking any other messages. The sun was still shining, the birds still singing. The grass was still green. But now Charles was dead.
I sat there in silence until my next clas
s. I didn’t know what else to do. I stumbled through the day and ate dinner alone, in disbelief. I tried reaching Naomi, Aisha, Wade, and even Patrick. No one responded. I skipped my studies and went straight to sleep.
By the next morning, everyone in school had heard the news. The guys were all talking about it in the halls. How did he die? He was in class just yesterday. You know he was picked to be a fellow in that government agency? The International Security Agency? Yeah, that one. I bet he was a spy. I bet the Chinese killed him. Maybe he bit one of those poison pills, the kind spies keep in their mouths to make sure no torture makes them spill their secrets. Is that suicide, then? No, it’s government service, the highest kind. Charles is a hero. An American hero.
And so the rumors spread.
Eventually I turned on my earphones. I searched for songs with violins and a swooning voice. V knew what I wanted better than I did. She found a playlist of five songs. I listened to those same five, over and over, until the eulogy for Charles the next day. I had been chosen to speak.
When the service came, a few hundred students gathered in the chapel. The perfect spring weather held outside. Sunlight streamed through the arched, stained glass windows. It made my classmates look brilliant, glittering in red and blue and yellow.
I walked to the podium as if in a trance. So many eyes were on me. V reduced my focus, so I wouldn’t have to look at anyone in particular. Then she enhanced my vocal chords. At least her presence in my life was reliable.
“Charles was a nerd,” I began. I heard a few gasps, as I’d expected. I wasn’t here to sugarcoat things. Charles would not have wanted that. “He was the first one to teach me how to hack into others’ precepts, five years ago, before the government had to change the whole precept system because of him. He probably taught some of you how to configure glasses so that the teachers wouldn’t catch you watching movies in class. He always wore his glasses. Sometimes I wonder if he saw a brighter world through them. He laughed a lot, Charles did. He made me laugh, too. I bet everyone in this room who ever talked to Charles has laughed with Charles.”
Many heads in the room nodded. I pressed on.
“A nerd, you see, never takes himself too seriously. He invites others into his world, as long as they are willing to leave their pride at the door. A nerd is a genius, a pioneer of some sort. A great nerd, one like Charles, makes the systems of the world bend around him because of his brilliance. Some systems of man will never bend, though. Systems like war and terror and power. They don’t give for nerds. They swallow them up and use them for their purposes. So what was a guy like Charles to do? He could let the powers swallow him, or he could punch them in the face. I’m sure that’s what Charles did. We may never know the truth, but I bet he punched a giant dragon. That’s how we should remember him.”
I took two swings at the air, fake punches, the way Charles used to do. I saw a few pained smiles in the crowd.
“Maybe he paid with his life, but he showed us what courage is. A nerd with courage. If we all followed that lead, Charles would be alive, watching movies, laughing. Instead he’s dead. Honor him. Don’t let the powers swallow you.”
I stopped and the chapel was deathly silent. I had prepared a speech in my head and it included almost none of the words that had left my mouth. I walked back to my seat and sat down. I wiped the sweat from my brow and the tears from my eyes. My hands were shaking.
They stopped shaking that night, when I got the message from Patrick. I was sitting alone in my dorm room. The message sprang into my mind, designated urgent, with an override of anything else. It was one of those top-secret notes that blinks on your screen for half a minute and then disappears forever.
I’m sorry, man. I was with Charles when he died. We were on a mission in Brazil in late January. His death came fast. It was painless. Just before we lost him, he gave me a message for you. He said you should trust Naomi. I don’t know why he said that. None of it makes sense anymore. Good luck. Your friend, P.
That was it. The letters vanished just as I finished reading them the third time.
It would have been hard enough to believe the words if they had stayed fixed on my screen. With them gone, though, doubts raged like wildfire.
Somebody was lying. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
I’d seen Charles many times since late January. I’d even sat beside him at the Super Bowl. He was living and breathing then. He’d said the exact opposite of Patrick’s message, that I should not trust Naomi. Did Patrick really have the guts to make up something like that? Why would he? Maybe I didn’t like the guy much, but he had always been honest.
V walked me through my memories. Charles had seemed off ever since we’d finished our week at ISA-7. Even at the Super Bowl, he’d looked sick. He’d snapped at me, for the first time ever, about not going to Rome. He hadn’t been himself.
The words of Sven, the ISA techie, suddenly came to me. But we can reconstruct a fresh corpse. You can occupy it.
I fell back into my bed. I closed my eyes, and the room and the world began to spin around me.
“I HEARD ABOUT your friend.” My dad had his back to me. He looked out a wall of glass over the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan. The green and metallic vertical lines of the city matched his pinstripes. He had shut down his precept. It was a bad sign, especially since he rarely called for me like this.
“What did you hear?” I sat in one of the deep leather chairs facing his desk. No one had desks like his anymore. It must have taken a whole redwood to build the thing.
“You gave a speech to your classmates.” He turned to me. A glass of scotch was in his hand. This was his second already since I’d been in his office.
“Yes sir.” I met his stare. Today would be different. I was not going to let him intimidate me.
“It seems you caused quite a stir.” He walked around the desk and leaned back against it, swirling his drink. The ice cubes clinked against the crystal.
“I don’t know about that.”
“The dean of Princeton, Garret Blythe, is a friend of mine. He called me.” He took a sip. “He’s worried about you, son, and so am I.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“No,” I lied. The past months had been a thunderstorm—Naomi was the lightening, Charles the thunder, and my dreams the black clouds. “I’m still enrolling this fall.”
“Of course you are.” My dad smiled, the way he always did before he demanded something of me. “That’s why I want you to take it easy before your first semester. You graduate in a little over a month, yes?”
“That’s right, the third Saturday of May.”
“I will be there.” He finished his scotch and sat in the other leather chair across from me. His hands gripped the chair’s arms firmly. “Listen, Elijah, I know this is hard.”
He had no idea.
“I am trying to protect you, son.”
“I know.” But I didn’t.
“Good.” He paused. “I want you to drop this ISA business.”
“What?”
“You have noble intentions, I can see that.”
“This isn’t about being noble. Our country needs people like me to serve.”
“You failed the test.”
“I will take it again this summer.”
“No, you won’t.”
I rose to my feet, and so did he.
“This is not an argument,” he said.
“No,” I said, my voice growing louder, “because you can’t stop me.”
“I already have,” he replied.
“What do you mean?”
“Sit down.” I stayed on my feet. “Please, sit, let me explain, and then we can discuss.”
He sat, and I reluctantly did the same.
“I won’t lose you like I lost your mother.” He looked away, toward the window. He hadn’t mentioned her in years. “I spoke with the ISA Director in Geneva, Beatriz Ronaldo. We agreed it was best if you postponed your enrol
lment a while. Finish your first year at Princeton. If you still want to enlist, then I won’t stand in your way. You’ll have to pass the test, of course.”
“You promise not to interfere again?”
The faintest wince crossed over his face.
“What did you do?” I asked. “Rig the first test?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I promise. But I was consulted when they learned about your dreams. They asked me strange questions, son. They asked me if you had any reason to dream of strange images, things like dragons and destroyed cities. I told them the truth, that you didn’t. What’s going on in there?” He pointed at my forehead. “I’m worried about you.”
I stood and walked to the window behind his desk. The sun had dipped halfway into the Hudson River. The lights of a thousand buildings began to shine against the coming darkness. It was my favorite time of day. The view calmed my nerves.
“I’m fine, father,” I eventually said.
He had stepped to my side, and at my words, he put his arm over my shoulders. We both looked out together. It was easier than looking at each other. “That’s what I’ve said for years about losing your mother.”
“I thought you were telling the truth.”
“Sometimes I did, too.”
“You have to let me try the test again.”
“I will, but not now. I can’t bear to lose you. You’ve had these visions, you’ve lost a friend, and this girl is distracting you.”
“Why shouldn’t she distract me?” I turned to look at him, defiance creeping into my stance.
He looked at me calmly, too calmly. “When Director Ronaldo called me in January, she asked about Naomi as well. The girl was in your visions, and she was in your class. I learned that you two synced. You’ve been spending a lot of time with her. I saw the charges. A night at the Inn at Little Washington, a trip to North Carolina, and you plan to go to Rome in a week. You’re young, and this is moving awfully fast. When were you going to talk to me about her?”
“I already told you the basics, last time we talked. You cut our monthly chat short. You’ve been busy.”
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