“Well,” Braden says, “that explains why not everyone got the whole prophecy.”
“What do you mean? These extra parts at least explain things more. The first version left off making you feel like it was inevitable that I’d win. It seemed like the Guardians were telling their own people that what they were doing was pointless.”
“Mr. Walters tried to explain it when he told you this could be looked at as more of a possibility than a prophecy. That’s how the Guardians treated it. Cassia would win unless we found a way to stop her.”
“But wouldn’t telling them how they’re supposed to stop me make more sense?” I ask.
Braden shakes his head. “Contrary to popular belief, not all Guardians are as sick and twisted as Drake was. If they told new recruits right off that Cassia was going to take Guardians and steal their power, for one, but also that they’d have to break the laws of power to stop her even though she was the one doing the right thing in the first place, they’d have a much harder time getting people to sign up with them. Most people join the Guardians willingly because they think they’re going to help people. It’s not until they’ve been there a few years that they realize the whole ‘protect and serve’ thing is just a pipe dream.”
So they give them an impossible task instead. Knowing firsthand how pigheaded and stubborn Guardians can be, I guess I can understand that. Any of the Guardian class members I know get pretty indignant when you tell them they can’t do something. In fact, it’s the best way to make sure they will do it.
“You know, when I got the first version from you, I didn’t understand very much of it. This new stuff, though, it seems so plain. Too plain, almost,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the first new stanza, it says they can’t stop me on their own because I’ll steal their people and power. Idris says one of my own will defeat me. The Guardians must think that means the Ciphers, the ones they’re changing, and I think I agree with them because of the last couple lines of the next stanza. It says they’ll have to seize all control by breaking the laws of power. Whatever they were doing to that poor Cipher, they were definitely breaking some laws of power,” I say, shivering at the memory.
Braden pulls me against him more tightly, and asks, “Libby, what were they doing to the Ciphers?”
Shaking off the horrible feeling that memory left is impossible as I call it back up. I try to ignore the sickening emotions as I tell Braden about what I saw. It doesn’t work very well, because I still feel like throwing up when I finish. That Cipher’s dead eyes haunt me every time I think about them.
“I don’t understand. What actually happened to him?” Braden asked.
“I don’t know, but a creature like that … Braden, they could take over the entire world. They could kill whoever they wanted, enslave everyone else. The Guardians would have complete control of everyone and everything.” It’s a thought that floors me, but figuring out how they made the creature has to outweigh my fear right now.
The idea that anyone would ever invade his protected memories like I did would never occur to Drake beforehand since it’s never been done before, but I swear he kept himself out of the circle just to keep me from figuring out what was going on. I had hoped so badly that he would be able to explain this to me. Now, I’m going to have to figure it out on my own. Braden’s hand drifts up and down my arm absently as he thinks. Despite the mountain perched to fall on me, I smile. I don’t have to do anything alone.
“My best guess,” I say, interrupting Braden’s thoughts, “is that they found some way of getting around having to perform an Inquest on the Ciphers. We already know every Cipher has the same six talents, so if they could unlock them in some way, it wouldn’t be surprising for them to have the same ones.”
“Could anyone really do that, Libby? You’re the most powerful person on earth, and not even you could pull off something like that.” He stares at me thoughtfully, his gaze fixed on the three sets of diktats ringing my arm. “Could you?”
I turn my hand over, not wanting to think about what the last set cost me. “I don’t think I could ever do what they did, Braden. I couldn’t feel the individual powers or what they were doing, but I could definitely sense how much power was being used. Even with the extra diktats I have now, I still don’t think I could do it. There was one person there for every talent they put in the Cipher, and they were obviously the most powerful practitioners they could get their hands on.”
“Okay, but you only have the diktats of three people. What if you had six complete sets? Do you think you could do it then?” he asks.
“I … I don’t know. Are you wanting me to try what they did?” I cringe at the very idea.
“No,” Braden says quickly.
“I don’t even get what you’re asking, Braden. There was only one person for each talent, not six for each one. Why would I need six of each talent? To do what they did, wouldn’t I only need to be as powerful in each talent as they were? I may not be there yet, because I’m not eighteen, but once my powers are fully unlocked I will be. I still don’t think I could do it, even then. It was creepy how much power was flowing through that room.”
Braden nods encouragingly. “Too much power, right? You said it felt like it was going to crush you. No one person should have that much power. So what if it wasn’t just one person’s power. What if they were combining their power, buffering each other until their power was six times what it should be?”
“You can’t combine power,” I argue. “It’s impossible.”
“Quite the statement coming from you,” he snorts.
I brush off his comment, and say, “Braden, seriously, there’s no way for two people to combine their power outside of being Companions. And you can’t be Companions with more than one person. Certainly not with six other people.”
“Well, which is more impossible, Libby, that six people found a way to combine their power, or that six people on this planet are more powerful than you? Neither one is supposed to be true, but obviously one of them is.” He waits for my answer, but I don’t know what to say. He’s right. One or the other is true.
“They must have combined their power,” I say quietly.
I say it not only because I don’t want to imagine the possibility of people being more powerful than I am, but because prophecies, legends, historical writings, all of them declare me to be the absolute most powerful. Not a single mention of the impossibility of combining power has ever come up. In fact, it’s another one of those things we’re taught from the time we’re little as an absolute truth, like the Destroyer being something to fear, but never do I remember any proof of the claim. We’re told it’s impossible, so we never try. I have to admit I should know better than that.
“Even if we’re right,” Braden says, “that still leaves us with the problem of what they did to the Cipher.”
My list of impossible things to either do or figure out just keeps getting longer. I play the memory in my mind again, searching for any hints or ideas. Nothing particular really strikes me, but as I watch I think about Celia of all things. Remembering when I attempted, and failed, to perform an Inquest on her suddenly sparks an idea in me.
“I could feel Celia’s talents, but I couldn’t unlock them,” I say, mostly to myself. Talking my ideas out helps me organize them. Braden must recognize this because he doesn’t say anything.
“I knew what talents she had, and where they were centered inside of her, but I couldn’t do anything to unlock them. If the Guardians really do know how to combine power, maybe they know how to find a Cipher’s talent without Perception. You now, like one person’s Concealment can go in and find the other person’s Concealment. Maybe that’s why they need someone from every talent. If they can do that, maybe they can touch the source of the talent and combine with it, or draw it out in some way, without actually unlocking it. That would be so much stress on a Cipher’s body and mind. It could be why he turned into a virtual zombie.
”
I turn my attention back to Braden. “What do you think?”
“It makes sense,” he says. He’s quiet for a moment as he thinks. When he looks back over at me, he has a considering expression on his face. “After my dad and brother died, I had a really hard time for a while. Every night I had nightmares. I was terrified of Sihirs coming and taking me away. Not the real Sihirs I know exist now, but the ones in the stories, the zombie kind that carry off little children. My foster parents tried. They gave me a night light and told me I was safe. They just figured it was an effect of everything I’d been through and said the nightmares would go away after a while.”
“Did they?” I ask.
“No, not until I told my grandpa about them when we met in the spirit world.”
“What did he do that made them go away?”
“It wasn’t anything he did, but what he said,” Braden explains. “He told me that dreams came from some grain of reality. He was a psychiatrist before his illness made him bedridden, so we talked for a while about how my dreams of the Sihirs taking me probably stemmed from losing my dad and brother and feeling like I was alone and afraid of losing anyone else. I was pretty young, so I didn’t really understand most of what he said, but what he told me about dreams coming from reality really struck me. I asked him whether Sihirs were real. His answer surprised me. He said just like dreams came from reality, most stories come from truth. I suppose it should have scared me even more to think that Sihirs might be real, but for some reason it made me feel better. I felt that if they were real, I could fight them. If they were just dreams chasing me around at night, there was nothing I could do to stop them.”
Not that I don’t love learning more about Braden, but I have to ask. “Um, what does this have to do with changing Ciphers?”
Braden laughs. “Sorry, I guess I didn’t connect the two very well. I think what my grandpa said is more true than he knew. Stories do come from truth. Milo’s mom told you the real Sihirs were the thing Saia turned into when they killed her with her spirit still out of her body. What if she was wrong? What if the real Sihirs are the ones from the stories, soulless bodies too powerful to stop, bent on mayhem and destruction?”
“That amount of power would wreak havoc on a person’s spirit,” I say. “The Spiritualist could even help the process along, suppressing the spirit until it couldn’t even interact with the body anymore. The Cipher would still be alive, but have no identity or free will. He would be a mindless slave with incredible power.”
“Who knows how many of these things the Guardians have created. They could have an entire army of them, Libby,” Braden says.
I’ve never been a big fan of zombie movies. Lance is, though. Growing up with him, I’ve seen dozens of them, from Night of the Living Dead to Twenty Eight Days Later and Zombieland. It’s pretty universal knowledge that cutting a zombies head off will kill them … again. None of the movie zombies had six talents, though. What I will have to face won’t be lumbering hunks of flesh too stupid to even open a door. These will be strong and fast, intelligent enough to hunt, but programmed to kill me. They will be much more powerful than any other foe I’ve faced. How do I fight something like that?
Our conversation moves on as we think and talk about how to beat the zombie Ciphers. Ideas and suggestions bounce around us, some good and some dismissed as soon as they’re spoken. As scary as this new threat is, at least I was able to find out about it. We can prepare ourselves. I’ve still got time. But as we sit and try to come up with a plan, my original fear about the prophecy nags at me. The explanation seems too simple. I have to be missing something.
Chapter 26
Faith
Jen’s blog report is snapped up in an instant, locally, but the story really only breaks when President Howe himself holds a news conference about it. He, of course, doesn’t bother to explain everything that led up to me “intervening” with Drake. All he does is paint a picture of a Guardian breaking under the pressures of his duties and basically losing his mind. I come off as some kind of creepy scavenger picking up desperate, unstable pieces of society.
Too bad for President Howe that his people aren’t the fastest workers in the world. It takes him two days to work up his speech. In that time, my Ciphers were already mobilized by Lance and Braden to contact everyone they could and explain what really happened with Drake. They encouraged their friends to pass it on to as many people as would listen. By the time Howe stepped up to his microphone Sunday night, half the world already knew the real version of what happened, or most of it anyway.
The only thing that still remains a secret is what happened to Drake after I took him. For the next few weeks, we maintained the rumor that he joined us, which is true, but don’t reveal the fact that he died right after I stole his talents. The Ciphers and friends in the training house are the only ones who know that. Of those thirty-something people, only Braden, Lance, Celia, and I attended his funeral. The Monday after I woke back up we took his body into the mountains after school and buried it near the cabin where Audrey died. I would have liked to have buried him next to her, but I had no idea where that might be. None of us really said anything. I didn’t know what the others were thinking as we walked away from his grave, but I left hoping he was able to find Audrey again.
In the weeks since President Howe’s press conference, everyone has been on heightened alert. I broke the truce regardless of what the public believes. The whole world thinks they know what happened. Howe knows the truth. I have no doubt about that. He has reason upon reason for me to be expelled, imprisoned, killed even, but nobody comes. No angry, pitchfork-waving mobs, no Guardians or Seekers, either. Everything stays eerily quiet. Everyone in the general public must either support me or be too scared to face me. I doubt that’s true for the Guardians and Seekers.
After weeks of looking over my shoulder, I realize that maybe our careful lie worked better than I thought. We start listening even more carefully to rumors circulating through the Guardians and realize that Howe has been scouring everywhere for Drake, trying to find him and kill him, and when he comes up empty he starts to believe what Jen wrote . Drake’s disappearance doesn’t convince Howe that I have Drake, but it makes him wonder, makes him too scared to make a move. It’s a small victory I know won’t last long, but it’s one I plan to make good use of.
Howe’s fear is a strange thing, but Milo’s behavior is just as odd. He knew better than to drag his criticism of me bringing Braden on the raid into a full out fight that night, but as soon as I was out of bed he threw it in my face again. I refused to apologize, and even lost my temper completely and slapped him after reminding him of his own mistakes. Maybe Celia wouldn’t have been able to do anything given how fast the toxin worked, but neither of us can know that for sure. Ever since that fight, he’s been making himself scarce. Celia worries about him and what he might be doing. So do I.
I have followed him multiple times with no suspicious results. That doesn’t mean I’m convinced something isn’t going on. I can’t watch him constantly. I worry and watch, ready to act, but more often than not, I have to trust in his total obsession for bringing down the Guardians and hope he won’t do anything to put it all in jeopardy. I try to take my mind off Milo for a few minutes and get back to something much more fun for a change.
Like getting ready for Lance’s eighteenth birthday party. I missed his birthday last year due to hating his guts. If Howe is going to hold off because he can’t decide whether I killed Drake or turned him, and which option is more scary, I’m definitely making up for missing Lance’s birthday last year. This isn’t just a party, of course. It’s mainly a guise for our recruits from all over the country to meet and plan, and to attract new recruits. We don’t want to advertise we’re all getting together in one spot, so using Lance’s annual monster birthday bash works as a very believable cover. And thank goodness it does, because we could all use a chance to have fun for at least a few hours.
“
Hope, is the DJ set up? Does he need anything else?” I ask as I rush through the foyer.
“Everything’s good to go,” she says, not stopping, either.
“Celia!” I call when I spot her across the room. She hurries over, balancing stacks of plates and cups in her arms, and asks what I need. “Did someone pick up Lance’s brother, yet? I wanted him to be here before Lance gets back.”
“Yeah, Daniel has him hooking up lights outside on the steps and making sure they got all the ice taken care of,” Celia says.
“I thought the ice was taken care of already. Have you seen Milo at all?” I ask, my thoughts invariably slipping back to him.
She shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him all day.”
I frown, but try not to linger. It’s no big surprise he isn’t in the mood for a party. I’m sure he’ll be here tomorrow for the conferences we have planned with our out of town guests. “I’m going to go get ready, okay? Holler if you need me for anything.”
Celia nods and makes for the ballroom. Her ballet-inspired cocktail dress swishes around her legs as she scurries away from me. Not many people can pull off a virtual tutu outside of a dance studio, but Celia can. Its happy bounce still fits her optimistic nature, but it amazes me sometimes just how much she’s changed since her Inquest. Boys and clothes used to fill her mind to bursting. Now you can hardly get her to talk about anything other than healing techniques and combat triage procedures. That’s what everyone has been like, though. Scared of someone coming after us, planning for those battles, thinking of nothing other than helping me take down the Guardians. This party is just what everyone needs. We’re all about to explode from the tension. And I am pretty excited for ten-seventeen tonight.
I turn away from the decorating and hurry upstairs. Your birthdate, right down to the second, determines when your talents become fully unlocked. At ten-seventeen tonight, Lance will be the first of my original band of insurrectionists to hit that mark. Before meeting Braden, Lance was the fastest, strongest, most graceful person I knew. Braden put him to shame, but Lance’s already potent talents were a teasing hint at what power he would one day hold. I get a little giddy when I think about finally being able to see what Lance can really do.
Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy Page 24