Despite her insistence that she be accompanied by Mercy, she not only didn’t teach her any new things, she didn’t speak to them at all. In fact, Jaelyn looked too tired in Ian’s opinion to be driving anyway. It was dark, and the road wound through an area so densely wooded that at times the trucks were pushing their way through the branches. Ian didn’t know how she could tell where the road was, and it made him so nervous that he lost all interest in distracting her with questions.
Before he knew it, the road ended abruptly at a cliff wall. Jaelyn stopped the truck and stared at the car that was parked halfway in the brush, leaving just enough clearance for their wide truck.
She didn’t say anything, but Ian could tell that she was both surprised and upset to see it crouched there in the shadows.
“What’s wrong?” Ian asked and then looked back at the car when she didn’t respond. It was a nice car, new and very expensive; unfortunately, it had been heavily damaged by the route it had taken through the trees.
“That car has been messed up royally,” Mercy commented and then asked, “Is it yours?”
“No,” Jaelyn answered sharply. She glanced through the side mirrors as the second truck pulled up behind. When it was in line with them, she said, “Here we go.”
They moved forward slowly, directly toward the rock wall, and almost immediately the truck started to dip down into the earth. The long ramp lowered under the weight of the truck, eventually hitting the bottom a good seventeen feet below the ground. Jaelyn pulled the truck forward well into the tunnel below, and the ramp stayed down for the next vehicle to descend.
“That’s a fancy setup,” Ian commented, looking back and taking in the hydraulic ramp.
Mercy added, leaning over to look out the window as well, “I guess you weren’t kidding about your privacy.”
“No.” Jaelyn climbed down and Ian watched her walk over to a control panel attached to the wall of the cave they had driven into. When the other truck had cleared the ramp, she threw a switch that sent the ramp back up to the ceiling. She hit a few more buttons, and then stood very still.
She seemed to relax, for just a minute. Her shoulders lowered and she stared forward into the true darkness that was cut only by their headlights. Because he was watching her intently, he saw it right away, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open just slightly.
He rolled down his window and asked, “What is it?”
Her head turned toward him, but she was still seeing whatever it was that had shocked her. Finally, she finished assessing whatever unwelcome information had greeted her on her arrival home, and she focused on him. She returned to the truck, laying one hand on Ian’s door and looking up at him.
“It is a visitor.”
“But I thought you said no one knew about this place.”
“That is true.”
“And even if they did, they couldn’t find it.”
“Also true.”
“So how could you have a uninvited visitor?”
“Some people are surprisingly resourceful and, in this case, dangerously meddlesome. Ian Young, I think it’s time you and yours rested after your long journey.”
He didn’t even have time to process the words before he slipped away.
Chapter 36
“How could you let him in without me here?” she demanded as soon as she entered the room. “Have you lost your mind?”
He leaned back in his chair, “You look terrible, Jaelyn, like you need about a week of sleep and two of your energy fixes.”
“Do not even consider starting with your reprimands. Go down the tunnel and bring everyone up. We need to transfer them as soon as possible, before they wake up.” She grumbled as she scanned the display in front of them, “I was planning on getting the rest I needed, but now you’ve gone and done this.”
He held out his hands, “One, Edillian spoke of dying.” As he expected, she froze for a series of heartbeats, after which she threw herself into a chair in front of another display and pulled up a status screen. He waited a moment, just for effect, and then dropped the second bomb, “And, two, he called him.”
“What?” Her head jerked around and he got a good view of her red eyes bulging out. She was having a hard time of it tonight, he thought smugly to himself. He shallowly enjoyed it after enduring so many years of her tight self-control.
“Edillian called him.”
“That’s impossible.”
He shrugged. “Nevertheless. Since he was called, I felt there was no choice but to let him in.”
“That tradition is not for them, and certainly not for him, as you well know, Morgan.”
“No? I thought you were replenishing the People, Jaelyn. What happened to your boast that you would repopulate the city before you died? Besides, the traditions of the People are Edillian’s to embrace and have nothing to do with the race, or races, of his lifegiver.”
She made a disgusted sound and turned back to the display, choosing to ignore his needling. “He looks good.”
Morgan nodded, “He’s been growing stronger steadily. It is the first good outlook I’ve seen.”
“That’s because the last time the outlook was good, it was you. All the rest were failures.”
He knew it as well as she did. He stood and started toward the arch she had entered through. “Where do you want them?”
“For now, we’ll have to keep them sedated. I must have some rest. Perhaps later, we could allow some of the easier ones, especially the children and the untalented…”
He stopped, turning, “You brought unpowered? Why?”
“Someone needs to take care of those children until they are old enough to be of any use, and their parents are perfectly suited for that. They are also much easier to control. You won’t believe the problems I had keeping your children in line.”
“That strong?”
“Naturally. They are yours, after all, and Mercy is even better, even though a smaller fraction of the talent came to her through her mother. It gives me great hope, Morgan, to see them as powerful as they are, with so much Human polluting the line.”
Jaelyn hadn’t thought that Morgan or any of the other patients, including Edillian, would be able to have natural children of their own. She was sure that they would be sterile because of the disease and their long years convalescing. That was why Onesia’s pregnancies and then later Morgan’s wife’s were so celebrated. It was also why she had become infuriated when both of them refused to reproduce like lab rats for her.
She continued, “Perhaps I worried needlessly about the children’s ability to reproduce. Oniesa’s eggs were viable, and you were able to reproduce very easily. I think we can assume the rest will be just as successful.” She sat down in front of the display which she hadn’t turned from, and started reviewing every one of her son’s status readouts since she had left.
“Hospital, then?”
She nodded. “If you want, wake the easy ones and walk them over, then put them down again. Keep a few to help you transport the rest.”
“All right.”
“But do not wake them, and especially not Mercy.”
“Naturally. You should rest while you can.”
She nodded but didn’t move.
He left, striding through the large hall, which, like all the areas they inhabited, was only minimally lit. There were only the two of them living there, so there was no need to draw on more resources, even though the city was designed to easily accommodate the power needs of thousands. Higher up the mountain, the windmills that took advantage of the high winds that tore through the passes generated the majority of the power for the city; there was also another, smaller facility deep in the cavern system that harnessed an underground river as a second source. Between the two, they had far more power than the two of them could ever use, even with the high demands of the laboratory.
The farther he got from her, the more he felt the tension leave his back, and the easier his breathing came. He had taken a big
risk, and he still wasn’t sure if he had gotten away with it. She was tricky that way. But, with her only true son’s life on the line, she couldn’t really argue with his decision. Morgan had probably saved the boy’s life by leaving the man with him. That should put him in good standing with Jaelyn for a while. With her, the plan was absolutely everything, so it was hard to know how she would react to anything or anyone that wasn’t part her design. She had already proven that any person who wasn’t in line with her vision was easily cut from it.
So, he obeyed and kept his thoughts as simple as he could. She couldn’t read him of course, not without effort, but she could definitely pick up things if he left them lying about his mind. That’s why he made sure to keep a clean house when she was expected to visit.
He passed the hospital, where a quick glance showed him that several beds were already occupied, thanks to Jaelyn. Three steps past the door, he stopped. He backed up, until he was standing in the doorway. He hadn’t seen his son in over thirty years, and he had never seen his granddaughter. They lay side by side on two white, unmade beds in the center of the room. They were surrounded by people, but he had picked them out instantly.
Morgan passed the people he didn’t know who lay nearly as perfectly still as his son did. It was not sleep, which was accompanied by little sounds and movements. This was a deeper rest, one native to his people, that rested the mind, spirit and body completely; sometimes, after a trauma, they would fall into it unwillingly and remain submerged until the stain from the experience could be washed away. All those around him had been forced into it and would be held there by Jaelyn until she released them; in fact, if she never released them, they would eventually starve to death. For the Kin and the Humans that carried none of his genetic heritage, it was a forced, unnatural hibernation; for people like his son, it was something that his body instinctually embraced and would be rejuvenated by.
He stopped by Ian’s side and looked at the features that greatly resembled his own, or rather, how his features would look, if Morgan were to age another ten years or so. They had the same dark, wavy hair and tan skin, the cut of the jawbone, the almond shaped eyes, and the full lips. He wanted the man to open his eyes, so that he could see him even better, to know what kind of person he had become in his absence, in the life that Jaelyn had insisted would make him into the kind of man she was looking for.
She had taken a vision of them, when the boy and his sister were still very young, and had convinced Morgan to release them into the future she saw for them. She said that she saw a danger for them, something that only hardy individuals could combat. If they stayed in the city, she assured him that they would not survive it. At the time, he was still fresh from his awakening, impressionable, unsure and very biddable; he had had no chance of defying her in the matter of his children any more than in the matter of his wife. Now that he was not much older but decidedly wiser, he had no choice but to live with the results of his earlier naivete.
What manner of man was his son? The kind that Jaelyn had hoped for, supposedly. He wondered, not for the first time, if he would be glad of that. What had she wanted? Someone like herself? Someone who had the strength of character to do what she did, for decades upon decades? Or was it better described as the stomach to do what was required, for the good of their people? He understood now, that she had seen that Morgan didn’t have it, so she had torn his children from his poor influence and set them adrift in the borderlands, the fiercest environment imaginable for the young and helpless.
He knew what that did to people, because they had spent many years there, manipulating the genetic pool, tinkering with the lives of people easily tampered with, until the genetic map of more and more people included one particular foreign trait. It was laughably easy to get subjects, unlike the ridiculous stunts the Kin and Humans were currently resorting to. They didn’t have to do more than pose as doctors who would take next to no pay for services, and people flooded to them.
Sometimes, they specialized in pediatrics, setting up shop for a week at a time at the local orphanage, but accepting any child that was brought to them.
“Here you go. Now this will sting a bit.” One booster shot, and one thin tendril of power reaching in and making just a few tiny changes right there.
Always, they targeted females of any age because their eggs were fully formed at birth. It was a matter of great concentration, to send their power into the ovaries and effect a very small change in the multitude of simple cells, increasing the likelihood that any of the girl or woman’s children would be born with the ability to manipulate energy fields.
In all the many years he had spent in the borderlands, he had seen enough to guess how that environment would have molded the minds of his children. Ian and his sister were undoubtably just the type of people Jaelyn was looking for, which made it unlikely that Morgan would have any interest in them at all.
His eyes only trailed over the girl momentarily. Looking at her was like looking at her grandmother, down to the smallest detail, and he suddenly wasn’t interested in doing that, either. He had already had his fill of standing over her unmoving body.
As he left, he wondered if it would be as hard to look at his daughter. Would he see her mother’s recrimination in her eyes? Would her voice remind him of his wife’s frantic screams, her pleading, her weeping, or would she be like her mother in later days: resentful, and then silent. Silently taking herself and their unborn child away.
Jaelyn had planned to be his teacher, but his wife was the one who had taught him the most. She even left him an assignment on a little hand written note. I’ll be taking care of this child. You are in charge of the others. After that, there was nothing to do but wait until they returned to the halls of their childhood, as Jaelyn had seen that they would.
Chapter 37
Mercy blinked opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. She took a deep breath and released it, feeling refreshed. She had finally gotten some good sleep. Her father would be pleased about that. She remembered that he had been really worried about her during the trip, and she decided immediately to get up and go talk to him.
She had been rude to him, now that she thought about it. She started to remember that she had stood up to him and ignored him and behaved like a complete brat. Her heart started beating faster. Why had she done that? She needed to find him right away.
She sat up and looked around the large bedroom. It was very elegant, with rich fabrics on the bed and covering the beautifully hand carved chairs. A large, skillfully woven rug was spread over the blue and white tile floor and others that were similar in style hung on the walls. There were no windows and only one exit: a high archway led into what looked from the bed to be a study of some type. On a bench at the end of the bed a fresh set of clothes she’d never seen before were folded neatly next to her shoes. She got up, dressed, pulled on her shoes and went out.
The outer room ended up being a little sitting room. There was some type of piano in the corner, a decadent piece of furniture she’d only seen a few times in her life in museums. She mistook a small decorative desk along one wall for something functional, but it didn’t have anything useful in the drawers, just some linen paper, some small books written in a language she didn’t recognize, and a pair of pens. It didn’t have what she was looking for: a key to unlock the only door.
Well, that wasn’t a real problem for her. She went to the door with the intention of opening it in a more destructive way, even though she felt a little regretful about treating the solid, wooden door inlaid with delicate scrolling patterns as poorly as she had treated Cord’s dorm room lock. However, once she started looking for it, she realized that there wasn’t a keyhole to be found. There was only a latch. The door was hanging there on its hinges, held closed by its immense weight and the friction between the door and the floor. She had assumed it was locked before because it hadn’t budged when she pushed on it. She tried again, putting her weight behind it. It only swung forward a few i
nches, but not enough to allow her to pass through and, when she stepped back, it slowly fell back into place.
Then, with the help of her power, she pushed on the door with enough force to open it. She stepped through the door and then watched as it fell shut again, her fingers trailing along the wood. Only a very strong Human or Kin would be able to get out of her room easily; that, or a person like herself with a strong ability. Other than her father, she didn’t know anyone who could have moved the door the way she had. She looked up and down the hall. The other doors seemed to be similar to hers.
What kind of place was this? It was Jaelyn’s home...she remembered that much, because she remembered when they had arrived, but, she didn’t remember going to sleep in that room. In fact, she didn't remember anything after the underground tunnel.
She had already sent her ribbons out searching for her family, but hadn’t found anyone else yet. Every room in the hall was empty. Then, she encountered someone coming up a set of stairs to her right. She followed her own ribbon in that direction, even as Jaelyn latched on to it and followed it back to her.
You have risen earlier than I expected.
Mercy could tell that the woman was both irritated and surprised by that fact. Normally, she would have felt sorry for upsetting their host, but she wasn't feeling normal. For some reason Mercy didn't feel the affection for the woman that had filled her recently, probably because she was still tired from their long trip and her intense training.
As they approached each other, Mercy thought that something about the other woman seemed less...well, just less. Less kind, less regal. Mercy pulled her ribbon out of the woman’s grasp, frowning slightly when Jaelyn held on to it for just a moment before releasing it.
“Where is my father? My family?”
“They are resting still. The trip was very strenuous for everyone. I’m afraid even I might have been a bit unpleasant at the end. I apologize for that, Mercy.”
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